This is a long awaited report into how much it will cost to upgrade the UK to a wholly fibre-optic cable based system.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7600834.stmThe cost of taking fibre-based broadband to every UK home could top £28.8bn, says a report.
Compiled by the government's broadband advisory group, the report details the cost of the different ways to wire the UK for next generation broadband.
Another option, to take the fibres to street-level boxes, would only cost £5.1bn, it said.
Big differences in the cost of updating urban and rural net access will pose difficult choices, says the report.
The cheapest option, at £5.1bn, is to take fibre only to the familiar street-level cabinets that act as a connection point between homes and exchanges. Beyond the cabinet to the home existing copper cables would be used. The BSG estimates that this system would permit speeds of 30-100 Megabits per second (Mbps).
The other two options involve taking fibre to homes via a shared or dedicated cable.
The BSG puts a £25.5bn price tag on the shared option which would see a small number of homes sharing the 2.5 Gigabits per second capacity of each line.
Giving every home or business its own dedicated cable is the most expensive option, said the BSG, and could cost up to £28.8bn. But it would mean each home would get up to 1Gbps
Whilst it seems a lot of money there is no point in not pushing forward with the best possible system offering 1Gbs, we are already seeing the potential of video delivery systems and the associated infrastructural problems it is creating, also the costs involved in setting up this system can be offset by providing television channels via the fibre network and freeing up the final amount of radio spectrum that consumes using this method folks can select pay per view options from the tv providers and thus infrastructural costs can be reduced at their end also.
The savings introduced by the sale of the existing radio spectrum used by television and the phasing out of the need for giant transmitters and the associated infrastructure should mean the £28 Billion price tag will drop to something like £18 billion and thus would make it possible to deliver a major social upgrade in the way folks live and interact.
