Watchdog unsure whether to interfere in high-speed upgrades to the national broadband network

UK communications regulator Ofcom last week hedged bets with the publication of its consultation document for regulating the future of residential broadband. The watchdog said it is not sure whether it should interfere in next-generation access (NGA), its term for mostly fibre-based high-speed upgrades to the national network.

In the document, called Future Broadband: Policy Approach to Next Generation Access, Ofcom said, " Intervention to secure next-generation access (NGA) investment today is premature, but should not be ruled out if circumstances change."

Currently, the majority of residential internet connections use a copper connection to one of BT's street cabinets and then a copper connection to the nearest exchange. NGA would either require one of two options for operators, running optical fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) or running fibre to the home (FTTH).

The problem Ofcom has, and why it appears to be sitting on the fence, is the dearth of NGA deployments in the UK, "aside from the government-funded Digital Region project in South Yorkshire and BT's FTTH trial in Ebbsfleet [in Kent]", said Ed Richards, Ofcom chief executive.

Ofcom did not give its own figures for the cost of NGA using optical fibre, but the group’s chief technology officer Peter Ingram quoted industry figures of around £7bn to £10bn for FTTC, and "somewhere north of £15bn" for FTTH.

The massive scale of this investment means that there are very few operators which could contemplate such a large investment. Of these, BT has already got a £10bn five-year investment in its Next Generation Network and would be perhaps most likely to contemplate a rollout.

Ofcom’s Ingram said that the majority of European NGA was FTTC, but that in the UK it would probably end up as being a heterogenous mixture of transports using optical fibre, cable and even wireless.

Industry expert Steve Kennedy warned that FTTC could bring problems, as other operators would want equal access to the street cabinets to put in their own DSL access modules.

"It will be a regulatory nightmare,” he warned. “BT love that. Their regulatory department is bigger than Ofcom's."