Focus

**Something Else** · 12-09-2007, 06:04 PM

(Fibre Optical Cable Underground Sewer)

A great technique being used which means I mitght actually get fast internets one day.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7104011.stm

Originally Posted by someguy

While politicians and network providers work out how they can afford to provide the UK with a network capable of delivering super-fast broadband speeds, one company is already doing it - via the sewers. H20 networks has been in negotiations with water firms for the last five years and began rolling out its fibre-via-sewers network - known as Focus (Fibre Optical Cable Underground Sewer) in 2003. Universities in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Bournemouth are enjoying high-speed fibre connections with speeds of up to 20Gbps (gigabits per second), while council offices around the UK are also benefiting from super-fast broadband. Next month it plans to move to a new phase of its roll-out which could see it provide fibre networks to businesses and consumers around the UK.

The alternative way of laying fibre involves digging up the road which can be extremely disruptive, expensive and slow. “To roll out a networking deploying fibre over a 2km area would be six to 12 months in the planning. We can do it physically in four hours,” said Elfred Thomas, managing director of H20. There is also a huge disparity in the costs as well. “It costs between £150 and £200 per metre to dig up the roads and our costs are nowhere near that,” he said. It cost Napier University in the order of £80,000 to have a 1.2km fibre network. With a traditional fibre network these costs would have been in the region of £400,000 to £1.2m, said Mr Thomas. The other major advantage over competing systems, for instance the leased lines that BT supplies to businesses, is that the costs are not dependent on how much capacity is required. “You can have 10Mbps or 20Gbps and it costs the same,” said Mr Thomas.