British Telecom has to this point been unwilling to spend heavily on a new fiber to the home network for the UK. Even UK regulators have agreed with the thesis that clear evidence of demand, sufficient to provide a payback, is lacking.
"No one would be more delighted if a commercial incentive emerged that enabled us to fiber the nation," says Peter McCarthy-Ward, BT director. "We are not facing large numbers of people today who are constrained by their bandwidth."
BT also faces intense investor resistance. Everywhere service providers have pondered widesparead FTTH, investors have made their displeasure clear by hammering equity prices of the companies that have done so.
What does seem clear is that in cases where a national, or other units of government, do not subsidize FTTH programs heavily, the investment case is questionable, even if the strategic value might outweigh even the near-term pro forma. Investors might not appreciate the replacement of copper access networks with optical fiber networks, when the immediate outcome is simply a replacement of lost voice revenues with new service revenues made possible by the existence of the fiber.
But that's a better outcome than sustained decline, which might be the outcome if the upgrades are not made.
FTTH makes clear business sense, even if it does not always seem to make immediate investment sense, in markets where a national government is not heavily subsidizing the program.
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