The on-going developments in FTTC, EFM & Annex M means that services long previously held as the “Corporate reserve” are now available to the SMB market, it is also great news for “hard to get to” sites that were previously held back simply because fibre role out was cost prohibitive.
A few years ago in a previous role, we were approached by a company that owned several trading estates, they were suffering churn on some of their smaller sites simply because their customers needed more bandwidth to run their businesses. These access technology developments enable businesses to move forward with technology.
So what about FTTP – this is great news for customers as it is that next step towards a robust access technology, the characteristic of a fibre access means that there is no questions of the service characteristics which still hamper copper access even with FTTC, EFM & Annex M. So if you want 30Mb throughput then that is what you will get. There are still some questions that need clarification in the area of traffic handling at peak usage but I am sure that these will be cleared up soon.
From an Updata perspective these developments allow us to push forward with our Converged communications play. We can supply a multitude of services over these access capabilities, so our move into Voice and Cloud services is a brilliant fit.
So, what is in it for the end customer.....?
Choice - of access types means each site can be easily assessed from a cost versus benefit perspective.
Simplicity - Delivery of true converged service offering (Voice, Internet, WAN and connectivity to cloud services).
One throat to choke – Converged approach means one that you don’t need individual contracts for various services.
Home working – better bandwidth available to increase productivity at home.
And what about for the reseller....?
Broader market – business telecoms for the mass market
Choice – of access types appropriate of their services offerings.
Greater choice of telecoms providers – “Equivalence of input” means that all providers are on an equal footing for the access.
This means the question is down to what a providers is doing with the access, not can they get access to a location.
Drawbacks:
Fix times –need to be right to support business critical locations, broadband is still seen as a “best endeavours” service.
Limitation – basically these access technologies are still broadband services.