On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 13:12:49 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I suspect they are going to have a solution that works over 5+
miles of copper, is easy to install (swap out the rear half of
the
NTE?) and emulate analogue POTS.

its called fttp.
the cost of laying fibre is in the end less than the cost of
putting
in powered repeaters.

Powered repeaters? AIUI FTTP is provided over GPON it doesn't have
powered repeaters just passive optical splits that can be stuffed
into a hole in the ground miles from the head end.

That's exactly why I said what I said Dave.
The cost of fibre is less than the cost of powered repeaters (for
copper)

ADSL2+ will do the 500 kbps required for voice only provision over 3
or 4 miles of copper. Though I think ADSL goes out the window along
with the the PSTN. But the technology is there to provide such a link
over a simple copper pair.

It's also complicated by the Universal Service Obligation that is now
in place for broadband. You have a right to at least a 10 Mbps
service and Openreach or Kcom have to provide it. There are a few
gotchas like a cap on the construction costs.

Is there a fibre equivalent to 50 pair armoured cable that is
buried
direct? Miles of such cables feed many places around here, the
only
over head bits being from the road to premises. Trenching for a
duct
is very expensive, even ploughing in a duct isn't cheap. Fibre
doesn't like being stretched, not sure you could plough in an
armoured fibre cable.

Armoured fibre will take an enornous number of 'circuits' . So very
little fibre replaces a 50 pr. One fibre should do

But you need one fibre (at least, spares?) from where ever the
optical split is to each served premises. The optical split may only
have one, or more likely two fibres, feeding it from the OLT.

The 50 pair armoured direct buried cable feeding POTS to us also
feeds other places along it's route from beyond us and back to the
exchange. These places are well spaced apart, 1/4 mile or more.

You can get mutltiple tube ducting systems designed to distribute
from the split to premises. But again that would need to trenched or
ploughed in and chambers constructed to hold the duct splits to
replace the joint posts/bullets.

I am not sure BT has *ever* buried cables in the soil without ducts.

They have here...

The multiple 200 pair cables running down the village are ducted. And
they shoved a fibre duct through that ducting to get the fibre down
to the village's FTTC. That's the one that runs under our forecourt.

--
Cheers
Dave.