Future fast net could go through sewers

17 April 2008

Ofcom wants new houses ‘fibre-enabled’

Ofcom, the independent regulator for the UK communications industries has said that future super-fast broadband could be delivered through the UK’s underground pipes belonging to UK water and electricity companies.

The regulator is currently conducting a survey of the UK’s underground ducting network to find out if it is suitable for supporting fibre networks.

As it stands, some companies in France and the UK already offer high speed broadband which runs through the sewers.

Ofcom is calling for all the three million new homes, set to be built in the UK by 2020, to be ‘fibre-enabled’.

A consultation has been opened by the communications regulator to work out how to best regulate these types of ‘next-generation networks’. This consultation will run until June 25.

However, the move is not enough according to critics as they warn that the UK is at risk of falling behind with the launch of super-fast broadband.

Ian Fogg, an analyst with Jupiter Research, said: “The fact that this is just a consultation is another indication that the UK is lagging behind.”

Three operators in France already offer super-fast broadband, at speed of between 50 and 100 megabits per second, to homes.

Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, will lay out plans to start enabling super-fast broadband services for the UK in a speech addressed to the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

“Next generation broadband will come to change our perception of communication radically. So we must prepare now.”

Ofcom is keen to explore how much fibre could be run through existing pipe networks for water and energy systems.

“We must be sure we are not missing a trick here. We know that lots of the costs are in the civil engineering and this is civil engineering of a very similar kind,” he said.