Ofcom reports recommends fibre to the home technology

According to an Ofcom-commissioned report from Plextek, the UK should embrace FTTH (fibre to the home) technology, so that it doesn’t trail behind the rest of Western Europe in providing high-speed Internet services. FTTH uses optical fibre for last-mile connections to users’ premises and provides super high-speed broadband.

The findings of the report contradict Ofcom’s previous advice that DSL broadband is an adequate solution to support the UK’s future internet access needs.

Plextek undertook a six-month study into the role of wireless broadband and found that high-speed fibre connections to the home and office will be vital if the UK is to adopt services such as IPTV which need greater bandwith than can be provided by DSL broadband.

The report recommends a combination of fibre connectivity backbone networks and fixed and wireless gigabit connections in the last mile. This combination is already in use in some parts of the UK - by the Metronet network in Manchester for instance.

Steve Methley, senior consultant at Plextek advised that high definition (HD) TV services will require undiluted access to streaming content at 10-15Mb/s per channel, substantially faster than today’s ADSL systems can support.

Wireless standards are being developed with a bias towards small screen mobile content delivery and are not attempting to address the needs of services such as HDTV.