BT says FTTC rollouts make 'economic sense'

BT has backed its decision to invest heavily in fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) broadband networks, insisting that the solution makes "economic sense".

The telecoms giant has often attracted criticism for choosing to focus on rolling out FTTC infrastructure - which relies on using copper cables to deliver broadband to the property - rather than building pure fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks.

However, BT's strategy director Sean Williams argued it is prudent to deploy FTTC in markets with an established copper telephone infrastructure if there is insufficient funding to support the launch of universal FTTH.

As well as taking advantage of existing assets, FTTC reduces local disruption during a rollout and is still capable of delivering very high speeds, Mr Williams said.

He went on to hit out at opponents who argue that laying fibre only as far as the cabinet is not a future-proof solution.

"Further expenditure will be incurred in the future to upgrade the network to FTTP as demand for bandwidth increases," the BT strategy chief explained.

"However, experience has shown that there is plenty of headroom in FTTC technology for bandwidth increases."