Chi Onwurah concerned at lack of FTTH planning

Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Chi Onwurah has expressed her concern that the government and major internet service providers appear to have no significant plans regarding the widespread rollout of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband.

Speaking to Techworld, the Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central stressed that her constituents are not currently asking for FTTH, but are instead demanding decent broadband - something they were not doing three or four years ago.

When consumer desire for ultra-fast fibre optic broadband connectivity peaks, it will take some years to build out the necessary networks, she explained, with this process likely to take even longer as time will be required to create a regulatory vision to incentivise rollouts.

Consequently, Ms Onwurah remarked: "I am very concerned that we don't have a plan from government or from many of our major providers that includes FTTH in significant numbers."

While the MP is in favour of supporting FTTH deployments, telecoms analyst Point Topic recently argued that the market will benefit from the use of multiple solutions to improve super-fast broadband coverage.