If the lackluster announcement of BT Openreach's FTTH project in Ebbsfleet was pretty much a non-event, the recent announcement that Merseyside company H2O Networks is in negociations to deploy FTTH through existing sewer networks to the three towns of Bournemouth (pop. 164.000), Dundee (pop. 170.000) and Northampton (pop. 200.000). The Register has written an extensive article about it under the title 100Mb/s sewer roll-out coming your way and subtitled the internet is coming up your toilet.
H2O expects that at least one of the three cities will have given its go by April and expects a three year rollout. So, by the time Openreach will serve 10.000 customers in Ebbsfleet, H2O will potentially serve 150.000+. From what I understand of the Register's article, H2O will work in an open access model, reselling access to the fiber wholesale, although at this stage it's unsure whether that will be dark or lit or whether they will also sell to the end-customer. Each rollout is expected to cost between 15 and 20 million pounds.
H2O has also opened a dedicated website called Fibercity. Looking at the content, H2O very clearly targets other Tier 2 cities and that's a good strategy since it's going to be a long while before anyone else rolls out there... I was also surprised about the .eu extension which may suggest that they have plans outside the UK...
This will be interesting to follow, if only because it must make Openreach a little uneasy. Should these deployments be successful, Openreach will have little choice but to counter with widescale deployments of their own, if only to remain in business in 20 years. Assuming other muni-fiber projects currently cooking in the UK go forward, this could very well force the separated incumbent to invest where it currently does not want to.
