FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet), provides a very cost effective connection for primary schools with downstream bandwidths of up to 80Mbps at a fraction of the annual costs of fibre circuits. Over the last two years, BT have enabled large areas of the country to be able to receive FTTC, and embc have worked with BT in testing this connectivity for schools use. Some emPSN schools were pilot schools and the first in England to get fttc. emPSN has since used the FTTC connectivity extensively across the East Midlands and have found the service to be a great improvement over other copper based services and a benefit particularly for primary schools.
What is FTTC exactly?
FTTC is part fibre optic cable and part copper circuit. FTTC involves running fibre optic cables from the telephone exchange to the street cabinets, which then connect to a standard copper phone line to provide broadband to the edge site. This delivers much faster speeds than traditional copper connections. FTTC is capable of delivering download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps. Not all sites will receive the maximum speed as it depends on the length of your phone line to the cabinet.
Please note that speeds vary considerably depending on the line length and the quality of the copper connection between the school and the cabinet. It is also important to realise that FTTC through emPSN is a fully managed and supported on-network connection, part of both the schools network and the NEN complying with the PSN security.
To find out more about FTTC and availability in your area, please contact emPSN: 01604 879869