BT's relic-grade broadband

[Mr Whippy]

Haha, I wish


I wouldn't mind so much if ADSL was all we could have, but the price is near as damn it the same as Fibre in an enabled area. Ie, 1 mile away on another cabinet.


And to kick us in the nads even more they send glossy A4 adverts about deals on Fibre, wasting the money they do have trying to tell me about something I DO want, making it even less likely they'll ever be able to afford to make my cabinet Fibre.

[wiffmaster]

bimjim said:

We're in a similar situation, as our office is in Islington. The BT connection was poor, circa 3.5Mb/s, as we're on a direct link to the exchange at King's Cross, so no street side cabinets. Virgin's offering had better speed but was too flaky.

We went with Relish three months ago and so far it's all working well. Currently running around 30 Mb/s. It's definitely worth looking into, if you're in range.

Thanks for the feedback - very useful. Seems like they're having a big marketing push in Islington at the moment - leaflet through the postbox last week and adverts on all the bus stops. Think I have about three more months of BT pre-paid line rental, then I'll make the switch.

[trashbat]

Mr Whippy said:

Do you actually share a line with a few homes?

If that line has all it's connections used up, and you had a new one fitted, would it still be suffering with this same issue.

Perhaps get a new line and then retire the old one, with overlap of course.

Dave

The whole section of street is EO. I doubt a second line would resolve anything - still no cabinet. The commonly floated solution to EO lines is that BT might put a cabinet in at the exchange. There are various legislative and possibly technical restrictions on this, I believe.

I don't really mind to be honest. FTTC would only mean that torrents came in quicker, and 20Mbit is already more than tolerable in that sense.

[Mr Whippy]

trashbat said:

Mr Whippy said:

Do you actually share a line with a few homes?

If that line has all it's connections used up, and you had a new one fitted, would it still be suffering with this same issue.

Perhaps get a new line and then retire the old one, with overlap of course.

Dave

The whole section of street is EO. I doubt a second line would resolve anything - still no cabinet. The commonly floated solution to EO lines is that BT might put a cabinet in at the exchange. There are various legislative and possibly technical restrictions on this, I believe.

I don't really mind to be honest. FTTC would only mean that torrents came in quicker, and 20Mbit is already more than tolerable in that sense.

I have 6/0.4 here and it's the upload that is the biggest pain.

On fibre I'd be done in 10 mins, but on ADSL I'm waiting most of the afternoon.

It's not so bad on LLU exchanges because at least ADSL is cheap vs fibre, so you at least get it cheap if that is all you can get.


It's pretty sad that BT just leave potential customers so close to having these services, high and dry, because they're too expensive to serve. If they keep operating under that local they'll no doubt be letting old failed lines go out of service and just stop serving expensive to maintain properties/areas?!

Dave

[bimsb6]

Mr Whippy said:

Following that logic, wired data transmission is dead, and so by definition is BT.

If I can get a 3G signal here with an aerial, it only needs a 4G upgrade and why would you even bother with ADSL on BT, or Fibre even?

Edited by Mr Whippy on Wednesday 26th November 12:46

First point , who still provides the fibre data transmission ? BT
2nd point , you think adsl is expensive , try streaming a few movies on 4g and see how long your monthly data allowance lasts .

[bimsb6]

trashbat said:

ame for me in that I have an exchange-only (EO) line. No FTTC when you don't have the C. Anyway BT have got a plan to deal with these in general, so in time the problem will go away, but they're not being very specific about it for now.

It's being done on various exchanges already i saw one outside a very rural exchange in cambs i think it was a few weeks back , they just put a new cabinet outside the exchange and divert all the e/o cables into it and fit a dslam there.

[trashbat]

bimsb6 said:

It's being done on various exchanges already i saw one outside a very rural exchange in cambs i think it was a few weeks back , they just put a new cabinet outside the exchange and divert all the e/o cables into it and fit a dslam there.

Cool. The last I heard they were doing a pilot across a whole area in Cornwall, so it's good to hear it's happening elsewhere.

[trashbat]

If it's anything like ADSL, it can take two weeks to slowly negotiate up to a good speed.

[gamefreaks]

Rural internet is awful. I live in a village with about 200 residents in Leicestershire and get about 1.5mbps on BT ADSL. (No other suppliers available) No 3g cover either and have to go outside to get a mobile signal. This is about 5 miles from Loughborough and about the same from Leicester.

What I really don't understand though is why new build estates don't have fiber installed. The internet is part of the countries infrastructure. It's no different to water, gas and electric!!! You wouldn't expect to see an estate built, then after it is finished the water company turn up two years later and dig it all up again to install water and sewers!!!

Someone posted earlier that it's because developers demand kickbacks, but why is it not one of the conditions for granting planning permission? Over the next 10 years I expect that an internet connection will go from being 'quite important' to pretty much essential as the 'don't use computers' generation die off and more services move to online only. (Think stuff like taxing your car)

Also decent internet infrastructure will benefit society as a whole if we let it. We spend billions annually adding capacity roads that only have congestion problems between 8-9am and 5-6pm. Why? Being able to work from home (which requires fast, reliable internet) will allow us to smash this dogmatic 'at your desk for 8.58am' mentality. We're a small crowded island. Why do we insist on having massive offices empty all night and houses that are empty all day?

[MissChief]

gamefreaks said:

What I really don't understand though is why new build estates don't have fiber installed. The internet is part of the countries infrastructure. It's no different to water, gas and electric!!! You wouldn't expect to see an estate built, then after it is finished the water company turn up two years later and dig it all up again to install water and sewers!!!

When Openreach get notification from developers that they want telephone lines to a group of houses Openreach will gladly do it but they much prefer overhead wired for ease of installation and maintenance. However this doesn't go down well with the developers who's plans make no mention of overhead wiring 'spoiling' the 'grand vision' and the pretty pictures. So the developers say 'we want underground wiring' at which point Openreach say 'OK, there's the equipment, do it yourself because we're not doing it for you because it's ballache to fix when it goes wrong'. So the developers do the cheapest job which inevitably means copper only and, if you're lucky, FTTC. FTTP is put in by some developers and this number is growing but it's still a comparative rarity. So much so that many ISP's don't even offer it.

[Tuvra]

I have recently gone from 152mbps to 0.8, I have moved around 2 miles from the first address

[Luke.]

Tuvra said:

I have recently gone from 152mbps to 0.8, I have moved around 2 miles from the first address

Where are you? I've gone through a similar thing.

[Mr Whippy]

Luke. said:

Tuvra said:

I have recently gone from 152mbps to 0.8, I have moved around 2 miles from the first address

Where are you? I've gone through a similar thing.

That must be pretty poor.

I recently had 2Mb and it was borderline for a 'current' web experience. One stream of something was ok, but then everything else was just useless.

Sub 1Mb must be painful.


Imo, the government would be better spending money on Fibre everywhere intrastructure, open to anyone who wants to use it right up to the local exchanges and all cabinets... if they are going to put money into stimulus and QE type stuff for the economy.

Working from home could save the economy billions on roads/maintenance/subsidising public transport etc, if less people HAD to drive every day... vs doing video conferencing and working on remote desktops at home inside their corporate networks via virtualisations etc.

All that stuff becomes immediately possible if people have super fast connections.

Dave

[bimsb6]

MissChief said:

When Openreach get notification from developers that they want telephone lines to a group of houses Openreach will gladly do it but they much prefer overhead wired for ease of installation and maintenance. However this doesn't go down well with the developers who's plans make no mention of overhead wiring 'spoiling' the 'grand vision' and the pretty pictures. So the developers say 'we want underground wiring' at which point Openreach say 'OK, there's the equipment, do it yourself because we're not doing it for you because it's ballache to fix when it goes wrong'. So the developers do the cheapest job which inevitably means copper only and, if you're lucky, FTTC. FTTP is put in by some developers and this number is growing but it's still a comparative rarity. So much so that many ISP's don't even offer it.

That is so far from reality it's laughable. How do you think the poles are fed for one ?

[mph1977]

bimsb6 said:

That is so far from reality it's laughable. How do you think the poles are fed for one ?

what's 'far from reality'

Utility infrastructure being provided by developers and connected up after inspection by the infrastrcuture co ...

as for feeding the poles unless a development is going to need new cabinets ...

[markiii]

JimmyTheHand said:

I believe NTL used to pay developers to put in cable - but I get the impression things have changed. BT is wired to house already, so it should make no difference to costs except the extra cost of a fibre enabled cabinet as it will use same wires.

oh it will, they have to fibre back from the cabinet to the exchange

[Tuvra]

Luke. said:

Where are you? I've gone through a similar thing.

I am based in South Wales (nr. Neath). At the last place it was Virgin, paid for the top package to get 100mbps, was getting around 103mbps, then they upped it for free to 120mbps before upping it again to 150mbps (was getting over 150mbps) so I dropped down a tarrif to have "just" 100mbps. This was upgraded 3 times in the space of 13 months.

New place which is a bit more into the valleys, lucky to get 1mbps

[JimmyTheHand]

markiii said:

oh it will, they have to fibre back from the cabinet to the exchange

Which from what I recall from my telecoms days is a minor cost compared to cost of the building the ducts (which they need to do for the copper anyway)

[bimsb6]

JimmyTheHand said:

Which from what I recall from my telecoms days is a minor cost compared to cost of the building the ducts (which they need to do for the copper anyway)

That would be dependant on duct space , ducts being free of collapses and obstructions and distance pcp to exchange hardly a minor cost.

[bimsb6]

mph1977 said:

bimsb6 said:

That is so far from reality it's laughable. How do you think the poles are fed for one ?

what's 'far from reality'



...

The thought that bt would want to provide a new estate overhead ! And that poles somehow do not need ducting to feed the overhead service !