BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

Soldato
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We’re also only really just getting to the point where 40-80mb is starting to feel a bit sluggish, and even then it’s only when it’s being hit really hard like trying to download a COD patch and stream.

900mbs is more than 10x the bandwidth. I can’t see people needing a 2.5, 5 or 10gb connection anytime soon. What are people doing on their domestic connection to need that sort of bandwidth?
 
Associate
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We’re also only really just getting to the point where 40-80mb is starting to feel a bit sluggish, and even then it’s only when it’s being hit really hard like trying to download a COD patch and stream.

900mbs is more than 10x the bandwidth. I can’t see people needing a 2.5, 5 or 10gb connection anytime soon. What are people doing on their domestic connection to need that sort of bandwidth?

I was having a similar conversation with my brother. I'm upgrading because I can, I don't need it. It'll most likely sit there doing very little most of the time, but thats no different to to my CPU / RAM or SSDs. None of my systems run 100% load, 100% of time but when I do want things to run well I don't want a bottleneck, and that's really what I'm trying to remove. The new issue, in my view is upload - this is where I'll see more benefit and its still very modest compared to download (on VM that is).
 
Caporegime
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What are people doing on their domestic connection to need that sort of bandwidth?

First world problems and all but being able to download games and updates in a matter of seconds would be nice. Sometimes I'll get the urge to play a game for 20-30 minutes and then find out there's a patch that will take just as long to download (some recent COD updates for example) and that's on 500Mbps. When you don't have hours to sit and play games it can be a blessing.

Other than that, I would like to see the UK leading the way for broadband speeds and really pushing the boat out. We stagnated for a while, it was only 5 years ago or so when 80Mbps was the best speed that the majority of the population could get.

1Gbps will be great but give it another 5 years and 2.2Gbps+ services should be available at a premium.
 
Soldato
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You can quite easily swamp a 76Mbps connection in a busy household. Start streaming UHD on a few devices and try and watch something on catch up on Sky Q and it'll all grind to a halt.

I'm looking forward to switching from 76Mbps to 150Mbps in January. I wouldn't have minded 300 but Sky don't offer it. Anything higher than that, i'd have to start distributing Cat6.
 
Soldato
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Yep, it was the upstream that I really saw the benefit from after FTTP was installed. Previously I had 60/20 VDSL then I moved to 900/100 FTTP and whilst the extra downstream has been nice, the upstream has made the biggest difference.
 
Soldato
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1Gbps will be great but give it another 5 years and 2.2Gbps+ services should be available at a premium.

10Gb symmetrical has been available to residential on several alt-net providers for a while now, it’s more of a PR/heading thing at this stage than something customers are pushing for, but it is a thing in a handful of areas. VM are currently testing 2.2Gbit on a small deployment down south, DOCSIS 3.1 brings a lot more options to the table for cable, it’s also cheaper and easier to upgrade the CPE than having to dispatch an engineer to swap out a GPON as OR etc. will have to do, unless VM ditch RF altogether and decide to re-pull everyone on fibre, but that’s a long way off thanks to RFoG. OR however are still installing GPON’s that cap at 1Gb, although they are moving to the NOKIA kit from memory ‘soon’ (read they have a load of the old ones to use first), that should open up future upgrades, but it’ll be a long time before they do.

Realistically with gigabit you are at a natural point of everything that needs it having the ability to use it, it’s the standard for routers, PC’s and pretty much everything else. The next phase will be greater than gigabit WAN (Virgin already do this with the Gig1 service, so multiple users can saturate the WAN, but it’s always more than a single user can manage, but gigabit LAN followed by multi-gigabit capable LAN options on the switch side are coming. The issue being pretty much all hardware needs upgrading to support it on the client side, and even the stuff that supports it can struggle to make significant use of it. 10Gb means over 1GB/s of writes, NVMe’s (depending on OEM and product line) tops out at 2-4TB, assuming you can find a remote host capable of saturating the connection, you can do 1TB in under 20 mins easily, which brings us to cloud storage and merged file systems where your local ‘fast’ storage is used as a cache for cloud based storage for things like large files (media being the perfect example), but that’s another story.
 
Mobster
Soldato
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9 Apr 2012
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Can anyone explain why I need a BT engineer visit to upgrade from an 80Mb product to a 150Mb product?

If it's G.Fast or FTTP, then they need to install either a new faceplate (and test the line as my understanding is that G.Fast does not perform up to estimate), or to install an FTTP cable and ONT to your house.

The more people that get FTTP now, the less that will need to wait for an engineer in the future as the ONT stays with the house and can be activated with a phone call.
 
Caporegime
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18 Oct 2002
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26,083
It's like FTTC except quicker and syncs in a lot less time if it drops. It's far more susceptible to line conditions, and the estimates see to come in a bit on the high end. It's also a very niche technology so finding 3rd party modems is either difficult or they are expensive.
 
Caporegime
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Just wondering if G.Fast means we'll be bottom of the list for FTTP or whether they overbuild?

There was a lot of talk about how if you had FTTC you would be bottom of the list for FTTP but this hasn't been true for a lot of people. No doubt it's based on expected commercial return rather than any existing services available.
 
Associate
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There was a lot of talk about how if you had FTTC you would be bottom of the list for FTTP but this hasn't been true for a lot of people. No doubt it's based on expected commercial return rather than any existing services available.

Pretty much this, my area isn't in the fibre first roll out but bt have been rolling out fibre to the newer builds 2000 onwards in our area that already have 50Mb+ syncs, i live in a older 80's build with a blistering 16/0.7 connection yes thats fttc not adsl2
 
Soldato
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There was a lot of talk about how if you had FTTC you would be bottom of the list for FTTP but this hasn't been true for a lot of people. No doubt it's based on expected commercial return rather than any existing services available.

This wasn't true for my town either. It's a small town of about 6500 people which good VDSL availability and G.Fast in some parts of town. Much to my surprise FTTP was enabled earlier this year.
 
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