BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

[Caged]

G.fast seems to be significantly underperforming in terms of distance vs. what people's expectations were. If you aren't getting a full 80Mbps sync then you can pretty much forget it - I've seen line estimates of 130 down and 10 up, which is a step backwards.

When it was originally conceived as being deployed in pavement chambers or put at the top of poles it made sense, but not now.

 

[ChrisD.]

It’s silly isn’t it, catering only for those who get near top speeds rather than those who are stuck at 50 odd.

 

[Rroff]

G.fast seems to be significantly underperforming in terms of distance vs. what people's expectations were. If you aren't getting a full 80Mbps sync then you can pretty much forget it - I've seen line estimates of 130 down and 10 up, which is a step backwards.

When it was originally conceived as being deployed in pavement chambers or put at the top of poles it made sense, but not now.

What I don't get - when I had my original FTTC installation done (engineer install) he had a handheld device that showed line data and showed me that IIRC 30a profile it was capable of something like 130 down, 125 up but there doesn't seem to be that much effort towards rolling out such capabilities - not sure if it is related to cross-talk issues or something like that.

 

[Caged]

It seems like they chose to bin off VDSL 35b in favour of a product that needs to have the lower VDSL frequencies chopped out to prevent interference. This made sense when the nodes were going to be shoved on phone poles or lobbed into chambers and reverse powered, or installed in the basement of apartment buildings to give an upgrade without lots of disruption and perhaps 40-50m of copper in total. It's the wrong way to go if you're putting the pods on the side of cabinets, and I really don't know why they still seem to be progressing down this path.

I can only assume it's to compete with Virgin Media for headline numbers, which makes no sense at all as any time Openreach look like they're getting close to 300Mbps Virgin will just crank their top product to 500.

 

[Duke]

Nice round up of news here https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...ast-fod-sogea-and-fttp-broadband-changes.html

 

[Avalon]

Supposed to be getting Gfast in Bury st Edmunds Suffolk but unable to find any date info, Anyone know where to look for install dates ?

It's a case of periodically checking availability via the wholesale availability checker or similar. You would hope in this day and age you could express interest and receive an email when/if anything changes, alas seemingly not.

G.fast seems to be significantly underperforming in terms of distance vs. what people's expectations were. If you aren't getting a full 80Mbps sync then you can pretty much forget it - I've seen line estimates of 130 down and 10 up, which is a step backwards.

When it was originally conceived as being deployed in pavement chambers or put at the top of poles it made sense, but not now.

OR are in agreement with you, they effectively pulled back on g.fast in favour of fttp last year - I remember reading the announcement not long before they enabled g.fast for my cabinet.

 

[Jez]

It seems like they chose to bin off VDSL 35b in favour of a product that needs to have the lower VDSL frequencies chopped out to prevent interference. This made sense when the nodes were going to be shoved on phone poles or lobbed into chambers and reverse powered, or installed in the basement of apartment buildings to give an upgrade without lots of disruption and perhaps 40-50m of copper in total. It's the wrong way to go if you're putting the pods on the side of cabinets, and I really don't know why they still seem to be progressing down this path.

I can only assume it's to compete with Virgin Media for headline numbers, which makes no sense at all as any time Openreach look like they're getting close to 300Mbps Virgin will just crank their top product to 500.

It does seem like an absolute nonsense, doesn't it. My entire area has recently had 3rd party FTTP laid, and almost as if it is a kneejerk, every single BTO PCP now appears to also have a Gfast pod attached to it, they rolled it out extremely quickly over the space of a few months to seemingly every PCP you could set your eyes on.

I honestly do not know why they are flogging this dead horse, though. The headline speeds are much lower than the FTTP solution anyway, and the penetration is much smaller than the existing near blanket FTTC network. My area is rural with a wide geographical spread, my own PCPs Gfast implementation serves a useful service to only a handful of properties, and even then, that tiny subset of people can simply elect for Gbit FTTP anyway if they are enthusiasts or have desire for >FTTC bandwidth.

 

[Caged]

OR are in agreement with you, they effectively pulled back on g.fast in favour of fttp last year - I remember reading the announcement not long before they enabled g.fast for my cabinet.

I'm seeing new Gfast cabs getting dropped in every day, so either they had a lot in stock or they still believe that it's a thing worth doing. It seems daft to me as the UK market is hugely price driven and people with 80Mbps FTTC aren't really clamouring for 100Mbps for a 50% uplift in their monthly spend.

Openreach's desire to have one model fit all - while probably the only way to go if you're providing a portfolio of price regulated products - means they end up in weird situations where exchange-only lines have to have a cabinet built in the street outside the exchange rather than putting it in a rack inside the building, and stops them from being able to focus Gfast on apartment buildings where it would make the most difference. Considering most of the cost of FTTP deployment is in the civils work, I'd welcome a shift to something along the lines of what Eir do in Ireland, where the ductwork on your property is your responsibility in terms of making sure it's clear and there's a rope in place. Pulling fibre and installing splices in existing duct surely can't cost more than bolting a (powered) Gfast pod onto a bunch of cabinets.

 

[Avalon]

I'm seeing new Gfast cabs getting dropped in every day, so either they had a lot in stock or they still believe that it's a thing worth doing. It seems daft to me as the UK market is hugely price driven and people with 80Mbps FTTC aren't really clamouring for 100Mbps for a 50% uplift in their monthly spend.

Openreach's desire to have one model fit all - while probably the only way to go if you're providing a portfolio of price regulated products - means they end up in weird situations where exchange-only lines have to have a cabinet built in the street outside the exchange rather than putting it in a rack inside the building, and stops them from being able to focus Gfast on apartment buildings where it would make the most difference. Considering most of the cost of FTTP deployment is in the civils work, I'd welcome a shift to something along the lines of what Eir do in Ireland, where the ductwork on your property is your responsibility in terms of making sure it's clear and there's a rope in place. Pulling fibre and installing splices in existing duct surely can't cost more than bolting a (powered) Gfast pod onto a bunch of cabinets.

The announcement was in August, they enabled my cab in November, build out obviously costed/planned well in advance and it'll likely be a while before installs tail off. From a market perspective FTTP is simple to work with, pick a profile and the customer gets it, with g.fast you pick a profile and hope for the best as distance and jointing makes the drop off from the cab massive as you move out, the estimates are optimistic - just as FTTC was in the early days - and i'd imagine the level of calls related to this is higher as is the potential fault/repeat fault rate (i've had 4? faults tech's in as many months).

Civil's have always been a ball ache, and OR is in effect required to carry them out irrespective of cost due to it's position in the market, it's also very limited in ways it can directly pass those costs on. One of the options that may change that is micro trenching, the costings i've seen reported suggest it could make a very welcome difference (especially for things like FTTPoD), you're still stuck with wayleave/street works/permit red tape though and in some areas that's a real ball ache.

 

[david25]

Hello, quick FTTP question;

These black plastic FTTP pods have been appearing on telegraph poles in my area.

The only ISP seem to be Amvia who are saying ONLY an on-demand is available here (£127 + vat for 330/30)

After 12 months you be able to have a "native" service which will be cheaper.

Is this correct, there is some exclusive period for FTTP area?

 

[Avalon]

Hello, quick FTTP question;

These black plastic FTTP pods have been appearing on telegraph poles in my area.

The only ISP seem to be Amvia who are saying ONLY an on-demand is available here (£127 + vat for 330/30)

After 12 months you be able to have a "native" service which will be cheaper.

Is this correct, there is some exclusive period for FTTP area?

They're just a bog standard business FTTPoD supplier, who told you they have some period of exclusivity? If you actually have FTTP available you can buy from the usual suppliers (BT, Zen etc.) at the usual prices.

 

[z10m]

So after testing Virgin media for a few days I have decided to go back to Sky and FTTC connection.
Before on my previous Sky connection I was syncing at 79999/19999 but now it is quite a bit lower.
Yesterday I decided to unlock and connect HG612 to better see my line stats so here they are...

Openreach told me that my line is 252m long so not too bad.

Here is the cabinet that I am connected to (there are actually two cabinets within 20 meters from each other).
Is this the Huawei cabinet.?

BT wholesale broadbanc check says that I'm connected to cabinet 15.
As you can see it is g.fast enabled but g.fast is not available for me despite my line being only 250m long but weirdly enough it is availabe for the next building which is only like 30m away from me.

This is my address:

And this is next building:

Follow up to that..
So after switching my landline from Sky to BT g.fast is now available for me despite Openreach telling me few days ago it is not and won't be anytime soon.
I now ordered g.fast from Zen as BT is giving me huge latency spikes on my current Superfast 2 broadband.

So there you have it guys. If your landline is with LLU provider like Sky and according to OR you can't have g.fast but buildings near you can than your only option might be to switch your landline provider.

 

[david25]

They're just a bog standard business FTTPoD supplier, who told you they have some period of exclusivity? If you actually have FTTP available you can buy from the usual suppliers (BT, Zen etc.) at the usual prices.

Amvia didn't exactly say exclusive, but they stated it would be "non-native" for the first twelve months and therefore they were the only non-native supplier

 

[Avalon]

Amvia didn't exactly say exclusive, but they stated it would be "non-native" for the first twelve months and therefore they were the only non-native supplier

But non of that is relevant as that’s FTTPoD and you state FTTP is available, have you actually confirmed FTTP is available using the wholesale checker or your chosen ISP’s availability checker or are you just going off an ISP supplying a totally different product?

 

[GGizmo]

FTTPoD will incur a build price too, not just the monthly package price.

 

[Avalon]

FTTPoD will incur a build price too, not just the monthly package price.

Op states (though doesn’t seem to have confirmed) FTTP rather than FTTPoD so build costs shouldn’t be relevant. That said it wouldn’t be the first time someone confused the availability of FTTPoD with FTTP.

 

[the-evaluator]

The only ISP seem to be Amvia who are saying ONLY an on-demand is available here (£127 + vat for 330/30)

Sounds like FTTPoD to me.

 

[Avalon]

Sounds like FTTPoD to me.

You sure?

These black plastic FTTP pods have been appearing on telegraph poles in my area.

You don’t generally saturate an area with pods for speculative FTTPoD as someone needs to pick up the build costs, you do potentially if upgrading the area for FTTP.

 

[david25]

Thanks for the discussion, this is what the checker says:

 

[ChrisD.]

Perhaps the FTTP roll out is yet to finish.