Finally, we're getting FTTP, woo-hoo! (it was installed in June 2024)

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After getting annoyed with the silly negotiations with Virgin Media every 18 months I decided to move to FTTP as I was out of contract in May and they couldn't offer a sensible price for 1Gb. Openreach did the install yesterday which took about 90 minutes. A nice speed bump and the ping halved.

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The above is an Internet monitoring system I run on a Raspberry Pi which was put together by Jeff Geerling: https://github.com/geerlingguy/internet-pi - it does require some basic Linux / Docker knowledge to get running.

I would recommend doing a quick check on the square grey box (Customer Service Point) as the engineer left the lid unscrewed on mine and it looks like it has a waterproof seal on it. Just two Phillips screws in the bottom to tighten.
 
Why don't BT offer this? The smaller altnets deliver.
I think it's a capacity issue, Openreach FTTP rollout is using GPON which is asymmetric 2.5/1.25Gbps and shared between up to 30 customers. The other providers (including Virgin) are using XGS-PON which supports 10Gbps symmetric.
 
Aside from the capacity issues, I'm willing to bet 90%+ of Openrach FTTP customers would never use that much upload bandwidth.

I'm seriously close to dropping my Openreach connection for symmetrical gigabit through Lightspeed, especially now that they offer static IP addresses. Plus they're cheaper than what I'm paying now.
 
Another benefit of FTTP that I'd not really considered before is that my internet speed when I'm away from home is much faster as well. I run my own VPN on a Pi on my network and my phone and laptop are set up to automatically connect to it when I'm out and about.

This means that my home upload speed is effectively the maximum download speed I can ever get through the VPN.

Looking at the speedtest history on my phone, I used to average around 13-14Mbps download and anything between 5 and 10Mbps upload. Upload can always be a bit hit and miss as it also depends on the 4G/5G connection.

I've just been out this morning. I did a test while parked in the local BP car park with a 2 bar 4G signal, I got 67Mbps down and 2.4Mbps up. When I disconnected from the VPN, I got 112Mbps down and 4Mbps up.

In the car park at Morrisons with a decent 5G signal I got 83Mbps down and 15Mbps up. Disconnected from the VPN and it was 116Mbps down and 22Mbps up. My EE data speed is allegedly capped at 100Mbps.

I'm happy with that, it's a significant increase over FTTC.
 
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