How does fibre work?

86JR

86JR

86JR

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I am pretty confused how fibre works. Well no, I know how it works, but what I don't understand is why fibre in the UK is so slow compared to the rest of the world?

I get activated in 6 days and all I get is 40 down and 6 up, for £45 a month. Google fibre in the states is 1gbit each way and it's $60 a month...

Mainly what I don't "get" about fibre is why the upload speed doesn't match the download speed? I could understand it being limited to stop people running servers at home but even the business options don't offer asychnronous speeds.

Any ideas?

Slightly jealous of people getting 990mbit each way in the states!
 
Caged said:
The business options are all synchronous, it's called a leased line and is actually delivered over a fibre optic cable. This will cost you roughly £1600 to install. Consumer options / home business are specced with a higher upload than download because that reflects usage patterns whilst making the best use of the available frequencies.

Infrastructure costs a huge amount of money. The UK on average is actually doing incredibly well in terms of speeds and accessibility.



They aren't replacing the copper with fibre. Your telephone calls still take the same path to the exchange that they always did.
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I was quoted £5k to have FTTP done by BT and that would only allow 330mbit down and 30? up. So a leased line is much cheaper? How much is the monthly rent for the line for 1gbps both ways?
 
V-Spec said:
I've worked for service providers since 2000, I've recently been working on 4G backhaul, and I'd bet a significant amount of money that people will be replacing their DSL and Cable modems with 4G/5G wireless, before you see the likes of physical fibre optic cabling being run into people's houses, once it becomes more mature and with better coverage.

Fibre to the actual household is simply too expensive and requires so much labour I don't think it'll ever happen, in any quantity or element of affordability, it's bad enough trying to get Virgin to lay a run of coax cable into a business, let alone fibre into somebodies house.

I've got Hyperoptic 1Gig - the only reason it works for them is they buy a cheap layer-2 circuit from BT (probably QinQ or psuedowire) which they run into some sort of small Ethernet access network - it's cheap, simple and doesn't run on 50 year old infrastructure underpinned by someone else.
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But is 4/5g wireless secure? I run a business from home, I don't want someone able to infiltrate it by sitting outside in a van with a copy of airsniff running, which is impossible by wire?

Where I live 2G signal is dodgy and 3G just doesn't work let alone 5G.

My iPhone 4s won't connect to the internet unless it has a wifi link it is that bad, the little round thing just twirls and it times out. It only works in the middle of Plymouth and Truro, anywhere else, nada.
 
Steveocee said:
Is it just me who is thinking why do you "need" 1GB U/D?

My Virgin 120Mb line hardly ever reaches it's max unless I'm downloading from Steam.
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Well why not? We are a first world country with a 10th world internet system thanks to the monopoly that is BT.

Some people I know live in £3million houses and all BT can offer them is ISDN single link. They won't even take a quote for FTTP.
 
The attitude "what a problem for us to have" is what gets us in pickles, we should be pushing and pushing to be a premier country technology wise, not sitting back going "well we don't really need it so why have it". This is what lets governments govern for their own agenda instead of the peoples agendas. I guess this is how we ended up going from an empire to a dumping ground for the people that no one else wants too.
 
The UK's internet is so bad that parts of the middle of LONDON are still stuck on basic ADSL...no fibre for them! (like Canary Wharf). Which is funny when most of the people who make decisions for this country live in London and use the capital as an example for the rest of the country. Such as making laws where people on bicycles can ignore traffic lights...great in London but try doing that in Cornwall!
 
That our internet is inconsistent, again not in line with that of a 1st world country.

Places like Sweden are geographically the same as the UK yet they have had 100mbit for decades now.

I do read threads yes but just because "Caged" states something doesn't mean that's the end of the discussion.
 
Got connected today, only took 25 min for Engineer to sort it (from Kelly Communications), 10 mins later Zen activated my line. Netgear router admin is painfully slow, but the internet itself is absolutely awesome. Downloaded Dishonored and Arma 2, Arma 2 OA, and a load of Dayz mod's all at the same time within 2 hours!

I was quoted 42 down and 6 up, but it is running at 60 down and 10 up. I really hope the DSLAM does not interfere with this and put me on Interleaving as if it does the speed will half and only an engineer visit can fix it :(

Youtube actually works properly now!
 
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