New fiber optic BT broadband £19.00 per month

lol, I know exactly what you mean

I remember having a blazing row with BT fair usage when I got capped in november.... 100gb limit when xbox etc have hd content, games are delivered digitally, iplayer etc etc, they are well out of touch with the current demands of some households (I have 3 teenage children who cant comprehend allowances or fair usage :) )
 
I don't have a problem with the fair use policy as such - "100"gig was an unusual month for us now we are down to 3 active users from 5 (when we used to exceed it frequently). I have a problem with the fact that theres no higher useage package option (for those prepared to pay), no option to pay for extra uncapped, etc. I mean we are paying ~£18 a month currently for the unlimited package and IMO thats good value for "100"gig of uncapped bandwidth.
 
Ignoring the issues to do with the physical and financial problems of getting fibre directly to the house, even if somehow it did happen, what would be the point? From what I understand happens in the US, the areas that can get FIOS from verizon i think it is still only get 50Mb down and 20Mb up, which is great upload but the download isn't anything we don't get already from VM. So is there any reason to even care that we don't get FTTH, I know some would love that upload but for me what VM offers in upload is sufficient.

What I would personally much prefer over FTTH is to have multiple cable connections. I was watching a show on the twit network where they tested their mobile camera and showed the outside of the twit cottage where they get 3x 50Mb cable connections coming in along with some phone lines and an ISDN line. Not really possible when some areas are already over-subscribed, but even so, I would love multiple 50Mb connections :D
 
I agree again Rroff, I asked if I could pay extra and as you state there is no option for this, a shame really as they are missing oput on a lot of potential income

multiple would be sweet, possible on bt as most houses have multiple feeds on copper, usually 2prs but upto 5... trouble is 2x lines = 2x rental... 1 for kids and 1 for me lol
 
The technology behind cable makes multiple 50Mbit lines really silly from a technical viewpoint, just use a single bigger connection, in engineering terms it's more expensive to deploy than a 200Mbps connection as it's all a broadcast medium anyway.

The good news about fibre is it's good for much greater bandwidth in future. Bear in mind coax was installed in the early 90s and BT lines far earlier, they won't scale for 20 years time whereas fibre will. That's why it's desirable. It's necessary one day (probably, unless LTE works really well and we all give up on fixed lines) so instead of pushing current technology right to the edge we may as well just upgrade to modern infrastructure.

FIOS limitations are commercial (and technical enforced by commerical I suppose), rather than being the most the infrastructure is capable off.
 
G1BB0 said:
I agree again Rroff, I asked if I could pay extra and as you state there is no option for this, a shame really as they are missing oput on a lot of potential income

multiple would be sweet, possible on bt as most houses have multiple feeds on copper, usually 2prs but upto 5... trouble is 2x lines = 2x rental... 1 for kids and 1 for me lol
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What you need there is a decent provider though, other ipstream ISPs using the same infrastructure do offer products along those lines. There's no question that as an ISP, BT retail are appalling by any standard, no matter what the technology.
 
bigredshark said:
Virgin surely aren't connecting any more homes soon, they're still suffering the financial consequences of their last role out a decade ago.
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VM extended their network to cover another 50,000 properties in 2009, just adding bits on from their existing network. No new areas are being targeted at the moment but extensions to existing areas are certainly taking place.
 
You mention that multiple 50Mbit connections are more epensive than a 200Mb connection, but what about from a users standpoint? would 3 of whatever modem VM use and 3 50Mbit capable routers be cheaper than a single modem capable of 200Mb and a router that is 200Mb capable (I know not all routers are 50Mb ready, so even fewer in the home user market would be 200Mb ready).
 
Dist said:
You mention that multiple 50Mbit connections are more epensive than a 200Mb connection, but what about from a users standpoint? would 3 of whatever modem VM use and 3 50Mbit capable routers be cheaper than a single modem capable of 200Mb and a router that is 200Mb capable (I know not all routers are 50Mb ready, so even fewer in the home user market would be 200Mb ready).
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A consumer router capable of something close to 200Mbit would be expensive, but that's likely irrelevant in the medium term as the need for home users to have a router will reduce with newer access mediums and ipv6 deployment. And router/firewall prices will drop over time.

Either way though, Virgin (or whoever) don't care what the customers router's cost, the resources on their network are far more valuable to them.
 
bigredshark said:
Because that last 500m would cost more than twice as much again, laying fibre in conduits is easy, but they don't generally go to the premises so the civil engineering costs of those last meters are huge compared to getting it to the cabinet. So who would you like to pay for it?
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well, ok you do fibre to the cabinet and do the last bit to house via sewers or something, think about it, the tech is there, the protected fibre cabling is there and tested, no digging just feeding cables to houses.you could have a cat6 come right up the toilet so i can surf and do my call of nature thing at the same time!! :D

about £90 per home was the average cost? id pay £90 the problem is my tight ass neighbour probably wont...he could get a year of 0.4kbps talk talk for that ;)


anyways this is BT, the same bt i pay £15pm for line rental for a phone line i only use for broadband? the same £15 that over time more than pays for that copper, and probably has many times by now, and the same BT who makes billions every year but when it comes to upgrading thier network goes crying to the goverment for taxpayers money to do the job and only does it half way aka FTTC not FTTP.

the same bt who after taking your money via taxes will make you pay for renting that peice of fibre you already paid for half of?the same bt who you cant even get out to check that line with a £100 fee for half an hours work?

ah yes BT gotta love em


all backed by that fat stinker gordon brown


dismantle em i say and send em packing usless sods the lot of em

except the engineers of course you guys r sweet! :D
 
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Actually I expect the costs would be more in the region of £1k+ per property, certainly the only place which is deploying FTTH to existing premises in a big way is sweden and costs there are talked about as £2500 a property. (Caveat - the only place with deployment economics anything like the UK, Japan/Korea etc don't count, it's a different challenge)

And that line rental you pay to BT, they only make a profit on it if the line is fault free for something like 3 years. Quit moaning, if it was financially viable to do it with private finance somebody would be doing it already, how many do I have to say that. There's nothing stopping you or anybody else deploying fibre to the home if you have a business plan which doesn't end in rapid bankruptcy...
 
I really think that it's time ISPs were banned from using the phrase "fibre optic broadband" unless they are describing a FTTP product. It's going to get far too confusing.

Also:

Rofflay said:
dismantle em i say and send em packing usless sods the lot of em
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You mean like splitting up the retail, wholesale, and access network parts of the company. What a fantastic idea. Oh wait.
 
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It'd help if consumers didn't fall for it as well, there's no reason for people to care about the access medium to be honest. If they can get 50 down and 10 up it doesn't much matter whether it's provisioned over wet string. The ISP cares for future upgrades but customers would be better off worrying about the service.

The BT product still features fairly small caps and aggressive fair usage policies, loosing those might be better for people here than higher speeds. But unless people either pay more or miraculously become more responsible about their internet use it won't happen.
 
The problem is though that the access medium does matter for the end customer because if they offer up to 50 down and 10 up over wet string then the length of that piece of string matters to the customer as that will determine what they will get in real life, where as if it was FTTC then distance would be less of an issue.

Of course if ISPs could give each house a solid figure of the speeds they would get then the access medium is not important, but when you get given just an estimate it helps to know what the data is traveling through to help work out what sort of speed you can realistically expect within that estimate range.

If distance to exchange and all that made no difference at all, I wouldn't care about cable vs ADSL, all that would matter would be speed and price.
 
And of course, I can't get it.

well done BT, only make fast lines faster as our 3mbps broadband will stay like this forever.
 
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