Anyone Work for Open Reach?

[jdsnape]

I don't know if I'm FTTC or FTTN

I'm fairly sure that FTTC is just BRITISH for FTTN?

Practically speaking I think so. BT trialled something called FTTRN (remote node) for exchange only lines but I think it only got put in a few places.

[Beardy]

I don't know if I'm FTTC or FTTN

I'm fairly sure that FTTC is just BRITISH for FTTN?

Practically speaking I think so. BT trialled something called FTTRN (remote node) for exchange only lines but I think it only got put in a few places.

I remember a colleague who was most upset that he couldn’t get fibre broadband for a long time because he was on a direct exchange DP. These have no primary cross connection points and thus no cabinets. The did trial FTTRN but the economics of putting it into many exchanges just didn’t add up due to the very small number of people fed from direct exchange DPs. I think he was lucky in the end because he lived in Londonton and the high population density made FTTRN viable.

[CAMRAMan]

Well, an unexpected knock on the door saw an engineer come expecting to install the hardware that's already here. Within 5 minutes I was connected at a speed I haven't had for a long time. iPlayer might now be an option...

[jdsnape]

I remember a colleague who was most upset that he couldn’t get fibre broadband for a long time because he was on a direct exchange DP. These have no primary cross connection points and thus no cabinets. The did trial FTTRN but the economics of putting it into many exchanges just didn’t add up due to the very small number of people fed from direct exchange DPs. I think he was lucky in the end because he lived in Londonton and the high population density made FTTRN viable.

What ended up happening for EO lines was BT putting a cabinet just on the outside of the exchange with the requisite equipment and run FTTC from there. It's all a bit mad, I heard it was due to regulatory restrictions on what equipment/frequencies were allowed to be in the exchange, but I don't know how true that is.

[Polar Bear]

Well, an unexpected knock on the door saw an engineer come expecting to install the hardware that's already here. Within 5 minutes I was connected at a speed I haven't had for a long time. iPlayer might now be an option...

Good news though.  👍

[CAMRAMan]

I'm now able to regularly download at 168 Mbps and upload at 32Mbps. I was down to Kbps with Three's wireless broadband.

[rogerzilla]

It's increasingly popular for builders to install a private broadband connection which ties you into a crap and expensive provider for ever.  Often there is also a ban on external aerials and satellite dishes so you have to pay for TV too.  Along with leasehold houses and escalating "service charges" (for which they do virtually nothing), it's another reason to run screaming from a new-build estate.

[Kim]

Thing that people tend to forget about satellite dishes is they work fine at ground level.  Flip it on its back and hide it behind a hedge / bin store / whatever: job done.

[Feanor]

In communal buildings it's common to have a single aerial and satellite dish feeding a distribution system.
That way, you don't festoon the building with metal tat and badly fixed cables.
Also, flats looking the Wrong Way can get a sat feed which might otherwise be impossible.

None of that requires any subscription TV or anysuch; it's just a shared aerial and satellite dish.

[Kim]

In communal buildings it's common to have a single aerial and satellite dish feeding a distribution system.

That's the sort of common sense joined-up thinking that's probably beyond the builders of new-build cardboard estates.

[davelodwig]

What I don’t understand is why some ISPs can offer FTTP but not others? They all work through Openreach so it’s not a technical issue.

Competence, and whether they want to pay for sufficient transit to the wider internet that FTTP customers don't perceive them as a bottleneck.

Pulling fibre / cable is expensive and they won't want to pay for it.

BT aren't putting any more copper in the ground now, all new installs are fibre so that should at least help new builds but not the millions of miles worth of copper connecting existing network subscribers.

[yoav]

What I don’t understand is why some ISPs can offer FTTP but not others? They all work through Openreach so it’s not a technical issue.

Competence, and whether they want to pay for sufficient transit to the wider internet that FTTP customers don't perceive them as a bottleneck.

Pulling fibre / cable is expensive and they won't want to pay for it.



BT aren't putting any more copper in the ground now, all new installs are fibre so that should at least help new builds but not the millions of miles worth of copper connecting existing network subscribers.

I agree, but what I meant was, in newly built houses that have fibre to the premises (like mine), I can only choose from a small number of providers, whereas in my old house, when I only had fibre to the cabinet, I could choose from dozens of providers. The infrastructure for both FTTP and FTTC is provided by Openreach.

[nuttycyclist]

My house is almost 100 years old.  Virgin were amongst the most recent people to dig up the pavement outside.  I have a choice of Virgin digging up my driveway* and not supplying a service, or sticking with a provider over existing copper.

I'd love it if my copper could be replaced with fibre, and having replaced many cables in my time I'd happily supply the ball of essential string,





*One person down the road has avoided this by running the fibre from the pavement port along the fence.    I am awaiting local yobs to apply tug/knife/wire-cutters/other to remove fibre from house just for "fun".

[Feanor]

What I don’t understand is why some ISPs can offer FTTP but not others? They all work through Openreach so it’s not a technical issue.

Competence, and whether they want to pay for sufficient transit to the wider internet that FTTP customers don't perceive them as a bottleneck.

Pulling fibre / cable is expensive and they won't want to pay for it.



BT aren't putting any more copper in the ground now, all new installs are fibre so that should at least help new builds but not the millions of miles worth of copper connecting existing network subscribers.

I agree, but what I meant was, in newly built houses that have fibre to the premises (like mine), I can only choose from a small number of providers, whereas in my old house, when I only had fibre to the cabinet, I could choose from dozens of providers. The infrastructure for both FTTP and FTTC is provided by Openreach.

Commercial decision, I expect.

Openreach will offer their FTTC and FTTP service to ISPs at different costs.
Perhaps some ISPs don't see enough uptake of the FTTP to justify selling a tariff based around it.

Also, it will place strains on their backhaul from BT to them, their internal network capacity, their peering and upstream providers. That's all expensive back-end infrastructure to upgrade.

[Bledlow]

I don't know if I'm FTTC or FTTN, but the speed is ok for our needs (three laptops on online meetings, files being downloaded for two people working and one homeschooling) while the tellybox is also downloading stuff I want to watch.

I don't know that I want to go FTTP and have my driveway dug up and holes drilled in my house.

Telecential or whoever it was back then did that here aeons ago. Dug up the front garden.

[Tod28]

FTTP here, no digging as it comes from the pole across the road old style. Shotgun style cable across the road with old copper for the phone and fibre blown through the other side. Copper split out at the old telephone connection entry point above the front door and fibre enters lower down front wall where the internal gubbins box is. Openreach install at least 5 years ago. BT isp with whom we negotiate each 24 months.  Virgin is available and cable provided (BlueYonder/Telewest? originally) makes negotiating easier.

[rafletcher]

Our village is just undergoing duct laying (causing mayhem on a single track road with house boundaries at one edge and granite setts and (increasingly destroyed by wider than car traffic) raised grass verge on the other) for a private BB provider Gigaclear. We have poles with power cable and copper phone lines - but because we’re now in a conservation area those can’t be used for the FTTP, that has to go underground  . AFAIK precisely no-one has signed up for it yet. The 70mb/s FTTC has been fine for us, and a several of larger households with a couple of teens in residence.

Classic bait and switch. £19 p/m for 18 months (for 200mb/s) thence £52. If we’d not had the FTTC they might have got a better buy-in.