Broadband Plusnet v Broadband

Are you on ADSL (up to 8 Mbps) or VDSL (Up to 38 or 76 Mbps)?

What that sales droid said might be half correct, you could get a considerable speed increase by switching from ADSL to VDSL. The village has recently become "fibre enabled", people down there were lucky to get 1 Mbps on ADSL. VDSL from the new cabinet just outside the village provides those same people with 30 to 40 Mbps. However the fibre only runs to the cabinet (in the same ducting as the phone lines from the exchange), but the last hop from the cabinet to premesis is on the existing copper.

If he insists that the fibre runs all the way to the premises and only wants a £100 or so install fee make it a term of the contract, record the phone call, get emails, anything. Then don't be disappointed when they don't deliver/cancel the order or be prepared for a BIG argument if they do.

Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) is available but install costs have four or five figures before the decimal point. BT are also playing with FTTP on Demand but last time I looked they hadn't really thought about costings. FTTPoD ought to be vastly cheaper as any "excess construction" is only charged from the nearest fibre node (joint box in the installed fibre network) which may well be very close rather than a "point of precense" that could be tens of miles away. But for anything over 200 m from the fibre node you are still looking at four figures...

BT Openreach now have huge amounts of spare capacity to all but the smallest places. The afforementioned village cabinet serves about 100 customers and required 40 km of new fibre to be installed, admitedly that 40 km of fibre also serves another half dozen or so cabinets in this exchange area (and possibly enroute as well) but there are only

1200 customers in this area total, of which a number are too far from a cabinet to benefit from FTTC.

Once the dust has settled from BDUK Phase 1 and proper work starts on Phase 2, BT Openreach will be looking at how to get this spare capacity earning money.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice
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/Once the dust has settled from BDUK Phase 1 and proper work starts on Phase 2, BT Openreach will be looking at how to get this spare capacity earning money. /Q

Erm... Phased price reductions?

Jim K

Reply to
JimK

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

Well thats trying to sell not a bad thing;!.

Well we use virgin and there're very good at Broadband and phone their TV well not known as we don't us it BUT sometimes they deliver over BT Openreach wires and there're just like any other ISP there.

However if it's over their co-axial network then that is very good. Here I'm on their 100 meg service I can go for the 150 or more soon.

As to their cables yep some were a bit messy, ours are fine they put in a duct as we asked them. Someone who's using good ole BT next door is getting around 35 meg fibre FTTC and that looks as fast as its going to go for a long while to come as yet!.

Reply to
tony sayer

For the past 5+ years a large percentage of my snail junk mail is from virgin. Around once a week I get a fat A4 envelope with a glossy personalised pamphlet stating how much I could save on my Freeview/Freesat or non-existent Sky costs. This is usually followed up with less bulky snail mail giving me a better offer. Strangely they believe everyone is deeply into sport and want premium content channels. For my usage of TV/phone/broadband I can get a better service or better price elsewhere.

In the days long before Virgin took over the operation, when cable was first installed in the street where I live the only notification was a single letter around 6 weeks before they started work saying cable would be coming to us soon. I was woken early one morning to find that the contractors had stated work even earlier and there was already a trench and the spoils piled high on the pavement. No resident could get their cars out of their driveways (front gardens). There followed an intensive campaign by cold calling foot-in-the-door salesmen scum attempting to sign up customers. I wonder why the initial take up of cable in my street wasn't that high?

Reply to
alan_m

I tell you what I know of quite a few people who'd PAY them to come and dig outside their front doors now as they can only get sub 1 meg speeds on so called broadband and thats not too far out in the county either!...

Reply to
tony sayer

B-)

They wouldn't have to do much digging here, 96 core fibre going down to the village's FTTC passes through a chamber 10 yards from the house, it's believed there is a fibre node 200 m away in the direction of the exchange. Pretty sure Hexham where the other end of the fibre is has Virgin so they just rent a bit of dark fibre from BT Openreach, and 200 m of duct, simples. (Does Virgin FTTP kit work on the end of 40 km of fibre?)

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Biggles posted

Why would anyone want the second one?

Reply to
Big Les Wade

I believe, tho I might be wrong, think its to do with the kit that breaks down the fibre into more usable chunks. As to VM fibre it does run a very long way the right type of fibre and in any case fibre repeaters can and are used as required. However I believe that BT now have a lot of capacity that they want to make available to more for less than current costs so they say....

Perhaps its an issue with the cost of the plant required for accessing it?.

Reply to
tony sayer

For places where there's WiFi but no cellular signal?

Reply to
Mike Barnes

An uninterrupted bit of single mode fibre can be longer than that. And you don't necessarily need more than one fibre-pair. You can put

960Gbps down that (if not more these days). Wouldn't be cheap to buy the kit for that, though, and it certainly wouldn't fit inside your roadside cab.
Reply to
Tim Streater

I have a PATG mobile. Would make any outgoing calls free when my landline is. Ie evenings and weekends.

The BT wi-fi seems pretty good in London. Although I don't use a mobile like most do. And of course it's not going to work on the move.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

But why not use the landline .... Aaaaaaaah, I get it. This is for when you are piggybacking on somebody else's Internet connection via the Fon thing.

Reply to
Big Les Wade

I took the Biggles to mean *any* WiFi (that's how it works with the app I have, provided by Three). So if, for instance, I'm staying at a hotel where there's no signal, I can make calls with my mobile and avoid paying hotel landline rates, from anywhere in the hotel.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

(Does Virgin FTTP kit work on

Doubtful.

Reply to
dennis

We get four such fat envelopes, addressed to flat 1, flat 2, flat 3 and flat 4. This house has not been in flats for over 22 years, and only Virgin's database seems to think it still is.

Cheers

Reply to
Syd Rumpo

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