Fibre. Does the existing phone line stay when the install FTTP?

[Dave Plowman (News]

Considering getting full fibre instead of FTC as I have at the moment. Does the existing phone line stay, or does the new fibre cable include provision for a basic analogue phone?

[Roger Hayter]

Apart from a few dozen experimental exchanges, the copper stays; for the moment.

[The Natural Philosopher]

But it may not be connected to the exchange... That is what my engineer said.

So you can have

'Just FTTP' and organise your own backup for power fail, and VOIP. No copper involved, although it's there.

'Our VOIP and FTTP' where you organise your own backup, but plug into POTS socket on the fibre modem. No copper involved, although it's there.

'FTTP and POTS' as two entirely separate and independent services... backup on POTS included as per battery at the exchange etc.

Which is what I have, currently.

[Dave Liquorice]

Those "few dozen exchanges" must all be clustered around here then, 'cause the amount of "full fibre" is popping up is constantly expanding. And that's only the easy stuff to spot, up poles...

With the analogue PSTN being switched off at the end of 2025 and the Universal Service Obligation now in place things are going to be instresting. There are numerous places around here that have no xDSL service to hang a SOTAP connection on.

IMHO anyone who has "superfast" (> 24 Mbps) broadband shouldn't get any further upgrade until every one has at least USO broadband provision.

[Andrew]

Why ?. where you live your download speed will do everything you want. Only houses full of teenagers are likely to benefit from full fibre, surely ?.

[RJH]

I was quite surprised how my FTC connection (3MB/s wifi, 7MB/s ethernet download) copes - Netflix super-HD 4k streams without interruption, even over wifi. Very occasionally, when rewinding say, the resolution drops for a few seconds.

But obviously, mileages vary, depending on, er, habits ;-)

I gather 5G is set to change all of this for possibly quite a few households, if and when they sort out the procurement. I know a couple of families that manage well enough on unlimited 4G and wifi tethering.

[Roger Hayter]

Obviously you can do any of those things, but Openreach are not offering a native FTTP plus VOIP solution with no copper except in some exchanges and some new builds. Neither are BT wholesale or retail. The ONTs Openreach are currently fitting have no 'phone socket and VOIP seems to be planned as a function of ISP (or customers') routers; or, indeed, VOIP only boxes which plug into the ONT.

[alan_m]

have just run fibre down my street in Southend on Sea and they appear to be offering fibre to the premises broadband in conjunction with (EE?)

[Theo]

In current Openreach installs the fibre overhead cable includes a copper pair. They also don't as a rule uninstall your existing copper.

Non-Openreach installers may do something different.

Theo

[polygonum_on_google]

When we had FTTP installed, I plugged the phone into the socket on the optical box - and it was dead.

BT installer chap called base, and chatted around. Seems they sometimes move it over to digital, sometimes not. And not at all clear the basis of that decision.

Ended up, phone is still on copper.(We never use it, so no real difference for us.)

However there is an advantage, being on copper, it would still work during a power cut. On FTTP, it wouldn't unless you supply some sort of backup power yourself to the boxes.

[Dave Plowman (News]

That's what I was wondering about. My present line is overhead to the front of the house from a telegraph pole in the street. Ugly enough without adding a second line.

Never quite worked out why most streets in this area, built at the same time, have underground cabling.

[Dave Plowman (News]

My FTC gives 70 Mbps down, 20 up on a cabled PC. Rather slower on Wi-Fi.

But the router is first generation BT FTC (two units) so wondered if a new one would be faster. I often get 'your bandwidth is low' on Zoom meetings. Don't have a problem with catch up TV or streamed stuff though, usually.

[polygonum_on_google]

The ONT fitted on 03/12/2019 to our house has a physical phone socket.

Just not set up to work.

[charles]

I suspect your slow signal is due to conjestion in the system rather than your local end. We have the same speeds here and last week there were two Zoom meetings going on at the same time - no problem.

[Andrew]

BBC Click (last saturday) showed a solution to that, that only needs a few Kbytes/second thanks to something that nVidia are developing.

[Andrew]

Do people actually need to see each other when having a multi-way conversation, or is this a technological solution to a problem that doesn't really exist ?.

[Dave Plowman (News]

What I suspect - although the message I get says *your* bandwidth is low. But generally using the laptop on Wi-Fi. Even installed a range extender, so the signal it gets is very good.

[Peter Johnson]

How are they doing it? Digging trenches or using existing ducts. Google give lots of answers about this but nothing that I've found about how it's actually being done.

[charles]

Where is the message from?

[Tim Lamb]

I watched and failed to understand that. Perhaps you have local software that delays and gap fills from a series of *stills*?