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

[alan_m]

About 10 weeks ago a gang of 4 turned up and dug a hole at the end of the street followed a bit later by a green cabinet being installed. Since all I've seen is purple coloured cable being pulled through existing ducts. I haven't seen any houses being connected up. Previous we had a letter saying that the cable would be installed within a six week period. We have also has the cold calling saleswoman knocking door to door trying to get people to sign up. I'm not sure about the success rate but who in their right minds would buy on the doorstep?

I did have a quick look at their offerings - maybe faster speeds for the same price as I'm paying but I already get around 38Mbps/9Mbps so no need for more speed. From memory the contract had to be with EE.

[Andy Burns]

Something like a 3D cartoon head to fill in the missing bits?

[Dave Plowman (News]

The Zoom app.

[Roger Hayter]

The one fitted to my house in June didn't! I think it is a recent change, as they have decided not to use them. I.e. not to have a wholesale VOIP solution.

[Andrew]

actually it looked very much like the actual person !

[charles]

so Zoom is noting apoor connection between its home & your computer. Could be anywhere.

[Vir Campestris]

I tried ours. The new socket was outgoing calls only. If we want the 'phone to ring we have to use POTS. Which is annoying as the POTS socket is not in a convenient place.

I haven't tried for a couple of years though.

Andy

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

on 12/10/2020, Peter Johnson supposed :

Virgin did the whole village a few years ago, then struggled to sell it. The used a narrow trench cutter machine, making a trench about 5" wide, dropped the fibre in, leading to the boxes, then from the box to the end of everyone's front garden, where the installed a small plastic box. Where people subscribed, they ran from the box up the garden or drive to the houses. They included a service to every bus stop too, for the bus information displays.

[Dave Liquorice]

developing.

Max Headroom?

Yep, Max Headroom.

[Dave Liquorice]

Most if not all none Openreach physical broadband providers only offer a single ISP be that one they also run or one contracted in. So no choice of ISP like you get of OPENreach.

[Dave Liquorice]

"usually" indicates that you sometimes do. Zoom or iPlayer never complain about low bandwidth here. When does it happen? The "evening slowdown" around 1800 to 2100? Indicates the local conention is a bit on the high side.

[Dave Liquorice]

developing.

Seemed reasonably clear. There is a reference still image that has a number of key points defined. The movement of those key points on the real subject is tracked by software and that data sent to the reciver where the key points on the still image are moved accordingly.

[Dave Liquorice]

Seeing the facial expression and body language does add something.

But the technology isn't quite there yet so the overall experience isn't quite as good a clear voice only conference call. The delay, variable frame rates and variable quality sound just make it hard work which is not fully compensated for by the additionof facial expressions/body langauage.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ok, though the very similar cumstomer fibre "dropwire" system I saw a few years back had no copper signal pair. It did have steel strainer wires though...

[T i m]

<snip>

I watched that series the first (only?) time round and thought it was cool, especially at that t-t-t-t-t-t-time, well, mostly the MaxmaxMAXmax H-h-h-h-h-h-headroom bitzzzzzzzzz.

I think I had a Max headroom PC program that repeated what you said real time. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

Generally the new fibre is completely separate from any existing POTS install.

Yes, in more than one way, but they are likely not used at this stage.

The typical fibre cable that Openreach drop to the premises does actually carry a single (very fine) copper pair as well that could in theory carry a POTS line. However chances are the other end is not actually connected to anything. (and apparently, the fitters don't like trying use it since it has a hard PTFE insulation which is a bugger to strip with breaking the cores!)

Going forward, the plan it to replace/retire the copper for the local loop anyway, and the phone provision be provided by a VoIP adaptor on the end of the fibre network.

(consumers ordering phone only systems would get a FTTP connection running a 0.5 Mbps service feeding a VoIP terminator)

[John Rumm]

I suspect that that had someone turned up here offering FTTP when we were all stuck with 6km of ADSL soggy sting and 1.5Mbps if you are luck, they would have had their hand bitten off up to the ankle!

You may get lower latency and jitter as well as faster speeds. However much depends on what you do with it as well as the capabilities of the ISP, since it sounds like you are on a 40/10 FTTC setup running at close to theoretical max speed anyway (and could no doubt go to 80/20)

[John Rumm]

Sometimes depends on what you mean by a "good" signal. Had a case recently where a widi network would give a solid 4 to 5 bars everywhere, but the throughput was abysmal. (to much interference / competition from surrounding networks)

[Dave Liquorice]

End of the digtal network would be more accurate. The PSTN is being phased out and shutdown by the end of 2025 but the digtal replacement will still be using a lot of copper for SOTAP (ADSL), SOGEA (VDSL) or G,Fast (SOGFast) from the exchange or cabinet. That's assuming the copper is short enough, which for the vast majority of lines it will be.

Upgrade to FTTP is more of an exchange/local area infrastruture change. They ain't going to put fibre in for a single "phone" line. They'll use the existing copper for one of the above SO...'s and in the fullness of time that may get the infrastructure upgrade to FTTP.

[RJH]

Bytes-bits - much the same as my connection. I've just added a cheap mesh system - works very well, but I'm not sure now where the bottleneck is - device or mesh. But it works fine, and considerably better than the access points, power plugs etc. Best of all is the wifi calling (low mobile signal) and the wifi cameras 'load' in about half the time on the phone app.

I gather some of the BT routers are pretty good - to the point firmware has been developed to hack them and enable wider use.

Funny you should mention Zoom - I have regular Zoom meetings with 10-20 students, and union meetings with 100+ (only about half have the video on though). The computer is connected by wifi right now - usually it's gigabit ethernet. No difference that I can see.

I suspect the issue for you is their end - might be worth isolating that as a cause?