New BT Infinity connection - what is its look & feel

[Dave Liquorice]

Well if they don't take that into account how can they provide any estimate at all for the speed. It is that last bit of wire (rather than glass) that determines the speed on FTTC connections.

Our ali does very well but then it is thick ali, looks to be 1 mm dia rather than the 0.5 mm of "standard" copper.

Yep, that is about the distance that VDSL has degraded down to ADSL speeds.

Ali can be PITA for voice as well. I get very nervous when ever I see an Openreach person ferreting about in any of the holes or joints along the route our pair takes. If it doesn't actually get broken the crackles from the disturbance can mess up the BRAS, at least if it does break and voice stops the ADSL being RF can often "leap the gap" and just about work at 500 kbps or so. At least with Total Care they come and fix it within 24 hrs 365 days/year. B-)

[charles]

Indeed, but why would you want both?

[Dave Liquorice]

Both provided over the IP connection ie BT Sport 1 and BT Sport 2 (donno if BT does have BT Sport 1 & 2 but you get the idea) or one over IP the other from Freeview or both from Freeview?

And they way the schedules seem to go these days we often want to record two things at the same time, indeed our PVR was doing that last night, 2 DSAT channels being recorded whilst it played a DVD... If push comes to shove the TV can record another DSAT channel, these can also all be HD @ DSAT rates (something just under 10 Mbps). Which is why I think the 20 odd Mbps limit on FTTC will come home to roost within 10 years.

[Mark]

Yes. If you use BT you will get months of frustration. They'll probably overcharge you as well.

They're not allowed to. However it doesn't stop other ISPs offering a much better service. Most decent ISP will offer FTTC, "infinity" is just the BT brand name for the product.

There is a new face plate (like an ADSL filtered plate) and an adaptor between the socket and the face plate.

OR will install a VDSL modem and your ISP may supply a router. You can use any router with an ethernet WAN using PPPoE. Many ADSL routers will not do this. Some routers that say support PPPoE won't work (as they run PPPoE over the phone line).

--snip--

[Bill]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

As far as I know he did.

BT certainly sent a man round on one occasion, because I had to sit the house. BT were up and down the road like a yo-yo and it suddenly came good.

[Roger Chapman]

There is BT Infinity in our area now and BT have been pestering me to upgrade. I now get up to about 5 meg on what was originally advertised as a up to 20 meg service. All down so they say to the 1.5 miles of copper between me and the exchange. The Infinity cabinet is 0.5 miles away and BT claims I should get 7 times that if I switch but if they can do that over half a mile of copper they should be able to give me the 20 meg that their weasel words originally promised without the need to upgrade.

Incidentally there is a Virgin cabinet within 100 yards of my house but a postcode check says they won't do fibre to the house and in any case I am still pissed off by the behaviour of the cowboys who originally installed the NTL fibre who damaged my electricity supply cable and, instead of reporting the damage, wrapped a bit of insulation round the damage and buried it. When the supply failed a few months later I was left without any power in the depths of winter for the best part of 24 hours before the engineers were able to track down and repair the fault.

[Geoff Pearson]

On Infinity FTTC I've been getting 38Mb download and 9mb upload consistently for 6 months - my sister has been offered Infinity FTTP - 100Mb and up.

[Huge]

I wish you lot would shut up. I get ~1.3Mbps down and ~300kbps up and I hardly live in the middle of nowhere (in the macro sense).

[Huge]

No idea. Didn't spend much time watching TV - we were on holiday. The view was much more interesting.

FWIW, it was this;

[Mark]

They must use line length to the cabinet, otherwise all estimates would be the same.

IIRC all total failures of my phone line in the last 10 years have been immediately after the presence of an Openreach man working outside my house.

[Dave Liquorice]

"Internally" was possibly the wrong word. They appear to only be able to contact each other via the same route as any customer. I'm pretty sure that other providers reselling BT services (just like BT Business. BT Retail do) have access that doesn't involve normal "customer services".

[Mark]

Not that I am aware of. It's all done in the name of 'fair' competition.

[John Rumm]

I don't follow your logic... ISTM that even with perfect conditions you would not expect 20Mbps out of ADSL2+ at 2400m line length. 14Mbps would be about the theoretical maximum.

There is a reasonable trade off diagram here (no corporate relation!):

Note that those are theoretical maximum speeds - you will achieve (possibly significantly) less in real life.

[Dave Liquorice]

There is a significant difference in the loss on 1/2 mile v 1 1/2 miles of copper, particularly at the higher carrier frequencies. ADSL2 (up to 8 Mbps) goes up to 1.1 MHz or so, ADSL2+ (up to 20 Mbps) gets it's extra download speed by extending the carriers used up to

2.2 MHz(ish). "Long" pairs simply have too much loss at the higher frequencies.

FTTC uses VDSL which does perform better than ADSL on "short" pairs but again suffers badly, back down to ADSL speeds, once you the pair length get to about a mile.

I think you need to look past the marketing and see what VDSL is likely to realisticaly achieve on 1/2 a mile of copper. I'm pretty sure I've seen it somewhere that they target 15 Mbps minimum for VDSL delivery. My gut feeling is that should be achievable on 1/2 a mile of copper.

Meh, we were off for 36 hrs last winter when an ice storm brought down the lines in many places, and snapped 1/2 a dozen or so poles. Nice bit of snow on the ground, temps barely above freezing during the day, no great problem. But then I take responsibilty to ensure that things that are critical/important have backups available or have contractual terms that mean they get fixed PDQ. Rather than just believe marketing puff or winge when "they" don't fix things instantly.

[rbel]

As all 6 OR engineers have said the same thing and Plusnet are aware of it I take it to be the case. My assumption is that BTW decided that checking the line beyond the cabinet would be too expensive. As I mentioned earlier Ofcom are aware of the problem but a fix is not likely until next year. I have asked Plusnet to make it clear in their estimates that such anomalies can occur and I have just been told that they are now proposing to do so.

According to OR, fibre is much more susceptible to this 'long line from the cabinet' problem than ADSL.

The engineers hate it. Unfortunately when the infrastructure for our part of the Devon was being created it was during the copper shortage of the 1970's, so it seems that many others are in a similar position to me.

[Peter Crosland]

Up to means exactly what is says. You were never guaranteed 20 only that the maxiumum capability of that type of service was 20 and that the actual speed would be dependent on a number of factors of which line length was a major one. To suggest otherwise is simply not true. The reality is that getting the speed you have is about what might be expected for your line length.

[tony sayer]

In article , Geoff Pearson scribeth thus

Indeed .. but does it seem that much faster 'tho?..

[tony sayer]

This must be a record but we've got a VM phone line, still have as part of the package but usually use VoIP, but since 1996 never known it to fail;!..

[Huge]

Given that my exchange is ~7km away, I'm amazed it works at all. (I get ~1.3Mbps down and ~300kbps up.)

[tony sayer]

In article , rbel scribeth thus

Eh?, you man the copper line length is far more susceptible to the length of line losses!..