BT expands fibre rollout BT has pledged it will invest a further £1bn in its expanding fibre optic network, and is now aiming to cover about two-thirds of the country by 2015. The plan brings the total value of the programme to £2.5bn. BT had previously committed £1.5bn to lay fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the-premises to about 40 per cent of homes …
https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/Community/Broadband_Community/21CN_Broadband_Availability.html
So on checking the list downloaded from the above link posted by smallfaces, I find that my local exchange is not even listed, isn't this list supposed to show the upgrade status of every exchange in the country, even if there's nothing doing?
If they keep the 10GB monthly bandwidth cap, a 40Mb transfer speed is of very limited benefit.
Files up to a few 10s of MB transfer quick enough at 4Mb. If you are downloading anything bigger than that it is probably a video, and if you are watching it as it downloads what does it matter?
If anyone came up with a web service which came close to using 40Mb (some mega online game or something) you are SOL because you will have used your monthly allowance in half an hour. Same goes if you are watching HD video.
Sure, once in a while I download a software bloatmonster and it would be slightly more convenient if it downloaded a bit faster, but most people don't do that very often (if at all).
At present you can only use an WBC/WBMC based service for FTTC. That's where the usage caps come from. If/when the LLU players get involved then things might change. Tbh I'm surprised there isn't more activity from LLUOs. If GEA is up and running it should be easy enough to migrate users. Presumably it's the bureaucracy that's holding them up.
http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=29019
BT infinity do offer an "unlimited" package. I just can't find the link for it now.
I think the options were 10M, 30M and unlimited (from memory).
They do say they throttle P2P at peak hours, which is fair enough, noone uses it anymore anyway.
That's complaining responding to a Ferrari advert by complaining that your Lada will still be slow.
FTTC effectively reduces your line length and uses a more advanced form of DSL. You are /guaranteed/ to get a better service if you moved over and in most cases it will be a huge improvement. From the figures I've seen banded around everyone is likely to see at least 10Mb/s downstream and most will be in excess of 20Mb/s. On a typical housing estate I reckon 30Mb/s is a reasonable average to expect.
'The firm has previously claimed the economics of faster broadband stack up for the remaining third of the country, which will comprise more sparsely populated regions'. Do you really mean this, or should there be a 'don't' between 'broadband' and 'stack'? If not, it really *is* a big change in BT's thinking.
We recently got BT's FTTC Infinity service installed in my flat. It was brilliant for the first couple of days until we until we hit our 'unlimited' cap of 100Gig. There are 3 of us sharing the connection, all in our mid 20s so we use the internet quite a bit. However, after 5 days we had used up our 100gig limit and were being throttled in the evening.
100gig sounds like a lot but between three guys it's really not much at all. At the advertised speed you can get through it in a little over 7 hours! We're not heavy torrenters by any means. In fact, it's mostly been used up with Iplayer and buying games from steam.
In real terms, it's a totally impractical solution. The only people who spend the extra are the very same people who will saturate the connecting in days. It'll never happen, but Ofcom should consider whether it is 'fair' to advertise an 'unlimited' service for a monthly fee which, when used at it's fully capacity, can be exceeded in 1% of the monthly period.
I think you'll find that 100gig is a shit-load of data (especially if stored on disk), it's probably just that you can eat through it pretty rapidly if you want as you have found. I think you'll have to change your usage expectations.
The reason they won't give you much more in the immediate future is that it would obviously make a mockery of their miserly efforts to date.
...just enough to hobble any attempts to compete in terms of time to market.
That and obstructing the likes of Rutland Telecom by not providing the info they need to assess the cost of providing high-speed broadband to a village.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10111724.stm
This bit caught my eye when I read that this morning:
'"It seems BT is not interested in delivering a rural solution but at the same time is trying to stop anyone else from doing so," he added.
Ms Garfield said that she was unaware of any problems.
"It's news to me I'm afraid. I thought we had provided everything we were required to provide."'
So she isn't actually denying the accusation - just hiding behind the regulatory framework.
It would be nicer if BT or one of its competitors could upgrade some of its exchanges to be "actually capable" of something instead of just theoretically capable of it.
And when they've achieved some sort of "actual" capability, how about some HONEST advertising that states only the GUARANTEED "23/364" capability and ignores the theoretical capability altogether.
I say 23/364 because we all know that 24/365 is theoretically impossible to guarantee. But a 23/365 figure (allowing only one hour per day when the throughput is less than advertised and one day per year when the advertised throughput is not met for at least 23 hours that day) ought to be entirely possible and a fully realistic measurement of what the customer is actually buying.
Of course, the 23/364 figure will be a *LOT* lower than the theoretical capability -- and is precisely WHY the law needs to require it to be the *ONLY* figure allowed to be advertised.
..but very expensive. The great British public refuse to pay enough for what you are proposing.
I agree that 1:1 contention isn't a requirement but like you I'd prefer to see throughput being discusses rather than just sync speeds. Unfortunately that's a non-starter. Most people shop around for the cheapest deal they can find..then they complain when their attempt to download the entire 'net runs into problems.
Seriously - if you're paying less than £20pcm for your connection then you shouldn't expect to be able to download hundreds of gigabytes a month. I reckon if we want to eliminate congestion 23/365 we're going to have to be prepared to pay two or three times more than we do at the moment.
Well funnily enough the link provded earlier for checking your adsl lice status states my home connection as definat 2Mb and a possible 3Mb
I actually get 3.5 and sometimes 4.0
Thank you B for being hohnest that its a shit line and again for still giving more than i should probably be getting !
FTTC rollout has nothing to do with caps thats set by the ISP, if you want those ISP's that give large usage cap's to offer you these connections then you need the Openreach FTTC rollout to carry on so they can then sell the access using GEA to your LLU isp.
BT infinity is just BT the ISP buying the FTTC product from Wholesale and then putting their caps and management on it. They do the same with their ADSL.
When other ISP start selling products on it then you will have greater choice, but once the networks there that can happen. Though FTTC is still a trail product with BT Wholesale and Openreach so most ISP basically want to test it and see the results of the trial before loading their customers onto it.
"The firm has previously claimed the economics of faster broadband do not stack up for the remaining third of the country"
.... where BTw enjoy predatory pricing on a captive market and so have no imperative to improve the overpriced and under-performing "service" they currently inflict on those unfortunate enough to live in these areas.
Time for price reductions to reflect the poor service we get from old tech.
Many years ago some bright sparks laid trunking in all the pavements and verges between Dorchester and Weymouth ready for the cable revolution. It never came.
In a county that has no cities and no motorways I think the concept was far too radical.
Now we have the olympics coming to town. The sailing events are being held in Weymouth & Portland and amazingly so is fibre (to serve the event venue).
The most amazing thing of all is that once the event is over there is no guarantee that they will leave it in place for us poor locals to make use of!
So much for a lasting legacy.
Local business have had to lobby for its retention and there are still no guarantees that we will win.
You mean having spent the *substantial* bag of cash *laying* this stuff in they would pull it back up?
One of the "Truths" of the cable revolution was the value of all that *copper* cable (once laid) was *zero*. The recovery cost was as much (or more) than the world price of Copper for the mass recovered per street.
Now I know silica OF is highly pure and made in an energy intensive way but I find it hard to believe you would break *even* on digging it up again, let alone be enough ahead to justify doing so.
Thumbs down for this madness.
Hmm - not sure about your point. All the local press seem to support my point, plus I actually spoke to the guy from the County Council who is dealing with this at a barbecue some time ago and he seemed to confirm that the infrastructure would be available to local users.
http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/4865703.BT_quizzed_over_high_speed_broadband_for_Dorset/
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
