Talktalk to offer fibre optic?

martin57

Hi,

I undestand that talktalk is tto offer fibre optic boost to its customers (who can get it) early in 2011.

1 Just wondering why does an engineer need to visit your home to install this, and if this is likely to change in the future?
2 What would you conisder is a fair extras charge to pair for the fibre optic service £5 £10?

thanks
martin57

paddyrg

I'm pretty certain you'll need an engineer as you're not talking about a small change but a major upgrade, and I'd be surprised if it was as as low as £10 - this is a premium product and early adopters will certainly pay a premium for it

boxst

An engineer does have to visit and I believe BT are going to charge £10 extra a month (could be wrong about that!) so I assume Talk-Talk will be similiarly priced.

The BT version is here: http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=29019

GunJack

the engineer visit is more to set up the new router you'll need and to ensure you're online. The fibre stops at the street cabs (in FTTC) and uses your existing copper pair to your master socket. Or if you're really lucky you get the FTTP (fibre to the premesis) but that's rare. If FTTP then it requires engineer to terminate the new connection & box.

S0litaire

This sounds like they are offering FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet).

if you're in a BT area that has had the fibre upgrade you should have a new bigger cabinet on your street (or close by) The Engineer just needs to plug your copper line into the Fibre conversion box (changes light to electrical signals) and away you go... it's a basic 20 min job.

Phantom_Flan_Flinger

Unless there's been a change, it's TalkTalk as a wholesale provider using BT's FTTC service.

alexmole

An engineer would be installing a socket in to your house, it would be different to anything you have.

It aint going to be cheap and personally I would avoid anything new by talktalk for its first 6 months as they wont be able to fix it if it goes wrong due to demand

GunJack

Flan Flinger is right, TT are initially going to be a wholesaler of BT's FTTC. They are planning their own fibre product, piggy-backed on the BT infrastructure (poles, ducts, etc., but that won't come along for a while .....

Hammyman

With Talktalks inability to even max out 8Mbit ADSL at any time other than the middle of the night, having an "up to 50MBit" connection will be meaningless 20hrs of the day.

Mr_Oink

Hammyman wrote: »

With Talktalks inability to even max out 8Mbit ADSL at any time other than the middle of the night, having an "up to 50MBit" connection will be meaningless 20hrs of the day.

The BT FTTC 'product' has a guaranteed minimum speed of around 15mbps. The engineering visit is to ensure this is achieved. If it cannot be obtained after trying a number of pairs of wires back to the cab, then you can't have it and the order is cancelled.

Hammyman

Mr_Oink wrote: »

The BT FTTC 'product' has a guaranteed minimum speed of around 15mbps. The engineering visit is to ensure this is achieved. If it cannot be obtained after trying a number of pairs of wires back to the cab, then you can't have it and the order is cancelled.

Thats the maximum throughput regardless of network congestion and is done using test servers on BT. It doesn't have anything to do with the ISPs lack of bandwidth. I'm quite sure you'll have plenty of people with Talktalk who can tell you how they have a 8Mbit or even 24Mbit DSL profile yet struggle to get speedtest results of even 1Mbit on an evening. The fact you have FTTC doesn't change this. Changing ISP would though.