BT Superfast broadband

unicronicus

Hi all,

We are due to have our area switched over to BT's Superfast Fibre network tomorrow (Friday 20th November) and I was wondering if someone could answer me a quick question with regards to this process and the affect on my current service.

I am already with BT and on their unlimited usage package up to supposed speeds of 17Mb, but at the moment on the old cabling (or Microwave link) I am only getting up to circa 7Mb. I expect after the switch over to this fibre link (Fibre To The Cabinet) I will eventually see an increase in speed of my current service, but I was told I would have to change my package/tariff, is this true? I would assume all I would have to do is a simple reboot of my router, allow my line to stabilise and wait for my IP Profile to rise...?

I am also literally 40ft from my nearest DSLAM (where the fibre is terminated on the street) so would opting for their superfast fibre broadband be worth it given the short distance?

Cheers!

LazyTyper

FTTC is a separate product entirely from ADSL (standard broadband), so to answer your question, yes, you will need to take out a different product.

Openreach will need to patch your copper pair into the DSLAM that's serving your local area.

JJ_Egan

When its gone live then see the BT Fibre sign up page ans see what speed increase you may get .
New contract fibre 18 months .

iniltous

If you are on 'ordinary' broadband and fibre to the cab is available , you don't benefit unless you approach a provider and order it, it's not an automatic 'upgrade' so even if FTTC is available your service will stay exactly the as it is now, unless you order fibre broadband
Just noticed your location Isles of Scilly, remote locations like yours can be a bit of a Heath Robinson affair, radio mux's , street based ADSL cabinets, not VDSL FTTC etc, a non standard method of provision, so if you are currently served from legacy ADSL , and are getting 7Mb (from a max of 8Mb, not 17Mb) and they are upgrading to ADSL2+ you may get an increase , but that's not what BT usually call super fast broadband, you may have to collar the local OR engineer and ask what is actually being 'upgraded'

unicronicus

I was under the illusion that we were on an Adsl2+ exchange (called scillonia) but the limiting factor of me getting more than 8Mb was with the microwave link to the mainland. So in theory the copper path up to the exchange from my property/dslam will stay the same but this new fibre cable to the mainland makes things faster...

suki1964

The copper from your house to cabinet will stay the same. It's at the cabinet that they connect to fibre.

Once the cabinet it's set up for fibre, you need to get a provider to switch you over. That's a new contract and new router and with BT, they also send an engineer to make sure your wiring in the house is fit for purpose

fedupconsumer

Good luck with openreach uni. Be patient your going to need it. Regarding the speeds got nowhere close to the headline speed. Have learnt only 10 % of customers can achieve a speed near the advertised speed. Be careful openreach miss appoinments as well.

iniltous

unicronicus wrote: »

I was under the illusion that we were on an Adsl2+ exchange (called scillonia) but the limiting factor of me getting more than 8Mb was with the microwave link to the mainland. So in theory the copper path up to the exchange from my property/dslam will stay the same but this new fibre cable to the mainland makes things faster...

If the bottleneck was/is the radio link from your island to the mainland, then it would have an impact on your throughput speed, but not neccesarily on your connection speed, I presume 7Mb is your connection (sync) speed,so unless your provider restricts your connection speed to share the available bandwith, the radio link being replaced with a fibre cable with more capacity/bandwidth may not benefit you as far as sync speed but may give you a better throughput,
If your line is capable of a higer sync speed than 7Mb, then assuming your line is currently capped at 7Mb ( seems a strange figure to cap a line at) and your provider removes this cap,you may benefit with a better sync speed , I assumed you were ADSL as 7Mb sync on a short line seems probable , rather than a restriction to 7Mb on a short line capable of a higher sync speed on ADSL2+
If the upgrade only allows more connections rather than speeding up the existing ones, you may see no difference at all
I would wait and see, if your sync speed increases, great, if it doesn't you could speak to them and ask why not, but trying to explain the situation to the customer service reps may prove difficult,
If you look at your router stats you should be able to tell if you are on ADSL or ADSL2+, but if you have a street based DSLAM cabinet I would guess it's ADSL as BT are only now talking about ADSL2+ in street cabs in areas where FTTC isn't viable

spud17

Apparently, they're running a spur from a 1000 Km cable going from UK to Spain.

According to Kylie Pentelow, on the local news, speeds of up to 80 megabytes/s (wow), think they meant 80 Mbit/s.

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Best-connected-Isles-Scilly-gets-super-fast/story-24561129-detail/story.html