Fibre Broadband

Terry98

That's really helpful, thanks.

My ISP only said the speed would be up to 38Mb. If the speed was below 11.9, presumably after the settling in period, is there somewhere I can quote them to get out of the contract?

lee111s

When you take out the service they will (or should) send you an email telling you of your expected speeds. If they don't, be very wary, I think it's a legal obligation now for them to do so.

macman

Moving FTTC supplier anyway is not going to improve the speed much, since the FTTC service is supplied by BT Wholesale regardless of supplier, and the last 200 yards of copper by BT OR similarly. The line checkers on all the supplier sites will give you an idea of the speed range you can expect if you move up to FTTC.

Terry98

macman wrote: »

Moving FTTC supplier anyway is not going to improve the speed much, since the FTTC service is supplied by BT Wholesale regardless of supplier, and the last 200 yards of copper by BT OR similarly. The line checkers on all the supplier sites will give you an idea of the speed range you can expect if you move up to FTTC.

I was thinking of staying with my current supplier and moving from ADSL to fibre.

Up to 38 Mb seems much better than my current 3Mb but when it might only be 11.9Mb it makes you think is it worth the extra cost and to put up with the buffering when 2 or three people are using the Internet at the same time!

I could not find any proper line checkers for fibre. It was only when I posted here I was able to find out any realistic speed estimate!

The words 'up to' should be banned when any reference to broadband is used!

onomatopoeia99

Terry98 wrote: »

The words 'up to' should be banned when any reference to broadband is used!

The problem is physics. ADSL and VDSL are line quality limited, which in turn is largely dependent on the line length. While an estimate can be given based on the line length, the only way to know what throughput is achievable is to connect it up using the relevant technology, leave it running for a week or so to settle and see what's achieved.

kwikbreaks

With those speed estimates I think you must have found the wrong cabinet or the route the cable takes is very circuitous. The cabinet feeding me is 300m away and I get > 70Mbps.

lee111s

macman wrote: »

Moving FTTC supplier anyway is not going to improve the speed much, since the FTTC service is supplied by BT Wholesale regardless of supplier, and the last 200 yards of copper by BT OR similarly. The line checkers on all the supplier sites will give you an idea of the speed range you can expect if you move up to FTTC.

Not strictly true. Openreach own the whole physical infrastructure from the customers NTE back to the exchange including the copper cable to the cabinet, the VDSL DSLAM in the FTTC cabinet and the fibre link back to the exchange. In some LLU exchanges, Sky and the likes have their own handover from Openreach to their network via the Layer 2 switch. So not all providers use BT Wholesale for fibre to the cabinet services.


This is why on some exchanges Sky do not offer FTTC even though lines have it available, as they don't always have their own equipment in that exchange yet to be able to pass the connectivity over to their backhaul network. There is sometimes a month or two gap from an exchange or cabinet accepting orders before Sky and other LLU operators will accept orders.


The OP is wanting to move from ADSL to FTTC anyway.

macman

Around 11MBps should be sufficient for 3 people to stream at once, typically you need about 3 MBps for iPlayer etc.
As I said, go to one of the supplier sites, (try |Plusnet, for example) pick your fibre tariff, input your address details and phone number and it will give you a an estimate of speed.

Terry98

macman wrote: »

As I said, go to one of the supplier sites, (try |Plusnet, for example) pick your fibre tariff, input your address details and phone number and it will give you a an estimate of speed.

You are correct. I put my details in the Plusnet site and it gave:

Fibre broadband Download speed 11 - 17 Mb
Broadband Download speed 4 - 8 Mb

Their prices are way to expensive though!

My point was if you want to compare prices via any of the comparison sites all they give me is 'up to 38Mb' which is either meaningless or getting new customers with false expectations.

JJ_Egan

<My point was if you want to compare prices via any of the comparison sites all they give me is 'up to 38Mb' which is either meaningless or getting new customers with false expectations.>

Problem is that the sites do not compare individual address .