Can you change back from fibre to standard broadband (without extra cost?)

lin64

Leaving Shell as they are upgrading me to 'fast fibre' even though I don't want it - I'm happy with the cheapest, standard broadband, not a big user.  My assumption is that although the price rice isn't huge now, it will be in future and that there would be a cost if I wanted to then change to another provider on standard broadband - because I'd then be on fibre.  Am I right, or could I just swap to a standard contract next time without cost/hassle?  Does anyone know?  Thanks.

JJ_Egan

Never seen any huge price rises just because its fibre .

Mickey666

I don’t really know how providers structure their product offerings but there’s no technical reason why a fibre connection has to be super fast because the network equipment could be ‘throttled’ to limit the speed and allow them to offer lower cost, lower speed services.  When our village was upgraded to fibre-to-the-cabinet we were not forced to upgrade our broadband package to the faster speed that was now available.  Probably the only way to get a definite answer is to contact a few broadband providers and see what packages they will offer for your property.

briley

I'm on Shell fibre broadband, so went to Plus.net - they are willing to offer the 'ordinary' broadband at £19.99 or fibre at £23.99 so assume you can just downgrade with a new company, or tell Shell you do not want the upgrade.

Probably still get the price increase.

cajef

It will not be possible soon as the PSTN network is due to be switched off by 2025 copper lines won't work it will be fibre only.

https://www.openreach.com/news-and-opinion/articles/goodbye-old-telephone-network--hello-new-opportunities-

molerat

cajef said:

It will not be possible soon as the PSTN network is due to be switched off by 2025 copper lines won't work it will be fibre only.

https://www.openreach.com/news-and-opinion/articles/goodbye-old-telephone-network--hello-new-opportunities-

So that's 2030 at the earliest then

cajef

I did say it was due to be switched off not it is going to be.

Mickey666

cajef said:

It will not be possible soon as the PSTN network is due to be switched off by 2025 copper lines won't work it will be fibre only.

https://www.openreach.com/news-and-opinion/articles/goodbye-old-telephone-network--hello-new-opportunities-

I don't think it's entirely true to say that copper connections won't work after 2025.  The primary objective (which was planned many years ago as the "21st Century Network" project - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_21CN ) was to migrate from the PSTN network to an IP network. 

While there is also a lot of upgrading to optical fibre, mainly for performance reasons, an IP network can be implemented perfectly well over the existing copper cabling to homes.  Thus, although there is also a push towards replacing legacy copper wiring with optical fibre, the switch to a fully IP network is not totally dependent on everything being fibre. 

I really don't believe that every home in the country is going to have a fibre connection (FTTH) by 2005, though they should have a fibe connection to their local telecoms street cabinet (FTTC) with a copper link into their homes, as is currently commonplace.  So, whatever the type of physical connection, the switch from PSTN to IP could still be made.

littleboo

As above, PSTN switch off is not the same as copper replacement.

Chop-D

I’ve ‘downgraded’ from fibre to standard broadband at the end of my contract before with no issues, but it wasn’t fibre to my home, just the cabinet

iniltous

As already stated , eventually exchange based ADSL will be unavailable, in fact some providers won’t offer ADSL if FTTC ( fibre) is available, in the majority of cases the  price difference isn’t much between ADSL and FTTC, but for the time being , if you switched to a provider that still offers ADSL, then switching to them from FTTC won’t be blocked and you pay whatever the provider states there isn’t an extra penalty payment, but personally for the relatively small difference I’d go for FTTC unless he distance from the cab was such that there was no speed advantage from FTTC