What , legally is classed as fibre broadband

the_original_Andy

I was talked into fibre broadband a few years ago. I was told it would speed up the connection etc etc etc. I pay Sky, for fast broadband. Every site I go on, while surfing, buffers. I am lucky to get 13 download speed. The box is 5 miles away. Is this classed as super fast fibre broadband. When I question it, I am told, the alternative, is around 5 per second. What is the limit , where cable ends, and fibre starts. 5 miles of copper wire  seems a long way away from fibre broadband.

Browntoa

Fibre ADSL is classed as fibre to the cabinet , which yours is.

There is no guarantee of fast speeds .

The new gfast product would have boosted your speeds but I believe commitment to that has stopped by BT .

Your long term hope is a fibre to the premises upgrade by openreach

matelodave

G.fast is only any good up to around 300-500metres and so wouldn't have been available to the OP if his cabinet is 5 miles away TBH if he reckons that he only gets 13mbit/s I'd doubt very much that his cabinet is five miles away. % miles on ADSL would probably only mange 1-2mbit/s at best

If your copper line length to the G.Fast cabinet is under 300 metres, you may reach download speeds of up to 300Mb/s1 down and 50Mb/s up, which is a considerable jump up from the next fastest copper-line broadband service of VDSL2 (or fibre to the cabinet/ FTTC) that tops out at 76Mb/s down and 19Mb/s up.

G.fast is delivered via a street-side fibre-connected extension cabinet bolted to the serving copper-line cabinet also known as the primary connection point (PCP). G.fast leverages the advances in twisted-copper-line broadband technology to increase the spectrum used (bandwidth), noise mitigation and error correction mechanisms to deliver much faster speeds2; the trade-off being that this is only possible with much shorter copper-line lengths than VDSL2 or ADSL2+.

In some cases fibre-connected G.fast pods are being fitted to telegraph poles and installed in the basements of apartment blocks to reduce the copper line length further.

 

Zellah

Browntoa said:

The new gfast product would have boosted your speeds but I believe commitment to that has stopped by BT .

No way on God's earth would the OP be getting G.fast being 5 miles from his cabinet.

iniltous

What is legally classed as ‘fibre broadband’ ?, Virgins broadband network in the main is a copper / fibre hybrid system ( although co-ax rather than copper pairs ) , they were the first to advertise this as ‘fibre broadband’, when Openreach introduced fibre to the cabinet  (FTTC) they also used the term ‘fibre broadband’ after all VM had set the precedent, the ‘full fibre’ operators objected, saying the term ‘fibre’ should only be used to advertise full fibre  , but the advertising authority’s were happy calling FTTC ‘fibre’.
FTTC has been around quite a while , but as more and more FTTP comes on stream ‘full fibre’ may become commonly used to differentiate between FTTC and FTTP.

Mickey666

Firstly, I'd be surprised if there here are any actual legal definitions for such things.
Secondly, the only thing that really matters is what speed can be delivered to your house.  Focus on that, not whether it is fibre, coax, copper or wet string.

The_Fat_Controller

You cannot be that far away from the cabinet and still get that speed, it's impossible.
You must be connected to a closer cabinet.

prowla

If you're using Wi-Fi, the speed to the house is almost irrelevant.

A 200 Mbps connection to the house is meaningless if your Wi-Fi can only support 3 Mbps (that's Sky's Wi-Fi promise).

Also, that raw line speed doesn't tell you much about how reliable or performant the equipment in the providers' data-centre/hub/whatevertheycallit is in transmitting the actual content you want.

I don't know whether they tune or cache the performance for the automated testers, but that performance dial may not reflect your real-world performance; think of is as being a bit like a VW diesel test.

Though it is very subjective, you may also consider the providers' reputation and support - there is little more frustrating than calling for support and the provider playing the game of telling you the problem is yours not theirs.

I'm going to be ditching my Virgin BB in the next month or so, because it isn't very performant and has sporadic hangs of several seconds, plus in the past month I've had the "your problem not ours" response on one support call, only to call back within the hour and speak to someone else who checked the router and found faults, and said they'd send out an engineer.

Browntoa

Zellah said:

Browntoa said:

The new gfast product would have boosted your speeds but I believe commitment to that has stopped by BT .

No way on God's earth would the OP be getting G.fast being 5 miles from his cabinet.

Plans were to push out gfast to poles if needed to eliminate long lines , but as I said it is on pause as a project at the moment and may only now be used on hard to reach customers or blocks of flats . Openreach now regards fibre to the premises as their preferred delivery going forward . Gfast may only be used if it is the only technical solution in some situations

the_original_Andy

Thanks guys. At least I'm not being conned. The guy who had me upgrade, told me, there would be fibre coming straight to the house. After weeks of same old same old, I phoned the provider, who said, he shouldn't have said that, and that fibre goes to the box, and enters my house via the same copper wire that has always been there. Just a new receiver box inside. Another provider has offered me a better router, but cannot guarantee faster download speeds. Needless to say, I won't be taking up that offer. It looks like I will be spending my time waiting, like always

JJ_Egan

5 miles to local cabinet ??

How are you connecting  via Ethernet cable ??

Try a BT wholesale sped test then additional diagnostics .

https://speedtest.btwholesale.com/

Only low speed arriving then you need the best internal setup .