Switching to full fibre

I currently have ordinary FTTC and am close enough to the fibre cabinet to get rock solid sync at 80/20 with about 73Mb/s download and 18Mb/s upload speeds. In other words as good as it gets for FTTC. It's also good enough for all my needs.

FTTH is now available at my address and the prices for the 76Mb/s and 145Mb/s tiers are actually a little less than I'm paying for FTTC. So why aren't I jumping at this?

On the 76Mb/s tier the guaranteed download speed is only 40Mb/s. Does anyone know why this should be? It's not like copper which can cause significant speed loss with distance. I don't want to sign up for 76Mb/s FTTH and find my speeds have significantly dropped.

Edited by ppppenguin99 (Fri 18-Jul-25 17:34:27)

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

I currently have ordinary FTTC and am close enough to the fibre cabinet to get rock solid sync at 80/20 with about 73Mb/s download and 18Mb/s upload speeds. In other words as good as it gets for FTTC. It's also good enough for all my needs.

FTTH is now available at my address and the prices for the 76Mb/s and 145Mb/s tiers are actually a little less than I'm paying for FTTC. So why aren't I jumping at this?

On the 76Mb/s tier the guaranteed download speed is only 40Mb/s. Does anyone know why this should be? It's not like copper which can cause significant speed loss with distance. I don't want to sign up for 76Mb/s FTTH and find my speeds have significantly dropped.

FTTP is a contended service with upto 30 properties and the overall bandwidth is 2.4Gbps down and 1.2Gbps up so if you do the maths not everyone can always be guaranteed their max speed. I am not one to regular check my speed but when I do I almost always get what I pay for.

Edited by PCJM40 (Fri 18-Jul-25 17:48:32)

Thanks. I wondered if that might be the case. So it could work at full speed on day 1, then drop as neighbours also get FTTH. Unless a few neighbours are diehard downloaders who max out their connections there will be a statistical multiplexing effect.

This is reminiscent of contention in the old days of ADSL.Is there any meaningful contention on FTTC?

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

Thanks. I wondered if that might be the case. So it could work at full speed on day 1, then drop as neighbours also get FTTH. Unless a few neighbours are diehard downloaders who max out their connections there will be a statistical multiplexing effect.

This is reminiscent of contention in the old days of ADSL.Is there any meaningful contention on FTTC?

Yes the FTTC cabinet has a number of fibres going to it (I honestly don't know how many) and the bandwidth of those fibres is spread across the properties connected to the copper line cards.

FTTP is far better than FTTC even if you are living on top of the cabinet

If several neighbours sign up for the top tier of 900Mb/s that might impact the parsimonious few who only have 76Mb/s.

My other potential problem is that I'd like the ONT about 8 metre from the external fibre termination, where my master socket is fitted in what I laughingly call my network closet. The cable from outdoors to the master socket runs through a hole in the wall to the space under the floorboards. I think it would depend very much on getting a friendly Openreach guy who's willing to use the old cable as a draw tape for the new fibre cable.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

If several neighbours sign up for the top tier of 900Mb/s that might impact the parsimonious few who only have 76Mb/s.

Its all ifs buts and maybes, we can all over think it but honestly its a no brainer of a switch.

Just for reference 900Mbps is no longer the top tier available on the Openreach network.

Regarding getting the cable through, you can either try to arrange for the fibre to be run all the way to the closet or just get the ONT put on an outside wall and run a ethernet cable the remaining distance.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

If several neighbours sign up for the top tier of 900Mb/s that might impact the parsimonious few who only have 76Mb/s.

My other potential problem is that I'd like the ONT about 8 metre from the external fibre termination, where my master socket is fitted in what I laughingly call my network closet. The cable from outdoors to the master socket runs through a hole in the wall to the space under the floorboards. I think it would depend very much on getting a friendly Openreach guy who's willing to use the old cable as a draw tape for the new fibre cable.

Even if some near neighbours on the same PON take a 900 Mb or even a 1.6Gb service , and every one of the 30 splitter outputs , it’s extremely unlikely that every user is maxing out their service simultaneously, plus OR employ DBA , dynamic bandwidth allocation so even in peak usage, it isn’t the case everyone is given the same low ‘speed’ the higher bandwidth’s although suffering a percentage reduction have more headroom anyway , so if DBA applies a 10% reduction to alleviate congestion (not very likely) 900 goes to 810 , 80 goes to 72 etc …what’s more , I suspect your minimum speed guarantee may be incorrect anyway and is for FTTC or even your own current FTTC circumstances ,
As an example , the FF100 (full fibre ) , with BT/EE is actually a 150Mb service and the guaranteed minimum is 100Mb ….anyone on F2 (80Mb on FTTC ) can normally get FF100 when upgrading to FTTP for no increase in cost although potentially with a new minimum term , that’s seems to me the obvious upgrade path for those that don’t need any more ‘speed’ than what they get from FTTC .
I would take any minimum speed guarantee with a huge pinch of salt , you are not artificially restricted to the MSG , it’s nothing more that a sop to the regulator and advertising authority

The rest of your requirements, using the existing copper cable to draw in an optical one can’t really be predicted, it depends on who turn up on the day , some will be OK with that , others will refuse

Edited by Iniltous (Sat 19-Jul-25 08:58:26)

You could try https://community.plus.net/

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

using the existing copper cable to draw in an optical one can’t really be predicted, it depends on who turn up on the day , some will be OK with that , others will refuse

May be if the OP wants to put in the legwork they can do what is often suggested on this forum, install conduit point to point with a draw string so it becomes a no brainer for the installer. If it isn't straight forward then its not likely to be accepted as a workable solution.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

If several neighbours sign up for the top tier of 900Mb/s that might impact the parsimonious few who only have 76Mb/s.

My other potential problem is that I'd like the ONT about 8 metre from the external fibre termination, where my master socket is fitted in what I laughingly call my network closet. The cable from outdoors to the master socket runs through a hole in the wall to the space under the floorboards. I think it would depend very much on getting a friendly Openreach guy who's willing to use the old cable as a draw tape for the new fibre cable.

Even if some near neighbours on the same PON take a 900 Mb or even a 1.6Gb service , and every one of the 30 splitter outputs , it’s extremely unlikely that every user is maxing out their service simultaneously, plus OR employ DBA , dynamic bandwidth allocation so even in peak usage, it isn’t the case everyone is given the same low ‘speed’ the higher bandwidth’s although suffering a percentage reduction have more headroom anyway , so if DBA applies a 10% reduction to alleviate congestion (not very likely) 900 goes to 810 , 80 goes to 72 etc …what’s more , I suspect your minimum speed guarantee may be incorrect anyway and is for FTTC or even your own current FTTC circumstances ,
As an example , the FF100 (full fibre ) , with BT/EE is actually a 150Mb service and the guaranteed minimum is 100Mb ….anyone on F2 (80Mb on FTTC ) can normally get FF100 when upgrading to FTTP for no increase in cost although potentially with a new minimum term , that’s seems to me the obvious upgrade path for those that don’t need any more ‘speed’ than what they get from FTTC .

DBA doesn't work that way and is upstream only, Sir. Downstream the shaper satisfies minimums then distributes the rest based on a QoS algorithm, involving how full buffers are, if smaller packets may fill gaps, etc.

The minimum downstream speed is a CIR configured on the downstream shaper, the maximum the subscriber has available, their actual tier, is the PIR. A customer with tons of traffic hitting the OLT in many flows will get higher speeds than someone running a single flow as packet loss will impact the single flow more heavily than the multiple flow customer. Openreach call the speeds prioritised and peak in at least some of their documents.

Bittorrent and Usenet with many connections are both PITAs for degrading speeds on PON due to the many flows thing.

However very unlikely to be an issue to OP, higher speeds come with lower guarantees relative to the tier for obvious reasons. ISPs can and do advertise higher guarantees as those are likely to be reached all the time but the network operator itself can't.

The people on 76 Mb might see an impact from heavy use on the PON but it'll be far less heavy an impact than the one people on a gigabit would see and they'd be less likely to notice even if the PON were heavily utilised. If so scared of contention better to pay for a DIA regardless. Can be assured you're getting 'what you pay for'.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

Thanks. I wondered if that might be the case. So it could work at full speed on day 1, then drop as neighbours also get FTTH. Unless a few neighbours are diehard downloaders who max out their connections there will be a statistical multiplexing effect.

This is reminiscent of contention in the old days of ADSL.Is there any meaningful contention on FTTC?

Yes the FTTC cabinet has a number of fibres going to it (I honestly don't know how many) and the bandwidth of those fibres is spread across the properties connected to the copper line cards.

FTTP is far better than FTTC even if you are living on top of the cabinet

FTTC cabinets start with a single gigabit symmetrical link to the OLT. This gets upgraded with another link if load gets too high but some congestion is absolutely tolerated. Openreach routinely run reports on it.

So, yes, FTTC absolutely has meaningful contention from cabinet to exchange, especially if the cabinet is busy. Could happily have 15 Gbit of FTTC connections being backhauled by one gigabit fibre and it'd probably be fine.

Either way worrying about contention whether on FTTC or FTTP isn't really worth it. Very few instances of it on either platform even with the sale of 1.8 Gbit download products.

There are a lot of TLAs in that last reply! I worked out that PON is passive optical network. I had to google some others. CIR = Committed Information Rate. DIA = Dedicated Internet Access. DBA = Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation. OLT = Optical line termination.

Put in practical terms, if (for example) I'm downloading a 4GB Linux distro, that might get throtlled but I'm likely to be OK if I want to watch a 4K stream which only needs about 25Mb/s.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

Put in practical terms, if (for example) I'm downloading a 4GB Linux distro, that might get throtlled

And even that's very unlikely. Your 4GB download at 1Gbps would only take ~40 seconds, so the chances of two other people doing that at exactly the same time are low.

Maybe if several of your neighbours are hardcore gamers, who have all decided to download the same update for the same game at the instant it is released. Even then, you're unlikely to hit those few minutes.

Demographics are your friend. In principle, up to 30 houses could be on the same PON. But even if *everyone* in your area has upgraded to Openreach FTTP, most of them will be normal people with normal lives, not broadband addicts.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

Put in practical terms, if (for example) I'm downloading a 4GB Linux distro, that might get throtlled

And even that's very unlikely. Your 4GB download at 1Gbps would only take ~40 seconds, so the chances of two other people doing that at exactly the same time are low.

If you download said linux distro, sometimes its 40s others 41s or 45s ......... you won't ever know if its server load, other contention or OR contention.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

On the 76Mb/s tier the guaranteed download speed is only 40Mb/s. Does anyone know why this should be? It's not like copper which can cause significant speed loss with distance. I don't want to sign up for 76Mb/s FTTH and find my speeds have significantly dropped.

This seems a very low 'guaranteed download speed', we are FF150 from TT and the 'guaranteed download speed' is 120, i.e. 80%, I would have expected yours to be a similar %, so say 60, but as others have said, we get what we pay for, in fact most times slightly higher, the only time I've noticed that to be impacted is with a free VPN on.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

There are a lot of TLAs in that last reply! I worked out that PON is passive optical network. I had to google some others. CIR = Committed Information Rate. DIA = Dedicated Internet Access. DBA = Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation. OLT = Optical line termination.

Put in practical terms, if (for example) I'm downloading a 4GB Linux distro, that might get throtlled but I'm likely to be OK if I want to watch a 4K stream which only needs about 25Mb/s.

You won't get throttled. No-one cares what you're doing. If there's not enough capacity available you're more likely to notice on the download but the systems only try and ensure everyone can get their CIR. After that it's fight amongst yourselves.

I have now ordered 76Mb/s FTTH. OR visit scheduled for 6 August.

Thank you for all your help.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

I have now ordered 76Mb/s FTTH. OR visit scheduled for 6 August.

Thank you for all your help.

Please keep us updated on how things go with the install.

I've just done the work to make it easy to pull in the fibre to where I want the ONT. It's in the underfloor void rather than in conduit but it's still an easy pull.

I ordered the PN hub 2 router (just pay for p&p) because I don't want any arguments about it not working. I hope to continue using my TP-Link modem router (Archer 400) simply by connecting one of its ethernet ports to the port on the ONT.

I'll let you know how it goes.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

If several neighbours sign up for the top tier of 900Mb/s that might impact the parsimonious few who only have 76Mb/s.

I'm also rather parsimonious: I've had Openreach FTTP for more than 2 years and there has been no impact on speeds...principle benefit has been stability

Good luck.

Surprise visit today from Openreach. Really nice, helpful, guy over from Belfast for a couple of weeks to help out us poor folks in London. He's putting in the fibre cable from the nearest TPON splitter to the front wall of my house. To his amazement the cable rod went straight through the ancient 1" duct that runs under my front garden. He says they are usually blocked.

I showed him where I wanted the ONT and he said that was no problem.

I can only hope that the OR guys who turn up for the main appointment are as decent and helpful.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

He's putting in the fibre cable from the nearest TPON splitter to the front wall of my house.

The connectorised cable to the front wall of your house will have come from a Connectorised Block Terminal (CBT) not directly from the splitter.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

I showed him where I wanted the ONT and he said that was no problem.

Hopefully this will put your mind at rest.

It wi possibly be an MJ Quinn operative doing your install they are doing a lot of installs for openreach now.

Round here it's Kelly Communications. I've not seen Quinn vans in my area.

The guy who did the survey and put in the fibre cable and CSP was genuine Openreach.

I ordered the PN hub 2 router (just pay for p&p) because I don't want any arguments about it not working.

Just to say, I ‘ ve heard tell of some PN circuits not working from the get go, the issue being PN having to do ‘something’ at their end …. moving the existing account from gateway to another , or similar.

This is beyond the remit of the installer, as long as it is all built on BTw correctly.

Just saying …. Hope yours goes smoothly

The OR guy said there was light in my fibre. That's no guarantee that it will be OK at the PN end.

Opebreach are making lots of their staff redundant and getting contractors in so your more likely to get a contractor.

In my recent upgrade to Plusnet full fibre the connection worked when installed but the speeds were low, there was some problem with BT Wholesale systems not completing the order. It was another week before this was sorted and I got the expected 300Mbps.

However this was nothing compared to the appalling delay due to Openreach failing to clear a blocked duct in the pavement. Order placed on the 26th March this year, two permission to dig dates went by with no one turning up. The updates from the OR escalation contact were obviously not true so I emailed the OR CEO and the high level complaints team got involved and sorted it. Eventually installed on the 4th of July, a reasonable amount of automatic compensation heading my way.

Kelly communications guy came today. Unlike the clued-up Openreach man who came on the first visit he knew just about enough to do the job. Although he was in a Kelly (working for OR) van he said he was self employed.

I had to do a little gentle persuasion to fit the ONT where I wanted it. He said he wasn't allowed to drill into wood! So I fitted the ONT to the wooden wall in my "network closet". After he realised that I was helping him and keeping down his time on site he was happy.

My job needed a 10m length of fibre from the ONT to the CSP. It came pre-terminated at the ONT end. He had to terminate it at the CSP end. He said he also had 20m and even 50m fibre cables on the van though he'd never actually used a 50m.

I've set up the PN Hub 2 router to the same SSID, wifi password and access password as my old router to make life easier. If the wifi works as well as my own TPlink Archer VR400 router it can stay. Otherwise I'll reconfigure the TPlink to act as a pure router. I would hope it can do the basic NAT and DHCP functions in that mode.

TBB speedtest gives 74.8Mb/s down and 18.4 up. Almost exactly what my old VDSL was giving. I don't think there's any equivalent of sync speed which used to be 80/20 rock solid with VDSL.

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

TBB speedtest gives 74.8Mb/s down and 18.4 up. Almost exactly what my old VDSL was giving. I don't think there's any equivalent of sync speed which used to be 80/20 rock solid with VDSL.

Seems a bit slow for a 80/20, just done a quick couple of speed test on our 150/30 and it comes back as 149/31 and 150/31, the only time I've noticed any drops are when testing VPN's.

I signed up for 76Mb/s full fibre and I'm getting very close to that. No complaints. The up speed seems less well specified but I'm happy with just shy of 20Mb/s.

80/20 VDSL was often sold as 76Mb/s as that's about what you'd get under best possible conditions.

That's fine then, my bad never noticed anyone offering 76 downloads.

In reply to a post by burble:

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

TBB speedtest gives 74.8Mb/s down and 18.4 up. Almost exactly what my old VDSL was giving. I don't think there's any equivalent of sync speed which used to be 80/20 rock solid with VDSL.

Seems a bit slow for a 80/20, just done a quick couple of speed test on our 150/30 and it comes back as 149/31 and 150/31, the only time I've noticed any drops are when testing VPN's.

Your 150 service is actually capped at 160 down by Openreach so probably explains why you're getting the full 150 even after overheads.

My Sogfast 160/30 get 150/29 (which it correctly for overhead)

In reply to a post by adslmax:

My Sogfast 160/30 get 150/29 (which it correctly for overhead)

Indeed.