Changing from Virgin to FTTC

Hi

I have been very happy with my Virgin Media broadband for many years, great speed, reliable, no real problems. I now need broadband that will be good for video conferencing on a platform used by the company that I work for, they supply the software and I install it on my PC. I've tested this software out on my Virgin connection (SH2, not the SH3) and it is more or less OK except at times the connection drops, it cuts off randomly and I don't know why. I have been using a BQM here Virgin SH2 BQM and it looks pretty normal for Virgin with a SH2.

My question is, I want this to be as good as can be and I suspect that Virgin cable broadband may not the be the best choice for this. I'm thinking that switching to FTTC would be the better choice. It's the quality of the connection that I need, not speed. I've checked out my options and FTTC is in my area and I'm about half a kilometer from the FTTC cabinet.

Would I be better switching to FTTC ?


Many thanks

Edited by MrFinbar (Sun 15-Apr-18 14:14:04)

I'm confused as to whether you mean ADSL2+ or FTTC, as I assume you mean the FTTC cabinet which has nothing whatsoever to do with ADSL2+.

What does this checker give for your home? If your phone line is with VM it won't be recognised so you will need to use the Address Option. Do not use the Postcode option!

Please either post a screen image of the result somewhere and link to it, (best, but scrub out the address while keeping the exchange and cabinet info), or copy and paste the cabinet and exchange info above the table plus the VDSL2 and ADSL2+ lines. That's messy for everyone.

Sorry about that, I've corrected my references to ADSL in my original post, I did indeed mean FTTC.

Checker results

Exchange MOTHERWELL is served by Cabinet 35

Cheers

Edited by MrFinbar (Sun 15-Apr-18 14:45:45)

Those are decent figures for the FTTC/VDSL2. As long as you make sure you optimise the wiring at your end.

It shows the line takes a decent route to you from the cabinet. Sometimes the cable route is much longer than the obvious route.

Thanks for the feedback RobertoS

So would FTTC be a better choice for video conferencing than Virgin cable?

Thanks

I've never used video conferencing or VM broadband sorry so can't help with that, except the most important factor in my opinion would be the choice of provider.

You need one that has sufficient throughput capacity for all its users at the time of day you expect to be doing this. Unlike VM, where only they provide service on their cable, on FTTC there are well over a hundred providers renting throughput capacity off Openreach and most of them doing it via BT Wholesale.

They budget at an average of so many Mbps per customer and an estimate of the maximum number likely to be using that much at any given time. Some will cater to provide full throughput, many will save money by providing say 90% of the maximum "full speed" requirement, letting everyone slow down.

However, it doesn't work like that in practice, as you can see from motorway traffic grinding to a halt even when there is no obstruction. More traffic trying to get through a bottleneck, with surges and slows, very quickly causes a huge queue. Queuing theory is quite a complex subject.