TalkTalk vs Openreach

Hi all

I've been attempting to move from Be to TalkTalk fibre but had conflicting stories.

TalkTalk have said my cabinet isn't enabled and that they wouldn't be able to provide fibre for me. They also said I have to be a TT Broadband customer for 3 months before I can be considered for the fibre 'boost' package.

On the openreach checker (and according to a BT engineer I jumped when I saw him working) FTTC is available to my house with an approx line length of 4800 feet / ~1.5km.

Just wondered if anyone had any experience with the conflicting stories and whether a manual order can be placed on TalkTalks end or whether that isn't the case with FTTC?

Also, does anyone have a predicted speed for a line of my length? The checker says 28Mbps, but from other posts I have seen the estimates can be conservative.

Thank you

Which checker(s) have you used?

My estimate from the BT Wholesale checker was and is 28.9/6.4Mbps. I get a 40000/10000kbps sync.

Does it have to be TalkTalk? There are many others. What do their checkers say?

On that checker I get the following:

"...downstream line speed of 27Mbps and upstream line speed of 5.8Mbps."

It doesn't have to be TalkTalk, my main draw to them was the price and the truly unlimited packages. I know BT Infinity 2 offers unlimited, but I've heard bad things about their traffic shaping?

If anyone has any more info the BT traffic shaping then I'd gladly look at them. I've been happy with BE for a long time so I've not really looked around - hence don't have a vast amount of knowledge with who's good and who's not.

At the moment, (although I didn't go with them), BT Infinity is probably the best bet for most, barring perhaps TT who have only just entered that market. I haven't seen any reports here of traffic shaping on BT except that P2P can be hit quite hard, and things can slow down in the evenings.

The other FTTC suppliers so far are listed on this page of my website, and there is a link on that to a spreadsheet by orly and yarwell summarising the features and base prices of them all.

I suggest, even if you don't go any further, you try entering your phone number on one of their sites and see if it looks as though you can order. If you can, then it would seem TT are just taking things slowly at the moment.

As for having to be a customer for even a short period, to be "considered", what??????

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 15-Aug-11 22:30:17)

P2P isn't really a direct issue, it's not something I really use. I do a lot of downloading from a variety of sources - I DJ in my spare time so I get a lot of mix sets as well. You say BT slows down in the evening, does it drop a tremendous amount?

As you say, BT and TT stand out with cost vs. package options. I am able to order on BT's website without any problems so I am going to assume its TT's end in terms of their website displaying May 2011 still.

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Sounds like TT are just a bit behind getting the latest updated data for your cab from BT Wholesale. I would expect that by the time you've connected with them, you'll have the fibre boost option available in your online account. I think you or the call centre agent miss-understood the 3 month consideration as your online account will show a fibre boost option the minute the BTW data says your line is good to go.

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Hi RobertoS,

You mentioned your forecast/actual speed:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

My estimate from the BT Wholesale checker was and is 28.9/6.4Mbps. I get a 40000/10000kbps sync.

I'm scheduled to go live at the end of September and the checker gives exactly the same numbers - 28.9/6.4 - for my line. I'm curious to know your line length, if you have it, to see how it compares; mine (from walking it out, measuring with Google earth and allowing for up/down poles) is ~1650 ft. Obviously other factors such as line quality and crosstalk are important, although I don't know the extent to which the checker can model these.

Thanks,
Dave

...Thank you, kind sir!

I paced it at 500-550 yards. The engineer's JDSU reported approx 0.6 metres. Attenuation 17.7dB, SNRM 7.3dB. So we are very similar, and mine could go slightly faster than it does, if uncapped.

Thanks! Now it's wait-and-see time.

Dave

>>P2P can be hit quite hard, and things can slow down in the evenings.

I have noticed that Infinity punters report that p2p is throttled but I have not noticed punters reporting 'things slowing down in the evenings'

Indeed I have noticed punters of high priced providers reporting slow downs and high pings on 'big news days' including posts to 'live bqm's' that clearly show altcos struggling. Whereas Infinity punters appear to have been unaffected.

Given that Infinity would appear to be outselling altcos in droves. Perhaps you could point out where Infinity is slowing down in the evenings as compared to much higher priced altcos?

Edited by RandomJointer (Tue 16-Aug-11 20:48:46)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I paced it at 500-550 yards. The engineer's JDSU reported approx 0.6 metres. Attenuation 17.7dB, SNRM 7.3dB. So we are very similar, and mine could go slightly faster than it does, if uncapped.

I measured mine to 550 metres, and the engineer reported 600-650 metres. Pretty much identical attenuation and SNRM figures.

My predicted speeds were around 31/6.1, and I'm getting approx 36/10 (although I got 40/10 at first, but with 4% packet loss). I'm pretty sure there's something fixable for that downstream speed, but nothings happened yet...

In reply to a post by RandomJointer:

Perhaps you could point out where Infinity is slowing down in the evenings as compared to much higher priced altcos?

Afaik Infinity doesn't slow down much in the evenings, as you say it only seems to affect those independent ISPs who are selling the BT product.

Odd, that.

Edited by billford (Wed 17-Aug-11 00:25:30)

I've never noticed any substantial slow down at any time. Obviously it can vary by a few megabits from time to time but there is no set period like "in the evenings".

The only thing I've found to be throttled in any fashion in Bit Torrent and even then it's not a blanket slowdown.

Mine is also about 600m.

From memory the JDSU had 27dB attenuation. Speed is about 23Mbit here.

TalkTalk are unlikely to resort to placing manual orders on Openreach's systems. Any company with ~4 million customer accounts / records to maintain and accurately bill is going to be fairly inflexible with regard to processing anything outside the "normal" provisioning flows from entry point (sales portals used by yourself or their staff if you call to order), to CRM, to supplier mediation platform to supplier.

Allowing staff to manually place orders directly on supplier systems as they see fit would at the very least be foolish. IME - It's those kind of ad-hoc processes that result in over-billing, inability to provide exit (MAC code production fails for example) and billing after leaving issues at some future date.

The entry protocol on ordering that may seem inflexible and possibly not quite up to date with supplier information perhaps at times from the outside, is actually a very sane approach when taken in an end to end customer lifecycle view.

With regulators quick to go for SP's jugular wrt MAC adherence and other customer exit protocols (rightly so!) it is only sensible for companies of this size to make sure their customer data is clean and "un-fudged" from the moment it is entered - rather than frigging through an order manually on some backend system with the very real risk that other upstream systems will never be brought up to date with pertinent data that they rely on.

Frustrating in some instances for sure, but it is an approach for the greater good overall.

I paced it at 500-550 yards. The engineer's JDSU reported approx 0.6 metres.

0.6Km surely ? Mine is 566m, and I can't be arsed to go get the JDSU from the van to get the stats . Deffo 40000Kbps down and 10000Kbps up though.

Hehe!

I won't claim it was a deliberate mistake ....

Indeed, 0.6km.

I felt quite proud that over 50 years on I can still walk that distance and get it right, having learned yard pacing when potato-picking as a kid, in the days where you had a "length" to pick.