Enough backhaul? (80/20)

Will the BT network even be able to cope with loads of people on the new speeds (80/20)? I'm a bit concerned myself, I think they may end up introducing some kind of management to cope with this. When I read it was a free upgrade (yeah, yeah, contract renewal) I wasn't very pleased because of the impact it could have on the network.

Also, it's not looking good for the smaller providers, but a lot of there customers are business users who are already paying a premium for the CS so I suppose they'll probably be willing to pay even more.

How many people currently max out their 40Mbps connection continuously? Very, very few.

Will getting an 80Mbps connection change a users habits? Probably not, or if it does, by just a little. Films will down load faster - but no extra data ... so the big downloads for most families will just happen in 60 seconds instead of 100 seconds!

There might be a little extra congestion at some of the really peak times but in general, I feel it will not have an impact in the near future.

The quicker you can get something the better.. Chances of everyone downloading a film for example at the same time gets slimmer.


So we shall see very soon.

80/20 is looking pretty pointless. Unless the results of throughput fall below 12Mbps BTw won't accept speed complaints!

In reply to a post by jelv:

80/20 is looking pretty pointless. Unless the results of throughput fall below 12Mbps BTw won't accept speed complaints!

That doesn't necessarily mean that the ISP won't strive to fix a problem, but I agree that this 12Mbps figure for the acceptance of formal BTw fault reports needs changing to something realistic.

In reply to a post by CommandQ:

Will the BT network even be able to cope with loads of people on the new speeds (80/20)? I'm a bit concerned myself, I think they may end up introducing some kind of management to cope with this. When I read it was a free upgrade (yeah, yeah, contract renewal) I wasn't very pleased because of the impact it could have on the network.

Also, it's not looking good for the smaller providers, but a lot of there customers are business users who are already paying a premium for the CS so I suppose they'll probably be willing to pay even more.

its sort of like adsl2+ it seems a big chunk of people wont get the top sync speed so it wont be everyone on the higher speeds.

I agree with the thumbs down on the free upgrade, and I hope BT themselves realise 'some' extra capacity will be required and I hope they have already planned and got the capacity in place needed. So far tho BT seem to have learned from past mistakes and infinity has ran well according to customer reports.

Is it 12 for 40/10 and 40/2 as well?

If so that's plain stupid. Why should ISPs (and their users if the ISP charges more) for something which is going to go at the same speed at the time they want to use it?

And what was the figure for the up to 24 Meg ADSL2+ products?

The up to 80 is really the burst speed, rather than the committed rate per user. In most cases it will be the providers backhaul that is the limiting factor, rather than the multiple fibres from the cabinet to the exchange.

If it is the same on all of them, the difference is that when contention is not bad (majority of the time) they will see better.

Now for people who lose sleep if their hourly speedtest is not with 20% of maximum speed it may be an issue.

There are two download speeds. If you are paying extra for 80/20 and your sync is near 80 I don't think it's unreasonable to expect it to be faster that 40/10 - i.e. at least 40.

If you read the Openreach announcementof the 80/20 product you will see that the prioritisation has been increased from 15 to 30Mb/s. So the in extremis the customers on the 80 product should get more of the cake.

There is mention of a change to the fault thresholds as well, but the link requires a log in. Andrew can you find out if the 12Mb/s level has been increased?

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/updates/briefin...

What if I need to raise a fault on an 80/20 line?

We are changing the test thresholds within our GEA service test that we use to accept faults. From 19th March 2012 there will be no need to wait until your line speed has dropped below a specific fault threshold rate. Openreach provides a full fault diagnostic process that picks up the major causes of speed issues. Any found on an end user�s line will be picked up by our test systems and we�ll accept a fault for investigation. For further details see Section 3.9 of the GEA over FTTC product description.

Point ISP at that link if using the 12 Meg figure

Thanks Andrew I had seen that it was section 3.9 of the product spec that I wondered if you could access?

Not an Openreach customer

The OR article makes for interesting reading, however faults are raised to BT Wholesale who haven't acknowledged OR's stance nor updated their systems and processes to reflect that statement.

We've raised this with BTW management and we'll see what comes of it

M

In reply to a post by jelv:

Is it 12 for 40/10 and 40/2 as well?

If so that's plain stupid. Why should ISPs (and their users if the ISP charges more) for something which is going to go at the same speed at the time they want to use it?

I'm not sure what point you are making. Clearly, for someone whose line is capable, 80/20 will run faster than 40/2 or 40/10 (unless there is some fault that has not yet been identified, which seems to be the case for some on the Plusnet 80/20 trial - note trial, not a product for which a premium price is being charged). In my case I was getting maximum speed (effectively 38/1.6) on 40/20 and about 60/15 on the 80/20 trial, which is reasonable given my distance from the cabinet (though slightly disappointing). The fact that BT Wholesale sets a threshold above which it will not accept a formal fault report has nothing to do with the ISPs, although I would hope that the ISPs might be applying some pressure to get this threshold raised.

Edit: Just read Andrew's post with the link to the Openreach document and Mark Kelly's response, which sounds like good news.

Edited by kasg (Thu 12-Apr-12 18:31:34)

In reply to a post by jelv:

There are two download speeds. If you are paying extra for 80/20 and your sync is near 80 I don't think it's unreasonable to expect it to be faster that 40/10 - i.e. at least 40.

Neither do I and neither, as far as I can tell, do the ISPs that offer it.

There in lies the problem, BT Wholesale may have its own CBR/Fault levels that differ to Openreach.

These may become a differentiator between the LLU and BTW solutions. Now if a wholesale LLU provider were to offer a service, that might rock the boat some. Has Opal announced a fibre wholesale product yet?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Has Opal announced a fibre wholesale product yet?

Nope and we check every few weeks. Our Account manager says plans are at a very early stage (VERY EARLY), but generally there very concerned that the wholesale channels are being squeezed to a point where they won't be able to offer a model via LLU wholesale options, certainly within the current framework pricing.

I briefly also spoke to him ref 80/20 launch and BT Retail's position about free upgrades...the general view was it could be the final nail in a early wholesale model.

It will be disappointing if that is the case.

Has Opal announced a fibre wholesale product yet?

Not to my knowledge. I keep my ear pretty close to the ground for news of TTB's Partner /Wholesale service and havent yet heard FTTC mentioned. Can only be a matter of time.

M

Suppose you were on 40/10 and at peak times the speed dropped to 20Mbps. If you decided to pay more to upgrade to 80/20 to get getter speeds and found that at peak times (just when you wanted to use it) the speed still dropped to 20Mbps would you be happy?

That's the point I'm making.

I'm just hoping that like the upgrade from Max to Max Premium gave higher priority on the BT network and often helped on contended exchanges, upgrading to 80/20 gives better speeds during peak time as well as off-peak. Is that unreasonable?

See another post in this thread, you get better priority over the Openreach network

Now what your ISP does is another matter, but then the same applied with Max versus Max Premium before