FTTC enabled but line too long....

My cabinet got enabled last month (yay!) but I can't order FTTC as my line turns out to be too long to the cabinet and BT don't think it will make 5Mb/s (I has a sad..)

Is there anything that can be done?

I live in a small village in Cornwall (Callestick - TR4 9LN) which is 2km as the crow flies from the cabinet (P13 - Perranporth Exchange). Unfortunately, the actual cable distance to the cabinet is 5km apparently so most people in the village can't order FTTC due to the predicted speed being less than 5Mb/s. Interestingly one house in the middle of the village can order with a predicted speed of 6.5Mb/s. I've no idea why they are special.

Current speeds for people in the village are 2 to 4Mb/s so it is likely that most people will get above 5Mb/s if allowed to order as at least 2.5km (cabinet - exchange) will be removed from the line length.

Is there anyway of either being allowed to order even with our horrible line length? I'm guessing getting BT to reroute the cable more sensibly is unlikely to ever happen. The ideal solution would be a new cabinet in the village but I guess that too is dreamland.

Given we have seen perhaps one person with a 3km long line getting just 1 to 2 Meg if I recall the chances of you getting anything useful is unlikely.

Alas the frequency plans for VDSL in the UK mean it can perform worse than ADSL, which due to its lower frequencies has a better range.

At this point the best bet is to get the person who can get 6.5 Mbps to order and see what they get in reality.

Has the fast house only just had the phone line installed. As in during the last 3 days?

No, it has been installed for a long time.

Odd then.

And damned annoying for you and the rest!

That isn't good news.

I didn't realise VDSL didn't use the lower frequencies. I thought it just used additional higher ones. Oh well.

Any other magic ideas on what we can do? On demand FTTP is going to be too expensive individually being that it is 2km to the cabinet but there is the potential of fibre being brought into the village then shared. Is this something likely to be offered?

We will see what happens with the house that can order. They have a bit of dosh so I doubt that cost is an issue for them.

Not as bad as being 2km from the cabinet but having a 5km line. That was rather depressing to find out as I knew then we weren't ever going to get fantastic speeds.

As FTTC has been enabled it also means we are unlikely to get FTTP now either. Lets hope some of the other options for fast broadband get tried out on our village. We can but hope.

its more that the power cutback on vdsl (to protect adsl) makes vdsl worse on longer lines.

If a vdsl line can only use the adsl frequencies then it will be crippled as it has limited power on those frequencies, so then adsl works better, but of course adsl may be on a longer distance due to been from the exchange instead of the cabinet.

It seems when a cabinet is close to the exchange the power cutback isnt that severe and on frequencies above the adsl1 range, but when its far from the exchange (like mine) the power cutback almost completely wipes out the low frequencies. When I compare bitloading graphs posted from unlocked hg users (most who seem to be on cabinets close to exchanges) my estimate is about 8mbit/sec of attainable sync difference depending on which power masking you on.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 06-Feb-13 00:00:21)

On demand FTTP is going to be too expensive individually being that it is 2km to the cabinet but there is the potential of fibre being brought into the village then shared. Is this something likely to be offered?

It won't be offered, but what about a few houses very nearby clubbing together to get one home enabled, and then share it out ? 330000Kbps could be shared around a fair bit ?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

It won't be offered, but what about a few houses very nearby clubbing together to get one home enabled, and then share it out ? 330000Kbps could be shared around a fair bit ?

If you an find an SP actually offering that outside of trials.