Downgrading from FTTC to ADSL

Due to the expense of Fibre with plusnet, I have signed up with EE to move my line to them on monday. Am I correct in saying an engineer visit will be required to take me off the fibre connection in the cabinet?

Why on earth would u downgrade from FTTC to ADSL? As ADSL up to 8Mbps will be very struggle in many HD video.

I'll remind you that the term 'ADSL' is used ambiguously. It can mean the whole family of data transmission technology entirely (unlike VDSL) over copper telephone lines or it can just mean just one of that family, the original G.992.1. I expect the OP was using it in the former sense genetically but with an expectation of ADSL2+.

Is that cheaper than downgrading with Plusnet?

No engineer visit needed. The work is at the cabinet and exchange. It is unlikely Openreach will want the modem back.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Why on earth would u downgrade from FTTC to ADSL?

See:

In reply to a post by burty22:

Due to the expense of Fibre with plusnet

I know it's hard to believe but to many people an internet connection comes after other necessities.

that may be true but broadband is very cheap compared to other commodities, families often spend 4x as much on food a week as an example. Although if US speed isnt important and its a good adsl line syncing in the high teens its understandable, especially as adsl contracts can be had on a monthly basis.

Spending on food is something of a requirement to live and a slow broadband connection will still allow for the cost savings of online billing etc.

I'll go and say what no-one else is saying, Netflix, lovefilm etc all stream fine on a 5 Mbps capable connection

The cost equation is of course different if you are someone who works from home and poor broadband would mean having to commute.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Spending on food is something of a requirement to live and a slow broadband connection will still allow for the cost savings of online billing etc.

I'll go and say what no-one else is saying, Netflix, lovefilm etc all stream fine on a 5 Mbps capable connection

The cost equation is of course different if you are someone who works from home and poor broadband would mean having to commute.

And worth noting that even some of us on FTTC (68/18 in my case) average less than 100MB a day. I have a suspicion the majority of that is caused by miscreants trying to subvert my mail server.

240MB so far today and that is just one PC with me doing news and stuff

not all food is required tho, people buy cakes, trifles, booze etc.

and of course for some the internet is essential.

alot of it is about priorities, some people treat the internet as near worthless but still have it I guess because its fashionable to, for others its important.

The internet is also a big cost saver for very basic things as internet shopping, searching, amongst other things tends to be significantly cheaper than actually having to go out and physically go somewhere.

It's an interesting choice. I currently have reasonable 15mb/s adsl2+

I'll hopefully have access to FTTC soon, and when it comes will upgrade simply because I want it and can afford it.

I don't need it. I can currently watch HD video via Iplayer or netflix with no buffering, and there is pretty much no other application which needs more speed, except downloading stuff which I do rarely.

In some ways I'll be stupid to spend the extra 120/year.

I also made enquiries into downgrading From FTTC to ADSL due to cost a saving of £22 a month, this what I was told by Plusnet they could not take me on as an ADSL customer until BT Internet moved me off FTTC and onto ADSL but they also said that BT Internet may see this a new contract (moving from one service to another)
So I think I'll just stay on FTTC.

Try to negotiate a lower price, might commit you to a longer contract though. Check out the deals for new customers and use that as leverage

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Try to negotiate a lower price, might commit you to a longer contract though. Check out the deals for new customers and use that as leverage

Yeap have gone around the house's to find a cheaper deal on FTTC and getting at most £3 of a saving but some don't or do the evening and weekend free calls which is important for me when looking at BroadBand & Phone deals the only massive savings is by going back to ADSL (4Mbps) but it would feel like going back to 56K dialup days after using FTTC for so long , there has to be a better deal out there for me

In reply to a post by MrDiode:

I also made enquiries into downgrading From FTTC to ADSL due to cost a saving of £22 a month, this what I was told by Plusnet they could not take me on as an ADSL customer until BT Internet moved me off FTTC and onto ADSL ....

That doesn't sound right to me, so I've posted in the Plusnet Community forums asking about it.

BT will recontract you if you sneeze in the wrong direction, its that silly

.

That is a quote from a post in this topic: http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/unhappiness/t/42980...

Read that topic and you'll have some idea what you are up against.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by MrDiode:

I also made enquiries into downgrading From FTTC to ADSL due to cost a saving of £22 a month, this what I was told by Plusnet they could not take me on as an ADSL customer until BT Internet moved me off FTTC and onto ADSL ....

That doesn't sound right to me, so I've posted in the Plusnet Community forums asking about it.

I know it does not sound right, but it came from the horses mouth (plusnet) this is the way they said it, because you used BT Internet to upgrade your line from ADSL to FTTC then only way for us to take you on as a ADSL customer is if you ask your current provider (BT) to move my line onto ADSL and they told me don't say anything to BT about changing provider just get then to move you to ADSL then we can start the migration process.

Edited by deleted (Fri 24-Jan-14 22:22:07)

I assume that cane from Level 1 support. All I've done is query it over there, hoping that on Monday one of the excellent Digital Care Team will either confirm or correct it.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I assume that cane from Level 1 support. All I've done is query it over there, hoping that on Monday one of the excellent Digital Care Team will either confirm or correct it.

If you meen Plusnets sales dept because thats the only contact I have had with them via Phone, they did the home number check and could move to plusnet FTTC in a few days but as posted above the move to ADSL was not going to be so straight forward, and hence why I am still with BT rolling monthly contract.

also Exchange is a BT Wholesale only if that changes anything ?

Edited by deleted (Fri 24-Jan-14 22:54:43)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I assume that cane from Level 1 support. All I've done is query it over there, hoping that on Monday one of the excellent Digital Care Team will either confirm or correct it.

Other option would be a cease and reprovide with associated days disconnected and startup charges. I assume the MAC process doesn't allow regrading.

It allows all sorts of things. Which as you say, doesn't mean it allows this.

I migrated with a MAC from SMPF LLU with BT/O2 to FTTC with BT/IDNet.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 24-Jan-14 23:01:11)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

that may be true but broadband is very cheap compared to other commodities, families often spend 4x as much on food a week as an example. Although if US speed isnt important and its a good adsl line syncing in the high teens its understandable, especially as adsl contracts can be had on a monthly basis.

Not cheap if you need the money for energy, food, and other stuff to live, you can get by without broadband, people have done for years and some people stlll do. even if they do have broadband not everyone needs the high speed that FTTC can give.

i have chatted to a few people over the last few months and some of them have dropped FTTC and gone back to ADSL.

I cant get by without broadband. wrong.

Since broadband is so cheap cost savings from fttc to adsl whilst not 0 are trivial, the weekly saving is less than the cost supermarkets charge for 1 meal.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 25-Jan-14 09:25:57)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I cant get by without broadband. wrong.

Unless you use broadband for work, then you can get by without it. May not be so convenient, but you can get by

I could get by without it, i would go back to normal TV, maybe or just not bother at all. I would pay my bills by post office or paypoint. i can still pay energy bills using direct debit, bank is still in town, so I can go there to sort things out, use cash machine to keep check on balance.

I would have to read normal books, not ebooks. i would not buy anything online, so that would be a bit of a pain.

so yes, I could live without broadband,

Since broadband is so cheap cost savings from fttc to adsl whilst not 0 are trivial, the weekly saving is less than the cost supermarkets charge for 1 meal.

But it is not trivial really, Talk Talk it is a extra £10 a month, sky is a extra £10 a month. Bt is about £7 a month extra,. but then Bt is expensive to start with. It may not seem a lot, but that tenner could put food on the table for another week or may get you to pay off that loan you may have a bit quicker.

Anyway, this is not so much about coping with or without broadband, while I agree that it is not as easy to live without it these days, this is about paying extra for a bit faster speed. for most every day things you can get along with a couple of Megabits per second. I know two households that are still on dial up.

Am I correct in saying an engineer visit will be required to take me off the fibre connection in the cabinet?

No engineer visit needed. The work is at the cabinet and exchange.

Has your cocoa kicked in Bob ?

Did you notice the time of the post ?

More likely the woolly nightcap warming my brain up .

Looks like it is Openreach that have no downgrade migration path, although they have an upgrade one. The only suggestion was ceasing FTTC then completely, not downgrading, then start afresh with the line transfer and adding ADSLx.

That means no broadband for a couple of weeks, but you are able to do what you want without getting into huge cancellation charges.

Thinks - No!!!!! A high chance your line would be re-contracted for 12 months at BT. It just happened to someone, because the line took over a week to be moved. However, I'm assuming you want to keep the same phone number. If not, it gets easier.

Not good .

There may be another way, but still involving loss of broadband for a week or so. How much do you download/upload per month, roughly?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Looks like it is Openreach that have no downgrade migration path, although they have an upgrade one. The only suggestion was ceasing FTTC then completely, not downgrading, then start afresh with the line transfer and adding ADSLx.

That means no broadband for a couple of weeks, but you are able to do what you want without getting into huge cancellation charges.

Thinks - No!!!!! A high chance your line would be re-contracted for 12 months at BT. It just happened to someone, because the line took over a week to be moved. However, I'm assuming you want to keep the same phone number. If not, it gets easier.

Not good .

There may be another way, but still involving loss of broadband for a week or so. How much do you download/upload per month, roughly?

so once again we are back to the same naff system that people have and still suffers with full LLU, why can they do this right?

No doubt done to get more money of the public.

People thought I was crazy going to the system I have gone with,

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

There may be another way, but still involving loss of broadband for a week or so. How much do you download/upload per month, roughly?

Monthly download usage ranges from 4.5GB min to 28GB max with a 40GB monthly allowance from ISP, i would love to get into netfiix as theres so many films i have missed but the 40GB limit scuppered that idea and prefer HD to SD.

I guess the cost of FTTC is not that bad at £35 it's just when you get your bill for the month and it's above £60 yes the the remainder is due to phone call charges

New system should cover GEA-FTTC, but not GEA-FTTP just to confuse people.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6216-ofcom-confir...

Alas still a long way from live, and suspect since its taken 2 plus years, it is why nothing much was done for going back to ADSL, i.e. had expected new system sooner.

So me being able to watch HD videos while sat on the end of my 20CN line is a figment of my imagination?

I checked my traffic monitor on the asus firmware whilst netflix super hd 1080p was playing on the wii-u and it was needing around 10mbit throughput. So a good adsl2+ line should handle it but adsl1 I think would be downgraded in bitrate.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 27-Jan-14 21:10:22)

In reply to a post by jelv:

So me being able to watch HD videos while sat on the end of my 20CN line is a figment of my imagination?

Netflix can provide 1080p resolution with a data rate of around 4 to 5 Mbps, but with their "Super HD" which is significantly better quality (and requires an ISP with a local Netflix cache) you need 12 Mbps or more. Originally they claimed 7Mbps, but I've seen upto 12. Obviously anyone else in the house, or you want to check email, facebook etc, at the same time and you might want to have a connection at 15Mbps.

20CN has a highest data rate of 7.1 Mbps (BT profile limit) on a sync of 8128kbps. My office BT business line was synced at 8096 for about 4 years until we got upgraded to 21CN last year. (now syncs around 16Mbps).

http://ukirelandblog.netflix.com/2013/09/highest-qua...

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/09/headach...

https://support.netflix.com/en/node/8731

Edited by jchamier (Mon 27-Jan-14 22:49:33)

A reality check is sometimes needed...

Is Super HD and HD video that important if you are doing things like bill watching?

The label SuperHD is dead with netflix, they have said it will just be HD and will scale according to the bandwidth available.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The label SuperHD is dead with netflix, they have said it will just be HD and will scale according to the bandwidth available.

Where have they said that?

Somewhere last week when I was reading about the 4K Netflix roll-out

My previous idea doesn't look too good then. I'm stuck for now, unless you could get a cheap second line installation and get broadband on that, cancelling the BT ones once you had it up and going. That would mean a new phone number though - I asked about that before .

He said HD and you've confirmed that HD is fine on 20CN!

Swapping the original telephone number on to the new line as the last step would not be an issue. I've seen a case where this was done quite recently.

Actually those complaining that ADSL will not be good enough for 4k are missing the simple fact that the codecs that are getting 4K down from many Gbps to just 14 to 15 Mbps, will also have an impact on HD feeds.

So higher quality HD may well be feasible at speeds of 4 to 5 Mbps again.

We pay virtually nothing for phone calls on our landline, we simply don't use it. We both have mobiles, and use them, so much better value than using a land line. I pay £15 a month for my package, 2000 minutes a month with unlimited data with tethering. The previous package I was on recently dropped to £9 for 600 minutes and 1GB. There are some very cheap deals if you look, and even cheaper if you use cash back. Obviously depends if the numbers you call are included, and of course good reception is crucial, even then there are ways to improve your reception.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

A reality check is sometimes needed...

Is Super HD and HD video that important if you are doing things like bill watching?

The label SuperHD is dead with netflix, they have said it will just be HD and will scale according to the bandwidth available.

I wouldnt call it dead given the wii-u netflix app was only updated last week to support super hd, why introduce it now if its dead?

As to how important it is depends on how much you use netflix and how big the screen is you watch it on.

In terms of the now yes still live, so the word 'is' should really have said 'is on the way out'.

It will be

SD, HD and 4K content if memory is working, i.e. avoiding too many labels

so you saying they launched it last week on a platform and its on the way out. Why launch something on the way out?

Sorry Andrew, I have tried to find anything to back up what you saying but all I am seeing is netflix expanding super hd not phasing it out, that makes no sense.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 28-Jan-14 12:35:20)

Same here. As I'm usually out during the day Mon-Fri I only have an evening and weekend call package and if I need to make calls during the day or to mobiles I use VoIP. I put £20 on my VoIP account 18 months ago and there's still around £14 on it now.

We have mobiles to ! , one contract and the other pay as you go (my phone) now £10 can last me seven months the contract on the female phone gets abused, the house phone has free evening and weekends calls you think that should be enough, but those 0844 and so on are the killers to the wallet, is there such a thing as phone locks on DECT wireless handsets ? then I could rest easy and not go down the ADSL route.

Edited by deleted (Tue 28-Jan-14 19:21:24)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

A reality check is sometimes needed...

Is Super HD and HD video that important if you are doing things like bill watching?

The label SuperHD is dead with netflix, they have said it will just be HD and will scale according to the bandwidth available.

yep, if penny watching than Hd is not important, saying that even when I was on ADsl24 i could get low to medium HD and the quality was fine and that was with 3-4Mb/s

that was if you are not using the network for any thing else

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Actually those complaining that ADSL will not be good enough for 4k are missing the simple fact that the codecs that are getting 4K down from many Gbps to just 14 to 15 Mbps, will also have an impact on HD feeds.

So higher quality HD may well be feasible at speeds of 4 to 5 Mbps again.

Um, i have seen what the so called new compression and codecs haave done to freeview and it is nto pretty, they stuff more and more rubbish into the same space.

you can only go so far and it don't matter how good the codecs are, you will lose quality. As for 4K, still a few years off price wise for most people. TBH, Hd is fine for me.

In reply to a post by MrDiode:

I guess the cost of FTTC is not that bad at £35 it's just when you get your bill for the month and it's above £60 yes the the remainder is due to phone call charges

If you're with BT you could get their Anytime package. That only costs £7 extra.

No doubt other providers have similar packages.

Edit: Ah, I see you already have evenings and weekends. That does include 0845 and 0870 you know.

Edited by Andrue (Wed 29-Jan-14 14:47:28)