Speed to expect from 1.5km line?

Hi All,

I'm currently looking at a house and it's currently about 1.5km from the cabinet (difficult to tell exact distance so 1.5km should be max - probably more like 1.3km). The area is not enabled for FTTC just yet but the cabinet is installed and due to go live in December. Would BT be able to advise approx distance? I can't find any details of the exact cabinet the property is connected to just yet.

So any of you out there who have FTTC installed with a long line want to suggest what speed to expect, I'm hoping it will be 20mb+ with technology improvements in the near future that will hopefully increase this speed further.

I'm currently with VFast and this is still an option, but the property is listed and is surrounded by trees so getting a signal may be tricky!

Cheers
James

The address option of this checker should tell you the cabinet number for the property. The line above the estimates table. Don't use the pure postcode option.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 28-Nov-14 18:15:01)

At 1375m by road and get http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

I'm 1.5km from the FTTC cabinet and can only get less than 8Mbps. Apparently the BT checker estimates speeds to the Drop Pole and not your actual location. It also assumes you will be within 50mtrs of that pole.
In my case the drop pole is at 1km from the cab with my address 500mtrs further down the road.
The checker posted by RobertoS gives an estimate between 14 to 21Mbps for my phone number or 3.5Mbps if I input the actual address. If I input just my postcode only adsl is shown as available.

Edited by deleted (Fri 28-Nov-14 20:09:37)

Note I'm only trying to get his cabinet number established .

I'm 1.2 miles/ 1.7km from my cabinet and just got installed today. Engineer rang before installation to say he was confident I wouldn't get sync but I could try it if I wanted. Glad I said yes and neither of us could believe the results!!

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14172...

Edited by deleted (Fri 28-Nov-14 22:13:39)

Glad I said yes and neither of us could believe the results!!

Why have you linked to Mr Saffron's speedtest?

Good spot!

I'll add a reminder that it isn't just the length of the cable that matter, but also the thickness.

At standard 0.5mm copper, that 1500m could come out somewhere between 10 and 20Mbps - depending on levels of noise interference and other subscribers.

0.7mm copper will act like a line half that length, while 0.9mm copper will act like a line one third of the length.

The postcode checker seems to have entirely forgotten about FTTC nowadays.

The results that BT posted about their G.fast trials (fibre to the DP) gave some stats about the drop wire (oe lead-in) distance from the DP:

20% of lines have a drop wire shorter than 19m
20% of lines have a drop wire longer than 67m.

500m must be pretty abnormal.

Oops! Still excited by the results!


http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14172...

On top of that, i've checked the BT wholesale checker and the Talktalk website and all FTTC speed estimates have been removed. If I was ordering this today I couldn't get it as its not available at my address!

In reply to a post by jtthedevil:

Oops! Still excited by the results!


http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14172...

You might want to go back and edit/correct your original post.

In reply to a post by ron3003:

Apparently the BT checker estimates speeds to the Drop Pole and not your actual location.

I think you mean distribution point

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The postcode checker seems to have entirely forgotten about FTTC nowadays.

The results that BT posted about their G.fast trials (fibre to the DP) gave some stats about the drop wire (oe lead-in) distance from the DP:

20% of lines have a drop wire shorter than 19m
20% of lines have a drop wire longer than 67m.

500m must be pretty abnormal.

Here's Plusnets final response to my ticket;

Our Support Team have replied to your Question (reference number: 93037992) with the comment shown below.



Dear Mr ******,

Thanks for your time on the phone today. As per our conversation, unfortunately due to the length of the line from the DP (500m) you are not going to see the estimated speeds as these assume you are no more than 50m from the DP.

The testing I've done shows that the connection is now stable as we are no longer seeing the drops we were before the last engineer went out.

Everything is therefore now running as it should (albeit with slower speeds than originally expected).

As agreed I am closing the fault off, but do not hesitate to get back to us if further issues surface.

Thanks guys.

Went to see the property today, checked their current DSL speed, looks about 2.5mbit, more than I expected really considering distance from exchange (5km by road).

The bt checker says Cabinet 4, but the cabinet I thought it may be connected to is not the same one (Cabinet 1). Hmm. Anyway to find out where this cabinet may be? It may be closer than I think and just not marked as one to be fibre enabled just yet.

Cheers
James

Which exchange?

I'm at the end of 1500m of cable (from the cabinet) and I'm getting 16 - 17 Mbps.

I hope that helps.

John

Minster, Ramsgate

Well, we've had an offer accepted on the house!

Hopefully we can get a decent FTTC connection or signal for VFast. Just awaiting exchange to be enabled to get an estimate of speed on the BT checker.

An update as now in the house and connected to FTTC this morning, my estimated speeds from plusnet were 13mbit (normal DSL was around 3mbit so any gain is positive!), dslchecker suggested 20.1 - 13mbit on a clean line.

So it's nice to see I'm connected at just under 21mbit considering I'm around 1.5-1.7km from cabinet!! 11th person connected from our cabinet too. perhaps it helps as this cabinet is located in a not so populated part of the village?!