FTTPoD - Has anyone explored?

Hey guys,

As previously mentioned, it doesn't look like I'm part of the rollout, but I can't just accept these speeds.

I'm a web designer running a business from home, so it's quite important to get upgraded (even simple things like uploading to Dropbox, FTP'ing is taking stupid amounts of time, not to mention Xcode updates!).

Do BT do FTTPoD? What's the cost likely to be? Could I look at any sort of local grant/scheme to help me?

Any advice on what to do would be super appreciated.

FTTPoD seems to have been (permanently) "suspended" by Openreach as the installation costs and difficulty turned out to be ridiculously high. (Thousands charged to the customer to install in most cases).

G.Fast, FTTN and vectoring seem to be the current lines of trialling. AIUI a spin-off may be a cheaper way to do FTTPoD via the remote nodes of FTTN.

What are your actual connection speeds, and have you looked into line bonding and services such as Ethernet over FTTC? (Cheaper than full Ethernet links). Line bonding and load balancing also available from them.

It's actually still available from Openreach, it's BT Wholesale who have decided to stop taking orders for it, but I suspect for the same reasons you've mentioned. Openreach still publish the pricing for installations on their website.

I suspect with the "new" connectorisation method that Openreach are trialling will become available as FTTPoD2 in the not too distant future and hopefully cheaper, but I imagine it'll be primarilly aimed at business customers as opposed to residential.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

FTTPoD seems to have been (permanently) "suspended" by Openreach as the installation costs and difficulty turned out to be ridiculously high. (Thousands charged to the customer to install in most cases).

Oh damn!

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

G.Fast, FTTN and vectoring seem to be the current lines of trialling. AIUI a spin-off may be a cheaper way to do FTTPoD via the remote nodes of FTTN.

Forgive me for my lack of knowledge, not sure exactly what you mean here,

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What are your actual connection speeds, and have you looked into line bonding and services such as Ethernet over FTTC? (Cheaper than full Ethernet links). Line bonding and load balancing also available from them.

I'm getting 6mbps on a good day, as low as 2mbps during peak times. They quoted £100 per month for bonding 2 lines, which seems ridiculously expensive, for not a lot of gain, and not the real answer going forward. I've just switched to business internet to improve my contention ratio...

In reply to a post by ryannn:

Hey guys,

As previously mentioned, it doesn't look like I'm part of the rollout, but I can't just accept these speeds.

I'm a web designer running a business from home, so it's quite important to get upgraded (even simple things like uploading to Dropbox, FTP'ing is taking stupid amounts of time, not to mention Xcode updates!).

Do BT do FTTPoD? What's the cost likely to be? Could I look at any sort of local grant/scheme to help me?

Any advice on what to do would be super appreciated.

How much is your business generating? Enough to warrant a leased line at around £5-600 per month and a 3 year contract?

In reply to a post by lee111s:

In reply to a post by ryannn:

Hey guys,

As previously mentioned, it doesn't look like I'm part of the rollout, but I can't just accept these speeds.

I'm a web designer running a business from home, so it's quite important to get upgraded (even simple things like uploading to Dropbox, FTP'ing is taking stupid amounts of time, not to mention Xcode updates!).

Do BT do FTTPoD? What's the cost likely to be? Could I look at any sort of local grant/scheme to help me?

Any advice on what to do would be super appreciated.

How much is your business generating? Enough to warrant a leased line at around £5-600 per month and a 3 year contract?

Not enough to warrant that much PCM, I just feel genuinely limited by the speeds I get sometimes, and it is costing me money in time wasted, just so frustrating.

Bonding of two or three lines may be affordable.

Also you just gave throughput speeds, not connection speeds. For throughput to vary as much as you say, you are either connecting wirelessly to your router; or need to change your ISP; or your exchange is in a mess either generally or in respect of your ISP. Which ISP are you with?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Bonding of two or three lines may be affordable.

Also you just gave throughput speeds, not connection speeds. For throughput to vary as much as you say, you are either connecting wirelessly to your router; or need to change your ISP; or your exchange is in a mess either generally or in respect of your ISP. Which ISP are you with?

Bonding 2 lines was £100pcm, for 16mbps download/1mbps upload. Connection speeds BT give me are 7/8, but never ever got 7 or 8. My main computer is all wired via Ethernet, cat 6 cable, so it's.not wireless causing the issue. I'm with BT.

Edited by deleted (Wed 13-Apr-16 22:06:20)

I'm a web designer running a business from home, so it's quite important to get upgraded (even simple things like uploading to Dropbox, FTP'ing is taking stupid amounts of time, not to mention Xcode updates!).

Might it not be worth moving property to somewhere where you can get a speed that suits your needs for the price you are willing to pay ?

What about 4G or wireless?

Can you rent somewhere in Much Dewchurch? ( A garage maybe?)

Someone there has 38Down 8 Up so there is potential in the area.

Also in Pontrilas

I get 4G, but limited to 20gb via tethering. Is there anyway I can utilise that speed, with unlimited download?

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Can you rent somewhere in Much Dewchurch? ( A garage maybe?)

Someone there has 38Down 8 Up so there is potential in the area.

Also in Pontrilas

Potentially, that shouldn't have to be the answer though, love living/working here.

I think the idea here is to rent somewhere to get fast internet then use a wireless point-to-point connection to beam it to your house.

You don't say whether you are on very slow FTTC or if it is just ADSL available? If FTTC is not available to you then the original FTTPoD product would not be available as they only provided it if FTTC was available to the house. It is likely that any future FTTPoD product will have the same stipulation as to do it they need most of the fibre network to already be in place.

EE will do you 50GB/month for about £50 a month inc vat. You won't get unlimited 4G tethering.

In reply to a post by ian72:

You don't say whether you are on very slow FTTC or if it is just ADSL available? If FTTC is not available to you then the original FTTPoD product would not be available as they only provided it if FTTC was available to the house. It is likely that any future FTTPoD product will have the same stipulation as to do it they need most of the fibre network to already be in place.

Just ADSL available, I'm on an EO line. Houses just up the road, under 500m away are part of the rollout, yet we're getting excluded...

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

EE will do you 50GB/month for about £50 a month inc vat. You won't get unlimited 4G tethering.

Yeah i thought this might be the case, I'd be afraid of exceeding that limit.

In which case the FTTPoD product of old would not be available to you either. Until BT either launch new packages or add you to either an FTTP or FTTC rollout then you aren't going to get anything better from them. The only options available would be 4G, satellite, leased lines or bonding. Pretty much all of which have already been covered in this thread - at this point your options are limited.

In reply to a post by ryannn:

Just ADSL available, I'm on an EO line. Houses just up the road, under 500m away are part of the rollout, yet we're getting excluded...

Know anyone in those houses? Do you have line of sight?

If so, you could always ask them to host a fixed-line connection for you, and then run your own point-to-point wireless connection back to your place.

As those houses are only "part of the rollout" (i.e., I assume they've not got it yet) then your only immediate solutions are bonded ADSL lines, or satellite. It could be weeks, or it could be a year or more before those houses have fibre.

Satellite is a sort of "burst mosde" broadband, i.e. there's a bit of a delay between clicking and receiving/transmitting data. So it would be a bit frustrating when doing something like browsing (I have read, multiple times, but I've not experienced it myself); but if your priority is big uploads/downloads because that's where you're losing all of your time, then it might be the answer.

You could try it, and make sure there's a decent period in which you can cancel for free without having to prove that anything is "wrong", i.e. a grace period. Then you'll have either found your solution, or eliminated another option.

Bonded ADSL is a bit of a "rubbish" solution these days, but compared to the other options everyone is talking about, it's going to be cheap(ish) and assuming an ISP says they'll sort it out for you with no anticipated problems, you'll have roughly halved your wasted work time. Assuming the ISP is true to their word, it shouldn't take that long to migrate, either - it's been ages since I migrated, I think they might have changed the system now, so someone else might be able to give you a better guess at how long it'll take - with the consideration that you might have to migrate from BTW > LLU for a good bonded service. You might not, though.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by ryannn:

Just ADSL available, I'm on an EO line. Houses just up the road, under 500m away are part of the rollout, yet we're getting excluded...

Know anyone in those houses? Do you have line of sight?

If so, you could always ask them to host a fixed-line connection for you, and then run your own point-to-point wireless connection back to your place.

I know someone about 2 miles away, not direct sight. I don't know the people up the road personally unfortunately. Has anyone had any experience with a bonded line, seems the only viable solution at the moment.

In reply to a post by gazzyk1ns:

As those houses are only "part of the rollout" (i.e., I assume they've not got it yet) then your only immediate solutions are bonded ADSL lines, or satellite. It could be weeks, or it could be a year or more before those houses have fibre.

Satellite is a sort of "burst mosde" broadband, i.e. there's a bit of a delay between clicking and receiving/transmitting data. So it would be a bit frustrating when doing something like browsing (I have read, multiple times, but I've not experienced it myself); but if your priority is big uploads/downloads because that's where you're losing all of your time, then it might be the answer.

You could try it, and make sure there's a decent period in which you can cancel for free without having to prove that anything is "wrong", i.e. a grace period. Then you'll have either found your solution, or eliminated another option.

Bonded ADSL is a bit of a "rubbish" solution these days, but compared to the other options everyone is talking about, it's going to be cheap(ish) and assuming an ISP says they'll sort it out for you with no anticipated problems, you'll have roughly halved your wasted work time. Assuming the ISP is true to their word, it shouldn't take that long to migrate, either - it's been ages since I migrated, I think they might have changed the system now, so someone else might be able to give you a better guess at how long it'll take - with the consideration that you might have to migrate from BTW > LLU for a good bonded service. You might not, though.

Okay, thanks for this info! Very interesting.

EE is about to be bought by BT who currently do not allow tethering so I would not bank the mortgage on that one until it is clear whether BT will change their mind and allow tethering.

I hope that switching to a business package helps. Certainly if your speeds vary by that amount when not using wireless you need to be complaining to your ISP. Even with a residential package I wouldn't accept more than a 20% drop during peak hours. I'm with Plusnet on a residential package and get the full speed for my line 24/7/52, so it can be done and it needn't cost the Earth.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 14-Apr-16 15:39:26)

In reply to a post by ryannn:

Has anyone had any experience with a bonded line, seems the only viable solution at the moment.

Yes. A few years ago my old employer used one at our offices. If I remember correctly one line syncd at 3M/bs, the other at 2Mb/s.

We got about 4.5Mb/s down and nearly 2Mb/s up. It worked quite well, albeit at a cost. The only problem we had was that the slower line was unstable and despite Cisco and our ISP claiming otherwise when it disconnected it would often take out the whole connection. Still - the throughput improvement was useful.

In the end though we replaced it with a leased line. The costs were shared by several other business on our park.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 14-Apr-16 15:43:06)

BT allow tethering

Can't confirm about EE though.

How do they allow tethering? When I switched from O2 to BT Mobile the personal hotspot option in the settings of my iPhone disappeared and I can no longer attach my iPad to the Internet using my iPhone. If you are aware of a way to re-enable this on an iPhone (without jail breaking it) I would love to know. There are a number of forums where this was discussed with no solution.

EE do also.. but you could just get a MiFi device and then an EE Data SIM if you have a good 4G connection, so you don't need to worry about tethering then.

Before I had my phone line installed thats what I used.
You can hook up around 10-15 connections depending on the MiFi device used.

TP-Link, Netgear and Huawei devices are worth looking at and come in around £80-120, unlocked so you can always swap networks.

If your 4G signal is good you could be looking at over 50Mbs (up and down) connections on EE at least in my experience.

Very interesting, hopefully when this switch from residential to business settles down, we'll see if it improves.

Not sure what to do really, stuck in limbo!

On an iphone i'm not sure i've not used one since the 3GS

i just click wifi hotspot and it works for me i'm on andorid lolipop.

BT Ts&Cs when I was with them specifically disallowed tethering and they do disable it in the iPhone profile. You may be able to technically do it on Android but it is against their contract terms. Section 25a/b of this seems to be clear that tethering is not allowed (even though it may technically work on some devices and it is possible they wouldn't actively monitor for it).

I moved to EE and the hotspot option became available on the iPhone.

So I wonder what will happen when BT take over EE. Will they disable your tethering? I moved from O2 to BT because locally O2 only had 2G while BT has 4G. O2 have now updated their network and I will seriously think about returning to them when my contract is up if BT do not change their stance.

BT now own EE and have done for a few months.

As far as I know, for all intents and purposes, EE will remain as EE. Just like PlusNet remained as PlusNet. Their day to day business functions won't change.

BT statement here essentially saying they will continue with BT, EE and PlusNet with customers able to choose distinct brands and services.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I'm a web designer running a business from home, so it's quite important to get upgraded (even simple things like uploading to Dropbox, FTP'ing is taking stupid amounts of time, not to mention Xcode updates!).

Might it not be worth moving property to somewhere where you can get a speed that suits your needs for the price you are willing to pay ?

Be cheaper than FTTPoD.