Faster FTTPoD now offered by Openreach

As of today, 20 January, the Openreach price list shows:-

Up to 330Mbit/s/30Mbit/s 01/05/2014 Base installation 750.00 Annual rental 1,188.00
Up to 500Mbit/s/165Mbit/s 20/01/2017 Base installation 1158.00 Annual rental 1,392.00
Up to 1000Mbit/s/220Mbit/s 20/01/2017 Base installation 1158.00 Annual rental 1,692.00

All plus the same (unchanged) distance related charges and Vat.

The new products are not showing on native FTTP.

async speeds to keep market segmented

I'd love to install one of these if I could find an ISP who will provide.

Try BT Business.

Also, try these - https://www.homeandwork.openreach.co.uk/fibre-broadb...

It's going to be bespoke, so they won't advertise on their websites.

Would a 220/220 synchronous package make people happier?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Would a 220/220 synchronous package make people happier?

Well if any of those 3 packages was to become available for FTTP if I was to upgrade, I would probably go for the middle one of 500Mbps down and 165Mbps up if the price is right, while the down stream is only increasing by 40% the upload is increased by nearly 82%.

Going by the price of Infinity 4 I am assuming the price of 500:165 would be about £58 p/m (£696 p/y)

Also while 1000:220 would be cool to have, but most of that bandwidth would just be a waste for the home, for businesses that might be enough and also in their price bracket of about ~£70.

Please note all quoted prices are just estimations and are most probably incorrect.

But until BT resolve all the congestion out, I cannot see them providing those speeds without having some issues.

Paul

Your prices are going to be quite off. For GEA-FTTP:

1000/220 is £1,152 (per year/inc VAT) with Openreach, so £96.00 a month
500/165 is £792 (per year/inc VAT) with Openreach, so £66.00 a month

These are just the rental costs for the ISP for the connection so once an ISP adds their costs to it, I think you're looking at around £100 per month for the 500/165 and £140+ per month for the 1000/220.

As far as I am aware, BT Wholesale is 'investigating' the demand for the higher end new native FTTP speeds. I would be very surprised if we see them on a residential level with BT Retail this year though.

From May 2017, BT Wholesale will add the 160/30 and 330/50 speeds to their FTTP portfolio. These are to align what G.fast is going to offer in the future. As a random guess, I would assume BT Retail will then offer 40/10, 80/20, 160/30 and 330/50 as their product portfolio for FTTP.

Edited by deleted (Sat 21-Jan-17 12:52:33)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

async speeds to keep market segmented

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Would a 220/220 synchronous package make people happier?

Perhaps you both intended to use the words asymmetric and symmetric, respectively!

Correction to my Opening Post. These two products have in fact been available on native FTTP since 7 December 2016.

I discovered this just now on going to check AndyHCZ's figures as I didn't see them in the price list when making the OP. That's because I didn't spot the word "transition" in the price list on this page.

I still don't know what that means other than they are only available if there is an existing copper phone line present, and are at a lower rental cost than the non-transitional found by scrolling down the page a bit. That gives a second table at higher prices for the same things and also these two products.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

Your prices are going to be quite off. For GEA-FTTP:

1000/220 is £1,152 (per year/inc VAT) with Openreach, so £96.00 a month
500/165 is £792 (per year/inc VAT) with Openreach, so £66.00 a month

These are just the rental costs for the ISP for the connection so once an ISP adds their costs to it, I think you're looking at around £100 per month for the 500/165 and £140+ per month for the 1000/220.

Well I know I would be off, I just compared the monthly cost of 300:30 package and divided the cost with what we pay for ours which equalled to 24.
So I just divided both of those prices with 24 and come up with the prices I said, which wasn't too far off LOL.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

As far as I am aware, BT Wholesale is 'investigating' the demand for the higher end new native FTTP speeds. I would be very surprised if we see them on a residential level with BT Retail this year though.

This is true.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

From May 2017, BT Wholesale will add the 160/30 and 330/50 speeds to their FTTP portfolio. These are to align what G.fast is going to offer in the future. As a random guess, I would assume BT Retail will then offer 40/10, 80/20, 160/30 and 330/50 as their product portfolio for FTTP.

I would be interested in the 330:50 (i.e. the extra 20Mbps up) but its all down to whether BT actually sell the 50 Mbps upstream product, I know they don't do the 330 Mbps and what BT do sell is 300, so that's 30Mbps lower.

Also wasn't there to be a ~500 Mbps downstream package that they was also suppose to be providing at the same time their ~500 Mbps G.Fast package?

Paul

G.Fast is not yet an Openreach mainstream product.

330/50 would have to be the Openreach 500/165 product. Very odd.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 21-Jan-17 14:29:58)

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

I know they don't do the 330 Mbps and what BT do sell is 300, so that's 30Mbps lower.

BT Retail's Infinity 4 is the 330/30, it's just they sell it as 300/30. Same as Infinity 3 is the 220/20 service, but sold as 200/20.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

I know they don't do the 330 Mbps and what BT do sell is 300, so that's 30Mbps lower.

BT Retail's Infinity 4 is the 330/30, it's just they sell it as 300/30. Same as Infinity 3 is the 220/20 service, but sold as 200/20.

Yeah, I know, that was what I was getting at.

Paul

The original pricing was for FIBRE ON DEMAND, which is NOT BT Infinity 1-4 products

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The original pricing was for FIBRE ON DEMAND, which is NOT BT Infinity 1-4 products

Sorry, that was my fault I brought up FTTP.

Paul

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

G.Fast is not yet an Openreach mainstream product.

Yeah, I am aware of that atm.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

330/50 would have to be the Openreach 500/165 product. Very odd.

Well I know we "might" be willing to go with the 330/50 if the price wasn't that much different than what we are paying now.

Would be nice to actually see the price for that actual FTTP version of 500/165 package, not that we would go for that, but the 330/50 maybe.

But at the end of the day, it boils down to the price and would we actually use all that.

I know at one point we did use the full 300Mbps down when 4 of us here were downloading, but that hardly happens.
The 30 Mbps upstream has been used several times now for uploading content.

Paul

We're aware of that, it's just GEA-FTTP was brought up.

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Would be nice to actually see the price for that actual FTTP version of 500/165 package, not that we would go for that, but the 330/50 maybe.

See my link in this post.

As I say there, you need to scroll down through the first table to the second that contains the faster speeds. Where you can see there is nothing that fits sensibly with a wholesale/retail 330/50 supply. Which is why I said that would have to be 500/165-based.

Then of course you have the wholesale and retail margins to add, plus Vat if you can't reclaim it.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 21-Jan-17 15:57:16)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Would be nice to actually see the price for that actual FTTP version of 500/165 package, not that we would go for that, but the 330/50 maybe.

See my link in this post.

As I say there, you need to scroll down through the first table to the second that contains the faster speeds. Where you can see there is nothing that fits sensibly with a wholesale/retail 330/50 supply. Which is why I said that would have to be 500/165-based.

Then of course you have the wholesale and retail margins to add, plus Vat if you can't reclaim it.

Just checked and you are right.
I did get a bit confused to do with the pricing, but that was due to looking into the first table, where as the second table seems about the right pricing.

I also saw:

6. Until further notice, orders for the 500 Mbit and 1000 Mbit variants must be raised as 330Mbit services with agreed additional text added. The detailed processes will be provided to participating CPs

Paul

Yes, I saw that Note 6. I take that to mean the Openreach ordering system can't easily be amended for the extra options to be added .

I dont know about other people, obviously 1000/220 is better than 220/220 but I was just commenting that its market segmentation the reason they not doing 1000/1000.

They not even matching the 4:1 down/up ratio of FTTC.

But, are they matching the 4:1 ratio on FTTC? 16/2 is 8:1.

It has nothing to do with market segmentation, there is no demand for symmetrical speeds at consumer level.

The demand is coming from the downstream and we will see a greater split between the down/up ratio in the years to come.

Edited by deleted (Sun 22-Jan-17 10:26:33)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As of today, 20 January, the Openreach price list shows:-


Up to 500Mbit/s/165Mbit/s 20/01/2017 Base installation 1158.00 Annual rental 1,392.00


All plus the same (unchanged) distance related charges and Vat.

The new products are not showing on native FTTP.

I want this one! 500/165 for my FTTPoD but where can I order it? As my isp Plusnet say NO.

In reply to a post by craski:

I'd love to install one of these if I could find an ISP who will provide.

Spectrum internet in Cardiff do it.

I don't understand why there is no isp's aren't interesting on FTTPoD?

Maybe the same reason so few are interested in native FTTP.

But not in Telford.

Cost versus profit.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But not in Telford.

Few customers does have FTTP in Telford in Dawley.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But not in Telford.

Few customers does have FTTP in Telford in Dawley.

I think Rob was replying to 23Prince who said the following:

Spectrum internet in Cardiff do it.

Rob wasn't referring to FTTP.

Paul

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I take that to mean the Openreach ordering system can't easily be amended for the extra options to be added .

I think we know the answer to that

This web page shows the notification process that Openreach have to go through to make changes to their ordering system, with the first notifications starting 150 days in advance:
https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/updates/eipcom...

They're obviously busy adding various use-cases for SOGEA and G.Fast at the moment.

Interesting, but that's how and when they tell their customer base about the products. Not the ordering system itself.

I've never noticed a footnote like the current one. It doesn't say they can't order it. Simply that it isn't in the order processing system.

Well surely the number of addresses/locations with FTTPoD listed must be significantly higher than those who can get native FTTP?

And almost all of them can get FTTC at literally over a thousand pounds cheaper installation and annual rental less than two months of FTTPoD .

of course it is.

The demand is created by marketing, so in other words the people selling the product decide if there is demand.

The product is fit to what they want to sell, it is not fit by consumer demand.

Pretty much every large company does market segmentation now days.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But not in Telford.

Yup My bad. I thought they were UK wide, not just S.Wales.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Interesting, but that's how and when they tell their customer base about the products. Not the ordering system itself.

I can see why you say that, but its not true. The EIPs refer to XML specifications, the "development process", and specifically mentions "... files are intended for CP technical teams responsible for designing and building the B2B interface into the Openreach gateway"

The EIPs really do document the change-control process relating to the API between CPs and Openreach - which is effectively "the ordering system".

Some of the items can be listed, for example, as "build only". That seems to imply that the new part of the interface is being developed, but isn't going to be tested or deployed. I guess that is probably the equivalent of just letting the CPs know, without making it orderable. It looks like this happens to a small subset, with testing and deployment left to a subsequent release.

The whole sequence speaks to me of a software development process, with releases every 2 months ... and functionality being added in phases.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I've never noticed a footnote like the current one.

It is certainly unusual...

Absolute gibberish.

Read Kotler, Philip. 1972. What Consumerism Means to Marketers. Harvard Business Review. 50(3): 48-57.

I wish I could get FTTP, without silly FTTPoD pricing (Infinity 4 would be excellent), but at least this should push VM on.

I currently pay them about ~56 a month for 330/21 on Homeworks 300, I'd love for them to try to compete with these packages, and perhaps replace the SH3 with something non-Intel without the Intel latency bug.

VM compete with widely available products, which excludes FTTP for the foreseeable, depending on how serious BT are with rollout, and most definitely FoD forever at this pricing.

I'm sure VM will be competing in time though - see this video from their parent. The new-ish DOCSIS 3.1 standard will allow a gigabit on the existing hybrid network, and of course the newer build FTTP will be fine either via DOCSIS 3.1 riding on the fibre or a PON variant.

Best of all for you such a product will require something that isn't the Superhub 3.

Yeah, hopefully G.Fast will become widespread fast enough to encourage them to boost speeds. Even if it only rolled out to 15% of the population, just by sidepods on existing fttc cabs, that could potentially be done in a very short time frame. G.Fast is supposed to offer 500/165 as a top speed I think I've heard?

VM won't want to lose the "fastest widely available speed" label.

Seeing as there are two speed variants in the pilot stage, 330/50Mbps and 160/30Mbps, I wouldn't expect anything else to be available come commercial launch time.

Price wise, you will have to pay some premium over FTTC for the new service. The other issue will be who offers it? There's only BT/Talk Talk and some select BT Wholesale ISPs taking part in the pilot.

I would be surprised if VM didn't have a gigabit available, albeit at a price, sooner rather than later.

A number of cable companies in the United States have gigabit deployments in various stages of completion.

You don't release a video like that one without having one eye on fulfilling that potential.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

I wish I could get FTTP, without silly FTTPoD pricing (Infinity 4 would be excellent), but at least this should push VM on.

I currently pay them about ~56 a month for 330/21 on Homeworks 300, I'd love for them to try to compete with these packages, and perhaps replace the SH3 with something non-Intel without the Intel latency bug.

The downside to Infinity 4 is that you notice the congestion more due to you can loose up to 85% and BT won't class it as an issue until you loose +90% of your connection.

I am not too sure how good or bad VM are to do with congestion due to our road and side roads will never be able to get VM due to being a conservation area, luckily most of this area is FTTP.

Paul

The key is how does latency behave during this congestion time, its the latency/jitter that is the killer on cable.

Should point out this drop off due to contention is a global thing, and does get more noticeable as headline speeds increase

Afternoon Andrew.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The key is how does latency behave during this congestion time, its the latency/jitter that is the killer on cable.

Erm, well I normally get around 3 to 5ms latency to most places in the UK and about ~120ms to the US etc.

But during this congestion if I recall what use to be around 4 ms was at the time around +97 ms.

While that latency isn't that bad, I was also receiving loads packet loss, which was enough to DC me from an online game and to also cause voice stuttering / corruption on voice chat (i.e. mumble)

So yeah the latency jumped up a lot higher than usual.

The strange this was normally the congestion only affected the downstream, this time it also affected the upstream.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Should point out this drop off due to contention is a global thing, and does get more noticeable as headline speeds increase

This is true, both of my neighbours that I know well who also got fibre the same time as me, however they only ordered Infinity 1 (i.e. the 52Mb package) and they hardly notice anything, in fact 1 of those neighbours has yet to see any speed drop due to congestion.

Luckily I do a lot of my stuff during work hours, so I am ok most of the time, its just when I need to do something late between 5pm to 2am that's when its been an issue.

The Christmas and New Year break was murder during the day LOL, but that was expected.

*** edit ***
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention there is only about 6 at most on our splitter node due to everyone else on our PCP cabinet are to get FTTC later on (so I have been told) so if I do the calculations right 2.5Gbps (fibre cable going into the splitter node) / 6 (number of homes on that splitter) = ~416Mbps.

So its not the connection between us and the exchange.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Mon 23-Jan-17 12:22:59)

It'll be the BT Wholesale backhaul, Paul. Either the SVLAN out of the exchange, or the 1 Gb CableLink between the Openreach OLT that serves you and the BT Wholesale equipment.

BT Wholesale have been known to provision 330 Mb FTTP on 250 Mb SVLANs.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

It'll be the BT Wholesale backhaul, Paul. Either the SVLAN out of the exchange, or the 1 Gb CableLink between the Openreach OLT that serves you and the BT Wholesale equipment.

BT Wholesale have been known to provision 330 Mb FTTP on 250 Mb SVLANs.

Ah ok, well during times 2am to 5pm our speed is back to normal which is shown >> here << which you can see is fine.

I might phone BT's FTTH team about this the next time it gets that bad, its a shame that department isn't 24/7 because the connection is fine during their work hours

Paul

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

BT Wholesale have been known to provision 330 Mb FTTP on 250 Mb SVLANs.

That's really smart of them!

Haha, I love the sarcasm on this forum. How stupid of BTW!

In reply to a post by WilliamGrimsley:

Haha, I love the sarcasm on this forum. How stupid of BTW!

LOL.
Well I wasn't too sure if Rob was serious or not due to there was no emote

Paul

Well, as you've said in the past, even a child could work that out. Anyway, back on topic.

Edited by deleted (Mon 23-Jan-17 13:18:19)

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

I wish I could get FTTP, without silly FTTPoD pricing (Infinity 4 would be excellent), but at least this should push VM on.

I currently pay them about ~56 a month for 330/21 on Homeworks 300, I'd love for them to try to compete with these packages, and perhaps replace the SH3 with something non-Intel without the Intel latency bug.

The downside to Infinity 4 is that you notice the congestion more due to you can loose up to 85% and BT won't class it as an issue until you loose +90% of your connection.

I am not too sure how good or bad VM are to do with congestion due to our road and side roads will never be able to get VM due to being a conservation area, luckily most of this area is FTTP.

Paul

This is what you get paying consumer prices for services of these speeds though. You pay what, £50+line rental for 330/30? I pay £51 (no line rental) for 330/21, it's just not enough to cover the cost.

VM in some areas is awful, but for me it's actually pretty good. I very rarely see less than 200mbit from Steam or newsgroups, I'd say 95% of the time it's over 300mbit, the remaining 5% of the time it's about 210-230mbit.

SH3 has some known issues with the Intel chipset, with these resolved VM would be good. The only issue I would then have with them is that downtime due to planned/unplanned work seems to happen about once every 6 weeks or so which is... rather annoying.

what is? that most large companies segment their markets?

or that I say openreach are doing it?

What reason other than segmenting would they have async speeds on a FTTP product?

Note lack of demand as you say does mean segmenting.

Windows home, pro ,etnerprise = segment
nvidia gtx 1050,1060,1070,1080 = segment
intel i3,i5,i7,xeon = segment - again notice that intel deliberatly do not allow xeons to be overclocked, and to prevent businesses buying cheap i7s for server's they keep core count's low on consumer cpus to segment the market. Also in many PC type components such as GPUs and CPUs often they manufactured the same but get parts disabled for lower price segments. e.g. a nvidia gtx 1070 is the same as a 1080 except it has some modules disabled to create the performance gap.
tesco every day value, standard, tesco finest = segment
BT adsl, fttc, g.fast, fttp, leased line = segment - they wont want to lose leased line business to much cheaper fttpod product offerings. Whilst these FTTPoD prices seem high for consumers, they are dirt cheap to businesses.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 24-Jan-17 08:41:20)

async because Openreach use GPON. GPON uses time division multiple access (TDMA)

Openreach see GPON is seen as a significantly more cost effective way of delivering FTTP compared with say point 2 point.

Sorry, but plenty of service providers around the world offer symmetrical speeds via GPON - up to 1000/1000 (Google Fiber for example).

By increasing the upload speed to match the download you subsequently reduce the density. i.e. you can serve less customers per fibre, and so increase the cost of deployment.

GPON uses a time division multiple access (TDMA) format to allocate a specific timeslot to each user. This divides the bandwidth so each user gets a fraction of the total bandwidth. The upstream rate is less than the maximum because it is shared with other ONUs.

The fiber is split with a ratio of say 1:32 or 1:64. That means each fiber can serve up to 32 or 64 subscribers. (other ratios can be used e.g. 1:128)

I may be wrong but I think Google Fibre uses WDM-PON

"I pay £51 (no line rental) for 330/21"

So you DO get FTTP? You said you wished you could get something you claim to already have?

In reply to a post by ajays:

I may be wrong but I think Google Fibre uses WDM-PON

I think you are wrong

Looks like they are saying they are on VM not FTTP.

I believe Google fibre initially used GPON (and apparently still does for the final mile), as WDM-PON costs were too high - http://faster.conferenceworks.com.au/wp-content/uplo...

You only have to look at So-Net in Japan which successfully offered a 2000/1000 service over GPON with a 32 split. GPON is the standard deployment for method for FTTP worldwide.

You will struggle to find any FTTP service provider that does not split their fibre, P2P is just not cost effective.

I think in the days of broadband the sync/async question is far simpler than reference to the technology.

It is simply that less than 0.1% of consumers will want to upload anything remotely approaching as much as they download. Whereas a business frequently may need to.

Similarly few businesses even with high capacity upstream requirements need symmetric gigabit per second transfers. Which is why low and moderately-priced leased lines have traditionally had lower downstream speeds than the highest consumer ones.

As an aside, I'm rather amused by the proposed new masts in Kent to reduce the latency between stock and money market traders in London and Frankfurt from 10-11ms to more like 2ms. You have to wonder if even computerised algorithm-driven decisions aren't being made too fast.

I think in the days of broadband the sync/async question is far simpler than reference to the technology

Symmetrical/asymmetrical not synchronous/asynchronous. Very different things...

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

"I pay £51 (no line rental) for 330/21"

So you DO get FTTP? You said you wished you could get something you claim to already have?

I have VM, Homeworks 300, provisioned at 330/21.

http://i.imgur.com/04Hy8IN.png

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

"I pay £51 (no line rental) for 330/21"

So you DO get FTTP? You said you wished you could get something you claim to already have?

I have VM, Homeworks 300, provisioned at 330/21.

http://i.imgur.com/04Hy8IN.png

Sorry I missed that bit. isn't it meant to me 300/30?

Ignition.

It was a coding issue as BTRetail/Business use the same VLANs for FTTC and FTTP.

The original coding allocated each new customer to the lightest loaded VLAN from that site to spread the load equally. Worked fine while customers were all at 80Mb or below.

When they started getting 330Mb FTTP it took a while to notice that the newest VLANs were only provisioned at 100Mb and these were usually the lightest loaded!

The VLANs were augmented automatically (as long as there was spare capacity in the backhaul) so were regraded each night if over x% of the capacity but the steps were too small to reach 330 in less than 10 days. (from 100Mb). Zero touch capacity management within the backhaul capacity so nobody noticed until customers reported the issue!

It took some months to amend the coding to only allocate to SVLANs bigger than the service or increase the VLAN to the service size (+%) if there was none available big enough.

This issue may return when they start providing 1Gb customers as the max SVAN size used to be 950Mb within a 1Gb Ethernet pipe. So all 1Gb customers will need to be served over a 10Gb Cable link and backhaul within a minimum of 1Gb SVLAN. ( This will need up to date Edge and Core routers as less recent ones couldn't cope with switching VLANs greater than 1Gb). This tends to sterilise backhaul capacity unless lots of smaller customers are also in the same VLAN to efficiently use the gaps in the larger customers demand profile.

This is one of the reasons Business ( dedicated circuits) are so much more expensive than consumer.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

"I pay £51 (no line rental) for 330/21"

So you DO get FTTP? You said you wished you could get something you claim to already have?

I have VM, Homeworks 300, provisioned at 330/21.

http://i.imgur.com/04Hy8IN.png

Sorry I missed that bit. isn't it meant to me 300/30?

I wish!!

Gamer 200 actually has more upload, as it's provisioned at 23 up.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

I wish!!

Gamer 200 actually has more upload, as it's provisioned at 23 up.

Going by the upgrades going on I've a suspicion your wish will be granted in the not too distant.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Ignition.

It was a coding issue as BTRetail/Business use the same VLANs for FTTC and FTTP.

The original coding allocated each new customer to the lightest loaded VLAN from that site to spread the load equally. Worked fine while customers were all at 80Mb or below.

When they started getting 330Mb FTTP it took a while to notice that the newest VLANs were only provisioned at 100Mb and these were usually the lightest loaded!

Thanks for the clarity on that, greatly appreciated.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

This is what you get paying consumer prices for services of these speeds though. You pay what, £50+line rental for 330/30? I pay £51 (no line rental) for 330/21, it's just not enough to cover the cost.

VM in some areas is awful, but for me it's actually pretty good. I very rarely see less than 200mbit from Steam or newsgroups, I'd say 95% of the time it's over 300mbit, the remaining 5% of the time it's about 210-230mbit.

SH3 has some known issues with the Intel chipset, with these resolved VM would be good. The only issue I would then have with them is that downtime due to planned/unplanned work seems to happen about once every 6 weeks or so which is... rather annoying.

Well Infinity 4 is the best for the Mbit, however you do notice more congestion like I said.
Most of the time during the evenings I normally see +200Mbps with the odd fluttering below, Christmas and new years was the worse, but like I said I was expecting that.

I got around to speak to a few of my old friends round the corner from me who couldn't wait for BT to install fibre so they went for VM, not too sure what package they got but they said it top one for broadband and TV.

They all was telling me that they are lucky to see 35 Mbps in the evenings and they only just get the speed that they are paying for from about 3am to 3pm.
But they did say everyone in their area are on VM and seem to use it a lot.

Now I have a friend in Manchester and his VM connection is fine about +95% of the time, however there isn't too many people on VM where he lives.

So maybe its down to how dense the area is that is using it.

At the end of the day its still better than our 3.5 to 5Mbps that we was getting on ADSLx along with the high pitch whining sound we got on the phone at times

Granted the price is 10x the price of what we was paying for ADSLx but its still worth it.

Paul

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

They all was telling me that they are lucky to see 35 Mbps in the evenings and they only just get the speed that they are paying for from about 3am to 3pm.
But they did say everyone in their area are on VM and seem to use it a lot.

Now I have a friend in Manchester and his VM connection is fine about +95% of the time, however there isn't too many people on VM where he lives.

So maybe its down to how dense the area is that is using it.

Yeah, I would switch to FTTP from BT if I had the option, even though I have it quite good from VM.

My current house is on the outskirts of a large town in East Anglia, it's actually a former council estate built in the late 40s but like most of these it's almost all owner occupiers now. It's not very densely packed, all 3 and 4 bed semis, and lots of old people and people with families, as 20 somethings in our first home with no kids we're some of the youngest people we've seen. VM seem very popular here, going by SSIDs, but I imagine hardly anyone else uses the internet for more than email and general browsing.

I used to live in Bristol, on a road full of students. VM was absolutely terrible, to the point of being borderline unusable, this isn't really surprising thinking about it!

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

My current house is on the outskirts of a large town in East Anglia, it's actually a former council estate built in the late 40s but like most of these it's almost all owner occupiers now. It's not very densely packed, all 3 and 4 bed semis, and lots of old people and people with families, as 20 somethings in our first home with no kids we're some of the youngest people we've seen. VM seem very popular here, going by SSIDs, but I imagine hardly anyone else uses the internet for more than email and general browsing.

I used to live in Bristol, on a road full of students. VM was absolutely terrible, to the point of being borderline unusable, this isn't really surprising thinking about it!

Not too sure with VM, but is the TV data sent separately than the actual broadband or is it all over the same cable.

And if over the same cable, does the TV Data count as broadband bandwidth, basically when watching a live TV channel, or watching an on demand program on the fly (i.e. streamed) does the download speed lower?

Paul

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

My current house is on the outskirts of a large town in East Anglia, it's actually a former council estate built in the late 40s but like most of these it's almost all owner occupiers now. It's not very densely packed, all 3 and 4 bed semis, and lots of old people and people with families, as 20 somethings in our first home with no kids we're some of the youngest people we've seen. VM seem very popular here, going by SSIDs, but I imagine hardly anyone else uses the internet for more than email and general browsing.

I used to live in Bristol, on a road full of students. VM was absolutely terrible, to the point of being borderline unusable, this isn't really surprising thinking about it!

Not too sure with VM, but is the TV data sent separately than the actual broadband or is it all over the same cable.

And if over the same cable, does the TV Data count as broadband bandwidth, basically when watching a live TV channel, or watching an on demand program on the fly (i.e. streamed) does the download speed lower?

Paul

It's all down the one cable, but the TV data is multicast, so there is 1 copy of each channel multicast at all times, it doesn't matter if one person, 1000 people, or no people are watching that channel, it takes up the same data. These frequencies are not used for Broadband.

On demand is obviously not like this, it effectively uses a modem built into the Tivo TV box, that has it's own bandwidth, that isn't part of your modem's provision, although I think the new V6 boxes need to be connected to your regular modem, which means it is part of your provision. Either way, you could cause more contention with yourself I guess.

Each cable segment has a number of channels on it, each with ~38mbit of bandwidth. To have 300mbit VM insist you must be in an area where there are 12 channels available to you, so 456mbit. Your modem is then capped at whatever the VM config file sets, in this case 330mbit. Other people using that segment will contend with you, and in theory I guess your TV on demand streaming on a Tivo box with it's own modem could contend with you.

In my case I have 16 channels locked, so there is 608mbit of bandwidth on my segment, and I have a cap of 330mbit. I don't know how many houses my cable segment serves, but it could easily be 20+, so you can see that it would not take many people on 300mbit to make contention a massive issue. However, it would take 6 people on 50mbit all maxing out their connection at once on my segment before I even noticed it. This is where the issues come from on VM, especially in areas with 8 or sometimes even fewer channels.

When I moved here in May I had 8 channels locked, they would not let me have 300meg. They then upgraded the head end to a Cisco cBR-8, and I went to 12 then 16 channels locked and switched to 300m. That Cisco CMTS is capable of 32 channels, I think via a software upgrade, so there is room for them to expand here.

I'm Broadband only myself though!

Edited by nemeth782 (Tue 24-Jan-17 20:13:42)

ok thanks for this answer.

why are they artificially capping the size of the svlan's in the first place, especially that low?

You realise they run multiple VLANs over the single circuits right?

No I didnt but whats the technical reason for splitting one physicla circuit into multiple smaller segments? As it only makes contention more likely.

At least its much better than what VM have tho, so BT have an automated system that ramps up the svlan size over night, whilst VM have to take several months to carry out upgrade work.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

No I didnt but whats the technical reason for splitting one physicla circuit into multiple smaller segments? As it only makes contention more likely.

At least its much better than what VM have tho, so BT have an automated system that ramps up the svlan size over night, whilst VM have to take several months to carry out upgrade work.

Technical reason is segmentation of traffic, different SVLANs go to different BRAS on their way to the CPs.

Once backhaul is full BTW have to order new from Openreach along with having the hardware to terminate it which can take several months.

do they wait for it to be full before ordering (bad management) or perhaps do something more sensible like order a new one say when the existing is 50% utilised or even have spare ready to deploy links?

BTw can seem to mitigate issues quickly still when disaster strikes as we seen isp's report back to unhappy users they get moved to a new SVLAN following complaints.

Utilisation of BT's 21C Service VLANs is continuously monitored to ensure that customers are receiving the correct level of service. S-VLANs are adjusted to maintain the correct levels of service. This is achieved by referencing each VLAN's utilisation to tailored planning rules to determine when we should take action to 'cool' the VLAN. The planning rule parameters are intended to operate so that the changes are implemented before the level of service is compromised .

There are the best part of 34,000 SVLANs in the UK. Quite a complex task I would think as you have to project future growth etc and ensure the correct physical assets are in place.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As of today, 20 January, the Openreach price list shows:-

Up to 330Mbit/s/30Mbit/s 01/05/2014 Base installation 750.00 Annual rental 1,188.00
Up to 500Mbit/s/165Mbit/s 20/01/2017 Base installation 1158.00 Annual rental 1,392.00
Up to 1000Mbit/s/220Mbit/s 20/01/2017 Base installation 1158.00 Annual rental 1,692.00

All plus the same (unchanged) distance related charges and Vat.

The new products are not showing on native FTTP.

What distance away from something a (pod or cabinet?) for this product?

How do they cost up the base installation price?

Why is the base installation price for the 330/30 £408 cheaper than both the 500/165 and 1000/220 products? Surely the base price for the actual installation should be the same no matter what speed the line is going at?

Do you order new capacity if for one evening a VLAN fills up to 75% of capacity (or pick your threshold of choice), when its previous peak has been a lot lower?

Large online streaming events are not every day, but large sporting events are still pushing peak capacity sometimes.

Add to this the costs of the upgrades and it gets interesting. Hence why CityFibre is keen to push its dark fibre for site to site links in its metro network, i.e. once you have the fibre send a single wave of 1 Gbps or multiple waves giving you much faster options, difference being cost of the hardware you put on each end.

I don't see that the distance from the cabinet matters re the technical side - it's basically and identical product to FTTP. Installation-wise the base distance charges are the same as for the pre-existing FTTPoD.

Seeing as the 500Mbps and 1Gbps products have the same higher base cost, the kit at some point is probably different in order to drive the line faster. Or Openreach are simply charging by more for a "better" product. That's what marketing is about.

Similarly re the base price for the 330/30.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how BT Wholesale manage or project the VLAN capacity. I believe Dave at Plusnet gave some clues a while back as to how things work. I don't think a VLAN will be reported 'hot' from a one off event, I suspect it would need to repeated over several days. In most cases though, the solution is virtual so quick and simple.

I know BT Wholesale are reminding ISPs about anticipated major internet 'events' months ahead so they can order their capacity increases in advance. There always used to be things like Apple making the new iOS available for download which would see a large spike in demand.

At the same time, it's a hard challenge for BT Wholesale as they need to project general demand increases. Then on a regional level, they need to know when new areas are going live with new FTTx services. This all needs to be forecast months in advance due to the lengthy timescales for ethernet services these days.

Same goes with GEA-FTTP. The up to 330/30 services are £92 for the installation and the 500/165 and 1000/220 are £500 for the installation (but it's reduced to half price for this year to £250).

I wonder if Openreach are deploying 10G-PON for those ordering the fast speed variants?

Edit: Doing a bit more digging - it states that the 500/165 and 1000/220 services are "are not supported on ECI ONT�s" and that FVA is not available with those speed variants (FVA is Huawei only as well).

Edited by deleted (Sat 28-Jan-17 13:29:38)

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

It has nothing to do with market segmentation, there is no demand for symmetrical speeds at consumer level.

The demand is coming from the downstream and we will see a greater split between the down/up ratio in the years to come.

How can you say that? no demand my arras

You have evidence there is demand?

Not one single ISP is pushing or has pushed for higher upstream speeds at any of the meetings with BT Wholesale and Openreach. Downstream on the other hand...

Thanks Andy.

It looks to me more and more that Openreach dropped a clanger opting for ECI as the alternative GEA equipment supplier. Messy on FTTC and now rather poor on FTTP.

Certainly looks that way. I understand the choice of two suppliers on such a big contract, but you also would have had the likes of Alcatel who are up there with Huawei. I guess it came down to cost at the end of the day.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

I guess it came down to cost at the end of the day.

And getting it wrong [chuckle].

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

I wonder if Openreach are deploying 10G-PON for those ordering the fast speed variants?

That's my suspicion, too. BT did say, after multiplexing GPON with 10G-PON and NGPON2 (40Gb) that they could start offering symmetric services with that.

It may also be the case that they use GPON with a much lower split ratio.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

You have evidence there is demand?

On the contrary, the average demand tells a completely different story...
https://postimg.org/image/sgsimrlo7/

That was 7:1 downstream:upstream.

Whose figures are those? An average of 190GB with 75% of data consumed by 25% of lines is probably rather skewed. It's a case of the mean not being the most relevant figure. The mode I think is what we need to see, plus the distribution graph of number of users v usage.

Chrysalis

All to do with scale and economics

The VLANs go all the way from the head end exchange to the BRAs in a core site. Thus you have Bandwidth in different physical paths with more and more VLANs from different sites in the same path the closer to the BRAs site you get.

So a 200Mb VLAN from Head end to Metro may run alongside other Head end on the same site. (You can also have other wavelengths in the same fibres from other sites carrying multiple VLANs).

Each Ge/10Ge will use a port on a edge router ( May be multiple edges at a site!) at the Metro, these get routed onto a Metro-Core path (10Ge/40Ge/100Ge) with lots of other VLANs.

Each VLAN can be rerouted at the Metro onto different paths by software.

This reduces the vast amount of potential oversupply that would occur if every Headend had a Ge/10Ge path all the way though the network to the BRAs ( including all the ports that would be only partially used at each Metro/Core/BRAs).

This whole design is why BT are so good (brilliant) when there is a fault at rerouting everything. It is also why capacity issues on VLANs are minimal and not usually seen by Customers. The scale also increases network resilience to equpment failure and enables service at a lower level to be continued rather than complete failure.

Due to the sheer number of VLANs etc most capacity issues are dealt with by robotic software and only when an additional Ge/10Ge needs to be provided are people involved to do the physical connection at the headend and the Metro. Even WDM can be set up remotely across the network to carry additional wavelengths when this is required.

AndyHCZ

VLAN capacity is managed by Robotic software within the Backhaul capacity at each site. As the base Physical capacity is 1Ge at a site new sites are not usually an issue for FTTC. If a new Haedend is likely to cover a lot of customers they may start with a 10Ge connection but this would be rare nowadays.

It is only when a VLAN is growing rapidly ( Faster than the lag to provide a new Ge/10Ge) does this get difficult (for FTTC). Simple forecasting tools can project total bandwidth used in a Ge forward to get a date when additional is required.

The delays on Ethernet services I believe are due to the work required to reach the customer site not the provision of capacity in the Backhaul network.

So Ethernet services for CPs including BT Wholesale do not have such delays.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Whose figures are those?

Sorry, I meant to say that...

It was one of the earlier snippets from Openreach's fibre index, and refers to the volumes on their NGA connections.

That one was summer 2015, and is no longer available on the OR website. Six months later (Winter 2015/16, and still available on the website), the total was 230GB, and the ratio remained at 7:1.

The current snippets show the total having reach 260GB, growing at around 25% per annum, but there isn't an update to the ratio.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

An average of 190GB with 75% of data consumed by 25% of lines is probably rather skewed. It's a case of the mean not being the most relevant figure. The mode I think is what we need to see, plus the distribution graph of number of users v usage.

I agree that those would be more helpful, especially seeing quartile or decile distributions (perhaps debating whether median or mode is most appropriate to this dataset), but the data we're given data isn't entirely unhelpful.

First, we can take their 25/75 split, and turn it into 2 new averages:
- From 100 lines using 19,000 GB, calculate the usage pattern,
- Lowest 75 lines use 4,750GB; Highest 25 lines use 14,250GB.
- The 75% of lower-usage lines average 63GB
- The 25% of higher-usage lines average 570GB

Most reports that break the average down (eg one of the old Ofcom annual ones) show a hockey-stick pattern, so we can probably guess that the median is not far below the 63GB value. I doubt there's one "mode" value that stands out, but there's probably a lot of premises in the 40-63GB region.

That's quite a difference between the two sub-groups. My suspicion is that the difference is mostly explained by video:
- That the first sub-group, the 75% low-usage group, make use of Youtube and some iPlayer; the free video services.
- But the second sub-group is the set who have made the jump to subscription video services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, NowTV), and consequently use the subscription more.

If I'm right with that suspicion, I'd say there a pretty good chance that their downstream:upstream ratio is even higher than 7:1.

There was news earlier last year (about the time BTOR reported that Winter 2015/16 figure) that Netflix dominated UK subscriptions, with just under 25% of UK homes. Amazon Prime had about 6% and NowTV had 4%. Is that number is fairly significant.

There's obviously a question here: Is there a portion of the 25% doing something with even higher volume than watching video?

To help answer, we can make use of another piece of data to help here...

A while ago, a researcher for BT gave a presentation on usage volumes. He showed a graph of the usage seen on the busiest 20,000 lines in the country for one evening ... and the bulk of the least busy did indeed show video to be the main culprit.

However, the top 10% of those lines were primarily busy on other things, and consuming more bandwidth. So there is a niche group of users who are "busier on non-video"

The "top 10% of the busiest 20,000 lines" are perhaps 2,000 lines. At the time (mid 2014), BTOR had 3 million NGA subscribers, so the graph represented the top 0.6% of all NGA lines while the niche group of "odd ones" represents the top 0.06% of NGA lines.

My overall conclusion is that, barring a very small niche group, the faster we want our lines, the more we choose to consume our bandwidth through video, and the more our down:up ratio skews towards downstream.

you can come to the same results with leased lines at business parks tho.

The majority of traffic in datacentres is upstream, the majority for everything else is downstream.

Thanks. A real eye-opener for me! Particularly the Netflix figure.

Though I must admit I was surprised by an elderly lady last year who couldn't understand how she was getting extra charges from BT on Infinity 1, for exceeding her 20GB per month.

Shortly before her husband died suddenly they had bought a smart TV while still on 5Mbps ADSL2+. Continued to use a PVR. Then soon after he died that went kaput as well so she started using catchup TV.

She says the TV kept stuttering so she rang BT to ask why, and was sold Infinity 1 with 20GB. Which did cure it, but two or three months later she was using it most of the time and getting extra charges for going over the 20GB. She rang them again and got a free upgrade to 40GB. It wasn't long before she was hitting that as well.

She moved to a smaller house late last year and I think is now on unlimited so no problems.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

you can come to the same results with leased lines at business parks tho.

I'm not sure I can parse that to understand what you really mean to say.

Nevertheless, I was answering a thread that talked specifically about consumer behaviour. I don't have data that tells us much about business behaviour, except for the BSG study on small business needs (answer: it depends on size & nature of business, but majority of businesses have lesser needs than residential).

The exceptions shown up by the BSG report - such as larger businesses, software companies, hotels - are the small percentage that make good use of leased lines. I've got even less data about their usage.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

The majority of traffic in datacentres is upstream, the majority for everything else is downstream.

Though I guess you've reversed terminology there... what is "upstream" for a consumer is probably data being shoved out of a datacentre as "downstream".

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Shortly before her husband died suddenly they had bought a smart TV while still on 5Mbps ADSL2+. Continued to use a PVR. Then soon after he died that went kaput as well so she started using catchup TV.

She says the TV kept stuttering so she rang BT to ask why, and was sold Infinity 1 with 20GB. Which did cure it, but two or three months later she was using it most of the time and getting extra charges for going over the 20GB. She rang them again and got a free upgrade to 40GB. It wasn't long before she was hitting that as well.

A perfect example of a gradual shift in habit, that feeds that increase in usage. My mum is the same, being at ease with PVRs, but gradually using more catchup via tablet.

Incidentally, the BT presentation was to the BCS. The presentation and the slides can be found:
http://www.bcssouthwest.org.uk/presentations/DougWil...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aoybc0RxiT8

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

you can come to the same results with leased lines at business parks tho.

The majority of traffic in datacentres is upstream, the majority for everything else is downstream.

Can you elaborate on the first sentence a bit, I'm not sure what you're trying to say?

Okay I think I know now. This is simple to answer - private lines are based around symmetrical technology and always have been. I wasn't involved in this stuff before ISDN but obviously all that stuff was symmetrical. It had to be as it was often used for telephone calls over 64k digital channels. T1 and E1 lines, 1.544 and 2.048Mb respectively, were built on 64k DS0 channels, T3s and E3s were built on 28 T1 or E1 bearers.

There has never been anything to be gained by making private lines asymmetrical. Networks weren't congesting upstream due to their usage, the access networks were symmetrical.

This is not the case for many broadband technologies. To offer these over xDSL solutions comes at the cost of downstream performance. To offer them over cable solutions requires huge reductions on downstream speeds sold or extensive expenditure.

The way these products are sold over PON is a trickier one. Two major drivers here to not offer symmetry are commercial and technological. Sell 1Gb symmetrical over GPON and a single user can really mess up a split by hosting a datacentre out of their property.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/...

It should also be noted that Openreach are building these products but don't have any control over how customers use them. That is down to those buying them wholesale and reselling them to their customers.

This leads on to the other issue - those buying the products wholesale simply haven't asked for symmetrical products. The SLAs, etc, on GEA products aren't suitable for private line replacements, and while there are options to mitigate this these have to be taken in the context of wider enterprise deployments.

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Jan-17 12:19:41)

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Incidentally, the BT presentation was to the BCS. The presentation and the slides can be found:
http://www.bcssouthwest.org.uk/presentations/DougWil...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aoybc0RxiT8

While I was searching for those links to put in my post, I came across some new research done by Doug Williams of BT...

It turns out that last year, they published some model updates to the 2013 BSG predictions on bandwidth for 2023.

I've posted that in a new story.