Simple question

Hi there,

A very simple question to which the answer will no doubt be obvious to the very many learned people on this great forum......

I recieve around 18 D / 2 U FTTC. With the cloud becoming more and more important, why does a product such as 18 U / 2 D not exist for people that a) cannot move nearer a cabinet or b) afford a £20k leased line?

I get that it is my choice where I am located, but wondered whether there is a technical reason why ISPs have not delivered such a product that a great many people at 1km+ from a cabinet would happily install a second line for uploading.

I appreciate that it isn't going to happen, but wondered why it doesn't exist. I have asked my ISP and several others and they often comment that they are asked for this quite often.

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts from the experts on this forum.

BT Wholesale have started offering 18/2 as an option, although this is only available in certain locations as I understand it. It's also a very new development, so most/all ISPs don't yet offer this. Come to think of it, the 18/2 plans may still be in trial, I'm not sure.

If you put your number into https://dslchecker.bt.com what do you get back for the WBC FTTC 18x2 Provide Availability and 18x2 Sim Availability columns?

EDIT: Ignore the above, I should learn to read the OP properly

Edited by Toonshorty (Tue 31-Jan-17 18:25:35)

To reverse the upload/download using xDSL would cause massive issues e.g. crosstalk, and be totally impractical. It is not allowed by the regulator due to the technical issues it would create

Edited by witchunt (Tue 31-Jan-17 18:20:05)

In reply to a post by Mendip:

I recieve around 18 D / 2 U FTTC. With the cloud becoming more and more important, why does a product such as 18 U / 2 D not exist for people that a) cannot move nearer a cabinet or b) afford a £20k leased line?

Just to elaborate on @witchunt's answer...

The VDSL2 spectrum allocated to upstream and downstream van be varied by the telco running the FTTC cabinet, but it has to be the same for every single subscriber on that cabinet. If you don't do this, near-end crosstalk (aka NEXT, which is different from the usual far-end crosstalk FEXT that most lines suffer from) will destroy the service for most people.

That NEXT destruction of the service is the technical reason for forcing identical allocation on every user.

In making a choice of the allocation to actually use, BT have to figure out what the majority need. The majority need 6-7x as much downstream as upstream, because the majority are watching video. And BT want to sell video.

BT therefore choose to use an asymmetric allocation of spectrum that favours downstream by around 4:1.

If you are amongst the <<1% who want an extended upstream vs downstream, then your needs are very much in a niche market, which is served by leased lines.

Niche - not according to the House of Lords today, small business needs much faster upload speeds than it has now for sending documents, hence why some Lords are moving to make the USO a 1 Gigabit minimum and some want 2 Gigabit.

Next you'll be telling me that parliament has banned Trump.

"Niche - not according to the House of Lords today, small business needs much faster upload speeds than it has now for sending documents, hence why some Lords are moving to make the USO a 1 Gigabit minimum"

Bring it on and soon

How much would you be willing to pay for the 1Gig service?

The reason is that upstream and downstream signals can't occupy the same part of the frequency spectrum, even over different sets of pairs. So when all the varieties of DSL were planned, a decision has to be made over how much of the total frequency range is assigned to upstream and how much to downstream. As most users of broadband are what is called "consumers" and not "creators" of content (that is they download far more than they upload) then the decision is generally made to allocate more bandwidth to downstream than upstream.

These are called "frequency plans" with related "power masks" and, unfortunately, once set all pairs which might share the same routes have to adopt the same plan.

It gets even more complicated when VDSL and ADSL share routes (and there are even a few other very rare digital services which have to be considered too). The overall technical standard for this on the Openreach network is called the ANFP (Access Network Frequency Plan) and is controlled by an industry regulatory body called the NICC which is authorised by Ofcom.

Unfortunately, as you are some distance from the cabinet, you can't get anything like the full capacity from any of the allocated frequency ranges.

Andrew

I agree that businesses need more than ADSL upload speeds but even those with 2-10Mb can upload Gbs of documents and photos easily. Most people on VDSL now do this without even recognising it if we use any form of Cloud storage.

It is only small businesses uploading large amounts of video content or real time HD streaming that require more than that. Larger businesses doing multiple uploads should really be paying for a business service as the backhaul and core costs start to rise and I believe that consumers should not be subsidising businesses in that way. (Same as residential rates as opposed to business rates)

Practically every business wanting 1Gb can already purchase it at commercial prices, from a number of suppliers in most of the country, and if it is essential to their business most likely already do. ( The exceptions are like the recording studios set up in very rural areas to 'enjoy' the quiet of the countryside)

The vast majority of businesses (maybe 95%) do not need 1Gb in any direction and the rest should be paying for business services. If the Lords are pressing for 1Gb USO they may be thinking of how much their business interests could save !