So what if you can't get Gfast ad are on ECI?

According to ISPr only people on Huawei cabs may get the speed increase if they are in this magical Unicorn10%

But what about everyone else? I am literally next to my cab, my max attainable is 135mbps but I won't get sod all because BT put the wrong kit in?

It's BT so you couldn't make it up - but still.

Any ideas please?

You've misread.

The manufacturer of the FTTC cab you're connected to has nothing to do with G.fast.

The speed increases for Huawei cabinets is to do with the SNR margin changes that will allow DLM to reduce the target SNR to improve speeds on some lines.

If you have an attainable of 135meg on FTTC you'll remain on 80meg. There's no plans to lift the sped cap on VDSL2, regardless of the vendor of cabinet.

Edited by deleted (Mon 06-Feb-17 12:48:35)

It's BT so you couldn't make it up - but still.

So maybe good business sense dictates not putting all ones eggs in one basket in terms of a supplier.

Doubtless when manufacturers of FTTC DSLAM equipment were originally sourced G.Fast was not in the frame.

If it is such a huge issue for you - move. Or go with Virgin.

As already stated G.Fast has absolutely nothing to do with FTTC cabinets. It isn't connected to the fibre cabinet in any way. It is connected to the old PCP. G.Fast pods can be installed to PCP's with ECI cabs, Huawei cabs, a mix of ECI/Huawei or no cabinet at all.

Edited by j0hn83 (Mon 06-Feb-17 13:21:50)

There are various ways to achieve what you say is good business sense.

BT only needed to secure a backup supplier, they didnt need to actually commit to deploying units from the backup provider to have that redundancy.

Also if you going to dual supply its common sense to at least have a comparative technical specification, not an entirely different chipset, and one that has a poor reputation to goto boot.

They could have got a backup supplier that also used broadcom. But I can tell you why they didnt, cost control. My speculation is that if the ECI problems were not discovered when they were (lack of forward vectoring capability) then I think the full last 2/3 of the rollout including BDUK would have been ECI, I expect they only switched back to hauwei for the final third because that was when they started considering vectoring and a realisation occurred it wouldnt work on ECI, and of course with vectoring actually been used in BDUK areas, those areas had to be hauwei.

I also expect on a higher value contract BT may have been able to agree a hardware upgrade program with ECI e.g. switching out M41s for V41s without paying for V41s at full market value, but again I speculate the prime driver for the contract was cost.

BT are not innocent of blame simply because its all too easy to blame ECI. If ECI breached their contract then BT would likely be sueing them, I expect the contract has been fulfilled to the specifications agreed to.

Dual vendor inevitably adds long term costs as staff have to be trained on two difference vendors and things like maintenance, feature upgrades and so on become more complicated.

There is nothing wrong with negotiating a second contract with someone else to keep the primary vendor on their toes, the mistake BT made was actively deploying the two different chipsets in the field for the same service. Broadcom is the biggest name in DSL and the entire rollout should have just been that chipset, it seems on g.fast BT have at least made sure they only having one chipset this time round, and thought better of committing to that new name that entered the g.fast market.

Also the redundancy means nothing if the company (BT) is not willing to swap out chips to fix problems, so in this case ECI not working optimally but no willingness to switch the vendors at the sites. In reality having two vendors in the field just doubles the chance of a problem.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 08-Feb-17 17:50:03)

So what if BT had gone single supplier and that single supplier had been ECI? At the time they selected there was no visible difference between the two so it could have easily come down to ECI. And having a different chipset is a good idea as it could have easily been the Broadcom chipset that had issues later down the line.

You seem to think BT should have had a crystal ball - hindsight is great thing. Having kit as diverse as possible means they reduce their exposure to an issue with a particular piece of kit.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

There are various ways to achieve what you say is good business sense.

BT only needed to secure a backup supplier, they didnt need to actually commit to deploying units from the backup provider to have that redundancy.

Also if you going to dual supply its common sense to at least have a comparative technical specification, not an entirely different chipset, and one that has a poor reputation to goto boot.

We've been through this before. No alternative supplier is going to design a solution and have production capacity anywhere near ready to go on the off-chance you're going to order from them, rendering having two suppliers worthless due to extensive drag waiting for the second to ramp up.

The comparative technical specification is the ITU VDSL 2 specifications that both manufacturers should be adhering to. If there were previously undiscovered issues in the Broadcom chipset it would've rendered having two suppliers worthless. As far as reputations go I would assume this would've been taken into account when selecting the equipment.

G.inp became a standard in 2010 by which time Openreach were already deploying. Chassis-level vectoring support wasn't part of the requirements.

While debatable commonly held wisdom is that dual-vendor or multi-vendor is, and will continue to be, best practice. Any increases in operational costs are usually more than offset by reductions in capital cost with no significant increase in complexity or loss of reliability.

While for us nerds on here, ISP Review, Kitz, etc, ECI are the spawn of the devil 99% of people neither know or care that they're on an ECI cabinet. Openreach aren't there to pander to nerds who are polling their modems every few seconds and speed testing several times a day but to deliver the service they contract to to their own customers.

I suppose the great thing about being on an uneconomically viable cabinet is that when openreach eventually update us we might get some up to date kit. That said I'd suffer an old ECI cab if any are going free.

What is in it for a backup supplier?

How do you ensure security of supply from a supplier you haven't spent a dime with? How do you make sure the supplier's equipment meets your specifications initially? And at each major change in setup? And will keep manufacture and support going for a decade or two? How do you get them to commit to scale production?

What manufacturer will put themselves on the line for that without a significant sales contract?

When Ericsson won the tender to supply the AXE10 as a second supplier vs System X, they set up a whole supply chain in the UK, from software development, support through to a whole factory.

I reckon about a third of the country are on AXE10 instead of System X. Quite a widespread "backup supplier".

Ironically, it is System X, Plessey, GEC and STC that have departed the scene. Ericsson and AXE10 still exist (if less so in the UK).

In reply to a post by kebabselector:

That said I'd suffer an old ECI cab if any are going free.

Yeah, when you look at it from the point of view of the final 5% (or whatever final percent is being used ATM), I'm sure plenty of them would be glad to get any sort of FTTC service, even if it was an ECI cab