FTTC speed on a long line

We're looking at a new house which is in the country at the end of a lane.

Its connected to a cabinet that is about 2.1km from the exchange by road and about 1.9km as the crow flies. Obviously the actual cable run could be even longer.

If I use the wholesale checker the results for the property are between 2.2 and 5.4mbps down and 0.5 and 1.2mbps up.

fttc-check1

The nearest neighbour is about 250m up the road closer to the cabinet.

If I check their property they get the between 11.4 and 26.8mbps down and 1.7 to 5.9mbps up. The next properties closer to the exchange also get similar results which seem quite high to me given the line lengths.

fttc-check2

The property were looking at has had an elderly couple living in it and I don't think they've had fttc previously.

My question is, what are the chances that when connected we may actually get speeds similar to the other properties or is the checker not normally that far out?

Secondly I've read about the longer reach VDSL trials going on, does anyone know if these are likely yo be roled out in the near future and would a line like this benefit.

We could probably live with the speeds the other properties get but no the ones suggested for the property we are looking at.

Any advice gratefully received.

The line length from the exchange to the cabinet is irrelevant for FTTC. Only the length from the FTTC cabinet to the phone cabinet (PCP) and from that to you.

You need to give us that .

(The FTTC cabinet is in effect a mini "broadband exchange". It contains similar kit to the ADSLx stuff held in exchanges).

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 05-Jul-17 13:13:58)

Sorry, it was a typo on my part.

The distances quoted are the distances from the cabinet, not the exchange.

Edited by StuB (Wed 05-Jul-17 14:14:44)

I was on 1300m to my FTTC (Have since been connected to an AIO 50m away ) I used to get 14mbps up and 1.8mbps down.

I think at 2100m + you'd be luck if you got 5.4/1.2

I know the neighbour 250m closer stats look a lot better than yours but the nature of standard VDSL is that the drop of becomes steeper at the end of its range.

You need to keep your fingers crossed for an AIO cabinet or LR-VDSL.

All said though you might have a really nice twisted pair and exceed the wholesale checker.

I've a friend in the same position as you. He has ubiquity edge router lite with two connections one 4G modem with a 50gb limit a month and slooow VDSL connection, by setting up weightings and device groups he's managed to a good set up, so maybe all is not lost.

Depends on all sorts of things including how good the wiring is from the cabinet to the property, what the distance of the wire really is and who else is on the line

We had ADSL on a 5km line and from starting with 1.5mbps we eventually got over 6mbps after various faults had been rectified between our property and the exchange. My view is that the ADSL2+ forecast is extremely conservative with the distance you quote

It may be that the VDSL speeds are similarly conservative because with a property without broadband no one really knows until it is connected

If it is a prime requirement that you have fast broadband then the decision is down to you

If it is not the end of the earth how about starting with ADSL and see what speeds you really get. Better do that than start with VDSL and then try to downgrade

Thanks for the reply.

Broadband is important to us as both myself and my other half work a lot from home and just general modern life is a bit of a bind without a decent connection.

The upload speed is the big thing that concerns me as I do a number of largish file uploads and both of us use voip.

There is reasonable coverage on most mobile networks so I had thought about dual wan/4G router to allow more than one source.

I'd not seen the Edgrouter so thanks for mentioning that but I had been looking at the nanobeam range of products that they have which look great at beaming a wifi connection a long way if you have line of sight and I may get a pair of these to have a play with just to see how good they are.

Other than probably 15 - 20 properties I imagine that all of the others connected to this cabinet are less than 0.75km so I don't imagine we'd be a priority for BT to install an AIO.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

Thanks for the reply and info.

As you say until broadband is installed it's hard to know with any surety although based on what I've read it doesn't look great for VDSL at this distance, particularly the upload speed which I didn't realise dropped off so quickly with distance.

As you say with ADSL the download speeds should be better than reported but that upload speed max of 1mbps would be painful particularly when moving from our current 80/20 connection.

At the end of the day it's a judgement call we have to make but its easier to do with the help from others.

Thanks

We moved not too long ago from 6mbps to a property which gained FTTC shortly after we moved. We get 50mbps down and 7mbps up 24/7 on Infinity 1

I thought 6mbps wasn't bad and was ok for us, after having gradually moved up from dial up speeds

However, having lived for 2 years with Ultra high def via broadband on the tv, 18 live channels via broadband from Wimbledon, Netflix and Amazon prime etc, I'd say to you that if you currently have 80/20 you'll drive yourself nuts if you move to a property with stone age speeds

Especially since there will be absolutely no guarantee of the speeds you say you need within any time scale

It'll nag at you every day, however attractive the property

Good broadband speed was a priority when we were househunting. We stuck with it despite turning down a couple of places we would have loved to have lived in. We don't regret sticking out for good communications as a priority

If it's a priority for you don't settle for what may well turn out to be third best

Good househunting!

I vaguely recall one Plusnet subscriber worked at 4km from the cabinet, but that was early days.

One key ingredient is the thickness of the copper: to compensate for the long distance to some locations, BT use thicker copper in places ... and it looks to be more likely in the D-side than in the E-side, and is, of course, most likely in rural areas where the full distance to the exchange is pretty long.

This can result in the effective range being doubled or more, compared to standard copper.

However, it appears that the upstream speed is often the range-limiting factor. This is likely to be because BT employs a feature known as upstream power backoff. The aim of this feature is to reduce upstream power for "near" subscribers, to ensure "far" subscribers get better performance, and is tunable for balance between "near" and "far".

However, whatever BT are doing, it seems that this feature isn't tuned for "really far" subscribers - one graph I saw suggested that, for lines of 1.8km to benefit well, the short lines would need to be so limited in power that they could only get 5Mbps speed.