G.Fast rollout in announced locations

Does anyone have an knowledge / experience of how quickly Openreach are expanding G.Fast coverage in areas they have announced?

e.g. Southampton is now advertised as having availability but it appears to be confined to one small district, possibly just one or two cabinets.

The pods appear very quickly around the areas in my experience, but don't get too excited if you don't live within a stone's throw of it.

My cab is enabled, but only properties within 100m as the crow flies can get it. Not the 300m that's often thrown around.

In reply to a post by AndyPandy:

The pods appear very quickly around the areas in my experience, but don't get too excited if you don't live within a stone's throw of it.

My cab is enabled, but only properties within 100m as the crow flies can get it. Not the 300m that's often thrown around.

It would be 300m of copper line. The length of the copper loop can be much longer than the radial distance (as the crow flies).

In reply to a post by AndyPandy:

My cab is enabled, but only properties within 100m as the crow flies can get it. Not the 300m that's often thrown around.

I don't know anyone who's been claiming 300m as the crow flies though.
Line lengths can be much longer than that.
Neighbouring properties line lengths can also vary quite a bit too as they go in opposite directions to different DP's.

Line lengths of about 250-300m have been getting pretty good results.

I think it's totally the wrong tech and they should have ripped up the ECI cabinets, replaced them with Huawei and rolled out VDSL2 Profile 35b.

Isle of Man using this perfectly.
Just seen a VDSL2 Profile 17a (as used by OpenReach in UK) with working vectoring get upgraded at the flick of a switch to profile 35b with working vectoring.

https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,20343.msg37...

It roughly doubles the speed and reach of profile 17a and vectoring works across both. It would help everyone on the cabinet not just those already getting full sync.

Why OpenReach picked G.Farce I'll never know.
It does seem to be wiring ok and reaching the small pool they targeted though.

Edited by j0hn83 (Wed 04-Jul-18 14:19:55)

Easier for suppliers and governments to push up average speeds than deal with specific problems.

I'm not sure how G.fast pushes up average speeds over a widespread 35b program. Vectoring alone would help a ton relative to G.fast.

As far as I can tell G.fast went in to increase maximum speeds to compete with VM, not increase averages.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

I'm not sure how G.fast pushes up average speeds over a widespread 35b program. Vectoring alone would help a ton relative to G.fast.

As far as I can tell G.fast went in to increase maximum speeds to compete with VM, not increase averages.

That's what it looks like to me as well. It's a marketing trick rather than a serious attempt to improve the service. For all their proclamations it suggests that BT are still not really interested in upgrading the network. I'm not surprised because the RoI has always looked awful but that doesn't stop it annoying me to see the apparently playing a game just so they can be seen to be 'competing'.

Just maybe if FTTP take-up in areas with access to superfast via VDSL2 is a lot better than G.fast take-up you might see a big change in the next year or two, rather than in 7 years

G.fast with FTTP in other areas gives them chance to other 100 Mbps and faster to some 13 million homes by end of 2021 (10m gfast + 3 m fttp)

Brain may be too hot, but I thought some of the 35b benefits also needed ADSL/ADSL2+ turning off and with at least one MPF provider still planning to offer MPF from 2025 onwards it seems market not ready for that switch off en-masse

I’m in Glasgow and noticed a number of pods appeared around various places including my street, my cabinet has had a pod fitted for a month or so but not yet showing live.

Kingston has had some pods installed for a couple of months now and BT are now selling it where available. The Thinkbroadband availability checker didn’t show it although Openreach availability checker has been indicating availability for a month or so.

I have signed up for the A&A trial announced last week and have an engineer appointment scheduled for next week.