Gfast available at cabinet but not at my address!

Hi there,

I have been waiting eagerly for the G Fast pod on my cabinet to go live for a while now, and being less than 300m from it I would have thought I could order Gfast as soon as it went live.

I have noticed that my neighbour 5 doors down can receive gfast with a clean speed of 191-166 mbps and an impacted range of 147-98mbps I would have thought that me being only 35m down the road from them would allow me to get Gfast, although DSL checker says that I cannot get it!

I get a solid 80/20 at the moment on my VDSL line with my draytek's attainable rate sitting at 100 down and 30 up I would have thought my line would be perfectly fine for gfast?

I don't think DSL checker is particularly accurate, considering it thinks that the house on the street neares the cabinet will get 40mbps less than the house a few doors down!

Is there anyway to order Gfast from BT Retail, Zen etc. or do they abide by what DSL checker returns? Will I be stuck on VDSL forever till FTTP comes out or is there anyway to request a Gfast order without the DSL checker results intervening?

I'm cabinet 18 st. albans exchange if that helps.

Any input would be appreciated, cheers.

Saajan

They abide by the checkers and 35m may be enough to drop the speed lower to the point its not offered

Ah, that's a shame, I guess I will have to wait till FTTP is offered

In reply to a post by saajanb:

Hi there,

I have been waiting eagerly for the G Fast pod on my cabinet to go live for a while now, and being less than 300m from it I would have thought I could order Gfast as soon as it went live.

I have noticed that my neighbour 5 doors down can receive gfast with a clean speed of 191-166 mbps and an impacted range of 147-98mbps I would have thought that me being only 35m down the road from them would allow me to get Gfast, although DSL checker says that I cannot get it!

I get a solid 80/20 at the moment on my VDSL line with my draytek's attainable rate sitting at 100 down and 30 up I would have thought my line would be perfectly fine for gfast?

I don't think DSL checker is particularly accurate, considering it thinks that the house on the street neares the cabinet will get 40mbps less than the house a few doors down!

Is there anyway to order Gfast from BT Retail, Zen etc. or do they abide by what DSL checker returns? Will I be stuck on VDSL forever till FTTP comes out or is there anyway to request a Gfast order without the DSL checker results intervening?

I'm cabinet 18 st. albans exchange if that helps.

Any input would be appreciated, cheers.

Saajan

Are you on the same cable run (its common for different properties to come on different routes) You could try bugging your ISP to see if there is an error but its impossible to get them to do anything if the properties closer are refused as well.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-Jan-19 09:59:32)

I would have no way to check, our bt line comes via ducting, although now that you say it, the other half of the street which has gfast is fed via the pole, maybe that's why gfast is available to them?

It may be that the pole fed lines take a different, shorter route to the cabinet.

Also it's not as simple as they are 35m away. Your line might go 25m in the wrong direction to the underground Distribution Point, then go in the right direction. That would add another 50m on making it potentially 85m more than that property.

It's a technology that drops off massively at the far end of its range and OpenReach need to pick a point where it won't be offered.

I believe anything under 100Mb isn't allowed, and even if the low end Range B/impacted estimate is under 100Mb the line usually shows G.Fast but it shows as "Amber" instead of "Available".

Does the neighboring property you mentioned above with the sub 100Mb low estimate show as available or Amber?

Yeah you are correct, it shows as 'Amber', looks like I'm stuck on FTTC!

I had the same issue:
on my road there are only 17 properties all detached,

my number is 20,

on my side of the road Numbers 2,4,6,8,10,18 can get gfast, 12,14 and 20 could not,
anyway i contacted open-reach through chat, (https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/chat-with-us) explained the situation and the error was corrected in about 8 weeks,

of topic, i managed get a load FTTP information from the person i chatted with, they advised me my distribution point (agg node) is only located 130 meters from my property, in the same conversation they were able to give me Underground Distribution Point number as well, not sure if they should shared this amount of information with me, but they did have very detailed map/information of my surroundings, i would say our housing estate is about 30 years old,

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

It's a technology that drops off massively at the far end of its range and OpenReach need to pick a point where it won't be offered.

Not at all would seem to be the best option. They should have had a the guts to give it up during R&D and commit the resources to FTTP.

A distribution point and an aggregation node are two different things.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

A distribution point and an aggregation node are two very different things.

FTFY

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

It's a technology that drops off massively at the far end of its range and OpenReach need to pick a point where it won't be offered.

Not at all would seem to be the best option. They should have had a the guts to give it up during R&D and commit the resources to FTTP.

G.Fast was initially due to be DP pole/manhole based (ie closer to end user) but this was changed to cabinet based with the money saved poured into FTTP (Fibre First?) rollouts. Anyway Openreach aren't stupid, they know full well g.fast is just an interim solution but one which allows them to compete with Virgin Media wrt headline speeds without spending huge amounts of money. Just because a cabinet has been g.fast enabled doesn't mean Openreach won't ever bring FTTP to that area. You could argue g.fast live areas are better equipped for FTTP rollouts as they will have the exchange infrastructure (eg backhaul links) already in place for the higher speeds.

Edited by deleted (Thu 31-Jan-19 08:19:01)

In reply to a post by asrab:

I had the same issue:
on my road there are only 17 properties all detached,

my number is 20,

on my side of the road Numbers 2,4,6,8,10,18 can get gfast, 12,14 and 20 could not,
anyway i contacted open-reach through chat, (https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/chat-with-us) explained the situation and the error was corrected in about 8 weeks,

of topic, i managed get a load FTTP information from the person i chatted with, they advised me my distribution point (agg node) is only located 130 meters from my property, in the same conversation they were able to give me Underground Distribution Point number as well, not sure if they should shared this amount of information with me, but they did have very detailed map/information of my surroundings, i would say our housing estate is about 30 years old,

That's exactly what I was referring to; you can get 'genuine' errors which can be corrected.

In reply to a post by Garlic:

That's exactly what I was referring to; you can get 'genuine' errors which can be corrected.

You can, and do.
Particularly where random properties can't order while all those surrounding can.

That doesn't appear to be the case here. The OPs property is 35m further away from the tail end of the G.Fast range (properties show Amber, not Available, at the far end).

This doesn't look like a genuine error but the expected pattern.

I'm starting to wonder what the point of a Gfast roll out is to be honest, only around 60 properties can actually be served by my cabinet pod, so apart from being cheap to roll out it seems pointless, they should have spent their money on enhanced fttp rollout, as that is the future, instead of trying to squeeze every last drop from copper.

It isn't there to squeeze revenue out of copper.
That would require it to profitable.
At the current 0.88% take up rate that's not gonna happen.

It's there because it allows OpenReach to tick a bunch of Ultrafast coverage boxes and allows their marketing to compete with Virgin Media.

G.Farce from the cabinet is a ridiculous idea.
Imagine if they did FTTC from the exchange so only the fastest got faster.

I'd be gutted to see a G.Farce pod on my local PCP.

In reply to a post by saajanb:

I'm starting to wonder what the point of a Gfast roll out is to be honest, only around 60 properties can actually be served by my cabinet pod, so apart from being cheap to roll out it seems pointless, they should have spent their money on enhanced fttp rollout, as that is the future, instead of trying to squeeze every last drop from copper.

As others have said I think primarily it's about numbers on a spreadsheet. Getting the 'properties covered' column up whilst minimising the 'cost of roll-out' column. There may also be an element of not wanting to be seen to have wasted resources on the R&D.

I've always been sceptical of G.FAST since it was first mooted as 'the next generation'. As originally suggested (used for infill) it sounded reasonable but once that proved impractical they should have dropped it.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

It isn't there to squeeze revenue out of copper.
That would require it to profitable.
At the current 0.88% take up rate that's not gonna happen.

It's there because it allows OpenReach to tick a bunch of Ultrafast coverage boxes and allows their marketing to compete with Virgin Media.

The sites news post covers this well:

"Looking at the take-up of the G.fast and FTTP services we have some important insight to share, on the basic numbers there are 15,000 live G.fast connections (0.88% take-up) and for FTTP 267,000 connections (29.9% take-up). This suggests that FTTP is massively more popular than G.fast and some may incorrectly conclude that Fibre First is a run away success in the FTTP areas. The reality is that the vast majority of the live FTTP connections to date are from new build homes (full fibre often the only option) or in slow areas where the other option is just ADSL or ADSL2+ or is the first fixed line broadband option and in those slow areas people will very quickly sign up. G.fast is often competing in areas where there is Virgin Media cable available and the majority already have VDSL2 available around the 70 to 80 Mbps connection speed, and therefore if looking at take-up it may be fairer to compare the take-up to take-up of the faster Virgin Media services e.g. the 350 Mbps product appears to have a 1-2 % take-up and that is after being marketed for a number of years. "

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

G.Farce from the cabinet is a ridiculous idea.

The distance restriction is such an issue that some people would need the pod hanging off their front gate to be of any use

Before anyone replies and says this is not possible, I am trying to be funny!

Also to add, as we are seeing Whitchurch, Cardiff while FTTP is overlaying some G.fast locations, we are seeing things like blocks of low rise flats without FTTP but with the VDSL2/GFast options, plus wider provider choice currently on G.fast and no regulated £5 extra per month like FTTP attracts in fast VDSL2 areas

When the G.fast roll-out started the fate of Openreach and what would be decided by Gov/Ofcom was uncertain so taking a lower cap-ex route but offering faster speeds was sensible rather than a full on committing to FTTP and then finding you were being forced to sell at a MUCH MUCH higher price than competitors or one option might have been geographic restrictions on roll-outs.

The g.fast as a farce is a popular view and yes it has flaws, but if the FTTP roll-out hits big problems there is nothing to say that pavement chamber gfast nodes could not be added in the future.

In reply to a post by dect:

The distance restriction is such an issue that some people would need the pod hanging off their front gate to be of any use

Before anyone replies and says this is not possible, I am trying to be funny!

However that was the original idea behind G.fast. The most expensive bit of any roll out is replacing all the final drops to houses. So the idea was stick a G.fast pod on top of the pole feeding a bunch of houses and they will all get great speeds because the drop will be under 30m.

You can buy such G.fast and even VDSL pods designed to be put on top of poles or in underground chambers.

Also some areas due to cabinet density, cabinet G.fast pods make sense. If you look at the roll out for the Glasgow Bridgeton exchange you will see the vast majority of people get a significant uplift in speed. That is you can be getting ~300Mbps which is much better than 80Mbps.

However outside densely populated urban areas you do have to wonder if somone at Openreach is on the crack pipe.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

In reply to a post by dect:

The distance restriction is such an issue that some people would need the pod hanging off their front gate to be of any use

Before anyone replies and says this is not possible, I am trying to be funny!

However that was the original idea behind G.fast. The most expensive bit of any roll out is replacing all the final drops to houses. So the idea was stick a G.fast pod on top of the pole feeding a bunch of houses and they will all get great speeds because the drop will be under 30m.

You can buy such G.fast and even VDSL pods designed to be put on top of poles or in underground chambers.

Also some areas due to cabinet density, cabinet G.fast pods make sense. If you look at the roll out for the Glasgow Bridgeton exchange you will see the vast majority of people get a significant uplift in speed. That is you can be getting ~300Mbps which is much better than 80Mbps.

However outside densely populated urban areas you do have to wonder if somone at Openreach is on the crack pipe.

As I said I was trying to be funny, I personally think what prevented them from doing it was the fact that they would have needed to get fibre to those individual locations (poles/footway boxes) where the copper DP resides to feed the G.fast kit and there are around 4.3m of them compared to around 85.4k cabinets so the sums don't add up.

G.fast isn't a bad product when placed where it should have been - at the copper dp.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

I've always been sceptical of G.FAST since it was first mooted as 'the next generation'. As originally suggested (used for infill) it sounded reasonable but once that proved impractical they should have dropped it.

G.fast at the dp would have worked well for many, especially those who wanted faster speeds but without the extra fluff with fttp.

In reply to a post by Taras:

G.fast isn't a bad product when placed where it should have been - at the copper dp.

But then the planned en-masse FTTP (Fibre First) rollout would probably have suffered as a result, due to the costs. Unless you think g.fast is preferable to FTTP? I imagine the costs of g.fast deployment at the local DP were not THAT much cheaper than full fat fibre hence why Openreach took the significantly cheaper g.fast option, ie cabinet based, whilst going full steam ahead with their FTTP plans. There's no way on earth Openreach were going to roll out DP based g.fast and FTTP en masse.

Edited by deleted (Fri 01-Feb-19 12:49:31)

In reply to a post by Taras:

G.fast isn't a bad product when placed where it should have been - at the copper dp.

I'm not sure the intention was ever to place a G.Fast pod on every DP.

Deeper in the network was the intention. There are more convenient places where lines branch off that the pods could have been strategically placed.

If you're going as far as the DP then it many cases doing the final drop with fibre would be cheaper/more beneficial than installing a pod and its associated power requirements.

Considering it's higher frequencies that drop off the longer a line is and the fact VDSL2 uses up to 17Mhz means OpenReach have had to modify the G.Fast bandplan to use 20Mhz - 106Mhz.
This reduces its range quite a bit.

Wrong technology, poorly deployed.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by Taras:

G.fast isn't a bad product when placed where it should have been - at the copper dp.

But then the planned en-masse FTTP (Fibre First) rollout would probably have suffered as a result, due to the costs. Unless you think g.fast is preferable to FTTP? I imagine the costs of g.fast deployment at the local DP were not THAT much cheaper than full fat fibre hence why Openreach took the significantly cheaper g.fast option, ie cabinet based, whilst going full steam ahead with their FTTP plans. There's no way on earth Openreach were going to roll out DP based g.fast and FTTP en masse.

I completely agree, but isolation my statement is correct.

I'm amazed its even viable with the current 0.88% take up rate, I can only think of it as the Betamax video player of its day.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by Taras:

G.fast isn't a bad product when placed where it should have been - at the copper dp.

I'm not sure the intention was ever to place a G.Fast pod on every DP.

Deeper in the network was the intention. There are more convenient places where lines branch off that the pods could have been strategically placed.

If you're going as far as the DP then it many cases doing the final drop with fibre would be cheaper/more beneficial than installing a pod and its associated power requirements.

Considering it's higher frequencies that drop off the longer a line is and the fact VDSL2 uses up to 17Mhz means OpenReach have had to modify the G.Fast bandplan to use 20Mhz - 106Mhz.
This reduces its range quite a bit.

Wrong technology, poorly deployed.

Ahh i didn't realise, that g.fast had to be altered for uk deployment. The power requirements of g.fast vs fttp is something that most end users wouldn't know about.

The death nail for g.fast even at the dp level is that its 1Gbits/s max. That isn't the case with fttp.

G.fast with other tech, is a poor road to go down. If fttp didn't exist, g.fast is a good product.

I think it was more to do with getting power to the G.fast nodes that made it too expensive. The big benefit with G.fast would have been not having to did up gardens/drives etc when fed underground - not everywhere has poles.

With FTTP they have to get fibre to the house, which will cost even more than getting fibre to DP if using G.Fast.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

I think it was more to do with getting power to the G.fast nodes that made it too expensive.

That is my recollection as well.

The big benefit with G.fast would have been not having to did up gardens/drives etc when fed underground - not everywhere has poles.

I've always thought that new utility lines stopped being run above ground in most areas in the 1970s. According to this 2017 PDF it's roughly half and half, but a footnote says that's based on a 2010 survey. I assume by now with all the new builds the majority are underground.

Edited by Andrue (Sat 02-Feb-19 18:40:53)

Getting planning permission for overhead utilities for anything other than one or two dwellings in a rural location is next to impossible these days, and has been for years. Even my parents house built in 1968 was supposed to have underground telephone, except the builder did a dirty which left the estate with overhead telephones.

Would it in the long term? In the short term you would have had fibre at every DP in the land. Then sometime later when some people want more that G.fast can offer they could start replacing individual drops with actual fibre. Sure eventually you would have to write off the G.fast hardware, but right now how easy is it to order anything better than a 330/50 FTTP service?

Of course that would require Openreach to deploy G.fast to the DP with an eye for turning ti into full FTTP down the road, which is probably beyond their ability to plan.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

I think it was more to do with getting power to the G.fast nodes that made it too expensive.

Not saying you're wrong but I'm surprised that it was only getting power that made G.fast to the DP too expensive.

Edited by deleted (Sat 02-Feb-19 23:04:16)

I've been interested in broadband since I learned about fftc in 2012. FTTC got fibre out into the streets, but only so far. I've seen many reports of where FTTC cabs have been stood sometimes for over a year not going live because there was issues getting power to them, IIRC some cabs were even removed due to power issues.

Then we come to G. Fast, these were originally planned to be installed even closer to homes, again another stepping stone to getting fibre closer to the home They even carried out trials installing G.Fast on a couple of estates close to homes. Now think of the problems they had getting power to fftc cabs, but multiplied 1000s of times due to the additional gfast pods required. They even looked at reverse powering them from customers modems via the copper pair.

Now consider the fibre network built to support FTTC, this would still have to be built if they'd just gone full FTTP, same goes for. G.fast out in the streets, they would have just extended the existing fibre network far closer to homes. This would also have the benefit of making FTTPod much cheaper as aggregation nodes would be much closer feeding the G.Fast pods.

One G.Fast pod at the end of my road could have given all the houses in it, including a side road speeds upto and probably over 300mbps without digging up the entire length of the street or people's driveways/gardens /paving.

That's how I interpreted the plans, FTTC and G.Fast as stepping stones to a full FTTP network.

Given the problems/costs they had powering some FTTC cabs, I think that was certainly a major factor. Perhaps also splitting out the copper pairs for each pod would have been troublesome as well.

Edited by R0NSKI (Sun 03-Feb-19 08:33:36)

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

I think it was more to do with getting power to the G.fast nodes that made it too expensive.

Not saying you're wrong but I'm surprised that it was only getting power that made G.fast to the DP too expensive.

I think the issue was that the cost difference between installing and providing power to a G.fast pod and just running fibre all the way to the property boundaries was relatively small. In other words installing G.fast did most of the work required for FTTP making it somewhat pointless to just stop there..and yet the additional cost of FTTP was too high.

Edited by Andrue (Sun 03-Feb-19 08:31:23)

I think that copper distribution topology is also a factor.

In my street of ~25 properties, there's a BT pavement chamber/DP for every 2-3 properties. Installing a G.fast pod in each of those and digging power to every one would have beed mad. Rebuilding the network so that there were fewer DPs, each serving more properties, would have been mad. Inserting a new DP or cabinet between the DPs and the SCP would have been even more mad - another tier of cable breakouts would make the network less reliable. Putting something at the SCP wouldn't work: we are ~700m from the SCP.

Plus, the network is mixed, with different service providers using the copper. Cutting each individual line over between G.fast, VDSL and LLU is complicated enough when you do it all at the PCP.

Putting fibre DPs alongside each copper DP makes a lot more sense - except that when you pull the fibre cables is when you find your ducts are already full or collapsed.

Maybe the high cost of installing G.fast to the DP is a blessing in disguise, as it would not have resolved the speed issue for everyone (although FTTP will) so roll on the FTTP rollout and goodbye to copper and aluminum telephone cables.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I think that copper distribution topology is also a factor.

In my street of ~25 properties, there's a BT pavement chamber/DP for every 2-3 properties. Installing a G.fast pod in each of those and digging power to every one would have beed mad. Rebuilding the network so that there were fewer DPs, each serving more properties, would have been mad. Inserting a new DP or cabinet between the DPs and the SCP would have been even more mad - another tier of cable breakouts would make the network less reliable. Putting something at the SCP wouldn't work: we are ~700m from the SCP.

Plus, the network is mixed, with different service providers using the copper. Cutting each individual line over between G.fast, VDSL and LLU is complicated enough when you do it all at the PCP.

Putting fibre DPs alongside each copper DP makes a lot more sense - except that when you pull the fibre cables is when you find your ducts are already full or collapsed.

Thats only some of the potential problems but it very well illustrates the cost/complexity on the ground that isn't always appreciated when ppl are all blue sky thinking.