G.fast 320m from the cabinet

So a very nice Openreach engineer came on Friday to install my G.fast connection. Unfortunately, it turns out I'm even further away from the cab that BT thought - 320m as opposed to 270. I'm hitting 100mb quite a lot of the time, but I get plenty of speedtests around the 75mb mark. I was originally quoted 153mb and as I had very clean VDSL I was hoping for somewhere near that. The engineer himself did seem to be slightly disappointed and mentioned potentially switching me to another pair but at this distance I'm not sure if that's going to make any difference. Anyone else been in this situation? Will they let me drop down to VDSL? My minimum speed is 85mb which I'm quite often below.
All feedback gratefully received.

When you say below minimum speed are you talking sync speed or throughput?

If the sync speed is stable and good then throughput issues may be done to ISP network or other issues than the G.fast

Hi Andrew.

I'm talking throughput. The first thing I did was unplug the EE router and hook the modem in to my Ubiquiti setup so is there any way I can get my sync speed without plugging that 'thing' back in?

Cheers!

G.fast just seems like a complete waste of time and money to me?

Edited by lockyatlrg (Tue 12-Mar-19 07:45:40)

It is certainly an utter waste of time and money if you are far enough away from the cabinet to make no difference at all! Why would they invest so much money in a technology to satisfy so few? Bonkers.

Edited by derekdel (Tue 12-Mar-19 08:09:57)

In reply to a post by derekdel:

Why would they invest so much money in a technology to satisfy so few?

Because it's a cheap way to bulk up their ultrafast coverage / properties passed stats. All they have to do is stick a 24-port G.fast pod on a PCP, and suddenly 300+ properties are supposedly ultrafast-enabled - even if nobody uses it.

At 30 June 2018 (end of BT Q1) they only had about 4,000 connected properties on G.fast, but there were 1.1 million where it was "available".

As the OP has found, even properties where it is nominally available may find it doesn't work when they try to connect.

EDIT: Here are later figures to end of December 2018, showing G.Fast coverage of 1.71m properties, but take-up of just 15K.

Clearly there aren't many people with a solid 80/20 FTTC who have the desire to trade it for a flaky G.fast.

Edited by candlerb (Tue 12-Mar-19 18:24:36)

On getting sync speed without using supplied hardware, don't think so.

If issue is throughput then usually things are better in the wee hours and the shape of the graph from a speed test can provide some hints i.e. post link to test result from https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest

Hi

Also G.Fast, if the line length is longish, might see a faster download speed, but can often see a reduction in upload speed compared to VDSL. For most people capable of getting G.Fast (so already on max or very good VDSL), it's an increase in upload speed that's often more beneficial these days.

G.Fast will go down in history as a waste of money by Openreach, just seems to be a box ticking marketing exercise. Granted some lucky people will be getting some extra good speed from G.Fast, but then they always were getting good speeds on VDSL.

Regards

Phil

This is why I am staying with VDSL2. I suggest all of you to stop buying G.Fast product if available to them and it will make Openreach look more foolish in the first place. Should have FTTP instead.

G.Fast are just like ADSL2+ if you live too far, you get lower speed but some getting more speed on VDSL2 than G.Fast. Just save yourself money & stick with your FTTC until FTTP come along.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

I suggest all of you to stop buying G.Fast product if available to them

As per the figures I quoted, almost nobody is buying it anyway.

If you live right on top of the cabinet, and G.Fast is available and you want it, you might as well take it. It demonstrates a demand for ultrafast services, which perhaps indirectly helps the business case for FTTP. But really, the bulk of FTTP takeup will be most in those areas not able to get a good copper broadband.

When BDUK FTTC was rolled out to remote and supposedly "non-viable" areas, Openreach seemed to be surprised at take-up rates of 60%+. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that anyone who has been putting up with <2Mbps on ADSL is bound to jump at the chance of FTTC. People close to the exchange already getting 16-24Mbps on ADSL 2+ were the ones least likely to upgrade.