Happy to have FTTP during the Pandemic!

So, how many of us are happy that we’ve got FTTP or FTTC during this time?

I suspect working from home every day on my old 2Mbps adsl line would have been painful

I might have used more mobile networks, although judging by my experience on Vodafone and Three, that might have been just as annoying.

So glad I had FTTP installed - coming up to two years ago, after six years suffering with poor speeds and unreliable connections.

Really happy to have switched to Virgin cable (200 / 20) from my old FTTC which had degraded down to 40 / 3. The amount of video calls and VM images and other things I'm messing around with would have been painful on the 3 Mbps upload.

Mobile around here was good before the lockdown, but now is much more variable, Three is usually 60 Mbps download, and 10 or so upload, now hitting around 30 / 5 most of the time. EE was 150 Mbps download with 50 up, but has dropped to 60 / 20 at many times. My work Vodafone is too old now to reliably test.

Yep! Virgin Media 350/35 (in reality 380/38) - MS Teams calls work well, no latency (comparable to FTTC tbh at ~8msec) and VPN back to work hasn't dropped once!

So glad I don't have the 'rubbish broadband' label from other colleagues!

Whilst not working from home at all during the pandemic, at work I have been regularly dealing with colleagues at home.

Shocked at how many people are still on ADSL. Seen a couple of 2/3Mb connections.

Quite surprised at the speed of some of the FTTC connections I have had complaints about. Can only think of it being due to BT pulling the plug on the engineer install option on FTTC.

In reply to a post by B31:

So, how many of us are happy that we’ve got FTTP or FTTC during this time?

I suspect working from home every day on my old 2Mbps adsl line would have been painful

Openreach have been busting a gut to get FTTP to key workers. This is to be saluted. Of course those of us with better connectivity are grateful but it's worth mentioning that Openreach for the easy target they are have been doing their utmost to try and get FTTP to those who need it most and are needed the most.

In reply to a post by foolishlywise:

So glad I don't have the 'rubbish broadband' label from other colleagues!

A lot of my colleagues think they have rubbish broadband, which is probably a WiFi problem. The "corporate" laptops we get, (either Lenovo or Apple) don't come with Ethernet adaptors unless separately requested! Insane. I've set up my "home desk" so that I am Ethernet connected.

With everyone else at home WiFi is under a lot more use than typically, especially in close proximity houses & flats.

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

Openreach have been busting a gut to get FTTP to key workers. This is to be saluted. Of course those of us with better connectivity are grateful but it's worth mentioning that Openreach for the easy target they are have been doing their utmost to try and get FTTP to those who need it most and are needed the most.

That is great. Very hard to do, given where people live is not usually connected to their job, or role. (unless military!)

Talking of poor connections, talk talk going down wasn’t great!

Getting reports of lots of laptop connectivity issues, thought one of our remote access servers had died, but wasn’t our end at fault this time!

In reply to a post by B31:

Talking of poor connections, talk talk going down wasn’t great!

Yes, sadly if a provider goes down, the IT helpdesk team are usually the first to know. Most people don't have any resilience at home.

Imagine if an FTTC cabinet was driven into, and cut off a load of people for 2 weeks? (This has happened). Could easily overload the local mobile phone capacity!

Our lowly 40m FTTC has barely battered an eyelid during the pandemic, and thats with one still working from home, and three browsing/streaming etc.