To be honest, projects such as yours have been done as the FTTP bids had time on their hands during lockdown.

In reply to a post by longedge:

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

struggle on sub 50Mbps broadband

Struggle? My 45-48 Mbps is more than adequate. Now if it was in the 1-3 Mbps region I would agree with that wording

and he was talking about upload not download

In reply to a post by Micro:

Unfortunately (at this location) WBC FTTP is not available until R&R has been attempted, so I guess I'll have to be patient

Really ?

Openreach will only let you order AFTER they have attempted a rod and rope ??

Openreach provision is driven by CP’s placing orders .... if they cannot order from Openreach, Openreach reach won’t attempt anything ???

Hehe. I was just reading the frankly amazing story from FarmerStuart in the Broadband Not-Spots and Slow-Spots topic area. He was able to order an FTTP connection, even with 150m of duct missing!

Does that come under attempted rod and rope 😂

It seems that the OP has made his own incorrect conclusion regarding R&R being required before FTTP is showing as available. There must be other reasons for the delay on the FTTP service.

I mean I did say years to come so i was trying to imply that 5 to 10 years from now that will be as bad as sub 3 and 30, which I can say I have also experienced before fibre deployment and I mean HD streaming was possible on 4Mbps but it was a bit of a struggle to remote desktop and still was 3 years ago with a 50Meg connection with a tiny 5bps upload when connecting to computers with multiple 4K monitors. I know when 8K is more commonplace 50Mbps will be too slow, I have tested streaming 8K to see how it handles on 100Mbps and its just about bearable to run two maybe three i forgot (which it was) concurrent streams with minor buffering.

I mean I am on Virgin Media and am meant to get 113 Down 10UP now we all know what you actually get is lower more like 10Mbps up and down at peak or in my area it has been so it is a lot lower.
I know all the residents and businesses can't wait for FTTP in my area will certainly be a thing i'm looking forward to even if I can get 80/20 if i wanted and VM's M600 more like 60Mbps in the evening.
I struggle to remote desktop, video call and run updates at once without full saturation on a Saturday and during the peek in the week so I would like some consistency. I mean in reality I feel like Ofcom should change the definitions of what is suitable I know that "superfast" speeds are really slow even the definition of ultrafast of 100+ is not really fast if the upload is less than 50 its like saying yeah its fast if you are watching netflix but if you want to video call upload loads at once you can't as that's to much of an ask.

It can be said that my expectations of broadband speeds are quite high and that anything lower than what i currently have is simply not suitable or sustainable for long periods of time I know I won't be having any slower upload speeds as I have had these speeds since december 2019 when Virgin Media gave a free upgrade.

I'm quite surprised that most people's sub 30 connections can cope video calling, especially when the uploads are worse I know when I use teams on two computers at once on my network it gets a bit hard with the upload limitations which I get is a whole different story but knowing how quicker FTTP networks feel when loading webpages, uploading and downloading data I know the differences and I know how it feels to download 1 gig files compared to uploading it.

My previous experiences with higher upload speeds are quite visible. I have used some very extreme examples but 15 years ago others have and people who said 1000Mbps would be around I was told that lots of people did not believe it. So my examples of uploading may be extreme but the users here are probably downloading and uploading multiple TB a month so are the UK's future examples, I know there are two people in my household and the fact I single handedly max it out says a lot I know there was a statement in a news article a while back that showed that extreme users were only a few Years ahead in usage of others being a basic advanced warning for capacity although lockdowns and covid have increased the speed's of this trend. I think you get what i'm saying on a basic level, I can't remember the exact details of the article but i'm sure you get what i'm trying to say.

Edited by RR_The_IT_Guy (Wed 07-Apr-21 19:17:07)

and he was talking about upload not download tongue

I was for the current time as I mean loads of us can barely do anything on a 10Mbps upload or even 20 I know its a struggle when i go to upload ISO files to onedrive to share with someone who needs to reinstall windows every 6 months as I'm sure we all know those windows update bugs that cause havoc and break printers and cause blue screens, 100% of this did happen last month right as my VM service went to 1Mbps UP and Down in the evenings when this needed to be done it took hours and even days for all of the different updated ISO files.


We all wish uploads were symmetric maybe then we would use our connections to their potential without getting bottlenecked.
I think we can all agree that sub 30 Uploads is not really adequate on the assumption that only video calls use 5-10Mbps each and most households have 2 at once thats the bandwidth gone. I know my 10Mbps upload is gone most days luckily I have access to a leased line somewhere else so if i need to do some big uploads I can but you can imagine 20 to 40 gig images being uploaded its just too long.

I hope you understand what i meant I did partly state this answering to the gentleman myself.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

mean I am on Virgin Media and am meant to get 113 Down 10UP now we all know what you actually get is lower more like 10Mbps up and down at peak or in my area it has been so it is a lot lower.

I hope you are calling in faults constantly and getting refunds. here is a solid 200 down, 20 up for the working week. When I get 18 upload, I think something is wrong!

(I have a fing box, doing regular speed tests plugged into my router)

I hope you are calling in faults constantly and getting refunds.

Oh trust me i'm their worst nightmare I have clocked 6 Engineers in one week four kelly's the rest VM.
My attitude to them is the problem will be fixed or I won't go away, I made it clear to them that they have already lost 30 potential customers who just got VM in their areas as they asked me if they should change and quite frankly i sent them my samknows data and the virgin media chat's and call recordings taken from my Virgin VOIP phone and they were very quick to understand that their current provider however bad, was better. I know some people say to me I want to join VM my response to that is can you get any FTTP from any provider that's not them if they say yes i go never touch VM unless you have to. I get they can be good but my experience is so bad that I never want to deal with those incompertant crooks if i don't need to they also get sent evidence from my samknows whitebox BMQ's amongst other things to back what i say up..

Next door the same we team up we both get the appointments on the same day and times.
The engineer goes let's replace the cable and the network engineer at my local node outside my window knows me from the amount of times i go out there and he said they are just "putting a plaster on a broken bone". That says it all, he then said that he has CityFibre where he lives as virgin media is too bad. He then says to call again. In the end virgin media gave me a whopping £5 compensation for over 3 months of sub 10 speeds my old talktalk ADSL 13 Down 1 Up was better.
To be fair I only pay £29 a month for 100 Down 10Up with talk weekend calls and unlimited calls text and data on SIM so it is literally the price of a decent mobile provider for the plan but seriously they should give me the broadband for £1 as its not good.


You would laugh at it all, that's why when i found out Openreach FTTP is coming before september 2022 I was very clear to tell virgin media and since I told them the service has suddenly got a little better with drops to 70 according to Samknows Whitebox. They clearly know that my street is going to leave and get FTTP because the majority of my area use so much bandwidth it makes my usage look like nothing. I know that the majority of my street is VM as looking at SSID's walking through the street there is only two BT and one Plusnet so I'm not surprised there's capacity issues. I also know that my streets groupchat often has the words "Virgin Media outage" as a common topic and when I sent them a screenshot of Clive Selley's direct email to me they reacted how I expected with well done lets all leave VM.
I know one thing I am debating which provider I should get for my first FTTP experience.
The cheap talktalk or expensive BT with some customer experience or ZEN with excellent experience in comparison who would get those first time problems sorted. Or other small providers, regardless I will be using my own router and don't require a phone plan although if its cheap it might be considered.
I know when I'm closer to the time I will get my spreadsheet out and do a full comparison of packages vs my usage and my peek usage.
I have just done a GDPR data request for usage data from VM to see if getting a 500Mbps connection is worthwhile. I know I used a spreadsheet when i recontracted for virgin last year 4-6 months ago i think.

I know the usage data will be useful to see what i used in the last three years so I can plot the graph and estimate for an 18 Month contract that's all matters to me is the contract duration and after that is a problem for later on when that time is reached.
I know i like to leave a 20% overhead on upload and download at all times even at the end of contract if possible for obvious reasons. I know anything is better than unstable VM I know they are not going to get away with it whatever price they give me just got to hope the fibre comes sooner rather than later.

I expect I'm not the only person around these parts that now sees one of your posts and puts it in the TL:DR box without making any attempt to take note of your comments.