BT muddies the "full fibre" water

I have both FTTP and FTTC at my property. Just out of interest, I did a BT availability check at https://www.bt.com/products/broadband/deals/

Here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/6iS7m2A

Note that the first product offered is "Full Fibre Essential". However, the download and upload speed ranges offered match those that the wholesale checker gives me for FTTC. The speed I actually achieve on FTTC is 27M down, 4M up.

Therefore, FTTC is now "Full Fibre" according to BT.

??!!!

Ditto. The copper hasn't been used for quite a few years too.

Very strange!

In reply to a post by candlerb:

I have both FTTP and FTTC at my property. Just out of interest, I did a BT availability check at https://www.bt.com/products/broadband/deals/

Here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/6iS7m2A

Note that the first product offered is "Full Fibre Essential". However, the download and upload speed ranges offered match those that the wholesale checker gives me for FTTC. The speed I actually achieve on FTTC is 27M down, 4M up.

Therefore, FTTC is now "Full Fibre" according to BT.

??!!!

Not necessarily though, "full fibre" or FTTP as it's normally called outside of BT Retail marketing speak is available in speeds such as 40/10 just like FTTC so it is entirely possible they could choose to deliver it over FTTP at those speeds. They might use the FTTC product so it is a little unreasonable to describe that as full fibre I agree in that case, but it isn't clear they will or won't - and ultimately they might even show speeds on the essentials product to be worse than they would be to help boost sales to the more expensive products and/or reduce the ability for someone to complain about speeds.

If it were full fibre, they would be offering 40M download and 10M upload (compare what Fibre 1 and Fibre 2 offer).

This isn't just some arbitrary slower speed they're showing - it's exactly the FTTC speed that this property gets.

I'm going through this right now, and getting an install.
It will be FTTP.

I went through a right spell of confusion for exactly this reason. Why on earth BT cannot use 'normal' terminology, and clear terminology is beyond me.

It's been explained to me that where FTTP is available, that is what would be installed by default now. Not FTTC.

I would be quite sure that any order for that product would be FTTP.

Seems like if your in an FTTP & FTTC served address you will get "Full Fibre Essential", whereas if you're only FTTC served it will return "Fibre Essential" for the same package.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Seems like if your in an FTTP & FTTC served address you will get "Full Fibre Essential", whereas if you're only FTTC served it will return "Fibre Essential" for the same package.

Indeed, but if you have both available and order the fibre essential package it has always been provided as FTTC (unless a very long way from the cabinet).

BT have always muddied the waters by showing the Fibre Essentials package on their full fibre pages, right under the words full fibre.

This has been brought up before.
This is how it used to look.

Very deceptive imo.

Actually renaming Fibre Essentials to Full Fibre Essentials while still providing it as FTTC would be taking the ****

Edit: I just tried a dummy order with BT and despite the page linked by the OP initially giving me FTTC estimates for "Full Fibre Essentials", when trying to checkout it quotes the following

Your broadband speed
An estimated download speed of 36 Mbps

An estimated upload speed of 10 Mbps

Stay Fast Guarantee of 18 Mbps

Those speeds are unobtainable on FTTC here.
I get the same result on addresses with and without an active ONT.

So the only thing BT are doing wrong is showing FTTC estimates. Full Fibre Essentials is full fibre.

Edited by j0hn83 (Tue 17-Aug-21 04:11:38)

In reply to a post by clyde123:

I'm going through this right now, and getting an install.
It will be FTTP.

I went through a right spell of confusion for exactly this reason. Why on earth BT cannot use 'normal' terminology, and clear terminology is beyond me.

It's been explained to me that where FTTP is available, that is what would be installed by default now. Not FTTC.

I would be quite sure that any order for that product would be FTTP.

Providers have been calling FTTC fibre for years, it sounds good and most people believe they are getting fibre. Even on the cabinets when FTTC first came out, there was a big notice saying, Fibre broadband is here.
It is called marketing, well that is what they say, I say it is pulling the wool over people's eyes.
I have heard of full fibre being used to deliver FTTC speeds, That is fine if the price is less

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

So the only thing BT are doing wrong is showing FTTC estimates. Full Fibre Essentials is full fibre.

OK, that's good to know, thanks.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

Actually renaming Fibre Essentials to Full Fibre Essentials while still providing it as FTTC would be taking the ****

Edit: I just tried a dummy order with BT and despite the page linked by the OP initially giving me FTTC estimates for "Full Fibre Essentials", when trying to checkout it quotes the following

Your broadband speed
An estimated download speed of 36 Mbps

An estimated upload speed of 10 Mbps

Stay Fast Guarantee of 18 Mbps

Those speeds are unobtainable on FTTC here.
I get the same result on addresses with and without an active ONT.

Tried the same. Got the same result. System ignored the copper line in the end.

Presumably taking that dummy order to completion online, would not have resulted in a new FTTP connection (another drop cable, ONT yada, tada) - simply they would have attempted to takeover the existing service/ONT?

What I think is happening is it's reporting the speed estimate of Fibre Essential but if you ordered it you'd get Full Fibre Essential at 40/10.
Probably just a coding issue with the website pulling through the wrong figures.
Has anyone checked an FTTP only address?

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by candlerb:

If it were full fibre, they would be offering 40M download and 10M upload (compare what Fibre 1 and Fibre 2 offer).

This isn't just some arbitrary slower speed they're showing - it's exactly the FTTC speed that this property gets.

I agree they might well be using FTTC, but they might do that because they might sometimes provision on FTTP, but perhaps if somewhere had a capacity shortage for FTTP they might then provision on FTTC instead - and thus they show the lower possible speeds.

It is fair that calling it "full fibre" is not right (personally FTTP isn't full fibre either in my view but that is another debate) if they do provide it as an FTTC service, but I can see reasons they'd advertise those speeds and potentially still might install it as FTTP.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

Edit: I just tried a dummy order with BT and despite the page linked by the OP initially giving me FTTC estimates for "Full Fibre Essentials", when trying to checkout it quotes the following

I just checked the link, didn't 'check out', I have copper and FTTP, the Full Fibre Essentials gave the FTTC estimate of 7-13Mb, Fibre1 gave FTTP speeds of 50Mb stay fast 25Mb and Fibre2 gave 74Mb stay fast 34Mb, don't think I'd be very happy if I paid for Fibre2 and only got 34Mb, is that possible?

In reply to a post by burble:

Fibre2 gave 74Mb stay fast 34Mb, don't think I'd be very happy if I paid for Fibre2 and only got 34Mb, is that possible?

Yes it is, because that's only the "stay fast" guarantee. Essentially it means you'll get 80M most of the time, but it could drop below this in busy periods due to congestion of the PON or their backhaul network. In other words, you're not paying for an 80M leased line

It's not a variable sync speed as with copper though. The actual bit rate over the fibre is fixed, at 2.4Gbps down and 1.2Gbps up; but it is shared between up to 32 users on the same splitter and hence the same PON port on the OLT. Individual users will have different traffic shaping applied depending on what bandwidth product they've bought.

In reply to a post by burble:

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

Edit: I just tried a dummy order with BT and despite the page linked by the OP initially giving me FTTC estimates for "Full Fibre Essentials", when trying to checkout it quotes the following

I just checked the link, didn't 'check out', I have copper and FTTP, the Full Fibre Essentials gave the FTTC estimate of 7-13Mb, Fibre1 gave FTTP speeds of 50Mb stay fast 25Mb and Fibre2 gave 74Mb stay fast 34Mb, don't think I'd be very happy if I paid for Fibre2 and only got 34Mb, is that possible?

As candlerb said, yes that’s standard sales practise now in compliance with Ofcom guidelines to have a minimum speed guarantee of 50% of the headline speed on FTTP.

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 17-Aug-21 14:14:05)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by burble:

Fibre2 gave 74Mb stay fast 34Mb, don't think I'd be very happy if I paid for Fibre2 and only got 34Mb, is that possible?

Yes it is, because that's only the "stay fast" guarantee. Essentially it means you'll get 80M most of the time, but it could drop below this in busy periods due to congestion of the PON or their backhaul network. In other words, you're not paying for an 80M leased line

It's not a variable sync speed as with copper though. The actual bit rate over the fibre is fixed, at 2.4Gbps down and 1.2Gbps up; but it is shared between up to 32 users on the same splitter and hence the same PON port on the OLT. Individual users will have different traffic shaping applied depending on what bandwidth product they've bought.

I just love how supposedly quicker connections (FTTP) are being given lower guarantees, i just looked on BT and on Fibre essential it says 35-36Mb guarantee of 32
Fibre 1 49-50Mb it says 46MB
Then fibre 2 says 72-73 which is odd as all other checkers i have used say 78-80 on FTTC and a guarantee of 72Mb
The best part is when i spoke to BT they then said "ignore the website I can see 80Mbps down 20UP my end so I will guarantee you 77 if you join us"
I will mention I have never actually got more than 11Mbps on OR copper as I never had FTTC as it was more expensive than VM. I would have liked to have experienced VDSL but with FTTP being built at the moment I think i'm going to skip that.

I know one thing when FTTP's here i'm going to that, look at my BMQ the latency is so high when I do anything on cable I absolutely hate it. I just wish the services were a little less asymmetric.

Edited by RR_The_IT_Guy (Tue 17-Aug-21 16:24:31)