Three fibre networks being laid in my street ...

So in my street there's Jurassic fibre, Nexfibre is being laid today and Openreach is planned - so I can choose between three fibre networks. I also have great 5G reception. I've gone from FTTC to four superfast options. It's been like waiting for a bus, nothing happens for years then they all turn up at once, how they all expect to make money I'm not sure.

Similar situation for me. At the start of the year I only had Virgin Media or 2Mbps ADSL. Then Lit Fibre appeared, Openreach have just installed a CBT on the pole outside my house and a massive 5G mast has appeared at the end of the road! Its nice that there is competition at last but it does seem overkill!

I’ve had decent FTTC for about 11 years but I’m really looking for something faster.

Openreach contractors have put a CBT on my pole and I’m waiting on it being wired up.

Nexfibre are installing in the town but no where seems to have gone live yet, including the bits that were installed 2 months ago. They will get to my street in late november.

I just need someone to get here so I can avoid overpaying Plusnet. Out of contract pricing is ridiculous.

Having lived with about 60Mbit for ages my head keeps saying what it Nexfibre bring out a 2Gbit option, will I be unhappy if I’ve gone with openreach? I’ll never be content

In reply to a post by Spud2003:

So in my street there's Jurassic fibre, Nexfibre is being laid today and Openreach is planned - so I can choose between three fibre networks. I also have great 5G reception. I've gone from FTTC to four superfast options. It's been like waiting for a bus, nothing happens for years then they all turn up at once, how they all expect to make money I'm not sure.

Similar here (Gigaclear and Swish) although there are no signs of openreach yet which surprises me. I thought they'd be starting work by now. Still it's all rather wasteful. We don't need three sets of fibre. One set shared by everyone would be cheaper and less disruptive.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 12-Oct-23 18:37:39)

We got Openreach 5 months ago since then 2 other providers are installing chambers for fibre splitters was weird though because city fibre installed dark fibre 2 years ago and never did anything with it
I am happy with my 1 gig openreach wholesale connection at £40 a month

In reply to a post by Andrue:

One set shared by everyone would be cheaper and less disruptive.

One national (likely state owned) provider? One set of products, with gigabit download and 100 Mbps upload? Thats what you get from the one network provider that thinks they are state owned. Competition has been needed to shake up the market, and hopefully remove the former state owned telco's assumption they will get all the business. The competition is already offering gigabit download and upload, and in some cities offering even faster speeds.

The 1980s governments noticed that one = no competition.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

One national (likely state owned) provider? One set of products, with gigabit download and 100 Mbps upload? Thats what you get from the one network provider that thinks they are state owned.

This what think going to happen:-
BT (Business) is going to start sell symmetrical version of fibre internet (1Gb Download/1Gb Upload)
EE (Consumer) is going to keep on sell asymmetrical version of fibre internet (1Gb Download/100Mb Upload)

They also make out some SLA which rather pointless because fibre dosn't have much down time. So for SLA and being symmetrical charge an extra 50% more for something which dosn't cost anything near that much more.

SLA uselessly pointless because 99% of the time they are covered under a best effort, which is SLA form of get of jail free card. They always have wiggle out if want to, all they have to say is "It was there best effort".

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:

BT (Business) is going to start sell symmetrical version of fibre internet (1Gb Download/1Gb Upload)
EE (Consumer) is going to keep on sell asymmetrical version of fibre internet (1Gb Download/100Mb Upload)

Only possible if the network provider they use supports it. I don't see BT (Business) using Cityfibre or nexfibre, unless you are talking about leased lines which is a very different price and uses different infrastructure.

I was looking at a CityFibre installation on a street the other day, which utilised a mixture of their own new poles and Openreach poles (through PIA). The street also has Virgin Media, but that's delivered underground.

It made me wonder whether there's anywhere that might have three seperate networks delivered overhead, using their own pole infrastructure? I imagine the answer is no as it'd be a mess and people would legitimately kick up a fuss!

I also wondered if there's any industry protocol for avoiding overhead line 'clashes' - as there were some CityFibre lines (from their own poles) that crossed Openreach lines, albeit at slightly different heights, each from their own poles in the street. One can also imagine the possibility for tangles and difficulties when one operator is installing new lines, without disturbing the lines from the other operator.

It made me wonder whether there's anywhere that might have three seperate networks delivered overhead

I know of poles in Crowthorne (Berkshire) which have OR copper, OR FTTP, City Fibre FTTP, and Swish (or some other altnet) up the stick … there another buried network too.
The poles would be unclimbable to my mind as there’s no reasonable spot to put your work position belt. On top of it all looking very messy.

Progress.

There is a street I visited recently , where Netomnia CBTs are present on the existing Openreach poles , and they have customers connected ( they also added the occasional extra pole ) .
In a few places the Netomnia CBT they used for service to an address was not the pole the existing redundant Openreach copper dropwire existed from , this caused dropwires to cross over each other mid span , this is something that would be a quality failure if Openreach installed their own dropwires in this fashion.
When Openreach provide their own CBT’s and start to offer FTTP should that Netomnia customer decide to switch to an ISP using Openreach , it will cause a problem , unless OR in effect use the ‘wrong’ CBT for the address rather than the one allocated for that address, the correct one being the pole the existing copper dropwire uses , in this case Netomnia even had a CBT on the appropriate pole , but didn’t use it , chosing to use an adjacent pole and CBT .

It likely both OR CBTs once provided ( the one in the correct pole for the address one and the incorrect pole for the address ) would be served from the same splitter so an install would not fail by copying this Netomnia error , but it will make what is a relatively’ugly’ method of provision, even more ugly , and potentially puts the OR installer in a bind , copy the error and use the wrong CBT , or use the correct CBT and have the drop-wires crossing over.

Edited by Iniltous (Sat 14-Oct-23 13:14:36)

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

One national (likely state owned) provider? One set of products, with gigabit download and 100 Mbps upload? Thats what you get from the one network provider that thinks they are state owned.

This what think going to happen:-
BT (Business) is going to start sell symmetrical version of fibre internet (1Gb Download/1Gb Upload)

They have done that for years - they're called leased lines. (And they have proper SLAs too).

But they won't sell 1G/1G symmetrical on PON FTTP: firstly because Openreach don't sell that, and secondly because anything Openreach sell to BT they have to sell to all other communication providers.

It all sounds such a mess

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:
BT (Business) is going to start sell symmetrical version of fibre internet (1Gb Download/1Gb Upload)
EE (Consumer) is going to keep on sell asymmetrical version of fibre internet (1Gb Download/100Mb Upload)


Only possible if the network provider they use supports it. I don't see BT (Business) using Cityfibre or nexfibre, unless you are talking about leased lines which is a very different price and uses different infrastructure.

The upload thing on with Openreach is a choice. That hardware could tomorrow morning with just a simple change to profile could make all Openreach connects symmetircal ie 1Gb Down/1Gb Up. FTTP from both Openreach and Cityfibre at worse is GPon or XGS-Pos's.

So BT will be using Openreach with GPon and using a 1 Gb Download/1Gb upload profile. They "BT" have no need to use likes of Cityfibre to give such service as own network Openreach could do it.

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:

The upload thing on with Openreach is a choice. That hardware could tomorrow morning with just a simple change to profile could make all Openreach connects symmetircal ie 1Gb Down/1Gb Up. FTTP from both Openreach and Cityfibre at worse is GPon or XGS-Pos's.

So BT will be using Openreach with GPon and using a 1 Gb Download/1Gb upload profile. They "BT" have no need to use likes of Cityfibre to give such service as own network Openreach could do it.

Openreach use GPON standard kit, both in the exchange and at the customers property which I though limited total downloads to 2.5Gb/s and total uploads to 1.25Gb/s across the entire PON which is typically a total of 30 properties. Are you saying that this could be changed with a simply reconfiguration at the OLT end?

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:

So BT will be using Openreach with GPon and using a 1 Gb Download/1Gb upload profile. They "BT" have no need to use likes of Cityfibre to give such service as own network Openreach could do it.

Whilst the GPON hardware can do the service, if Openreach was to configure a 1G/1G service they only sold to BT Retail, then Ofcom would come down on them like a tonne of bricks given the undertakings already signed. Openreach products need to be available to all companies using the Openreach platform, (BT Retail, Sky, TalkTalk etc). Openreach may be testing/trialing 1G/1G but they don't yet have a released product on the FTTP/GPON platform.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Openreach use GPON standard kit, both in the exchange and at the customers property which I though limited total downloads to 2.5Gb/s and total uploads to 1.25Gb/s across the entire PON which is typically a total of 30 properties. Are you saying that this could be changed with a simply reconfiguration at the OLT end?

You can sell 1G/1G services on the 2.5/1.25 platform, but your customers will have higher contention. Some of the alt-nets are doing this, others are installing XGSPON which increases the bandwidth in both directions. Cityfibre committed to upgrading their early installs to XGSPON.

The main question is WHY isn't Openreach moving to XGSPON now, but still dragging heels.

Openreach will *never* sell symmetric FTTP. The problem is, EAD (Ethernet Access Direct) is a thing that exists, and OR have a huge markup on this product. Anyone waiting for "1Gbps up" will be waiting a very long time.

In reply to a post by gorebrush:

Openreach will *never* sell symmetric FTTP.

Agreed so lets hope that the likes of nexfibre or one of the Alt Nets are competing in towns with only Openreach FTTP so that OR get limited customers until they rethink this.

If they lost even 5% of their customers to an altnet because of this, they won't lose any sleep over it.

You have to remember that Openreach's customer base is the whole UK, which is populated mostly by "normal" people who are not members of this forum, are not computer experts, and don't care the slightest about upload speeds. If they can browse the web and stream Netflix reliably, they are happy.

In the long term, Openreach's FTTP customer base are their existing customers naturally moving off ADSL/FTTC and onto FTTP.

The small number of people who demand high upload speeds are typically also those who make very high use of their connection, and hence cost more to service. Openreach-based ISPs will be happy not to have them on their own networks, and will be happy that their competitors are saddled with them.

All in all, you might not like it but it makes perfect commercial sense for Openreach *not* to offer symmetric upload speeds on residential connections. Virgin too for that matter. The fact that Virgin are deploying XGS-PON does not mean they'll choose to offer symmetric residential services over it.

I’m going to wait and see. I think nexfibre (the future of virgins network I gather) are talking symmetric. It’s the old DOCSIS virgin network that isn’t.

I'm still at the bus stop waiting... But in all seriousness I expect I will have 2 or 3 options within the year but right now nothing. Trooli have enabled half the street (using the openreach manhole at the end of my drive to do some installs!) but not my house and half the street. Giganet did half the estate and have now stopped (merger issues?). VM have sent surveyors taking photos of the street but whos when? Openreach no sign but who knows? Mobile signal is junk though and I don't think that will change (In the shadow of a hill - lucky to 3G).

One day I can say good bye to long line FTTC but for now I keep waiting. It will be like a bus though I'm sure. Giganet/Trooli where originally due a year ago so even more bus like!

I'm so disappointed in these companies saying that they're coming over to lay cable in my street in order not to lose out on their other competitors just for them to be reusing the telephone poles, so there's nothing for me to get excited about and I'll just have to stay here with my puny 63 mbps while trying to download 70GB+ dependencies for my coding projects. I have had so many issues with my current pole, one of them being corroded wire and another time having the wire completely damaged due to the weather. Yes, I didn't pay a single penny; however, I did have to endure having to remove part of my garage roof structure just so they can put ladders down to access the highest point on the wall of my house. I do not plan to remove the garage roof again just to install FTTP via a pole, despite a few houses down the street getting FTTP via micro-trenching for reasons that doesn't seem clear to me. It's not fair at all.

Could you run FTTP to the garage then connect to your garage with WiFi(point to point antennas?)?.

Nope, the highest point of the garage is too low that the wire from the pole may interfere with the trucks going past between the pole and house.

Alright for some, we are expecting OR FTTP but despite there being hardware in various places on view the live date keeps receding into the future.

70 years ago my dad had a similar issue getting power to his shed. He solved it by having another pole by the shed, then running the cable from the distribution pole to his shed pole at a suitable height. Wasn't very aesthetic, but then it was just a shed.

Round my way we have a choice of Openreach and shortly Lightning Fibre, Trooli and possibly Cityfibre, although the latter haven't confirmed they will be coming out as far as my area.