How reliable should FTTP be?

How reliable should an FTTP connection be? I see odd comments on here like "it's been rock solid", but I've had Swish Fibre for just over a year now, and I'm just getting over my third significant outage.

The first was a few months in: pretty much the whole Swish network went down at about 2am one morning. It came back on about 8.30am, but that was 6 hours downtime.

Then a couple of months ago my ONT (Swish use Adtran boxes) failed, and it took a day for Swish to come out and replace it, after I'd done the yes I have power cycled it, yes I have rebooted the router dance with support.

This morning about 1am the whole Swish network (it seems) went down again, and didn't come back on here until about 10:20am, so down for 9 hours this time. Swish's phones don't come on till 9am, and then their switchboard promptly jammed. For the whole duration of today's incident their support website showed working normally.

Is it just that Swish are rubbish, or don't have sufficient redundancy in their network, or am I being unreasonable? I went to fibre mostly because I wanted reliability, not speed, and I am somewhat disappointed so far. Losing 39 hours in a year is about 99.5% availability; not bad, I suppose, but I thought 99.9..% was achievable. At least it doesn't go down every time it rains, like my old copper line did.

Perhaps a touch subjective, but the reliability of a fibre network is less down to the technology and more down to the operational maturity and capability of the operators.

Some of the turkeys in the AltNet (and I hasten to add the EAD / DIA / leased line space) I space I wouldn't let run my kids kindergarten network 😅 Others are brilliant.

All in all the Openreach network probably sets a fairly good example of reliability for FTTP. When I was with them it was pretty much faultless for 2 years with Cerberus and even good old TallTalk the cheapskates with appalling customer service had a pretty reliable run.

YMMV. 😎

When OR FTTP was first installed in our village there where two outages within a few months, it appears this was due to faults in the build. Since then it has been working fine, and that includes our TalkTalk business connection. I do wonder if in years to come when it has become old and decrepit it will become just as problematical as copper.

I have had fibre from Zzoomm, since the middle of July and to be honest seemed to have had more problems than did with in the 9 years I was on FTTC with Plusnet. Saying that things have improved over the last couple of weeks. In theory Fibre should be more reliable, but it still relies on equipment at either end.

We will see how it goes until the end of my contract next year.

Openreach has its problems as well, I chat to someone in Coventry using Vodafone via Openreach, the problems they are having is incredible, once they come to the end of the contract they are getting off Openreach.

In reply to a post by burble:

When OR FTTP was first installed in our village there where two outages within a few months, it appears this was due to faults in the build. Since then it has been working fine, and that includes our TalkTalk business connection. I do wonder if in years to come when it has become old and decrepit it will become just as problematical as copper.

I'm similarly curious about what faults and issues may arise over time with FTTP - specifically thinking about the 'local' network rather than the backhaul.

I'd imagine Openreach will keep things working and maintained (more or less), but one can't help but wonder how gracefully some of the altnets will age.

Re copper being problematic - certainly for broadband yes, but I think in its mature final years, the PSTN ended up broadly being pretty good for voice. Hopefully, given that FTTP is built for data from the outset, it should be and hopefully remain pretty reliable.

My router was reporting something like 3 months up time before the last power cut (BT).

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Openreach has its problems as well, I chat to someone in Coventry using Vodafone via Openreach, the problems they are having is incredible, once they come to the end of the contract they are getting off Openreach.

Individual experiences here are pretty meaningless, unless you can get a statistically significant sample.

Overall, the "last mile" fault rates for FTTP are much lower than copper/FTTC, at least for Openreach. There's just very little to go wrong: splices are permanent, water can't get in, there are no active cabinets. Storms can still bring down overhead lines of course.

Problems with the ISP's network are something else. These are likely to be the same for both FTTC and FTTP customers of that ISP.

In the case of an Altnet (except for wholesale providers like Cityfibre), they are providing both the last-mile connectivity *and* the transit network. The reliability you get will be determined both by how well they lay fibre and how well they can run an IP transit network. As Pheasant says, many of them are clueless.

The 'whole' Swish network did not go down

Check my BQM.

I had one issue recently where my latency went crazy and a restart of the ONT fixed it but in the 6 mths+ that I have had it it has been 100% uptime for me.

In reply to a post by binary:

I'm similarly curious about what faults and issues may arise over time with FTTP - specifically thinking about the 'local' network rather than the backhaul.

I'd imagine Openreach will keep things working and maintained (more or less), but one can't help but wonder how gracefully some of the altnets will age.

Re copper being problematic - certainly for broadband yes, but I think in its mature final years, the PSTN ended up broadly being pretty good for voice. Hopefully, given that FTTP is built for data from the outset, it should be and hopefully remain pretty reliable.

Fibre itself should last for years, it don't rust or degrade for a start, well in theory it should not degrade, depends on what they used to cover the fibre itself. It should last longer than copper cables, and look how long some of them have been around. the main problem is someone cutting through it. The electronic part can be changed either end as technology gets better.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Individual experiences here are pretty meaningless, unless you can get a statistically significant sample.

Overall, the "last mile" fault rates for FTTP are much lower than copper/FTTC, at least for Openreach. There's just very little to go wrong: splices are permanent, water can't get in, there are no active cabinets. Storms can still bring down overhead lines of course.

Problems with the ISP's network are something else. These are likely to be the same for both FTTC and FTTP customers of that ISP.

In the case of an Altnet (except for wholesale providers like Cityfibre), they are providing both the last-mile connectivity *and* the transit network. The reliability you get will be determined both by how well they lay fibre and how well they can run an IP transit network. As Pheasant says, many of them are clueless.

just saying the Openreach can have problems with fibre as well and is not the best thing since slice bread which people seem to think it is.

When my fibre went belly up, it was the whole network in the city I live in, Zzoomm said it affected other providers as well. A fibre broke somewhere, and it meant all traffic had to go through one trunk. So while it did not fail completely, the speed at peak was worse than FTTC here. It seems as if Zzoomm uses a third party. since then, I have had slow-downs and a complete lack of broadband for a couple of hours once.

This fibre we were told and the people on here before i changed to zzoomm was supposed to be more reliable than FTTC. Sure, they mean as a whole, but that don't help the people who are having problems. But it puts people off and chatting in a group a few days ago, a few people who know about my problems and this lad in Coventry problems have decided not to bother changing to FTTP. One of them have just don't another contract for a FTTC, so she will not be bothering with FTTP for a couple of years at least.

My router says i have been connected to the internet for 12 Days 21 Hours 26 Minutes, the longest so far since I have been with them and the speed as well, so let's hope it stays like it, otherwise I will be going back to FTTC next year.

We've had Openreach Fibre since March 2022. We had one outage that knocked out the connections for the 10 homes in our small hamlet that lasted about 24 hours - unsure what the issue was. We have EE 5G where we are so tethered mobile during this time.

Other than that, it's been rock solid and always the stated speed.

Previously with copper, there were times when our connection would drop at least once a week (often more) due to the line length.

Crazy to think in the space of 2 years we've gone from having poor VDSL and mobile signal, to brilliant connectivity!

Rock solid fttp here in rural Norfolk for 3+ years now. Only one significant outage and that was down to fallen tree bringing down the cable from the exchange to the village so hardly openreachs fault. Fixed within 24 hours!
That is why in my opinion it's good to have the big players behind your network of choice as they have the manpower and resources to fix it quickly when it's goes pear shaped.
My connection was even done on New year's Day some years back, we got up about 8 ish and there were two vans in the drive with the pole to house part of the install already in place. They were being nice and not knocking too early to wake us!!! Mucho coffee and bikkies followed and the rest of the install was done within an hour.

Edited by threelegs (Wed 01-Nov-23 11:05:15)

I've had my BT FTTP for about a year now with no downtime. So no complaints from me on that front, nor any complaints about it's FTTC VDSL predecessor. As for my VM circuit, well that's a different matter .....

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

otherwise I will be going back to FTTC next year.

If you can.

My understanding of BT's "stop sell" program is that that option may not be available to you (but I'm happy to be corrected).

In reply to a post by smouty:

The 'whole' Swish network did not go down

Pleased you weren't affected. Yesterday afternoon the Swish service status webpage was showing "Degraded Performance" across the whole of their network, and at the time of writing this it still is. So I assumed it was a network-wide problem.

I guess at least part of the problem is that the outages are of a different kind. FTTP is much more binary than FTTC: when it's good it's very good, but when it's bad it's horrid. With FTTC I was at the end of a longish (800m) mixed Cu and Al cable to my cab., and the crimp joints were a perpetual source of noise (or so an OR engineer once told me). I never got much more than 30Mb/s from it, even when the sun shone. It would lose sync 2 or 3 times a day typically, which was very annoying if I was on a Zoom call at the time, which I often was. It would usually resync within a couple of minutes, so overall not much downtime. Life was a continual 3-cornered fight with my ISP, OR, and the DLM, which every few months would worry about the line's performance and start reducing the sync speed. When it got down to 15Mb/s or so I would have to phone my ISP, go through the ritual of connecting to the master socket test point (which never made any difference) before the ISP could be persuaded to pester OR about getting the DLM reset. I'm not sorry to be rid of all that. But long outages of hours were rare.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Individual experiences here are pretty meaningless, unless you can get a statistically significant sample.

Overall, the "last mile" fault rates for FTTP are much lower than copper/FTTC, at least for Openreach. There's just very little to go wrong: splices are permanent, water can't get in, there are no active cabinets. Storms can still bring down overhead lines of course.

Problems with the ISP's network are something else. These are likely to be the same for both FTTC and FTTP customers of that ISP.

In the case of an Altnet (except for wholesale providers like Cityfibre), they are providing both the last-mile connectivity *and* the transit network. The reliability you get will be determined both by how well they lay fibre and how well they can run an IP transit network. As Pheasant says, many of them are clueless.

just saying the Openreach can have problems with fibre as well and is not the best thing since slice bread which people seem to think it is.

When my fibre went belly up, it was the whole network in the city I live in, Zzoomm said it affected other providers as well. A fibre broke somewhere, and it meant all traffic had to go through one trunk. So while it did not fail completely, the speed at peak was worse than FTTC here. It seems as if Zzoomm uses a third party. since then, I have had slow-downs and a complete lack of broadband for a couple of hours once.

This fibre we were told and the people on here before i changed to zzoomm was supposed to be more reliable than FTTC. Sure, they mean as a whole, but that don't help the people who are having problems. But it puts people off and chatting in a group a few days ago, a few people who know about my problems and this lad in Coventry problems have decided not to bother changing to FTTP. One of them have just don't another contract for a FTTC, so she will not be bothering with FTTP for a couple of years at least.

My router says i have been connected to the internet for 12 Days 21 Hours 26 Minutes, the longest so far since I have been with them and the speed as well, so let's hope it stays like it, otherwise I will be going back to FTTC next year.

A classic example of how the internet allows misinformation to run riot.

In reply to a post by binary:

Re copper being problematic - certainly for broadband yes, but I think in its mature final years, the PSTN ended up broadly being pretty good for voice. Hopefully, given that FTTP is built for data from the outset, it should be and hopefully remain pretty reliable.

We still have copper for the landline, at times it can be dire due to crackling TTB say it's fine, but back when it carried our FTTC it plainly showed problems at times and TT would get OR out to fix it.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

This fibre we were told and the people on here before i changed to zzoomm was supposed to be more reliable than FTTC. Sure, they mean as a whole, but that don't help the people who are having problems. But it puts people off and chatting in a group a few days ago, a few people who know about my problems and this lad in Coventry problems have decided not to bother changing to FTTP. One of them have just don't another contract for a FTTC, so she will not be bothering with FTTP for a couple of years at least.

Quoting this as I'm responding to a couple of points here, though OP your issues are nothing to do with FTTP. An equipment failure and issues deeper into the network. FTTP can only, and does, improve reliability in the part where it replaces copper.

Your issues were nothing to do with FTTP. Had you been on FTTP, FTTC, copper or carrier pigeon you'd have experienced the same issues. What were the problems with the person in Coventry?

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

just saying the Openreach can have problems with fibre as well and is not the best thing since slice bread which people seem to think it is.

When my fibre went belly up, it was the whole network in the city I live in, Zzoomm said it affected other providers as well. A fibre broke somewhere, and it meant all traffic had to go through one trunk. So while it did not fail completely, the speed at peak was worse than FTTC here. It seems as if Zzoomm uses a third party. since then, I have had slow-downs and a complete lack of broadband for a couple of hours once.

This fibre we were told and the people on here before i changed to zzoomm was supposed to be more reliable than FTTC. Sure, they mean as a whole, but that don't help the people who are having problems. But it puts people off and chatting in a group a few days ago, a few people who know about my problems and this lad in Coventry problems have decided not to bother changing to FTTP. One of them have just don't another contract for a FTTC, so she will not be bothering with FTTP for a couple of years at least.

My router says i have been connected to the internet for 12 Days 21 Hours 26 Minutes, the longest so far since I have been with them and the speed as well, so let's hope it stays like it, otherwise I will be going back to FTTC next year.

Lets start by making it absolutely clear that the outage you suffered was an issue with backhaul.

When it is said that full fibre is more reliable than a copper service they are referring to the connection between the exchange and the customer, you an experienced person on this forum should known that. The fact you chose to jump off the Openreach network and go onto Zzoomm because of contract lengths is a reflection of you.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

In reply to a post by smouty:

The 'whole' Swish network did not go down

Pleased you weren't affected. Yesterday afternoon the Swish service status webpage was showing "Degraded Performance" across the whole of their network, and at the time of writing this it still is. So I assumed it was a network-wide problem.

I guess you didn't read the whole of the ticket?

[Identified] If you have been effected with no internet, please reboot your ONT and routers. This should resolve the issue. If you are still facing no internet after a reboot then please contact the customer care team.

As I said, I did have this issue a few days back and rebooted my ONT which did in fact resolve it.

This is the BQM from that day.

Degraded connection

Edited by smouty (Wed 01-Nov-23 14:51:09)

This thread seems to be conflating two things:

1. Reliability of fibre as a technology in general (compared to copper)
2. Quality of service from Altnets

Just because an Altnet uses fibre doesn't mean they are capable of delivering a good service.

You won't find Openreach asking huge swathes of their customer base to reboot their ONTs. That's because they run their network much better.

In reply to a post by smouty:

I guess you didn't read the whole of the ticket?

[Identified] If you have been effected with no internet, please reboot your ONT and routers. This should resolve the issue. If you are still facing no internet after a reboot then please contact the customer care team.

As I said, I did have this issue a few days back and rebooted my ONT which did in fact resolve it.

I guess that you didn't read my original post, that throughout the outage the Swish website was showing no faults? I power cycled my ONT and router at 7am when I first found it was down. (I have IoT devices running 24/7, and I can place the actual fault time as around 1am from when their updates stopped.) It made no difference at 7am, but the router reconnected without further intervention by me at around 10:20am. Whether or not the earlier reboots had anything to do with that I have no idea, but the ticket you quote didn't appear till several hours later.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

You won't find Openreach asking huge swathes of their customer base to reboot their ONTs. That's because they run their network much better.

but at significantly lower upload.

Lots of areas including my town have zero OR presence but two alt nets and VM coax.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

This thread seems to be conflating two things:

1. Reliability of fibre as a technology in general (compared to copper)
2. Quality of service from Altnets

Just because an Altnet uses fibre doesn't mean they are capable of delivering a good service.

I think you make an important point, and one I hadn't thought clearly enough about before.

For me, for the time being, it's academic. As I have lamented elsewhere, there is no sign of OR building here for the forseeable, if ever. Altnets or FTTC with all its weaknesses are the only choices I have.

But unless Swish, soon to be Cuckoo I understand (I've not heard anything official about that yet) pull their socks up, I can't see me staying with them if/when OR do eventually come.

Am also on Swish. To be honest I had no idea there was any issue until I saw this thread. I checked my router logs and can see nothing amiss. My BQM is also perfect save for the usual latency blip at 2:45am when my speed test runs (which was also fine). Have not any historical hardware or connection issues either, except for my supposedly static IP changing a couple of times (i.e. it's public but not really static).

In reply to a post by gkw:

Am also on Swish. To be honest I had no idea there was any issue until I saw this thread.

It was the same for me. My first step is to check my own equipment, which had been 'up' for 3-4 months and after that restart the ONT. If that don't work then I open a ticket which is what was suggested.

My assumption is there will be more lag between issues, them being reported by users and subsequent notification of issues due to the significantly smaller userbase over Openreach for example.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

You won't find Openreach asking huge swathes of their customer base to reboot their ONTs. That's because they run their network much better.

but at significantly lower upload.

Certainly. It's then a question of which is more important to you: fast uploads, or a reliable connection?

For those lucky enough to have a choice, they can weigh up these factors, along with others like price. If you can afford it, you can always take both.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

This thread seems to be conflating two things:

1. Reliability of fibre as a technology in general (compared to copper)
2. Quality of service from Altnets

Just because an Altnet uses fibre doesn't mean they are capable of delivering a good service.

You won't find Openreach asking huge swathes of their customer base to reboot their ONTs. That's because they run their network much better.

Openreach are the example of how reliable FTTP actually is as that's the only part they're involved in. Their customers may ask users to reboot their ONU if they've a fault and occasionally a swathe of customers after something like a fibre break in the backhaul and stuck PPP/IPoE sessions, or indeed ask them to reboot their modem or router if a copper service.

Apples and oranges comparing Openreach with a fully integrated provider.

FTTP is more reliable: fact. Proven across many countries, hundreds of millions of customers, and a number of years of experience. Every telco that's implemented it has seen savings on repair and maintenance costs. FTTP connected to a well built network should deliver very high reliability.

It's worth remembering that many altnet networks are under construction, not upgrade but construction, and that brings some inherent instability as well as potential architecture changes.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

You won't find Openreach asking huge swathes of their customer base to reboot their ONTs. That's because they run their network much better.

but at significantly lower upload.

Certainly. It's then a question of which is more important to you: fast uploads, or a reliable connection?

For those lucky enough to have a choice, they can weigh up these factors, along with others like price. If you can afford it, you can always take both.

If reliability is very important to you and you can afford it that's exactly what you should do. The connection to the OLT on both should be very solid, from there onwards it depends.

I've the main altnet connection which has actually been very reliable I might add, and an Openreach secondary that's used for a couple of things specifically and as a backup in case of failure of the main circuit.

I seem to have been fortunate with my altnet. The only outages have been planned works, which I was notified of, and a single unplanned downtime when one of the planned works overran.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

but at significantly lower upload.

Certainly. It's then a question of which is more important to you: fast uploads, or a reliable connection?

For those lucky enough to have a choice, they can weigh up these factors, along with others like price. If you can afford it, you can always take both.

If reliability is very important to you and you can afford it that's exactly what you should do. The connection to the OLT on both should be very solid, from there onwards it depends.

Alternatively it might be worth taking FTTP and 4G -- if you have two FTTP connections then there's a risk that the same event will take them both offline (for example, if someone runs a JCB through the duct). Obviously the 4G is slower, but better than nothing!

In reply to a post by smouty:

In reply to a post by gkw:

Am also on Swish. To be honest I had no idea there was any issue until I saw this thread.

It was the same for me.

And the same here. While Swish's recent outage appears to have affected customers throughout their network, there seem to be plenty of customers who weren't affected.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Quoting this as I'm responding to a couple of points here, though OP your issues are nothing to do with FTTP. An equipment failure and issues deeper into the network. FTTP can only, and does, improve reliability in the part where it replaces copper.

Your issues were nothing to do with FTTP. Had you been on FTTP, FTTC, copper or carrier pigeon you'd have experienced the same issues. What were the problems with the person in Coventry?

If i was still on FTTC, I would not have had the same issue,

As for the person in Coventry, from what I can understand is his ONT loses connection now and again and come up with the lost link light or what ever it is on Openreach ONTs. done it again last night when we were chatting, one minute he was there, the next gone. His wife was not happy either as she was watching something online. It reconnects after 10 or so minutes. He is waiting until the end of the contract and then seeing what is available, I think they have 2 or 3 options

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Lets start by making it absolutely clear that the outage you suffered was an issue with backhaul.

When it is said that full fibre is more reliable than a copper service they are referring to the connection between the exchange and the customer, you an experienced person on this forum should known that. The fact you chose to jump off the Openreach network and go onto Zzoomm because of contract lengths is a reflection of you.

According to Zzoomm it was a break in a fibre cable and then all the traffic was forced down another one, so we had congestion, in the daytime it was okish, but as soon as evening came and people started playing their games and doing their streaming, I was lucky to get out of single fingers, it was like going back to ADSL.

Fibre itself is more reliable than copper, as it don't get affected by water or interference or other things that affect Copper, but the way it is advertised is as if it is this magical thing where nothing can go wrong or and it adds pounds to the value of your house. Funny how they advertise it.


But I have had other small problems since I have been with zzoomm and other people, but as I said it seems to be ok at the moment and have been for a few days.

i jumped from Openreach for a few reasons, yes the 24 months contracts were annoying, but I could have gone to something like now broadband, 12-month contract, no fibre, but as I have said before, not bothered about speed.

The prices for FTTC were pretty high for most providers, for both FTTC and FTTP, I did not want to pay stupid prices for speeds I don't need. It was only Zzoomm sending me a leaflet for FTTP at £24, that made me decide to move, after all at some point I may have to move to FTTP, so I may as well get it done now.

The other thing is I don't like Openreach, never have,

We will see what happens, I am on a 12-month contract with 4 months gone already, let's see if they can keep their network working. I reliase that problems do happen, but it is how they handle that bothers me.

zzoomm seems to be expanding and going to more places, just hope they don't go crazy and go belly up.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Lets start by making it absolutely clear that the outage you suffered was an issue with backhaul.

When it is said that full fibre is more reliable than a copper service they are referring to the connection between the exchange and the customer, you an experienced person on this forum should known that. The fact you chose to jump off the Openreach network and go onto Zzoomm because of contract lengths is a reflection of you.

According to Zzoomm it was a break in a fibre cable and then all the traffic was forced down another one, so we had congestion, in the daytime it was okish, but as soon as evening came and people started playing their games and doing their streaming, I was lucky to get out of single fingers, it was like going back to ADSL.

Fibre itself is more reliable than copper, as it don't get affected by water or interference or other things that affect Copper, but the way it is advertised is as if it is this magical thing where nothing can go wrong or and it adds pounds to the value of your house. Funny how they advertise it.


But I have had other small problems since I have been with zzoomm and other people, but as I said it seems to be ok at the moment and have been for a few days.

i jumped from Openreach for a few reasons, yes the 24 months contracts were annoying, but I could have gone to something like now broadband, 12-month contract, no fibre, but as I have said before, not bothered about speed.

The prices for FTTC were pretty high for most providers, for both FTTC and FTTP, I did not want to pay stupid prices for speeds I don't need. It was only Zzoomm sending me a leaflet for FTTP at £24, that made me decide to move, after all at some point I may have to move to FTTP, so I may as well get it done now.

The other thing is I don't like Openreach, never have,

We will see what happens, I am on a 12-month contract with 4 months gone already, let's see if they can keep their network working. I reliase that problems do happen, but it is how they handle that bothers me.

zzoomm seems to be expanding and going to more places, just hope they don't go crazy and go belly up.

I would never have guessed

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

According to Zzoomm it was a break in a fibre cable and then all the traffic was forced down another one, so we had congestion

That means it was a fibre break in *their backhaul network*: it's nothing to do with the fibre between them and your home, since there's only one path there, with no alternative to switch over too.

*All* networks use fibre for backhaul. Coax backhaul links are long gone, as are microwave links (except perhaps for the odd sheep-farming island)

Therefore this isn't a copper versus fibre issue.

Fibre breaks do happen frequently, and backhaul networks need to be designed with sufficient redundancy to cope with these events. This episode simply shows that Zzoomm had built insufficient redundancy in their network, and/or had not implemented it or tested it properly. Basically, they skimped on the network to save money.

Once again, we are conflating two different things:

1. Fibre from ISP to home, compared to copper from ISP to home, as the "last mile" connectivity. Fibre is clearly superior here.

2. How well ISPs design, build and run their own networks, which carry all their aggregated customer traffic to the Internet. This varies between extremely good to total pants, even though the site-to-site links themselves are all fibre.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

If i was still on FTTC, I would not have had the same issue,

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

When my fibre went belly up, it was the whole network in the city I live in, Zzoomm said it affected other providers as well. A fibre broke somewhere, and it meant all traffic had to go through one trunk. So while it did not fail completely, the speed at peak was worse than FTTC here. It seems as if Zzoomm uses a third party. since then, I have had slow-downs and a complete lack of broadband for a couple of hours once.

If you were on an FTTC supplier using that same backhaul yes, you would have. Nothing to do with FTTC/P/carrier pigeon and everything to do with the choice of ISP.

Yes, Zzoomm use a third party for backhaul. Nearly every ISP does including Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone.

The person in Coventry sounds like they do actually have an issue with either fibre or ONU that needs addressing. More reliable and 100% reliable are quite different things and their supplier should be pushing Openreach to get the issue sorted: issue is on the supplier if they aren't.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i jumped from Openreach for a few reasons, yes the 24 months contracts were annoying, but I could have gone to something like now broadband, 12-month contract, no fibre, but as I have said before, not bothered about speed.

Now = Sky. Sky have quite a few exchanges that have no resilient backhaul at all, and others where a single break will trigger congestion. If Hereford's one of them a single fibre cable break and you're either degraded or offline. They also make extensive use of third party backhaul and could quite easily have been using the same cable that was cut.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Fri 03-Nov-23 14:37:49)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

That means it was a fibre break in *their backhaul network*: it's nothing to do with the fibre between them and your home, since there's only one path there, with no alternative to switch over too.

I never said it had anything to do with the fibre between them and my home.

*All* networks use fibre for backhaul. Coax backhaul links are long gone, as are microwave links (except perhaps for the odd sheep-farming island)

Therefore this isn't a copper versus fibre issue.

I do know this.

Fibre breaks do happen frequently, and backhaul networks need to be designed with sufficient redundancy to cope with these events. This episode simply shows that Zzoomm had built insufficient redundancy in their network, and/or had not implemented it or tested it properly. Basically, they skimped on the network to save money.

I know this as well, the problem is, Zzoomm like others are using a third party for their backhaul, who I don't know, but it was not only zzoomm customers that were affected.

Once again, we are conflating two different things:

1. Fibre from ISP to home, compared to copper from ISP to home, as the "last mile" connectivity. Fibre is clearly superior here.

2. How well ISPs design, build and run their own networks, which carry all their aggregated customer traffic to the Internet. This varies between extremely good to total pants, even though the site-to-site links themselves are all fibre.

Not conflicting anything, just saying that i have more problems since going fibre than I had with FTTC. When you go for fibre and get a speed that is slower than what you had on copper, then it does make you think if it was a good move. Granted, it was only for a couple of evenings, but still.

Fibre should be more superior, but it is also more fragile, looking at the fibre going from the pole to my house this morning and the way it was blowing, the copper cable was not moving that much. I just hope it is well and truly bolted to the pole, I know it is to the house. The problem is and this is not just zzoomm, is the way some of these network providers including Openreach is just chucking the fibre down, I have seen a few posts from different people about fibre just being left where it can get damaged. Granted, that is not about the reliability of fibre, just that it is easier to damage.
The copper cables from my house have been there for 50 years or more and yet still carried data and voice until it was cut off a few months ago.


We will wait and see if we have any more problems, so far been online for 15 Days, 5 Hours, that is a record since I have been on Zzoomm.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

If you were on an FTTC supplier using that same backhaul yes, you would have. Nothing to do with FTTC/P/carrier pigeon and everything to do with the choice of ISP.

If i was using a FTTC provider with the same backhaul, but I doubt Plusnet or Sky uses the same one, which one of them I would have been with if I stayed on FTTC.

Yes, Zzoomm use a third party for backhaul. Nearly every ISP does including Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone

.
I know they do, I don't know who Zzoomm uses, I tried a traceroute, but it comes back with very little.

The person in Coventry sounds like they do actually have an issue with either fibre or ONU that needs addressing. More reliable and 100% reliable are quite different things and their supplier should be pushing Openreach to get the issue sorted: issue is on the supplier if they aren't.

They are with vodafone, he said it is like swimming through treacle and to be honest I can understand that as I used to be with Vodafone a few years ago with mobile, like a lot of these large providers they read a script and won't deviate from it. He said something about CityFibre and also Virgin is there, but his Wife thinks about Virgin the same way I think about BT and Openreach. He said about overloading the ONT powerwise, he is an electrician or something like that, so he would know how to do that, they would have to replace it then . We will be group chatting again on Sunday.

Now = Sky. Sky have quite a few exchanges that have no resilient backhaul at all, and others where a single break will trigger congestion. If Hereford's one of them a single fibre cable break and you're either degraded or offline. They also make extensive use of third party backhaul and could quite easily have been using the same cable that was cut.

Now broadband was just a idea i had at the time as it was cheap, Plusnet would not offer me anything at a decent price without them wanting me to go into a 24-month contract, even FTTC. I was willing to go for an 18 month, I will never go for a 24-month contract on anything again. Plusnet kept trying to push me to FTTP and I did not want to go to FTTP, certainly not Openreach, so when ZZoomm sent me a leaflet saying £24.99 for a 500Mb/s connection I decided to go for it, but only because of the price, not the speed.
I said it before, I don't need super-duper speed, it has made little difference to me. The only difference I suppose is when re-downloading some games after my Windows machine decided to play silly fools and also downloading Windows again. A couple of days ago when I decided to update the MAc to the latest OS. But If i had FTTC i would just wait.
When this contract ends, if I stay with Zzoomm i will go go to a lower speed unless they give me a good offer, that is if I am still living here.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

According to Zzoomm it was a break in a fibre cable and then all the traffic was forced down another one, so we had congestion

That means it was a fibre break in *their backhaul network*: it's nothing to do with the fibre between them and your home, since there's only one path there, with no alternative to switch over too.

*All* networks use fibre for backhaul. Coax backhaul links are long gone, as are microwave links (except perhaps for the odd sheep-farming island)

Therefore this isn't a copper versus fibre issue.

Fibre breaks do happen frequently, and backhaul networks need to be designed with sufficient redundancy to cope with these events. This episode simply shows that Zzoomm had built insufficient redundancy in their network, and/or had not implemented it or tested it properly. Basically, they skimped on the network to save money.

Once again, we are conflating two different things:

1. Fibre from ISP to home, compared to copper from ISP to home, as the "last mile" connectivity. Fibre is clearly superior here.

2. How well ISPs design, build and run their own networks, which carry all their aggregated customer traffic to the Internet. This varies between extremely good to total pants, even though the site-to-site links themselves are all fibre.

If you are referring to the following: Here is some wholesale information:


"Some customers connections via the Full Fibre Heroes network in the Shrewsbury area may be experiencing a current outage due to a cut cable. Fibre Heroes have provided the latest below update on the current issues:

Our engineers have now identified the root cause of the issue in Shrewsbury and we have a 288F (fibre) cable and a 144F (fibre) cable partially severed in an Openreach joint box. This damage was caused by a contractor working on behalf of Openreach.

In order to repair the cable damage we need to replace a section of both the 288F cable and the 144F cable and this means we need to access Openreach joint chambers several hundred metres back on either side of the location of the cable damage. One of these Openreach joint chambers is located in the middle of the road near a traffic light junction, we’re talking to the local Council Highways team to request a permit for emergency works to shut down their traffic lights and set up some temporary traffic lights so our engineers can safely access and work in the Openreach joint chamber.

Our resolution work is dependent on obtaining the permit from the Highways team and we anticipate the duration of our works will be 24 hours due to the complexity of replacing and splicing in new lengths of 288F and 144F cables.

Further updates will be posted as soon as they are made available.

******Update*******

Fibre Heroes have advised they do have a lot of engineers working in the Shrewsbury area and we believe we have additional cable damage downstream of the location we resolved yesterday.

Our engineers will be working into this evening and tomorrow to get all affected customers back online.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused."

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I know they do, I don't know who Zzoomm uses, I tried a traceroute, but it comes back with very little.

I'm not going to bother with the rest. Just this quoted statement shows you've no idea what you're talking about.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I know they do, I don't know who Zzoomm uses, I tried a traceroute, but it comes back with very little.

Your own thread in 2021.
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/4690595-is-z...

This doesn't help with how your traffic from your home, and others in your town is connected back to Zzoomm's central data centres. The ASN and BGP stuff from that thread is about the connectivity from the data centres to the rest of the internet. Traceroute is a very basic tool, doesn't show you the path from your home to the data centres.

Zzoomm may not have their own data centres but rent space in a neutral exchange point, e.g. the various Telehouse options in London, or elsewhere such as Manchester.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 03-Nov-23 19:28:20)

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I know they do, I don't know who Zzoomm uses, I tried a traceroute, but it comes back with very little.

I'm not going to bother with the rest. Just this quoted statement shows you've no idea what you're talking about.

fine, be like that.
It was just an idea, as I heard that sometimes traceroute can show what third party is used. Not always.
We can't all be wizz with networks, like you think you are, or do you just think you are?

Just show what a nit you are, I used nit because if I used anything stronger i would be banned, and I don't want to be banned because of you.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Your own thread in 2021.
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/4690595-is-z...

This doesn't help with how your traffic from your home, and others in your town is connected back to Zzoomm's central data centres. The ASN and BGP stuff from that thread is about the connectivity from the data centres to the rest of the internet. Traceroute is a very basic tool, doesn't show you the path from your home to the data centres.

Zzoomm may not have their own data centres but rent space in a neutral exchange point, e.g. the various Telehouse options in London, or elsewhere such as Manchester.

I realise that traceroute is a basic tool, just worth a go.
I saw the RIPE database entry. At the end of the day, all I am bothered about is that it stays working, and at the moment that is what it is doing. Just hope it keeps doing it. They do seem to have more updates than what plusnet used to have, or they just tell us.

Had BT install my FTTP July 21 - to this day, I've not had 1 second of downtime.

I do get the odd PPP drop at 1am (due to balancing traffic usually) - These are rare

Thanks, this is the sort of response I was looking for - just to get a feel for other folks' experiences. I didn't want to start another holy war.

I'm beginning to think that altnets are cheap for a reason.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

Thanks, this is the sort of response I was looking for - just to get a feel for other folks' experiences. I didn't want to start another holy war.

I'm beginning to think that altnets are cheap for a reason.

Some certainly are. YouFibre have been great for me but no guarantee others haven't cut corners.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Not conflicting anything, just saying that i have more problems since going fibre than I had with FTTC.

No, you're mixing them up again.

What you've actually had is more problems since switching to *Zzoomm* than you had with your previous provider (who happened to use FTTC).

The problem is not with fibre, it's with Zzoomm. If Zzoomm had provided you a service over FTTC, it would have failed in the same way.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

Thanks, this is the sort of response I was looking for - just to get a feel for other folks' experiences. I didn't want to start another holy war.

I'm beginning to think that altnets are cheap for a reason.

At the other half house at the moment, and she uses Gigaclear and been with them for almost 18 months, and she has had no problems, well nothing to speak off. She is going to recontract, but at a lower speed.

I suppose new networks need time to iron out the wrinkles, mine have improved over the last couple of weeks, maybe they have sorted out the problems. Zzoomm is by all accounts upgrading their backhaul to Hereford, so that should help if there is a problem again.

At the end of the day, it depends on what you want, I was never bothered with speed, I changed as I have said before because of price, and they offered me a better deal with a shorter contract than other providers. Being a 12-month contract, it means I can dump them after 12 months if things are not good, with many providers being 18 months or more, you are stuck, plus you have to put up with the price increases.

I have not seen as many complaints on zzoomm's Facebook page, so I presume things have improved, for other people as well.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

No, you're mixing them up again.

What you've actually had is more problems since switching to *Zzoomm* than you had with your previous provider (who happened to use FTTC).

The problem is not with fibre, it's with Zzoomm. If Zzoomm had provided you a service over FTTC, it would have failed in the same way.

I may see it is Zzoomm having these problems and not the fibre itself, apart from someone breaking a fibre backhaul and yes I know that would have affected people on FTTC, but less so as FTTC is slower anyway. It is other people that may think FTTP is unreliable if they chat to other people who have been having problems with FTTP.

This lad I chat to in Coventry is so fed up with FTTP, he was looking at going back to FTTC, he knows it is not FTTP that is the problem, but it is an extra bit to go wrong and it is going wrong. We presume it is the ONT that have problems

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

This lad I chat to in Coventry is so fed up with FTTP, he was looking at going back to FTTC, he knows it is not FTTP that is the problem, but it is an extra bit to go wrong and it is going wrong. We presume it is the ONT that have problems

I'm not sure if it's fair to describe an ONT as "extra" -- FTTC requires a modem instead and that's more likely to go wrong than the ONT. While a number of ISPs integrate the modem into a router / WiFi access point combination, that doesn't change the fact that the modem is an extra component which could "go wrong".

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

This lad I chat to in Coventry is so fed up with FTTP, he was looking at going back to FTTC, he knows it is not FTTP that is the problem, but it is an extra bit to go wrong and it is going wrong. We presume it is the ONT that have problems

Here's a bit of homework for you, work out the different stages data goes through on it's journey via FTTC and FTTP.

In reply to a post by burble:

Here's a bit of homework for you, work out the different stages data goes through on it's journey via FTTC and FTTP.

It would be good to have this as a diagram, maybe Thinkbroadband could host on the main site. It would need to indicate the different networks, such as ISP->wholesale->last-mile->home for some, or ISP->home for others.

In reply to a post by behuk:

I'm not sure if it's fair to describe an ONT as "extra" -- FTTC requires a modem instead and that's more likely to go wrong than the ONT. While a number of ISPs integrate the modem into a router / WiFi access point combination, that doesn't change the fact that the modem is an extra component which could "go wrong".

UMM, I suppose when we first started on FTTc we had a modem and a router, and then they became combined. When ADSL first started, it was just a modem, I used a third computer with internet connection sharing to allow myself and my lodger at the time to get online at the same time.
I used a modem on FTTC for the last 2-3 months I was on FTTC.
But for many people, the ONT will be an extra.

In reply to a post by burble:

Here's a bit of homework for you, work out the different stages data goes through on it's journey via FTTC and FTTP.

As much as it may not seem like it, I do have a life, not much, but a bit of one.

Each altnet can do what they want, they don't often advertise how they are deploying though.

I would probably not want to use an altnet that deploys their OLTs in street cabinets if I had other options, give me a nice solid exchange building with lots of fibre already available to backhaul please, though the types of customers served are going to impact whether this is an option - the really rural operators probably don't have the luxury.

As far as I can tell, Lit Fibre use BT exchanges so I don't have to worry about power issues, cars knocking cabinets over, vandalism, hot weather causing equipment reboots etc. Cityfibre build their own "fibre exchanges" which are insulated and climate controlled shipping containers with multiple power feeds, security fencing, and not in a position where a car can wipe them out.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I would probably not want to use an altnet that deploys their OLTs in street cabinets if I had other options...

Which is precisely what Swish do. As I said, I don't have any choice about that currently, except to go back to my miserable FTTC line. Don't think it was a cab fault caused the last problem, though.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

Which is precisely what Swish do. As I said, I don't have any choice about that currently, except to go back to my miserable FTTC line. Don't think it was a cab fault caused the last problem, though.

Do they do this? I didn't think they used any Openreach equipment and I haven't seen any evidence of any new cabinets in my area.

To be fair to Swish, I have not had an issue with them and am happy with the service. Their Trustpilot reviews are pretty decent too. I had no complaints about by BT service either apart from the speed and I'm happy to see the back of PPPoE.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

How reliable should an FTTP connection be? I see odd comments on here like "it's been rock solid", but I've had Swish Fibre for just over a year now, and I'm just getting over my third significant outage.

What you're experiencing there is what is pretty typical from most altnets. They are rarely as stable as the Openreach style services - mostly because the latter is quite a mature setup and most altnets are still scrabbling around, building networks, learning etc.

People love to moan about Openreach & BT (sometimes quite rightly) but one of the reasons they're slower and more boring is that they've generally got better processes and network stability - I'm always very wary of altnets as our experience with several of them has proven they're not as robust. I'm sure in time it will change as they get consolidated into a couple of players, but for now... not gonna happen.

In reply to a post by BuckleZ:

Had BT install my FTTP July 21 - to this day, I've not had 1 second of downtime.

I do get the odd PPP drop at 1am (due to balancing traffic usually) - These are rare

So you have not had '1 second of downtime' but actually many more seconds. Because those drops will indeed be 'downtime' - whether you want to be selective about reality or not.

In reply to a post by therioman:

I'm always very wary of altnets as our experience with several of them has proven they're not as robust.

Depends if you have a choice. Around me its an Alt Net or Virgin Media no sign of OR FFTP and no announce plan.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

I'm beginning to think that altnets are cheap for a reason.

They're often cheap because they're desperately trying to build a customer base and one way to do that is to be low price as it gets the low price crowd to use them.

You can absolutely guarantee as they mature (or more realistically get consolidated) the prices will rise.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by therioman:

I'm always very wary of altnets as our experience with several of them has proven they're not as robust.

Depends if you have a choice. Around me its an Alt Net or Virgin Media no sign of OR FFTP and no announce plan.

Indeed - and I didn't say for a second that isn't the case - but it doesn't mean the altnet isn't more 'risky' (Although VM is also a bit of a 50/50 roll the dice experience generally)

In reply to a post by smouty:

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

Which is precisely what Swish do. As I said, I don't have any choice about that currently, except to go back to my miserable FTTC line. Don't think it was a cab fault caused the last problem, though.

Do they do this? I didn't think they used any Openreach equipment and I haven't seen any evidence of any new cabinets in my area.

To be fair to Swish, I have not had an issue with them and am happy with the service. Their Trustpilot reviews are pretty decent too. I had no complaints about by BT service either apart from the speed and I'm happy to see the back of PPPoE.

There won't be loads like with FTTC/VDSL services - there'll be the odd one - but they are likely to be off-street - if like other similar altnets - for example one around here owned by the same people as Swish have one outside a sports/leisure centre.

In reply to a post by smouty:

Do they do this? I didn't think they used any Openreach equipment and I haven't seen any evidence of any new cabinets in my area.

Yes they do. For example Haslemere and Farnham (although I can't find a Streetview shot of this one with the Swish sticker still on it).

In reply to a post by therioman:

Indeed - and I didn't say for a second that isn't the case - but it doesn't mean the altnet isn't more 'risky' (Although VM is also a bit of a 50/50 roll the dice experience generally)

Agreed, dpends on the persons needs. VM often works, but isn't great in areas with 33 year old cabling that is degrading (and they know this). The alt nets have a chance to gain customers in areas where OR decided 30 down and 2 Mbps up FTTC was "good" ...

In reply to a post by therioman:

What you're experiencing there is what is pretty typical from most altnets. They are rarely as stable as the Openreach style services - mostly because the latter is quite a mature setup and most altnets are still scrabbling around, building networks, learning etc.

People love to moan about Openreach & BT (sometimes quite rightly) but one of the reasons they're slower and more boring is that they've generally got better processes and network stability - I'm always very wary of altnets as our experience with several of them has proven they're not as robust. I'm sure in time it will change as they get consolidated into a couple of players, but for now... not gonna happen.

I doubt openreach fibre network is any better or worse than altnets, after all, as people keep saying here it is not the fibre that is the problem. even on Openreach network, people have problems. I had a problem a few years ago where only one Modem would sync confused openreach as they had no idea what the problem was. My iold ECI modem would not sync, or the router hub one from plusnet. they even sent me a Zyxel and that played up as well.
But that was the only main problem I had in the 9 years I was with plusnet, apart from a couple of slowdowns.


I am willing to give different things a try, after all I tried a wireless network at one point, still got the thing on my roof pointing towards our cathedral, if it had kept offering a decent service I would still be on it now maybe, but it was not cheap. £30 a month for 10Mb/s, but it was better than the awful 2.5Mb/s I had on ADSL., until they could not cope with the amount of customers. By the time my 2-year contract ended, we had FTTC available.

I am pleased there are Altnets around, it gives people more choice and by the seems of it they are taking customers away from Openreach, I doubt it will bother Openreach that much at the moment, but it still pleases me.

What needs to be done for a lot of these Altnets is better customer service and to keep their networks running. 18 days and 8 hours now since mine have disconnected, so that is pretty good and the last time it disconnected may have been a router thing, I noticed yesterday that my router was on auto update. See if it stays connected until the end of the month.

My other half have no problems with Gigaclear apart from their customer service is a bit iffy, but still mile better than BT and Talk Talk customer service which is appalling.

I wish altnets all the best, let's give people more choice

In reply to a post by therioman:

They're often cheap because they're desperately trying to build a customer base and one way to do that is to be low price as it gets the low price crowd to use them.

You can absolutely guarantee as they mature (or more realistically get consolidated) the prices will rise.

They got to compete, but also make a profit, so they can't go crazy with price rises, but maybe, just maybe, we are being ripped off by the other providers with their silly prices.

what is happening now is providers are forcing people to fibre, by telling lies saying that their phone line can't support FTTC, and they must change to fibre and then offer speeds about 100Mb.s for silly prices. If their line can;t support FTTc, then what the hell are they using now?

In reply to a post by gkw:

Yes they do. For example Haslemere and Farnham (although I can't find a Streetview shot of this one with the Swish sticker still on it).

That is the type of cabinet that Zzoomm has by our local Aldi on the cycle path.

I doubt openreach fibre network is any better or worse than altnets

It is better than many of the altnets. The fibre in the ground to your home is only a small part of the overall picture. If you had to deal with the altnets often (and I do), you'll find the provisioning, support, troubleshooting, order processes etc are often half baked. You'd also see if you looked at our monitoring screens that the Openreach circuits are far more robust than the majority of altnet ones (there are some outliers who deliver very robust service, but that isn't then norm). For a start, many of the altnets have very limited peering, transit etc to the outside world so issues with any of them tend to cause network issues for the altnet, whereas the more established ISPs typically (but again, there are exceptions) using Openreach have a more robust network in that sense too.

I am pleased there are Altnets around, it gives people more choice and by the seems of it they are taking customers away from Openreach, I doubt it will bother Openreach that much at the moment, but it still pleases me.

But in reality an awful lot of people have an altnet or nothing for a fibre connection - so they're not getting choice, they're getting a fake choice as the realistic choice is 'fibre from the altnet with the flaws' or 'not a fibre connection' - that isn't really a choice.

Openreach brings more choice of provider where variables like peering, transit, customer support etc can be the differentiators - an altnet typically brings zero choice in any of that and often an inferior overall service.

It isn't quite as much a win as it sounds - and the reality is (and we're seeing it already) the altnets can't compete and will get consolidated. The same happened in the cable days and we ended up with Virgin Media.

In reply to a post by therioman:

It is better than many of the altnets. The fibre in the ground to your home is only a small part of the overall picture. If you had to deal with the altnets often (and I do), you'll find the provisioning, support, troubleshooting, order processes etc are often half baked. You'd also see if you looked at our monitoring screens that the Openreach circuits are far more robust than the majority of altnet ones (there are some outliers who deliver very robust service, but that isn't then norm). For a start, many of the altnets have very limited peering, transit etc to the outside world so issues with any of them tend to cause network issues for the altnet, whereas the more established ISPs typically (but again, there are exceptions) using Openreach have a more robust network in that sense too.

Are you an openreach fanboy like a lot of them on ISPreview? You may be right, but a lot of these altnets are new, the networks are new, Openreach have been in the telecoms/broadband game for many years, so they should be better. Hopefully, Altnets will get better as they learn the problems and build better networks and get more reliable.,
I know I have complained about Zzoomm being a bit iffy reliability wise compared to my old FTTC, but I think things are improving, had no one moaning on faceache for nearly 2 weeks about disconnections or slow speed. Oh, we did have one, but they are expecting gigabit speeds over Wi-fi. Mine have been fine for over two weeks now.
I did not want to go to FTTP, I was fine with what I had. Openreach FTTP as well as Zzoomm is available here., so looking at other providers, they just tried to push me to FTTP and charging a higher price than I was paying. Plusnet who I was with kept pushing me to FTTP, I told them I did not want FTTP, I was fine with FTTC as long as they gave me a decent offer. they offered me FTTC at £28 a month or something like that, but wanted me to take out a 24-month contract. just shows that staying with a company for over 9 years mean nothing. I could have FTTP for £24, but around 74Mb/s.

I did look at Now broadband, because they offer FTTC for 12 months contract, but their prices were higher than they used to be. Zzoomm sent me a leaflet offering me 500Mb/s for £24 on a 12 month contract, so I thought if I am going to be pushed to FTTP, then I may as well go with zzoomm.

But in reality an awful lot of people have an altnet or nothing for a fibre connection - so they're not getting choice, they're getting a fake choice as the realistic choice is 'fibre from the altnet with the flaws' or 'not a fibre connection' - that isn't really a choice.

But an awful lot of people have had openreach and nothing else for many years, apart time they had some decent competition

Openreach brings more choice of provider where variables like peering, transit, customer support etc can be the differentiators - an altnet typically brings zero choice in any of that and often an inferior overall service.

Openreach may bring more providers, but it is still one company gaining the money and monopoly and that is the problem, Openreach have had the monopoly for far too long. It also still belongs to BT,
Some altnets have a choice of ISPs. The problem I found with ISPs on FTTC is that they were more or less all the same, while you may get different prices, the broadband was the same, even Talk Talk offered a pretty decent service on FTTC. It will be the same fir FTTP, there will be no difference between them, apart from prices and maybe some offering extras or pushing extras, something that BT seems to do.

Choice is great, don't get me wrong, but I think BT need to sell of Openreach.

It isn't quite as much a win as it sounds - and the reality is (and we're seeing it already) the altnets can't compete and will get consolidated. The same happened in the cable days and we ended up with Virgin Media.

It may happen, in fact I am sure it will happen, which is one of the reason I was a bit nervy of going for Zzoomm and another reason I was happy to stay on FTTC. We have to see what the market does, I noticed another zzoomm van up here last week a couple of doors away from me, so they seem to be doing better in my road at least than Openreach, so these people must be happy to stay on one network.

i tell you a something, I am not that bothered about broadband, to me, it is something that is needed these days because trying to live without it is a pain in the neck. I know it is possible, I know a couple that do, no broadband, no mobile phone, nothing high-tech at all, they still have a CRT TV, I did have to get another set top box for them not so long ago. they manage fine, but it has to be a pain in the neck, at the moment their bank like mine has a branch here, but if that goes I am not sure how they will cope. They don't use cards either.
sometimes I think it would be nice to live like that again, but I don't have the time to pop into a shop to pay bills and even that is getting more difficult.
Broadband for me is just another bill I would rather do without. never used to be, I used to enjoy using the internet and getting info, but with smartphones, I can do all that now.
the other problem is now for me is I have got a lot of smart devices and also my video entertainment is now via broadband.

Are you an openreach fanboy like a lot of them on ISPreview?

Sure, if your definition of 'fanboy' is 'able to see the pros and cons and has experience with both the good and bad'

You may be right, but a lot of these altnets are new, the networks are new, Openreach have been in the telecoms/broadband game for many years, so they should be better. Hopefully, Altnets will get better as they learn the problems and build better networks and get more reliable.,

Sure, I didn't say otherwise. Although actually what you'll see is they'll be acquired and merged into a much smaller (likely 1, 2 or possibly 3) providers which is what will actually solve the issue. Just like Virgin.

But an awful lot of people have had openreach and nothing else for many years, apart time they had some decent competition

Openeach may bring more providers, but it is still one company gaining the money and monopoly and that is the problem, Openreach have had the monopoly for far too long. It also still belongs to BT,

That argument only partially makes sense - because it literally is not one company 'gaining the money' as the amount you pay to your ISP is a lot more than the ISP pays to openreach. And your ISP can be any of a large number of companies. The endless gibbering about how they have this monopoly because they had the network first is only partially true today - sure, they do have the extensive ducts and poles network - this is available to everyone - via PIA - and a HUGE number of Altnets are using it - hell, even Virgin Media now uses that. Those Altnets are getting a massive cost advantage doing it because it hugely takes out the civil costs, so if anything, the 'monopoly' you talk of is the only thing that makes it possible for half of them to exist. They simply can't afford to do it by building new poles/ducts. It's far more complex than this very tired and outdated 'monopoly' argument.

Some altnets have a choice of ISPs. The problem I found with ISPs on FTTC is that they were more or less all the same, while you may get different prices, the broadband was the same, even Talk Talk offered a pretty decent service on FTTC. It will be the same for FTTP, there will be no difference between them, apart from prices and maybe some offering extras or pushing extras, something that BT seems to do.

They certainly are not 'more or less the same' - there are providers like A&A who are expensive relatively, but offer a wide range of additional features and services customers clearly like because they keep growing customer base despite the competition. Then there is the mass market types of TalkTalk who offer cheap broadband but you get fewer bells and whistles. It's a very competitive market with a lot of choice at every level.

Choice is great, don't get me wrong, but I think BT need to sell of Openreach.

Sure, please do explain how you intend to make that work from a financial perspective - as much as I wish it was a completely separate non-attached even with the legal separation and controls that exist today, the numbers won't work. Well, not unless you fancy paying a lot more. As much as it drives me nuts sometimes dealing with them, it's really not this simple.

It may happen, in fact I am sure it will happen,

There is no 'may' about it - it's already happening, with consolidation having long since started. Plenty of examples out there, and it is the only financially viable route - the exceptions might be someone like B4RN as they have a very different model, but it isn't nationally scalable.

i tell you a something, I am not that bothered about broadband

By definition my friend, you post on a broadband specific forum, you *ARE* bothered about broadband

In reply to a post by smouty:

Do they do this? I didn't think they used any Openreach equipment..

This is my Swish cab. It's just a few metres from my old, hated OR cab on the opposite corner of the junction; whether they use OR ducts for the backhaul I don't know. Round here Swish used a small amount of PIA and some OR poles, but mostly they dug trenches and installed Toby pots. From chats with the engineers when they were installing this cab, and subesquently confirmed by @Swish_fibre in a private conversation, I know that my OLT is in there.

In reply to a post by therioman:

Sure, if your definition of 'fanboy' is 'able to see the pros and cons and has experience with both the good and bad'

I can see the pros and cons, but i have noticed a few people, certainly those on ISP review, seem to want Alt nest to fail. I know some have shares in BT and maybe some work in BT or openreach, but not all.

Sure, I didn't say otherwise. Although actually what you'll see is they'll be acquired and merged into a much smaller (likely 1, 2 or possibly 3) providers which is what will actually solve the issue. Just like Virgin.

You mean fewer providers, I presume? We will see what happens.

That argument only partially makes sense - because it literally is not one company 'gaining the money' as the amount you pay to your ISP is a lot more than the ISP pays to openreach. And your ISP can be any of a large number of companies. The endless gibbering about how they have this monopoly because they had the network first is only partially true today - sure, they do have the extensive ducts and poles network - this is available to everyone - via PIA - and a HUGE number of Altnets are using it - hell, even Virgin Media now uses that. Those Altnets are getting a massive cost advantage doing it because it hugely takes out the civil costs, so if anything, the 'monopoly' you talk of is the only thing that makes it possible for half of them to exist. They simply can't afford to do it by building new poles/ducts. It's far more complex than this very tired and outdated 'monopoly' argument.

Oh come on, Openreach had the network cheap and did very little for years, only doing what they had to do to keep it from falling apart. Other countries had pure fibre for years and yet Openreach decided on a hybrid system, part fibre and part copper.
The only reason Openreach wants to change the phone system is because the old one is falling apart, and they can't get parts. I understand that many people don't use their home phones these days and I doubt many providers make a lot of money from a home p[hone these days., but for years BT/openreach had the monopoly on it.
so don't come out with this rubbish of feeling sorry for Openreach and BT.

Sure, altnets are using the poles and ducts, that is if they can get into the ducts in the first place, but that makes sense unless you want more digging or more poles?

I know Zzoomm dug a lot of their own ducts around here, the main one being on the cycle track.
We have paid for these ducts and poles anyway, with the amount of money BT have had from the public purse.

[quote]
They certainly are not 'more or less the same' - there are providers like A&A who are expensive relatively, but offer a wide range of additional features and services customers clearly like because they keep growing customer base despite the competition. Then there is the mass market types of TalkTalk who offer cheap broadband but you get fewer bells and whistles. It's a very competitive market with a lot of choice at every level.



But the service is the same more or less, you can add bells and whistles, but that is it. The main advantage with more expensive providers is customer service, but my cheap and cheerful at the time Plusnet service have been for the most part fine. The time when it did fail was nothing to do with plusnet, but the network provider, openreach. there have been times when it had gone a bit on the slow side, but few and far between. Would I have got a better service by paying a silly amount of money to A&A?
I love to support the smaller company, that is why I buy my coffee beans from two local companies, but sometimes you need to look at what you are getting for that money.
All I want is something to connect me to the internet, no bells and whistles, yes I had email from a provider years ago, but I learnt that was not a good idea. That was with BT when I decided to stick a lot of my eggs in one basket, including mobile phone. sometimes you have to try these things. Saying that, i did get a mobile phone sim from plusnet, but I was not tired into anything.

you say competitive, are you sure? It seems that a lot of the larger providers are following each others, prices now are more or less the same, and they are pushing people onto FTTP with higher prices than FTTC and yet we were told that FTTP is cheaper to run. they are giving people little choice in the matter. If i wanted to go back to Plusnet, they would not even offer me FTTC.

Sure, please do explain how you intend to make that work from a financial perspective - as much as I wish it was a completely separate non-attached even with the legal separation and controls that exist today, the numbers won't work. Well, not unless you fancy paying a lot more. As much as it drives me nuts sometimes dealing with them, it's really not this simple.

Openreach makes millions, so a company buying them up will make the same amount, or maybe put it under government control.

There is no 'may' about it - it's already happening, with consolidation having long since started. Plenty of examples out there, and it is the only financially viable route - the exceptions might be someone like B4RN as they have a very different model, but it isn't nationally scalable.

I suppose it is happening with some, as I said competition is good, but there have to be a balance. At the end of the day, none of us can look into the future and see what is going to happen, we will have to wait and see.
[quote
By definition my friend, you post on a broadband specific forum, you *ARE* bothered about broadband :)
[/quote]

I post on here, yes, but that is because i am using broadband, but if I could get away with not having it, I would, less money to spend.

I can see the pros and cons, but i have noticed a few people, certainly those on ISP review, seem to want Alt nest to fail. I know some have shares in BT and maybe some work in BT or openreach, but not all.

Want them to fail... no

Expect many to fail (or avoid failure by acquisition and mergers), absolutely)

You mean fewer providers, I presume? We will see what happens.

I did - it's already happening now, and it is the only realistic outcome. It is near on impossible to compete with the Virgins, Skys, TalkTalks and BTs of the world with multi-play services and buying, marketing power etc without economy of scale and it makes zero sense to have endless repetition in infrastructure, admin systems, staffing etc. Most of the altnets are VC funded, they don't want to run an ISP, they want to make money and get a nice return - they do that by selling, so it's exactly how it will go.

Oh come on, Openreach had the network cheap and did very little for years, only doing what they had to do to keep it from falling apart.

They didn't have 'the network' for years because - as part your other point, we didn't have a fibre network. I don't agree with all the decisions made, but FTTC/VDSL has filled a gap for many many years and still will for some time because national deployment of fibre is not a 5 minute job - so it had and has a role.

When you compare 'other countries' you're often not comparing like for like - often people quote countries with high fibre uptake but benefits like density and high rises, which are different to widely spread out rural setups. Indeed, go look at say America - they have the money, they could do it, but there is a WILD variation in availability and often a total lack of choice there. They don't have the widespread ISP choice we do - so for the downsides (and they do of course exist), we also have a much richer and wider choice of providers and that keeps competition strong and pricing down.

The only reason Openreach wants to change the phone system is because the old one is falling apart, and they can't get parts. I understand that many people don't use their home phones these days and I doubt many providers make a lot of money from a home p[hone these days., but for years BT/openreach had the monopoly on it.
so don't come out with this rubbish of feeling sorry for Openreach and BT.
[/quote]

That's not the only reason, and I don't feel 'sorry' for them - I just live in a realistic world where I understand commercials because I live them. Many things have changed - demand has changed, the cost of running the old phone networks has skyrocketed, more competition has arrived sure - that has helped too, no doubt, but again, like many of your points, it isn't some single cause and simple reason, it's a lot more nuanced and complex.

Sure, altnets are using the poles and ducts, that is if they can get into the ducts in the first place, but that makes sense unless you want more digging or more poles?

They can get in the ducts, and as I said, it's not just the 'altnets' - the Virgin Media's of the world are *ALSO* using PIA - without Openreach that wouldn't happen. So in a way, whether the result of regulation or otherwise, we have a wider range of options in part because we have Openreach. If Openreach was still BT in the private sense, with no sharing of the resources, you'd have less competition, fewer altnets etc - so in a way, what we've actually achieved (complete with flaws, which you will pretend I don't think exist, but I know they do) is more competition, more choice for consumers and lower pricing - for consumers and lowering the cost of entry for competitiors. It's not perfect, but it's not terrible either.

But the service is the same more or less, you can add bells and whistles, but that is it. The main advantage with more expensive providers is customer service, but my cheap and cheerful at the time Plusnet service have been for the most part fine.

Great, but that's not true - the only bit that is 'the same' is the raw speed from your home to the cabinet with VDSL. After that, the ISP can differentiate in many ways - allowances, priority, peering, transit, IPv4, Static IPs, IPv6, monitoring, equipment, routers, billing & pricing, resilience options like 4G etc, customer service location, technical know how, advanced services or features etc. There is a massive amount of variance available. If you just want a simple connection, sure the budget provider is just fine, and very few are 'bad' these days in that respect, but the reality is a huge amount is variable in the real world. Again, I monitor lines from many providers and I see differences in the performance and availability all the time - the most reliable bit is the premises > cabinet bit - most of the time - it's typically either 'fine' or 'persistently unreliable' with nothing inbetween.

Would I have got a better service by paying a silly amount of money to A&A?

Some argue yes - they're known for having a reputation in that sense. Is it fully deserved, personally I am not wholly convinced, but I am partially convinced they offer something extra, but what really demonstrates it is, they're selling the proposition to growing numbers of customers, so you have to be realistic to say somehow, what they offer appeals, and people believe they're offering sufficient extra to justify it.

Again, that's the point - we have rich competition, and the likes of Openreach ultimately enable that.

Conversely, let's say you live on a new build where Persimmon Homes exist and you move in there. Your choice is... FibreNest, FibreNest or Fibrenest. Want faster than 500 meg? Tough. Want v6, tough. Want static subnets for v4, no can do. Unhappy with customer service? Suck it up buttercup.

If however Openreach was there - along with the downsides, you could also choose Sky, idnet, Zen, A&A, whoever you like - and trust me, people *do* want choices and complaints about the lack of choice *despite having fibre* are relentless.

you say competitive, are you sure? It seems that a lot of the larger providers are following each others, prices now are more or less the same, and they are pushing people onto FTTP with higher prices than FTTC and yet we were told that FTTP is cheaper to run. they are giving people little choice in the matter. If i wanted to go back to Plusnet, they would not even offer me FTTC.

Everyone is being offered FTTP, pricing is incentivised (to ISPs) to push FTTP.

FTTC isn't available anymore for new supply because FTTC is PSTN Voice and VDSL, the replacement is SOGEA. Available where FTTP isn't available because the plan is ultimately to bin it - remember when you complained above about how other countries are just fibre without it - well we want to get there, and if we keep selling the interim products we don't get everyone to just fibre - so make up your mind - we either remove the old PSTN, ADSL, VDSL stuff when FTTP is available and eventually end up on FTTP for everyone or we don't - and if 40/10 FTTC Was fine for you, then 40/10 SOGEA exists, is normally a tad cheaper, and likewise 40/10 FTTP exists for about the same price from many providers.

... nested quotes trimmed ...

Openreach is regulated, legally separated and supervised already.

If you dig into the finances you'll find Openreach and BT are pretty dependent - good luck finding someone to take that on outside of BT with the liabilities it has.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Are you an openreach fanboy

What is the opposite of an Openreach fanboy? just asking for a friend in Hereford who absolutely hates Openreach although his preferred full fibre provider Zzoomm has proven to be less reliable than Openreach.

In reply to a post by therioman:

i tell you a something, I am not that bothered about broadband

By definition my friend, you post on a broadband specific forum, you *ARE* bothered about broadband

Quite - given Adrian's extensive posting history on here, it's a fairly ludicrous statement for him to make!

In reply to a post by therioman:

Want them to fail... no

Expect many to fail (or avoid failure by acquisition and mergers), absolutely)

As I said, we will see what happens in the future, I am just glad we have a bit more competition.

I did - it's already happening now, and it is the only realistic outcome. It is near on impossible to compete with the Virgins, Skys, TalkTalks and BTs of the world with multi-play services and buying, marketing power etc without economy of scale and it makes zero sense to have endless repetition in infrastructure, admin systems, staffing etc. Most of the altnets are VC funded, they don't want to run an ISP, they want to make money and get a nice return - they do that by selling, so it's exactly how it will go.

There are a lot of people that are not bothered with multiplay services, where you are stuck in some contract for months and then when you cancel you get email after email trying to get you onto another service. My next door neighbour have Sky and uses their broadband, but they seem to love paying sky-high prices for stuff they don't use. I don't know many people that have other services from the ISP, I realise that is only a small amount of people compared to the rest of the country. I know all about VC, they take the money, hate the things to be honest, but sadly they are needed to get these things up and running

They didn't have 'the network' for years because - as part your other point, we didn't have a fibre network. I don't agree with all the decisions made, but FTTC/VDSL has filled a gap for many many years and still will for some time because national deployment of fibre is not a 5 minute job - so it had and has a role.

Not fibre, but they have had the copper network for years and let a lot of it to rot for years with very little investment. the copper cable going from the pole to my house, was supposed to have been changed when I moved in, never happened, how it has lasted and carried the data for the last 20 years I don't know, must be down to luck.

When you compare 'other countries' you're often not comparing like for like - often people quote countries with high fibre uptake but benefits like density and high rises, which are different to widely spread out rural setups. Indeed, go look at say America - they have the money, they could do it, but there is a WILD variation in availability and often a total lack of choice there. They don't have the widespread ISP choice we do - so for the downsides (and they do of course exist), we also have a much richer and wider choice of providers and that keeps competition strong and pricing down.

America in some parts is as bad as the U.K, even in large cities. My cousin lives in L.A, or on the edge of it and her broadband until last year was awful.

But some European countries have had good broadband for years.

That's not the only reason, and I don't feel 'sorry' for them - I just live in a realistic world where I understand commercials because I live them. Many things have changed - demand has changed, the cost of running the old phone networks has skyrocketed, more competition has arrived sure - that has helped too, no doubt, but again, like many of your points, it isn't some single cause and simple reason, it's a lot more nuanced and complex.

I realise that demand has changed, and now doubt more competition have got Openreach to move their backside, it certainly seems like that here, before Zzoomm, Openreach seemed to be on a go slow, but as soon as Zzoomm came up here, Openreach was here a few weeks after. there are still some parts in the city that don't have Openreach FTTP and one part where a colleague live don't, and I am shocked as there are a lot of people there and must be a huge customer base. Maybe they think because is supposed to be a lot of poverty there, they will not get that many customers.

They can get in the ducts, and as I said, it's not just the 'altnets' - the Virgin Media's of the world are *ALSO* using PIA - without Openreach that wouldn't happen. So in a way, whether the result of regulation or otherwise, we have a wider range of options in part because we have Openreach. If Openreach was still BT in the private sense, with no sharing of the resources, you'd have less competition, fewer altnets etc - so in a way, what we've actually achieved (complete with flaws, which you will pretend I don't think exist, but I know they do) is more competition, more choice for consumers and lower pricing - for consumers and lowering the cost of entry for competitiors. It's not perfect, but it's not terrible either.

Chatting to a openreach chap months ago, this was before I had zoomm and they were digging up a duct as it had collapsed, and he said that there are a fair few of them like it around the city. Openreach is BT, there is not getting away from that, no matter how BT dress it up, just because they take the BT name from vans, don't mean it still don't belong to BT. The reason why BT/openreach had to give access to its poles and ducts is because of the monopoly it has or had. Now the same thing should happen with Kcom, they should be forced to share as well.

I know some people are getting fed up with the mess that is being made around the city, laying this fibre, while Zzoomm is coming to the end, it is not doing them any good making such a mess.

Again, as I said we will see what happens in the future, I don't think we will have another network here, there would be no call for it, shame in one way, because it is competition, but I can understand why others will not want to come here.

Great, but that's not true - the only bit that is 'the same' is the raw speed from your home to the cabinet with VDSL. After that, the ISP can differentiate in many ways - allowances, priority, peering, transit, IPv4, Static IPs, IPv6, monitoring, equipment, routers, billing & pricing, resilience options like 4G etc, customer service location, technical know how, advanced services or features etc. There is a massive amount of variance available. If you just want a simple connection, sure the budget provider is just fine, and very few are 'bad' these days in that respect, but the reality is a huge amount is variable in the real world. Again, I monitor lines from many providers and I see differences in the performance and availability all the time - the most reliable bit is the premises > cabinet bit - most of the time - it's typically either 'fine' or 'persistently unreliable' with nothing inbetween.

But the majority of people don't care about IPv6, 4, static IPs, what router they have or other stuff like it. What they care about is price, certainly the way things are now, and getting a decent speed, so they can do what they need. sure you have some that think they need gigabit speed and there are some may do.

Some argue yes - they're known for having a reputation in that sense. Is it fully deserved, personally I am not wholly convinced, but I am partially convinced they offer something extra, but what really demonstrates it is, they're selling the proposition to growing numbers of customers, so you have to be realistic to say somehow, what they offer appeals, and people believe they're offering sufficient extra to justify it.

Umm, I have never used them, so I don't know what they are like, but the price always put me off. I know some people on her use them, they must think it is worth paying the extra.

Conversely, let's say you live on a new build where Persimmon Homes exist and you move in there. Your choice is... FibreNest, FibreNest or Fibrenest. Want faster than 500 meg? Tough. Want v6, tough. Want static subnets for v4, no can do. Unhappy with customer service? Suck it up buttercup.

I think that is disgraceful, but there have been some housing associations that have done the same thing, someone I know that lived in Cambridge, moved into a flat run by a HA, and they had no choice but to use BT fibre, which then was a lot more expensive than what they were using before. The goverment should step in and stiop this sort of thing. she is marrid now and moved out of the flat, so can choose what ever provider she wants.

If however Openreach was there - along with the downsides, you could also choose Sky, idnet, Zen, A&A, whoever you like - and trust me, people *do* want choices and complaints about the lack of choice *despite having fibre* are relentless.

But it is the company that built the houses that is stopping Openreach going there, not sure how they can do that, but it seems like they are.

veryone is being offered FTTP, pricing is incentivised (to ISPs) to push FTTP.

FTTC isn't available anymore for new supply because FTTC is PSTN Voice and VDSL, the replacement is SOGEA. Available where FTTP isn't available because the plan is ultimately to bin it - remember when you complained above about how other countries are just fibre without it - well we want to get there, and if we keep selling the interim products we don't get everyone to just fibre - so make up your mind - we either remove the old PSTN, ADSL, VDSL stuff when FTTP is available and eventually end up on FTTP for everyone or we don't - and if 40/10 FTTC Was fine for you, then 40/10 SOGEA exists, is normally a tad cheaper, and likewise 40/10 FTTP exists for about the same price from many providers.

]

FTTC is still available here and in many places, if i went to Now broadband I can order FTTC, at the end of the day if the service is still available then people should be able to order it.
the price is the same if you go to the same speed as FTTC, but then people think what is the point of going though the hassle of getting FTTP, when they are not gaining?
One of the reason I did not want FTTP, even from Zzoom, the hassle of getting the thing installed, while the instalation itself was not too bad, it was a pain in getting the permission to get it installed, as I live in rented accomadation. some people can;t even get the permisson, there was somone on here not so long ago saying they know somone who can't. So how are thayt goig to get FTTP?

The Partner had FTTP for a around 18 months now, but it took some instaling, they had to get a more powerful drill and longer drill bit to go through the wwall and even then it took some doing. Saying thta it took a fiar buit to get though the wall of my living room and i live in a normal brick house.

Openreach is regulated, legally separated and supervised already.

they are suppose to be, but sometimes I do wonder.

If you dig into the finances you'll find Openreach and BT are pretty dependent - good luck finding someone to take that on outside of BT with the liabilities it has.

I know it is a bit late now since we do have more compitition, but I BT should nebver havebeen privitised in the first place.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

What is the opposite of an Openreach fanboy? just asking for a friend in Hereford who absolutely hates Openreach although his preferred full fibre provider Zzoomm has proven to be less reliable than Openreach.

I will try these things, just like I did when I went to wireless broadband, considering I did even want to go onto FTTP in the first place, It is a miracle I changed. Seems to fine now, so maybe a few gremlins in the works, lets hope so and when they do the new backhual that will make things more reliable.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

BT should nebver havebeen privitised in the first place.

Internet connectivity in the hands of the GPO? Doesn't bear even thinking about

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

In reply to a post by smouty:

Do they do this? I didn't think they used any Openreach equipment..

This is my Swish cab. It's just a few metres from my old, hated OR cab on the opposite corner of the junction; whether they use OR ducts for the backhaul I don't know. Round here Swish used a small amount of PIA and some OR poles, but mostly they dug trenches and installed Toby pots. From chats with the engineers when they were installing this cab, and subesquently confirmed by @Swish_fibre in a private conversation, I know that my OLT is in there.

I'll have to look out for one as I can't say I have noticed any new ones locally.
They pretty much dug up every road in the town, in fact there was still a road closed last week due to their install.

In reply to a post by smouty:

I'll have to look out for one as I can't say I have noticed any new ones locally.
They pretty much dug up every road in the town, in fact there was still a road closed last week due to their install.

This is the only Swish cab I know about my village, but I haven't searched behind every bush looking for others. I think it's just coincidence that it happens to be close to my old OR cab. As @therioman said, there won't be loads of them like FTTC cabs. Prob. the whole village comes into it.
They dug up pretty much everywhere here too - I would guesstimate 90-95%. My connection is actually one of the 5% that's PIA and pole.

In reply to a post by billford:

Internet connectivity in the hands of the GPO? Doesn't bear even thinking about

At least they would not have to pay shareholders and put more money into the network.

I saw Openreach sticking a CBT on a pole by our local co-op, I thought they had done all of this Estate

Zzoomm had more problems last night, it was OK here, well kind off, speed was a bit lower, they said

Engineering have advised us there is an issue being investigated, and it’s compounded by the latest Call of Duty update which many are doing.
Usually the update alone wouldn’t be a problem as the network can easily handle the capacity.
We’ll keep you updated.

The first thing they said was "we are here, apologies - been putting the kids to bed." LOL, so they must be working from home, but that seems to be the norm these days. At least they are there. I have been with providers that offer customer service between office hours only.

Hopefully when they get the backhaul sorted it will get better., at the end of the day I am looking at it this way now, if I get more than 36Mb/s I am quids in as that it will be more than I got for the same price with Plusnet.


Now I wait for the replies

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

BT should nebver havebeen privitised in the first place.

Internet connectivity in the hands of the GPO? Doesn't bear even thinking about

Thats you off the fanboy christmas list 🤣🤣🤣