In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Born to be wild(ly off the mac!) 🙈 😝

puts on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB1D9wWxd2w

😂🙈🤭 sorry not sorry

Don't forget he's a wild pheasant, and just like a seagull, if his output misses our head that would be wild off the mark.

Time for my afternoon walk!

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Go walk round Salisbury, what an enormous amount of homes and businesses clearly haven’t taken up FTTP and will just sit tight until forced to do so.

Practically, how would you do this? I would like to know what the take-up of FTTP is in my area (2 altnets, no OR). Neither of the altnets publishes customer stats. I've tried walking around looking for CSP boxes, but there are so many problems with that: hedges, shrubs, garden plants & furniture, parked cars, bins can all conceal them. One I know for a fact is behind a side gate, so invisible from the road.. Quite a bit of my neighbourhood is served overhead, and sometimes two drop cables to the same house is a giveaway, but that aside, it's little better than guesswork.

Nonetheless I take your point about copper being around for many years yet. Quite a few (mostly older) people in my area are still on ADSL - I know several - and will likely stay that way until forced off. ADSL meets their needs for email and simple surfing, they don't like change, so they won't move voluntarily. That's why I thought OR would make more effort to complete areas so they can shut down our local exchange.

Doesn't it just need Openreach to make ADSL more expensive than ADSL2+? Those being the two underlying products in question. Or simply turn off pure ADSL at the same time as PSTN.

CPs will then automatically have to upgrade them to FTTC/VDSL2 or FTTP depending on which is available/cheapest from OR or an AltNet.

Edited by pluralist (Thu 14-Nov-24 17:44:17)

Oooh nasty 🤣

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Time for my afternoon walk!

Good thinking 😅😉

Practically, how would you do this?

I would look, albeit with eyes that possibly ‘see’ such stuff more readily than Joe Public.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Doesn't it just need Openreach to make ADSL more expensive than ADSL2+? Those being the two underlying products in question. Or simply turn off pure ADSL at the same time as PSTN.

CPs will then automatically have to upgrade them to FTTC/VDSL2 or FTTP depending on which is available/cheapest from OR or an AltNet.

Sorry, I wasn't distinguishing between ADSL and ADSL2+. It could be either they have. But since most of my village is around 5km from the exchange as OR's cables run, it would make precious little difference.

But these are regulated prices and products. I'm not an expert on any of this, but OR can only set their wholesale prices within levels prescribed by Ofcom. They can't just raise them on a whim. Similarly they can't just discontinue services because they're bored with them. Not everyone may be able to move to VDSL/FTTC if there are capacity issues at a cab, for example, and cabs aren't being upgraded any more.

Perhaps others who know more about this than I do can clarify.

From that, the question is whether or not FTTC is available in your village. Easily seen from the presence of Openreach FTTC cabinets.

(That hasn't been updated for years but as far as I know is safe. I've had no complaints by Norton or Malwarebytes about it having viewed the site a couple of times recently. Only my browser complained first time and I opted to continue).

The Huawei and ECI cabinets are the FTTC ones. Since that site ceased updating some mini-FTTC cabs have been bolted onto the sides of Openreach PCPs and/or (if I remember correctly), some Huawei cabs once the initial ones filled up.

If FTTC is there then if OR want to close the exchange they could simply upgrade ensure that all could get FTTC by adding cabs if needed. (They should be able to recover lots of redundant ones from FTTP areas).

If it isn't, basically the same. Install FTTP or convert to FTTC the same way.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Doesn't it just need Openreach to make ADSL more expensive than ADSL2+?

Technically, Openreach doesn't provide either ADSL or ADSL2+. BT Wholesale do, using their own DSLAMs hosted in the OR exchanges - as do various other operators like Talktalk, Sky etc.

These in turn buy the Metallic Path Facility (MPF) service from Openreach, which is just a copper local loop between the exchange and the premise. This is more generally known as Local Loop Unbundling (LLU).

So really, it's a question of Openreach increasing the price of the MPF service (which they'll be allowed to do once an exchange area becomes FTTP priority). And of course, BT Wholesale could at some point sunset their ADSL service, and the other operators could decide to remove their DSLAMs and MSANs.

If BT wants to exit the exchanges and stop paying the rental, then this will have to happen sooner or later, but there doesn't seem to be much of an urgent push yet: the original trial of ~100 exchange closures was reduced to just 3 or 5 (from memory). Apart from voice switchoff they'll also have to remove other things like leased line nodes, which could take years.

I think they're probably going to leave it to waste away naturally. In 10-15 years there may still be a few stragglers left on ADSL, but the numbers should be so small they can deal with them individually to "persuade" them to move. Similarly, the other operators will want to reduce their cost base over that period by removing their DSLAMs and MSANs, so have an incentive to migrate their own customers.

Over a similar time period, BT will be providing SOTAP for Analogue, using voice gateways in the exchange, to provide dialtone over copper to elderly people who want nothing more than to keep their existing voice phone. Since you won't be able to order this product for new provides or line takeovers - it's only for continuation of service to existing analogue phone customers - that problem will sort itself out naturally over time too.

There are a few places where FTTC performs worse than ADSL, due to the lengths of copper line, so those properties will have to be dealt with somehow - if they don't get FTTP then they may be offered 4G.

Edited by candlerb (Fri 15-Nov-24 10:57:12)