FTTC and FTTP

Does anyone keeping their FTTC (SoGEA) as a backup along with FTTP? How reliable is Openreach FTTP?

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Does anyone keeping their FTTC (SoGEA) as a backup along with FTTP? How reliable is Openreach FTTP?

FTTP will intrinsically be far more reliable than FTTC.

They both go back to the same place but FTTP has far less [censored] in the middle to (a) lose power (b) get hit by a vehicle (c) generally misbehave.

Therefore keeping FTTC as a backup for FTTP is a completely pointless exercise. Because it offers little to no diversity and far less resilience.

Fore backup you'd be better off looking at (a) another terrestrial fibre network (b) another medium such as 4G/5G or even dare I say something like Starlink.

We have copper for the phone, FTTP for t'internet, coppers going at end of contract. At times the phone is barely usable.

I did keep FTTC in parallel with FTTP for a year.

My problem was the other way round - I lost the FTTC for about 3 weeks due to slamming.

It is *possible* for FTTP to fail independently of FTTC - e.g. if the ONT dies - but this is very rare. FTTC is more likely to fail or degrade due to bad copper connections or more complex DSLAM circuitry in the cabinet. Or you may have a power cut at home.

So as others have said, if you want the maximum availability, find an independent backup: Virgin Media, an Altnet, 4G/5G, or Starlink. If you could live with tethering off your phone for a few days in emergency, do that.

Thanks all.

Yeah, 4G/5G is the only option backup if FTTP was down as I know FTTP will take longer to get back online than FTTC because of difference techology as for FTTP duct repair or clear will take longer for underground wayleave premission from council.

I don't know if I just got somewhat unlucky with my FTTP build, but in 2 years I've had 2 major issues where it has knocked our entire village of 30-40 odd houses offline for over a week.

The FTTP line follows the same route as the FTTC line to the FTTC cabinet, however in 2 stretches they installed poles for the FTTP instead of using the ducting all the way like the FTTC. I guess it was at capacity or blocked. The FTTP line then zig zags across each side of the road several times.

The first time, a car hit the pole and knocked it out. The 2nd time apparently rats chewed the line. Although you'd get the same even if that was the route of the FTTC.

I don't know if it's standard practice or technical reasons, but they used the same cable underground, then up overhead instead of having each section isolation with a track node on the pole where it exits the ground. That then meant when the cable was damaged, they had to organise traffic management etc instead of just being able to replace the underground part. That then meant it took ages to get fixed. There's track nodes there, just they are 1 pole further along, after it's hopped the road from underground.

I do wonder if there's an economic point where OR will redesign a portion of the network to save future costs, but who knows.

Edited by zebb_edi (Thu 02-Jan-25 10:15:38)

NO.

FTTP should be way more relaible and is now mature. I had one four hour outage - power cut but could not be bothered to move it to the battery back supply I have for the short time.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

as for FTTP duct repair or clear will take longer for underground wayleave premission from council.

Unless your FTTC and FTTP go through the same ducts, as is often the case.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

I know FTTP will take longer to get back online than FTTC

I don't think anybody has said this, and there's no reason why it should.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Yeah, 4G/5G is the only option backup if FTTP was down as I know FTTP will take longer to get back online than FTTC because of difference techology as for FTTP duct repair or clear will take longer for underground wayleave premission from council.

No, once built, wayleaves are in place, no need to get them again for repairs.

A failure and repair is just that, restoring something approved that has stopped working.