no 1600Mb option?

Hi quick question..
I have fftp @900Mb/sec
have completed some upgrades at home, just wondering about the costs involved of getting 1.6Gb/sec

it seems that that isn't an option for me..
The OpenReach site confirms availability, but sky/ee don't show or allow me to upgrade.

Is this a commercial decision, i.e. 1 customer using almost double bandwidth, rather than two customers.. so more money..
It cant be ports on the line card, they don't use additional ports to up the speed on an existing FTTP connection..
Portadown exchange...

I thought EE used different backhaul from the OLT (compared to the other speeds options they offer) for providing the 1.6Gbps service.

You may need to call them to check as I thought someone said it was a bit of a faff when ordering.

OK.. so they may have no capacity at the other provider and need to migrate a cable so as not to use Openreach.
....

ISTR they have no upgrade path to 1.6Gb/s , new customer orders only. May need to cease and re provide.

In reply to a post by dieselfreakk:

OK.. so they may have no capacity at the other provider and need to migrate a cable so as not to use Openreach.
....

Rather than getting bogged down by the detail give EE a call and see if they can recommend a path where you go from what you have to 1.6Gbps, as witchunt says it may be a cease and re-provide. I remember something about the 1.6Gbps orders needing to be placed on a different system than usual so if you are currently on EE your service may need to be cancelled and a new order placed on the other system.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

In reply to a post by dieselfreakk:

OK.. so they may have no capacity at the other provider and need to migrate a cable so as not to use Openreach.
....

Rather than getting bogged down by the detail give EE a call and see if they can recommend a path where you go from what you have to 1.6Gbps, as witchunt says it may be a cease and re-provide. I remember something about the 1.6Gbps orders needing to be placed on a different system than usual so if you are currently on EE your service may need to be cancelled and a new order placed on the other system.

yeah the 1.6gbs package needs to thru a different system with ee.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

ISTR they have no upgrade path to 1.6Gb/s , new customer orders only. May need to cease and re provide.

That was the case for someone on Vodafone: long story over at ispreview. https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/i-have-star...

In reply to a post by dieselfreakk:

Is this a commercial decision, i.e. 1 customer using almost double bandwidth, rather than two customers.. so more money..

A 1.6Gbps customer on average uses probably no more than one on 900Mbps. Got this from altnets before (all unattributable though)
I think the example was 500 vs 1G so not sure if there's some skew on 1.6Gbps being gamers or something but I doubt that has anything to do with itas they could price is how they want.

seb

Edited by seb (Wed 04-Mar-26 14:04:50)

Ok... I was on with EE, and they have told me "that is all that is available for me to order sir."

I have now begun to move to Virgin Media, which of course I could call a halt to if EE gave me the 1.6Gbps option as.. I'd rather stick with what I know.

as with VM, the fact that I can't directly plug into an ONT on Gig1 (Gig2 is not available at my home), additionally the VM router it seems doesn't offer a modem mode, so i'd be force to use double NAT.

Is anyone using a replacement (for the Hub5) device that can give me a modem type connection via GIG1?

@dieselfreakk,

I am with VM on Gig1 and have a Hub 4 that has a modem mode (which I don't use for various reasons). You should be able to ask VM for a Hub 4. Call them and actually speak to an agent and tell you would like to have a Hub 4 and NOT Hub 5. If Gig2 becomes available in your area and you want to upgrade then you might have to accept a Hub 5.

HTH,

In reply to a post by dieselfreakk:

<snip> (Gig2 is not available at my home), additionally the VM router it seems doesn't offer a modem mode, so i'd be force to use double NAT.

Is anyone using a replacement (for the Hub5) device that can give me a modem type connection via GIG1?

The lack of 2Gb would suggest you are not in a Nexfibre area, but will be served by cable, either HFC or the hybrid RFoG. Both of these for 1Gb will get a Hub 4 or Hub 5 (not to be confused with the FTTP Hub 5X), so modem mode is available.
I would rather have the Hub 5 as the Hub 4 is the only VM Hub with a fan, and as such, can have heat issues with dust buildup inside.

In reply to a post by dieselfreakk:

I have now begun to move to Virgin Media

For clarity, are you saying you're moving from Openreach provided 1Gbps to Virgin Media 1Gbps service just because you can't get 1.6Gbps via Openreach? if you are I think its a bad idea, for one contention on VM will be a lot worse than Openreach if no Nexfibre and you will soon regret it.

Oh.. now that i didn't know.
is this something well known?
they seem to talk up this guarantee on Wifi speed, which is of no interest to me.
What speeds are typically seen using 2.5G/10G kit in the home?

In reply to a post by dieselfreakk:

What speeds are typically seen using 2.5G/10G kit in the home?

The 2.5 or 10G LAN is only relevant to your in-house connectivity, once you go beyond that you're limited by the 1Gbps service provided by the ISP, its not just about speed, depending on what your doing latency could be a factor.

The LAN vs WAN part i understand, however i don't want to "upgrade" to 1.1Gpbs and then get 600Mbps
I understood that there was a 2.5G port on the Hub5.
Would i ever see 1.1Gbps?
Is the latency very high or spiky?

If you use the 1Gb port on the Hub 5, you will get around 940 Mb due to TCP overheads. If you want the full 1.1Gb, then you need to use the 2.5Gb port of the Hub 5. Note the Hub 4 only has 1Gb ports but still may be supplied with the 1Gb Tier.
If you do use the 2.5Gb port, then you will need a 2.5Gb switch unless you are only using a single PC with a 2.5Gb NIC. The switch should be managed as there are reports than you need to disable EEE to avoid problems.
As for contention, that's an area issue, and IMHO, not very common. I have had VM a long time, on and off, and never had any issues with the broadband supply. In any case, you have a 14 day cooling off period to test your incoming circuit.
As an aside, the Hub 5 has the 2.5Gb port, it's the (Nexfibre) Hub 5X that has the 10Gb port.

Edited by Adduxi (Thu 05-Mar-26 10:41:22)

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

if you are I think its a bad idea, for one contention on VM will be a lot worse than Openreach if no Nexfibre and you will soon regret it.

This isn't a national situaation. I'm on VM Coax in the Surrey/Hampshire border area and we don't have any contention issues. Coax cable isn't drastically different to PON in how the medium is shared, and it is quite easy to have saturation on the Openreach GPON network (maxing at 1.6 Gbps) which is why Alt Nets have deployed XGS-PON of course.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

This isn't a national situation. I'm on VM Coax in the Surrey/Hampshire border area and we don't have any contention issues. Coax cable isn't drastically different to PON in how the medium is shared, and it is quite easy to have saturation on the Openreach GPON network (maxing at 1.6 Gbps) which is why Alt Nets have deployed XGS-PON of course.

Answer me honestly James, would you switch from 1Gbps Openreach FTTP to 1Gbps VM Coax if you had both options?

I am on the gig1 tier with VM and using a hub 5.

I have my PC attached via ethernet to the 2.5Gbps port and receive 1122 Mbps to the hub and consitently achieve a speed of 1130Mbps to my PC without any slowdown/dropouts.

If you, or anybody in your house has an O2 sim then if you take out the M500 tier (516Mbps speed) then it's automatically upgraded to the gig1 tier.

I can't answer as per BT as the highest OR speed I have available at my address is 32-36Mbps download and 8-9 Mbps upload.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

if you are I think its a bad idea, for one contention on VM will be a lot worse than Openreach if no Nexfibre and you will soon regret it.

This isn't a national situaation. I'm on VM Coax in the Surrey/Hampshire border area and we don't have any contention issues. Coax cable isn't drastically different to PON in how the medium is shared, and it is quite easy to have saturation on the Openreach GPON network (maxing at 1.6 Gbps) which is why Alt Nets have deployed XGS-PON of course.

Also XGS-pon allows a higher split ratio.... 64(upto 128) compared to 32(upto 64) for gpon which makes it marginally cheaper for the wholesale operator

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Answer me honestly James, would you switch from 1Gbps Openreach FTTP to 1Gbps VM Coax if you had both options?

No, as VM is about 4 times the price. But around here, as I cannot get any FTTP, I would be happy with 1Gbps VM coax, its 1130 download and 110 upload. Like the other poster, my only other option is openreach VDSL at about 40 down and 2 up. The problem is block of flats, no wayleave consent and unresponsive landlord, as there is an alt-net in the road.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 06-Mar-26 19:02:21)

In reply to a post by Taras:

Also XGS-pon allows a higher split ratio.... 64(upto 128) compared to 32(upto 64) for gpon which makes it marginally cheaper for the wholesale operator

That should help reduce costs, explains more how YouFibre can offer their expensive 8 Gbit service.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Taras:

Also XGS-pon allows a higher split ratio.... 64(upto 128) compared to 32(upto 64) for gpon which makes it marginally cheaper for the wholesale operator

That should help reduce costs, explains more how YouFibre can offer their expensive 8 Gbit service.

it only marginally makes it cheaper but with altnets every penny counts

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Taras:

Also XGS-pon allows a higher split ratio.... 64(upto 128) compared to 32(upto 64) for gpon which makes it marginally cheaper for the wholesale operator

That should help reduce costs, explains more how YouFibre can offer their expensive 8 Gbit service.

CityFibre offer 2/1 on GPON. It's about take up and usage. Most people are light users. Take up of very high tiers is pretty low. End up on a PON across the ISPs with two heavy top tier users whether YF 8000, CityFibre 2000/1000 or Openreach 1800 and fun times ahead. Main thing preventing selling higher tiers would be the Ofcom requirements on advertising. In France for example where there are no such regulations services are cheap, fast for peak speeds but it can be a very different story for quality, due both to PON and backhaul congestion.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

CityFibre offer 2/1 on GPON. It's about take up and usage. Most people are light users. Take up of very high tiers is pretty low. End up on a PON across the ISPs with two heavy top tier users whether YF 8000, CityFibre 2000/1000 or Openreach 1800 and fun times ahead. Main thing preventing selling higher tiers would be the Ofcom requirements on advertising. In France for example where there are no such regulations services are cheap, fast for peak speeds but it can be a very different story for quality, due both to PON and backhaul congestion.

That sounds like the days of DOCSIS 1.1 with over use segments in student towns... interesting the ofcom requirements on advertising are stalling faster speeds; I assumed simply the UK price. Do French telcos not charge high price for high speeds?

Not really. Firstly it's really hard to saturate a 2/8gig connection for extended periods of time. Even the most hardcore downloaders would struggle to do that, you'd be running out of space to store the files very quickly, unless you literally are just running speed tests over and over. Arguably a bit easier to do on the upstream with backups I suppose, but that's still 10TB/day to upload at 1gig sustained.

But even assuming that, the OLT has quality of service configurations. It'll depend on the exact config, but if you got eg 2 users on openreach 1800 hammering it with another 20 users, it'd throttle back those two users to allow the others a 'fair shot' at the segment. It doesn't just start dropping packets etc, it will attempt to throttle users.

I think we at the point now speeds are fast enough for 99% of consumer use. At least for downloading.

There is a few people of course who will always want more and would buy 50GPON if available, but we can see with how congestion has eased of so much on VM DOCSIS 3.1 that once gigabit speeds are there, the usage stops going up with the speed.

I have experienced VM on DOCSIS 1.1/2.0/3.0 and 3.1. All of them had congestion affecting throughput except 3.1. At 3.0 throughput did at least start to be noticeably higher, but also at peak could drop off a lot. 3.1 stopped all that, and the 18 months I was on VM DOCSIS 3.1 gig1 service it was really good.

I left it for similar reasons to what you said would make you choose PON, the end of contract pricing, and retentions basically not giving a damn.

I would have honestly chose to stay with VM over moving to CityFibre if they kept my original price.

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

Not really. Firstly it's really hard to saturate a 2/8gig connection for extended periods of time. Even the most hardcore downloaders would struggle to do that, you'd be running out of space to store the files very quickly, unless you literally are just running speed tests over and over. Arguably a bit easier to do on the upstream with backups I suppose, but that's still 10TB/day to upload at 1gig sustained.

But even assuming that, the OLT has quality of service configurations. It'll depend on the exact config, but if you got eg 2 users on openreach 1800 hammering it with another 20 users, it'd throttle back those two users to allow the others a 'fair shot' at the segment. It doesn't just start dropping packets etc, it will attempt to throttle users.

Not sure exactly what you're disagreeing with

Seeing torrents will happily chew as much upload as it's allowed to. Usenet binaries will saturate downstream. I know of a couple of people that waste bandwidth like crazy but for sure hardly anyone maxes out a high bandwidth service but doesn't mean they can't cause congestion especially at peak times when the base load is higher.

On the OLTs they aren't that smart from the profiles I've seen. There's no concept of fairness the OLT services the unsolicited allocations for telephony, then everyone's committed information rate and usually everyone for themselves after that on best effort traffic up to their peak rate. People with many flows, for examine from a P2P app or high connection Usenet service, usually crowd out people trying to use a single or a very few flows due to higher level protocol congestion management. Openreach publish their profiles, they're basic. Business services get a higher CIR. Other operator I'm aware of the leased line replacement PON services get the same CIR and PIR so the bandwidth is there if they wish to use it.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I have experienced VM on DOCSIS 1.1/2.0/3.0 and 3.1. All of them had congestion affecting throughput except 3.1. At 3.0 throughput did at least start to be noticeably higher, but also at peak could drop off a lot. 3.1 stopped all that, and the 18 months I was on VM DOCSIS 3.1 gig1 service it was really good.

Where I live I've had 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 but as I'm on a slower speed (cheaper) service, I still have only a 3.0 capable hub. I'm on the 350 / 30 service which is about the price the AltNet's around here charge for symmetric gigabit.

I saw Openreach in an underground chamber in the main road near me (outside a private school) fitting what looked like one of these. Maybe competition in 6 months if OR can solve the wayleave problem.
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/images/news/4440-fttp...