In reply to a post by adebov:

In reply to a post by bruce007:

I think for Sky and BE, building out their own fibre network may be a future plan, but they can get in on reselling FTTx pretty quickly, while hopefully still using their existing backhauls (may have something to do with VirtualLLU).

Well BE have said their solution won't include their own local fibre loops, so they will (when they eventually get round to it) use Openreach infrastructure to get from home to exchange, before branching out onto their own networks (presumably using their existing backhaul).
Sky haven't really said much apart from putting up a web-page about a trial (then never bothering to update it, so it just gives details of exchanges 'coming soon in 2010').
However; they've also started a different trial (for three months, apparently) where they will be using BT ducts & poles, but using their own fibres (so I expect we'll never hear from them again ).

Either way, Sky and BE/O2 have dithered for so long (with both only just ready for localised trials) I fear they may be too late.
By the time either of them are actually ready to roll out, most of us who can get FTTC will be locked into 18 or 24 month contracts with BT (or 12 months contracts with resellers), so if they don't act fast their initial take-up will be quite slow as most of the Sky/BE/O2 exchanges will have already been enabled for BT FTTC so people will only be able to migrate to Sky/BE/O2 in dribs & drabs as their contracts expire.

Given BE have already said their prices will be higher than their current offerings, they may be far too late to the party for attracting people away from BT Retail.
I see BE's main market as being those of us who didn't trust BT could offer an un-capped or un-throttled product (and went to resellers offering that for maybe £30 or £40 a month).

Sky can bundle Anytime+ (via their newer HD boxes, which have an Ethernet hook-up) so it will be easier for them to attract people away from BT with 'Vision+' (except for the "I don't know why, but I hate Rupert Murdoch" crowd).

there is still many of their exchanges not FTTC planned, as the FTTC rollout has large parts of the country virtually untouched. However I agree they defenitly leaving it too long. Sky already have their own fibre network, its BE who are planning on building one.

I use 3 for 3G when I visit my parents or someone else, however they defenitly have capacity issues. It is noticebly a lot faster at say 8am than it is at 2pm or 8pm. Even without those issues I think wireless will never be as good as good wired services although it probably has a chance to beat adsl.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Sky already have their own fibre network, its BE who are planning on building one.

I was actually talking about local fibre loops (not backbones) and BE have definitely said they're not interested in install their own local fibre loops.
I didn't realise Sky had local fibres (which presumably means they also have their own street furniture) apart from the limited trial.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I use 3 for 3G when I visit my parents or someone else, however they defenitly have capacity issues. It is noticebly a lot faster at say 8am than it is at 2pm or 8pm. Even without those issues I think wireless will never be as good as good wired services although it probably has a chance to beat adsl.

Agreed - but compared to O2 (where I was getting a best of 128kbps, and a normal of 50kbps) getting a steady 1.5mbps and a peak of 5mbps on 3 is a revelation. Having tried Vodafone who's 3G works in the open air, but vanishes as soon as you enter a building, I was surprised.

I read that 3 have installed 100mbps into each base station, which is more than the other networks so far - however the air interface of 3G (WCDMA) is very inefficient as it was designed for voice. This is why we need LTE...

In reply to a post by adebov:

I was actually talking about local fibre loops (not backbones) and BE have definitely said they're not interested in install their own local fibre loops.
I didn't realise Sky had local fibres (which presumably means they also have their own street furniture) apart from the limited trial.

I don't think Sky has local fibres either - I believe the other poster might be referring to Sky's purchase of the Easynet network.

Telefonica UK (o2&be) have their own core network - but from postings by BE's Managing Director, we are led to believe they are working on a new core network.

My assumption is to scale up capacity and reduce management costs of the current network, ready for FTTC and others.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by dustofnations:

I suppose the best technical solution would be to have many lower powered nodes so that each mast has a smaller number of people contending for bandwidth. Would be rather expensive though, I suspect.

That's called 'Wifi'

This reminded me of a related subject: namely bandwidth pollution. I live in a fairly suburban area, but I can detect 6 Wi-Fi networks (of about 12) all sitting on channel 6.

It just makes me think that if the idea of blanketing heavily populated public areas with Wi-Fi is going to take off (and actually be fast and effective) then we need a lot more than just 4 non-overlapping channels and to get rid of dumb equipment that just seems to be preset to a default channel (although I'm happy for them all to destroy each others' signals instead of mine ).

I realise some equipment latterly attempts to find the least polluted channel, but really, there's not a huge segment of bandwidth available in the 2.4GHz range.

Edited by deleted (Tue 19-Jul-11 00:30:53)

yeah 3 isnt that slow, I get similiar speeds that you have reported.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by adebov:

I was actually talking about local fibre loops (not backbones) and BE have definitely said they're not interested in install their own local fibre loops.
I didn't realise Sky had local fibres (which presumably means they also have their own street furniture) apart from the limited trial.

I don't think Sky has local fibres either - I believe the other poster might be referring to Sky's purchase of the Easynet network.

Telefonica UK (o2&be) have their own core network - but from postings by BE's Managing Director, we are led to believe they are working on a new core network.

My assumption is to scale up capacity and reduce management costs of the current network, ready for FTTC and others.

I was they got no local loop yes, although they do have own fibre going to some exchanges.

BE have a london network, outside of london they rent backhaul to get traffic to london.

I am guessing this is going off topic ...

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I was they got no local loop yes, ...

Errr? Wot?

But I get your meaning and think you are right in the post.