Line length is one part of it. Copper is far from perfect.

FTTP will probably have a higher upstream speed in the future.

Also speed is heavily affected by crosstalk.

I was first on my cabinet and got a possible line speed of 52 meg.

Now 2 months on and with a fair few more people on the cabinet as OR seem to have a guy permantly camped there it has dropped to 37 meg.

In reply to a post by paul1360:

Mr S,
I never knew that FTTC speed up/down was line length dependant????

Length from the fibre cabinet via the PSTN cabinet, as opposed to ADSLx which is length from the exchange.

It appears that on the 8c profile that is being phased out, 40Mbps downstream connection ceases somewhere between 550m and 700m, dependent on line quality. I haven't got a length for upstream, but I'm getting 40/10 at 600m.

looks good.

£35 for 100Mb/15Mb with "unlimited" usage. Hard to sniff at.

I was convinced the new "80/20" product on FTTC would remain the same price as the normal "40/10" product. But it seems there is a gap in the pricing now to accomodate it.

So the offerings are as follows (slotted the potential 80/20 service in)
FTTC 40/2 (40GB use) - £18
FTTC 40/10 (unlimited) - £25.60
FTTC 80/20 (unlimited?) - £30ish?
FTTP 100/15 (unlimited) - £35

AAISP seem to have FTTP on their price list - same as FTTC:

aa.net.uk/broadband-prices-full.html

hmm weird thing is, on that link to bt infinity where it staes the 100mb fttp service, it says that is a relatively easy process where the enigineer installs the fibre to the premises, can this be done on an individual basis to order, if its that simple, and just serve fibre to people who want it rather than full areas where only a few want it.

Given their pricing it might be a case of FTTC subsidising FTTP...

Nah, it's us poor ADSLmax folk on 1/20 of the speed for 1/3 of the price.

You're confusing marketing with engineering.
Once engineering have put the local infrastructure in place in an area it becomes simple to install the final fibre span from to the premises. Marketing then get to say that its a simple job to install to premises who want it

In reply to a post by ionic:

Indeed, but there's definitely a business market for lower-cost broadband with the higher upstreams but not needing the "protections" of an SLA.
Currenltly if you need the higher upstream you're often stuk with buying an expensive leased line / ethernet circuit with SLAs, committed rates etc whether you really need them or not. The cynic in me suggests that BT are in no rush to give businesses the option to choose.

hence also the amount of city areas skipped for FTTC as well.

Why is this FTTP so crippled as well, are BT selling the slowest FTTP connection around for uploads?