You are not reading this right. The OP has ordered the sub 15meg product from his ISP, this is because the distance from the DSLAM street cabinet to his premises is too great to support a higher sync rate.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In this case, you need to stop thinking like someone who gets near 20Mbps on ADSL2+, and start thinking like someone who has spent a decade getting 512Kbps on good days, and disconnections on bad ones. Stop being selfish!

I was a member of the 0.5Mb to 1Mb (on a very good day) club for many years.

My own FTTC hasn't been so good at all for a few months, but I just couldn't go back to ADSL. It would feel like dialup in comparison.

You missed the point he was trying to make entirely.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

I am not selfish, I just want to make sure he get a fibre speed, 15.9 Meg isn't a fibre at all. BT is robbed his line off. I would complaint if my FTTC (Fibre) is less than my ADSL2+ at 16.4Mbps.

But your fibre speed wouldn't be less than your ADSL2+ speed, so no reason for you to complain. Their fibre speed is miles more than their ADSL speed, they are not complaining (but would like better), and certainly understand their position better than you do.

Remember that FTTC isn't fibre. It is fibre combined with DSL over copper (but faster DSL and shorter copper). And the DSL-over-copper component is still distance-dependent, and so still limits speeds. While the distance limitations are much worse for FTTC than for ADSL2+, the fact that the measurement is done from each of the 50-100 cabinets that an exchange has, rather than the 1 exchange building, means that many fewer people experience low speeds. Some do, but the vast majority experience less of a limitation on FTTC than on ADSL2+.

It is pointless trying to compare their fibre speed with your ADSL2+ speed because your distance is entirely different, and the place we are measuring distance towards is different.

So saying "15.9 Meg isn't fibre at all" means you just have no understanding of the technology providing the current FTTC solution, and the limitations of the technology or the limitations of the economics involved.

You might wish for better, but your wishes can't beat the limits that we can push technology in 2012 nor the economics that apply to a privately-invested rollout.

Edited by deleted (Sat 28-Jan-12 18:53:14)

Pushing out fibre into the network definately benefited me.

After much tuning, extra low SNRs etc I could just about hit 3.5 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up -- a lot better than many (@5km)

At around 470m I'm getting 40/10 (38/8 in throughput) with the modem predicting a max currently of around 63/25

So my *current speed* is around a 10x improvement & changes me from barely able to stream hd, single stream sd, to "it just works". That's a major shift.

In reply to a post by planetf1:

changes me from barely able to stream hd, single stream sd, to "it just works". That's a major shift.

That sums the whole thing up. The numbers don't matter - but if you (the generic customer) get to the point where "it just works," then BT have got the rollout balance right.

For me, we shouldn't be arguing about the actual speed - so long as it is "enough" - or the technology that finally managed to deliver that speed.

It is now really a matter of getting that "it just works" feeling out to more & more of the remote corners of the kingdom. That probably means pole-mounted mini-DSLAMs, rather than FTTremoteH. The response to BDUK & council funding will be interesting over the next few months.