In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

No, my point is that it is ridiculous that so many people say that FTTC is a 'joke' and we should be spending £30bn+ of taxpayer money subsidising FTTP rollout to everyone. FTTC is more than enough for right now.

I'm almost certainly going to downgrade to the £10/month 100/100 package next month - it's absolutely pointless having over 100megabit/sec right now.

I tried a 10 thread download to MSDN to download a windows server ISO and it is capped at 100mbit/sec.

BT has made a very wise decision not to go past FTTC right now.

PS: It's great that I get this speed (and also have BT FTTP as an option if I wanted), so I'm not being ungrateful. I just wanted to prove that this sort of speed is so silly. It reminds me of when everyone had 56k modems and some people were using dodgy firmware to get 10 or 20mbit/sec on NTL cable modems back in the day. Great - but you'll quickly realise that being 100x faster than the normal broadband speed means your held back by infrastructure and the internet as a whole.

I also see you fail to mention how many people are using this connection. Are you living alone? Families could saturate alot of that bandwidth, obvious if you are the sole user you'd be hard pressed to saturate it.

So how would fibre get to the premises here and now if that was what they were doing instead of FTTP? How long would the roll-out take, and who has the money to do it?

Don't forget that (I think) every cable company went bust until NTL owned them all and got the Virgin brand-name as a huge sales aid.

In a few years time maybe FTTPoD will morph into full FTTP. That would involve manageable investment capital, as there won't be the mad panic to improve on ADSLx.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Don't forget that (I think) every cable company went bust until NTL owned them all and got the Virgin brand-name as a huge sales aid.

Not went bust, but had very little income to improve services/grow network.

NTL was CableTel renamed when they bought a transmission business, (which they sold around 2006 to merge with Telewest). The merged company then bought Virgin Mobile to do quad-play and get the licence to Virgin name.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Don't forget that (I think) every cable company went bust until NTL owned them all and got the Virgin brand-name as a huge sales aid.

Not went bust, but had very little income to improve services/grow network.

NTL was CableTel renamed when they bought a transmission business, (which they sold around 2006 to merge with Telewest). The merged company then bought Virgin Mobile to do quad-play and get the licence to Virgin name.

Didn't go bust? Hmmm. Not for lack of trying.

How many profitable quarters has VM had so far? I know it had its first one last year. Did the huge financial success story continue?

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Didn't go bust? Hmmm. Not for lack of trying.

No, the banks realised if they let it go bust they would lose everything they'd loaned - so they changed the debt into something designed for 100+ years long term, assigned that to the holding company and let the operational company work as if it was making money, but also paying any "profit" into the holding company.

How many profitable quarters has VM had so far? I know it had its first one last year. Did the huge financial success story continue?

Don't know, but now part of the Liberty empire, its all different!

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

So how would fibre get to the premises here and now if that was what they were doing instead of FTTP? How long would the roll-out take, and who has the money to do it?

Don't forget that (I think) every cable company went bust until NTL owned them all and got the Virgin brand-name as a huge sales aid.

In a few years time maybe FTTPoD will morph into full FTTP. That would involve manageable investment capital, as there won't be the mad panic to improve on ADSLx.

Fibre gets to premises by laying a fibre cable from the local node to the customer's house. It could be pushed through existing ducting (if it exists), or via a drop cable, or new ducts could be installed. Google will provide you with more details if you don't know how fibre can be installed to a house.

I imagine the rollout would take the better part of a decade. As to who has the money to install it, logic dictates that the government would assist communication providers such as BT, Sky or Virgin Media, or even Google.

It is highly laughable though that in 2014 the UK are still installing copper telephone cables to brand new houses. The UK should folllow other countries example and requires all new houses to be provided with full FTTP, paid for by the developer of course.

The fact that the UK doesn't even get recognised by the FTTH council in europe is simply laughable, compared to the other European counties. Sure, we have tiny companies that manage to connect a few houses every year in the UK. But compared to the rest of europe?

Even if the UK started building a fullscale FTTP network today, we would still be way behind the other counties in 10 years. Sad state of affairs.

Well said, totally agree. Service the masses, the minority get the dregs.

I am fully aware of how FTTP/H/B is provided . It's you that seems to be writing a fairy story.

In reply to a post by dave2150:

As to who has the money to install it, logic dictates that the government would assist communication providers such as BT, Sky or Virgin Media, or even Google.

So why aren't aren't they doing? Are you suggesting the government should subsidise google, or that google should subsidise BT, Sky and Liberty Global?

It is highly laughable though that in 2014 the UK are still installing copper telephone cables to brand new houses. The UK should folllow other countries example and requires all new houses to be provided with full FTTP, paid for by the developer of course.

Is that true? Which countries?

The fact that the UK doesn't even get recognised by the FTTH council in europe is simply laughable,

I find it odd that the FTTH Council of Europe website can't even let me accept or dismiss it's cookies message. Who/what the heck are they anyway? All I can google is a blog.

Not impressed compared to the other European counties. Sure, we have tiny companies that manage to connect a few houses every year in the UK. But compared to the rest of europe?

Even if the UK started building a fullscale FTTP network today, we would still be way behind the other counties in 10 years. Sad state of affairs.

That doesn't seem to agree with the fact we are way ahead of most countries in national coverage of "superfast" broadband.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by dave2150:

Even if the UK started building a fullscale FTTP network today, we would still be way behind the other counties in 10 years. Sad state of affairs.

That doesn't seem to agree with the fact we are way ahead of most countries in national coverage of "superfast" broadband.

Maybe in Europe but there are quite a few countries outside Europe which are way ahead in both FTTC and FTTP coverage. Latvia and Lithuania both have more than 80% FTTP coverage.

In reply to a post by flipdee:

Well said, totally agree. Service the masses, the minority get the dregs.

How else do you propose we do things? Are you suggesting that no-one should have access to a service or a product unless it's available to everyone?

So by your logic:
* Mains sewerage should be banned because some people are still on septic tanks.
* Mains gas supply should be banned because some people are on tanks or another fuel altogether.
* Trains should be banned because only a few towns and cities actually have train stations.
* Broadcast TV should be banned because a few communities are in the shadow of a large hill and are unable to receive satellite or terrestrial signals.

It isn't feasible to guarantee the provision of goods or services to every last man, woman and child in the country. It is horribly expensive to even try. There will always be those left out or suffering a sub-optimal experience. That's human civilisation. That's life.