BT do not, and would not be allowed to run power cables. It will be sub-contracted to the local distribution network operating company who will, in turn, have their own series of subcontractors. All sorts of things can impact on that chain.

The FTTC Cabinet is about 10 Metres from my front door, although the VDSL signals take about 300 Metres to get to the same front door!

I spotted the technician opening the FTTC cabinet; and stood talking with him as he loaded the second 48 set of Filter/Links, leaving another 192 to be filled at some later date/s.

The implication at that time, May 2015, working for about 14 months, was that only up to the first 48 had been taken up.

Subsequent to the second 48 being added, there was almost a flurry of visits to the PCP over the next 4 weeks; but since then, things have gone quiet.

Gustimating, I suspect that the "flurry" probably amounted to about half-as-dozen upgrades.

In the previous year, it looked like about one upgrade, every three to four week.

The ADSL Speed for myself was more than adeuqte,around 15 to 16 Mbps Down and around 1 Mbps Up - If I find my Excel records and if they are significantly different, I will correct those.

The Down Attenuation was was just under 24 db on a line about 1,286 Metres long.

This tallied well with the 24 db when I had my line tested way back in Dial-up days, to ensure good connections to my company systems.


I decided to upgrade to VDSL in May 2014, when I was unaware of how low the Take-up Rate was, in effect I wanted to make sure I had a connection in the FTTC, rather than having any great need for higher speeds.

As a result, I went for the 40/10 offering, as it was only £1 (One Pound) per month more, with "free" Anytime calls, 1000 "free" calls to Mobiles etc.

On TBB Tests, it is typically around 36.5 Mbps Down and 8.9 Mbps Up.

The effective VDSL Line Length is at least 300 Metres, because of the convoluted route that the phone line takes. There is a slight chance that it is longer; but I am confident of the "at least 300 M2, as again back in Dial-up days, I had noise on the line; and helped the PO/BT Technician to track down the source of the noise, a deteriorating wrapped joint in a small footpath-level junction box on the foundations of a a "near-neighbour's house.

The Tech had first remade all the associated line joints in the PCP, without clearing the fault; and it was only by studying the records carefully, did the other junction box come to light.

The PCP is only 50 M from my front door; the estate was green-field in 1967; and every house was pre-wired underground for phone, back to the PCP of those days.

Actual phone connections were not available until about 1972, as the old Strowger exchange was not big enough. Only when a Cross-Bar System was installed in a new, larger building, did working connections become available. Very quickly, this estate then had almost 100% "penetration", when the average for Scotland was 55%; and 65% for England.

On VDSL, 40/10, I get about 36.5 Mbps Down, 8.5 Mbps Up.

With the "about 300 Metre length", the Line Attenuation is 15 dbs Down "0" dbs up.

Noise Margins are 12.3 dbs Down and 11.3 dbs up.

I signed up to Infinity 2. Initially I got speeds of 52-53Mpbs and uploads of 8.3 Mb/s due to the cab being not the nearest one (odd - it's about 0.5km away whereas the nearest is < 100m away).

These days i get 30-50Mb/s download and about 7.4MB/s upload. Really not sure if it's worth paying the extra over ADSL2 where I got a rock steady 15MB/s download and about 0.9Mb/s upload.

Seems like FTTC is hyped by BT, it's nowhere near the figures they quote.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

The ADSL Speed for myself was more than adeuqte,around 15 to 16 Mbps Down and around 1 Mbps Up

Well, this is what I'm thinking. the Ofcom (?) report of a few months ago came to the conclusion that 10Mbps was the sweet spot where people are generally happy with their speed so it's not surprising at all I think that take up of FTTC has been fairly low. But Openreach have now revised their estimate of takeup in areas that receive poor ADSL to 30%. I could have told them that!

I guess that rollout was done on the basis of how easy (i.e. cheap or expensive) it would be to enable an area against a forecast of how many people are likely to take it up. If it's fairly easy and a large number of people are in that area then I can well imagine it was likely to make a handsome profit even if the equipment is not fully utilised. Unless someone at Openreach has got their calculations very very wrong you can rest assured that even a low takeup in certain areas will be returning a decent profit for them, and that's what counts.

The higher percentage of takeup will be in areas that have poor ADSL but they are also likely to be the areas of fewer people and be more expensive to implement.

I'm on 0.1Mbps at the moment and my area has been amongst the last to be implemented but I forecast that takeup will be high around here, in percentage terms. FTTP coming soon!

On my ADSL2+ I get 14/1Meg with Noise Margin 3.0dB and my Line Attenuation is 31dB from 2011 to 2014. Then upgraded to FTTC in February 2014 and get straight away 75/19Meg with Noise Margin 13.0dB with Line Attenuation is 11.6dB with attainable rate of 107848/33507

The cab I'm on only had 53 fibre customers at the middle of last year according to the engineer who came to try and sort out a sudden drop in sync. That's after being live for 3 years and there are about 1000 lines on the PCP.

For "my" FTTC, an existing Road Traffic Sign Pole was stripped of all signs, which now raises questions about the application of RT Law at the road junction involved.

A simple aspect is that although the main road is 30 MPH, the estate side road is signed as "20 MPH Zone" inbound, 2 such signs; but no corresponding "End of 20 MPH Zone" signs out-bound, none!

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As you have indicated, the local power distribution company made the actual connections from the FTTC to the bottom of the now-bare traffic sign pole, suggesting the FTTC supply is from the general street-lighting cabling.

Does make me wonder if we are relying on the Battery Back-up on a regular basis, particularly as one of the FTTC batteries was tested and replaced some months after the FTTC became active.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

As you have indicated, the local power distribution company made the actual connections from the FTTC to the bottom of the now-bare traffic sign pole, suggesting the FTTC supply is from the general street-lighting cabling.

In a local council meeting, the report from the SFNY project to the councillors mentioned this. The indications were that the street-lighting supply is not considered high-enough quality to feed the cabinets.

I have no idea how (or, indeed, whether) street lighting supplies are run separately from domestic supplies. Perhaps the "quality" argument only works for some of the supplies.

Where the street lights are grouped on a common Timer circuit, they will be in degree separated; but that is generally similar to your house being separated from the general supply lines by a large fuse etc.

Otherwise they are on the same general distribution network as the majority of the nation and businesses, other wise they would need separate cabling right back to separate generators.

I suspect that the National Grid relies in part on the night time loading of street lighting to take up the base load energy overnight, just as my Economy 7 supplies do; and with similar reduced tariff rates.

So unless the specific street lighting cabling is known to be in poor condition, that statement appears to be strange.

Possibly you should follow it up in terms of safety etc.