well never say never, to me 55 vs 40 seems a pointless new product yet it happened.

I think if the 3db snrm rollout proves successful in bringing up average speeds, a new 105-110 product might end up been released.

I still suspect political as well as regulator intervention has contributed to the lack of openreach FTTP.

We have the ofcom situation where they are completely obsessed with retail competition to the point they have let quality assurance standards hit basement levels, they have let a situation occur where end users have no relationship with openreach the infrastructure provider (which has led to ridiculous situations like paying customers been put on trials without been communicated with), and finally this obsession has led to a holding back of superior technology such as FTTP, because FTTP sort of puts LLU up **** creek.

The gov point of view will be that they know if openreach were to start enabling profitable FTTP areas such as densely populated cities, then all the rural citizens will start making noises about wanting the same to stop a "digital divide" and this then puts pressure on the government to provide subsidises aka BDUKv2 to allow a rural FTTP rollout.

So I imagine BT have been persuaded to hold onto copper for as long as possible.

And exactly why do you think that paying customers have some mysterious" Right" to be told about trials.
It is BT's network and they can do with it want they want.

Have you ever heard of blind trials? - where the precise objective is not to let the person know they are on a trial.

Anyway the most likely reaction of some being told they are going to be on some trial or experiment is "no thank you very much - go and muck around with someone else's connection"
At the other extreme we saw the Plusnet trials which when they go wrong we get those on the trial screaming that the service is cr*p with the forum response screaming back - it's a trial you idiot - you volunteered you were told it might not work so shut the F up.

My sad experience in business was that the only way to trial a new process/product variation was never to tell the customer - as soon as you did they said either no thanks or they wanted a price reduction to compensate for well... something.

BT are well wise to tell nowt about owt.

In reply to a post by zom22:

And exactly why do you think that paying customers have some mysterious" Right" to be told about trials.
It is BT's network and they can do with it want they want.

Have you ever heard of blind trials? - where the precise objective is not to let the person know they are on a trial.

Anyway the most likely reaction of some being told they are going to be on some trial or experiment is "no thank you very much - go and muck around with someone else's connection"
At the other extreme we saw the Plusnet trials which when they go wrong we get those on the trial screaming that the service is cr*p with the forum response screaming back - it's a trial you idiot - you volunteered you were told it might not work so shut the F up.

My sad experience in business was that the only way to trial a new process/product variation was never to tell the customer - as soon as you did they said either no thanks or they wanted a price reduction to compensate for well... something.

BT are well wise to tell nowt about owt.

Which I think why certainly early stage trials tend to be done by BT employees.

In reply to a post by zom22:

Have you ever heard of blind trials? - where the precise objective is not to let the person know they are on a trial.

Makes sense when you're testing drugs, less so when testing things that can easily be measured objectively (e.g. vectoring or FTTrn and the resulting change in performance) or on things that are quite intrusive or obvious to the end user (like any trials involving new cabling or CPE, or a massive new green cabinet that has appeared out of nowhere)

In reply to a post by zom22:

Anyway the most likely reaction of some being told they are going to be on some trial or experiment is "no thank you very much - go and muck around with someone else's connection"
At the other extreme we saw the Plusnet trials which when they go wrong we get those on the trial screaming that the service is cr*p with the forum response screaming back - it's a trial you idiot - you volunteered you were told it might not work so shut the F up.

Could probably be sorted by having that in huge red letters before the person agrees to be a participant. Or by installing the new connection alongside the old so that the user has the option of moving back to the tried and tested line, if it's a dud

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I still suspect political as well as regulator intervention has contributed to the lack of openreach FTTP.

We have the ofcom situation where they are completely obsessed with retail competition to the point they have let quality assurance standards hit basement levels, they have let a situation occur where end users have no relationship with openreach the infrastructure provider (which has led to ridiculous situations like paying customers been put on trials without been communicated with), and finally this obsession has led to a holding back of superior technology such as FTTP, because FTTP sort of puts LLU up **** creek.

Australia had it the right way - moving towards one universal network, run by an impartial operator (who has no retail arm) with everyone subject to the same terms. They are slowly messing it up by moving from a mostly FTTP network to a mostly FTTC one (and seem to be doing a worse job of it than BT did!) - though there are rumours that they may salvage it by moving to FTTdp w/ G.fast

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

The gov point of view will be that they know if openreach were to start enabling profitable FTTP areas such as densely populated cities, then all the rural citizens will start making noises about wanting the same to stop a "digital divide" and this then puts pressure on the government to provide subsidises aka BDUKv2 to allow a rural FTTP rollout.

So I imagine BT have been persuaded to hold onto copper for as long as possible.

The sad thing of course is that the divide will always be there unless FTTP/G.fast happen in a very big way. Whether that's ADSL vs fibre, fast FTTC/ADSL vs slow FTTC/ADSL, or FTTC vs FTTP - it's still there today.

For a government that seems to find tens of billions for infrastructure projects that only affect specific areas or cities of the country, you'd think that spending the cash on a full and final solution to the digital divide, with truly national scope, would be a no brainer. It might take years, but the sooner it's started (which should have been years ago anyway), the sooner it'll finish. It's just a shame that time and money (ours and BT's) has been wasted on short term bodgery like FTTC

Edited by deleted (Sun 17-Apr-16 11:49:28)

In reply to a post by sor:

Australia had it the right way - moving towards one universal network, run by an impartial operator (who has no retail arm) with everyone subject to the same terms. They are slowly messing it up by moving from a mostly FTTP network to a mostly FTTC one (and seem to be doing a worse job of it than BT did!) - though there are rumours that they may salvage it by moving to FTTdp w/ G.fast

That seems to say they've realised they were doing it the wrong way and have belatedly switched to the Openreach method. Less successfully.

For a government that seems to find tens of billions for infrastructure projects that only affect specific areas or cities of the country, you'd think that spending the cash on a full and final solution to the digital divide, with truly national scope, would be a no brainer. It might take years, but the sooner it's started (which should have been years ago anyway), the sooner it'll finish. It's just a shame that time and money (ours and BT's) has been wasted on short term bodgery like FTTC

See above.

Bringing in FTTP in the whole UK mean more growth in jobs, FTTC mean lack of jobs, no growth in business.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

That seems to say they've realised they were doing it the wrong way and have belatedly switched to the Openreach method. Less successfully.

I think ideology played a larger part. They had a change of government, and the current lot seems determined to suggest that anything the predecessors did was awful (no different to the UK, I guess). The current government praises the UK model and is actively trying to copy us - right down to the impracticality / inability to order FTTP on demand

Their FTTP design had some flaws but nothing insurmountable. FTTC meanwhile has been a total mess - with many of the flaws that we have in the UK, magnified due to the dodginess of Telstra's copper, sparser population densities / larger houses, and a lack of open CPE testing (unlike BT's MCT). Unlike the UK, they do at least use vectoring!

The Australian equivalent of Thinkbroadband seems to wish it never happened.

Hence the rumoured "salvaging" by moving to FTTrn/FTTdp and G.fast - they can't admit that FTTP was the best and most practical solution and should have been continued, or that FTTC has been a disaster, but this option keeps some copper in the mix and it will be cheaper so the politicians can claim it's a win. I think it's slowly becoming apparent to everyone else that sorting out the flaws with FTTP would have been a superior move though

See above.

A valid point - though we could avoid that by sticking with technologies that actually are actually ready for the future (and have a good upgrade path) - now that we know how it worked in Australia!

Edited by deleted (Sun 17-Apr-16 14:08:30)

Australia may have homes and streets but demographically and geographically is very different, so porting one model wholesale from one to the other won't work.

A lot of the 'reasoning' for the change was an escalating set of costs from the civils work in the FTTP work that had already started, and even the FTTC component is proving more expensive than UK for similar issues.

As for what is going on, hard to tell due to the level of mis-information from all sides in Australia. Not helped by the way that upgrades/network changes are being forced on people.

The UK faced three main calls:

1. We want faster broadband
2. We want it to be available to as many as possible
3. This needs to be done yesterday

There was and still is a vocal lobby element calling for

1. We want Point to Point FTTH for 100% of homes and businesses

Given those requirements any roll-out that was slower than what we have now would just be seeing more criticism. The roll-out is not perfect and will mean more to done in a few years, but a lot of the groundwork for deeper fibre is there now.