In reply to a post by Kenneth:

On the subject of reliability though my FTTC line was more reliable than the power over the last few years - one big loss going with FTTP is loss of phone lines when the power is out ....

Come 2025 PSTN will go anyway. Landlines will have to be over whatever broadband one has.

Edited by pluralist (Wed 18-Aug-21 01:07:39)

after all i can still get ADSL if I want to.

Exchange based ADSL will be phased out long before cab based FTTC.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Exchange based ADSL will be phased out long before cab based FTTC.

Personally I think this is a sad thing when these exchanges could be modernised and turned into local Internet exchanges instead of shutting them all down. They could rip out all of the old telephone gear and run fibre to them and then connect everyone locally to this one centre instead of an aggregation node that's potentially miles away from you. I'm probably not the first person to have this idea though and since it costs a lot of money to do this investment I can see why most of them will likely all be phased out instead.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I went to 4G as i got a new phone that had 4G on it, I did not go out to buy a phone with 4G and i am pretty sure a lot of people did the same, if they drop 3G what are they going to do about smart meters? Some will work on 2g, but that is going as well. So smart meters will need a new modem, so more waste.

No 2G is NOT going but the capacity on it is tiny as the bulk of the spectrum has been moved to 4G. It is used for various M2M (machine to machine) communications including some smart meters. I understand the long term plan is for smart meters to use the DCC network and stop using mobile phones.
(You may be confusing with the USA, whom HAVE turned off 2G, but their 2G and 3G was not the same as ours, only with 4G did we all use LTE).

5G is about capacity, and with more capacity comes the ability to do more. It is going to be a lot slower rollout than 4G was. (4G is 9 years old in the UK this year).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

No 2G is NOT going but the capacity on it is tiny as the bulk of the spectrum has been moved to 4G. It is used for various M2M (machine to machine) communications including some smart meters. I understand the long term plan is for smart meters to use the DCC network and stop using mobile phones.

Big chunk, the southern bit, of the DCC is still using the mobile network for the WAN comms. As I understand it (not looked in depth admittedly) that part is managed by Telefonica and Arqiva do the northern (non mobile) WAN part.

In reply to a post by aidanh:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Exchange based ADSL will be phased out long before cab based FTTC.

Personally I think this is a sad thing when these exchanges could be modernised and turned into local Internet exchanges instead of shutting them all down. They could rip out all of the old telephone gear and run fibre to them and then connect everyone locally to this one centre instead of an aggregation node that's potentially miles away from you. I'm probably not the first person to have this idea though and since it costs a lot of money to do this investment I can see why most of them will likely all be phased out instead.

That shipped sailed a long time ago. When they sold the vast majority of the exchange estate and leased it back. They’ve already reduced the number of properties they occupy by 30% and that will no doubt accelerate as the lease deal comes up to expiry in 2031, PSTN switches off end of 2025 and they transition to a small footprint all fibre estate.

Post deleted by 69bertie

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Faster don't make things better, more reliability yes as have already been said above, while latency does make a difference, 3 milliseconds or so is not going to make a scrap of difference to anything
Not everyone requires faster speed and not everyone will want to pay the extra price to get it, sure if providers offered a slower speed on FTTH for a lower price than that is ok.
Money is the thing, if plusnet comes back at the end of my contract and say, yes we will do you a deal for the same price I am paying now, which is £23 a month for my 35Mb/s, I would have to think about why I would need to spend another £6 or more per month to get 100Mb/s which is not going to make a scrap of difference to me. If I really get started with this video stuff, a higher upload would be ok, but if I went for zzoomm, that would cost me another tenner a month to get a higher upload speed that I get now. So £16 a month more than I am paying, plus I get free calls, not that I use them, but that is not the point.

It really does depend on the provider for FTTP. Some seem to have jacked the price up. Mine costs me £39 a month for 500/500 (I get usually around 470/470Mb/s). And it is very reliable and blazingly fast as long as the server I'm dealing with is also fast. GB's of downloads are no longer a problem. The reason I went for the higher connection speed is we, as a family, do cane the connection.

But I could get 120/120Mb/s unlimited for £19 a month. That is vastly different to the OR product (FTTC) which was around £32 a month for 80/20 (I use to get 76/20Mb). Admittedly the above doesn't include a phone line but then I stopped using the landline many years ago. My mobile contract (£7.80/month) is far superior in many ways. i.e. more convenient, more controllable and unlimited call/sms at any time of the day, plus it has data included.

One thing I have noticed is that as the speeds go up, one tends to use it more and more, simply because it is there.

Yes, switching to my new ISP was a leap into the unknown (I kept the original FTTC alive for one month afterwards - just in case) but 6 months on, looking back it was a bit of a no brainer really. And judging by how many times I see other people around these parts getting the fibre installed, it's a case of 'me too!' OR must be kicking themselves.

The whole point about the way fibre is being deployed is it doesn't need a load of buildings as aggregation nodes can be installed in footpaths closer to the people using it. Fewer exchanges can handle larger numbers of connections as fibre can take them all back to a central point as fibre is able to handle longer distances.

It is primarily fibre that drives the ability to close exchanges rather than it being a reason to keep them.

Generally speaking FTTP is far superior to FTTC.

FTTP doesn't have any copper, so there will be zero interference's and risk of connection drop outs. Usually FTTP is symmetrical on many Altnet FTTP providers.

But in the case of Openreach and a few others, 1Gbps upload isn't supported due to lack of XGS-PON. But even then, it's still better than native FTTC as you can select higher speeds than the 80 Mbps limit on FTTC.

Problem with FTTC is most people don't get 80Mbps max due to line length of the copper to street cabinet. Some get only half of the speeds plus also crosstalk is a serious factor to consider. If there are many customers up-taking the FTTC package, then people may no longer get the higher speeds and those speeds are at risk of dropping.

Like for example when I first joined FTTC last year February 2020 I was getting 6dB SNR for 80Mbps and 15dB SNR for 20Mbps upload.

Over the months the SNR slowly dropped as more customers have switched from ADSL formerly EO Line to FTTC. I am now syncing for the same speeds at 3dB for 80Mbps and 7dB for 20Mbps upload. There are some months when connection dropped to 77.6Mbps before climbing back up to 80Mbps. This is the reality with FTTC. Now my only hope will be when part of the customers migrate to FTTP to relief the crosstalk, only then I am guaranteed to get stable 80Mbps sync. Anyway, I will get Community Fibre FTTP by December.

As soon as my contract is over, I will switch to Community Fibre, It is a no brainer.

Also don't forget about the DLM - Dynamic Line Management! On FTTC you have to wait 10 days or so and every day you will experience a connection drop out at 2am approximately before line stabilizes.

If there are power cuts or accidental disconnections to the telephone wiring then DLM will drop your connection. Intermittent router reboots will also trigger DLM to drop your connection. Then you have to wait for days before DLM returns your speeds back up when it interprets your connection as stable again.

This is a headache that you won't have to face with FTTP.

But of-course having said that if the FTTP packages are far more expensive like in the case of rural areas, then FTTC may be a better option. But FTTP in urban London like CommunityFibre, Hyperoptic, G.Network offer packages that are cheaper than Openreach FTTC! Unless the Altnet provider price hikes their FTTP package, I don't see a return to FTTC ever again.