In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Jack_Hackett:

In reply to a post by ft247:

Exactly, and I'd say at this point that most people who want and are going to get G.Fast have it.

I cannot get it and its not because i live in the middle of nowhere.

If you can't get it now, then you're never going to get it, because the G.Fast rollout has been terminated. You'll have to wait for FTTP to arrive instead.

The point being made was: because the footprint of G.Fast has been more or less static for the last 2 years, most people who are have coverage and are interested in taking it up will have done so already. If they were waiting for their existing contract to expire before switching, they have had time to do so.

Thanks for explaining, i wasn't aware G.Fast rollout had been terminated hence my comment, looks like i will stay on FTTC until i have no choice which according to this gives me 5 years at least.


The rollout of fibre across the UK has taken longer than anticipated but now BT Openreach has announced that 2026 is when they will start to close the copper network; they are going to have to work very hard to complete the implementation. Copper will be being phased out altogether from 2026.

BT Openreach are shutting down the copper wire ... - Agenda IT
https://agenda-it.co.uk/bt-openreach-are-shutting-do...

Edited by Jack_Hackett (Sat 04-Sep-21 20:15:21)

Thanks for the update. The take-up numbers were much lower than I’d anticipated.

Just read over on ISPreview that Openreach have announced a 20% price hike on G.Fast modems from 1 December.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/openre...

I’d say they have little intention of “sweating” G.Fast anywhere near as long as ADSL. It might be lucky to reach double digits before being withdrawn completely. The signs like the news of the equipment charge hike, they are actively pushing CPs away from the service…

In reply to a post by Jack_Hackett:

The rollout of fibre across the UK has taken longer than anticipated but now BT Openreach has announced that 2026 is when they will start to close the copper network; they are going to have to work very hard to complete the implementation. Copper will be being phased out altogether from 2026.

I think that article isn't entirely accurate.

Firstly, the PSTN (i.e. analogue voice via telephone exchanges) is being closed completely. This is underway already in some areas and should be finished by 2025/2026. But this doesn't require removal of copper, rather a shift to VOIP, which can be digital voice over xDSL.

Openreach has also announced an *intention* to cover 25 million properties (roughly 80% of UK) with FTTP by December 2026. As the rollout proceeds, many areas will get it before then.

In any particular area, once FTTP reaches 75% penetration, they will implement a "stop sell" on new copper services in that area, followed by a withdrawal of active copper services. Obviously that only applies to the 75%+ who have FTTP available, not to those who have only copper services available to them.

So it's true to say that they will *start* to withdraw copper from 2026. The further out you go, the more vague their plans are. The final 20% will be much harder to cover, and you can expect copper in some parts of the network well into the 2030's.

In reply to a post by Jack_Hackett:

I cannot get it and its not because i live in the middle of nowhere.

I can't get it here either and again, not in the middle of nowhere, but looking at the price of it, I am not that bothered and also I have heard that it is reliable only if you live very close to the cabinet, someone I know of, was told they could get, they live about 250yards away from the cabinet, which I think is not far from the maximum distance, but they had a load of problem with it, so they went back to normal FTTC.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Plusnet are the only ISP never release G.fast product.

Really? Look back to 2019 where you will find we openly said we were not going to launch a product lineup as our trials had shown disappointing outcomes in real world conditions. In fact, I even recall you commenting about our position at the time.

In reply to a post by aquiss:

we were not going to launch a product lineup as our trials had shown disappointing outcomes in real world conditions.

Out of interest how large was your trial?

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

Probably more connections than Green, Ghost, Structured, Trunk and Zen total customer numbers across all tech types added together. Probably way more than the total customer numbers on the CityFibre platform.

BT, Sky and TalkTalk are using GFast and that is the overwhelming majority of the market. It is proving reliable and the monthly speedtest results on TB show it regularly outperforming some of the forum's favourite provider's FTTP products.

It would do. For now. There will come a tipping point when the info data as supplied is updated. Currently it is very suspect! For instance, although I have been with my new ISP (FTTP) for nigh on 6 months now, TBB still doesn't show it and as such, they don't even feature in any ISP list. I even contacted TBB but still no show. Funny how other test sites do show it.

I can tell you though, at 500/500Mb/s, it certainly out performs G.Fast by a long way. As more and more fibre gets added, its like a blizzard round these parts with fibre being rolled out everywhere, G.Fast and for that matter any copper based product will eventually fall by the wayside. Its not so different to when 56k modems ruled the roost, once they were everywhere...who uses a 56k modem now?

I think everyone is aware that FTTP deployment is growing and GFast deployment has stopped.

However, GFast connections are growing and take up is voluntary as opposed to a lot of FTTP take up that is compulsory through new build. Voluntary take up in any volume is price driven not tech driven.

A few tiny providers not selling Gfast is not going to make any difference to it's service life in my view.

In reply to a post by dect:

Out of interest how large was your trial?

I had to refer back, but we ran a sample trial of 25 circuits, with 22 circuits going live (3 fell well out of range, so installs did not complete).

Of the 22 circuits that went live, only 6 were within predicted ranges (and was maintained), the rest were well out of estimates. We had a couple of examples where the customer was literally 50-75 metres from the cabinet, but had syncs that were well less than 50% of expected.

We concluded that supplying a customer a predicted pre-sales range that was accurate, as we are expected to do, was simply not possible in the most cases. Factoring in everything, we felt commercially the product was going to be problematic and we would be wasting a lot of resources on something with such a small footprint. We therefore took the decision to focus on FTTP instead.

I can have it here and I shall be upgrading to it isoon (at end of current contract) because there is not and II’ve been told there will not be* any planned FTTP build serving my address (which is in the centre of a town) due its somewhat unique location. FTTPoD is possible but the cost is likely to be offputting.