In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

The network Openreach built is perfectly capable of much higher upload speeds than the 115 they sell to residential and the 220 they sell to businesses with a £500 install fee and much higher monthly charge.

They made a conscious business decision not to offer higher upload speeds, nothing more to it than that.

It can't do Symmetrical and the according to plusnet checker their 74Mb/s service, only offers a 40Mb/s minimum guaranteed speed. Is that an open reach problem or a Plusnet problem?

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

It can't do Symmetrical

That's a commercial decision not to do so. Cityfibre use identical GPON technology, and they do offer symmetrical services.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

and the according to plusnet checker their 74Mb/s service, only offers a 40Mb/s minimum guaranteed speed. Is that an open reach problem or a Plusnet problem?

It's not really a problem at all. Because a PON is shared (by up to 32 users) they can't guarantee full throughput at all times - or they would be foolish to do so.

In practice, the chances of the PON being saturated are very low most of the time. If you have a few numpties with gigabit services caning them continuously, it does introduce contention though. Also: Plusnet may be making allowance for possible congestion on their transit connections.

In practice, I'd take an 80Mbps FTTP over an "up to" 80Mbps FTTC any day of the week - even though the FTTC connection is unshared up to the DSLAM.

It doesn't matter does it? I thought you weren't interested in FTTP.

In reply to a post by jpm:

It doesn't matter does it? I thought you weren't interested in FTTP.

Was waiting for this haha

In reply to a post by candlerb:

That's a commercial decision not to do so. Cityfibre use identical GPON technology, and they do offer symmetrical services.

That is a bit silly, certainly with other providers that offer it.

It's not really a problem at all. Because a PON is shared (by up to 32 users) they can't guarantee full throughput at all times - or they would be foolish to do so.

In practice, the chances of the PON being saturated are very low most of the time. If you have a few numpties with gigabit services caning them continuously, it does introduce contention though. Also: Plusnet may be making allowance for possible congestion on their transit connections.

Some people may find it a problem and it may be off-putting to some people, I suppose it is better than BT, they only offer a 34Mb/s guaranteed speed. As more and more people get onto Fibre then that will slow it down, certainly as more people uses broadband for media use.

In practice, I'd take an 80Mbps FTTP over an "up to" 80Mbps FTTC any day of the week - even though the FTTC connection is unshared up to the DSLAM.

I can't get 80Mb/s FTTC, I don't think i would have bothered even if I could as i have said before, never had the need for anything faster than what I have,

In reply to a post by jpm:

It doesn't matter does it? I thought you weren't interested in FTTP.

Not interested in having it or not interested in FTTP itself? There is a difference.
I am interested in how it works and certain things about it., but not bothered about having it. The thing is I am hearing that by the time my contract have ended I may have little choice now that we have fibre here. I went for a walk to the shop this morning and was talking to someone who lives close by and their contract for EE is up soon, and they have been having emails from EE about renewing their contract, but the only options they have been given is fibre. I said that was quick, openreach fibre have only just been connected around here. I said I presume if he phoned them up they would offer him FTTC if he pushed for it, but he is looking at Zzoomm. so it seems like providers are pushing it already, so god knows what it will be like in June.

I don't want a 24 month contract and this seems to be the thing with FTTP, Now broadband offers 12 months FTTC for £20 at the moment, even if it goes up by a couple of quid before the end of my contract, it may still be worthwhile going to Now, even if it is sky.

If you're in an FTTP priority exchange then your ISP can't send any orders to Openreach that involve copper services, on top of that there will be an incentive for these providers to move people to FTTP (Equinox, retiring old voice platforms quicker etc.) I wouldn't expect any amount of asking nicely with mass-market ISPs to result in them offering you FTTC when you're in an FTTP area - they want you moved, Openreach want you moved.

Your desire for a short-term contract but also the lowest cost providers I feel are two incompatible objectives.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Some people may find it a problem and it may be off-putting to some people

In which case they're welcome to pay £300 a month + VAT for a service that will guarantee speeds at gigabit.

If they lied about the guarantee I imagine you'd be among the first with the torch and pitchfork.

The sharing is why we pay what we do and we'd probably be paying less if people didn't get uppity at the first sniff of not getting what they think they pay for, though to be fair they're only following the example of the regulator.

I've had comments made on my service due to it dropping 5-6% speed at peak times. The horror.

In reply to a post by jpm:

If you're in an FTTP priority exchange then your ISP can't send any orders to Openreach that involve copper services, on top of that there will be an incentive for these providers to move people to FTTP (Equinox, retiring old voice platforms quicker etc.) I wouldn't expect any amount of asking nicely with mass-market ISPs to result in them offering you FTTC when you're in an FTTP area - they want you moved, Openreach want you moved.

Your desire for a short-term contract but also the lowest cost providers I feel are two incompatible objectives.

Now does a 12-month contract for £20 a month on FTTC, that is sort term and low cost. I don't know if now will change to fibre, at the moment they don't do fibre,
One of the reasons I went for smarty for my phone is no contract. 18 months I can just about cope with, but i don't want 24 months, there is no need for them to be that long.


i just wonder what they will do if I don't want to move, if the infrastructure is still working and as far as i know it will stay working for years, even if it is just for digital voice, then how can they refuse the order?
We will see closer to when the time comes, but I am not impressed.
where they would put the ONT would not be ideal, it means I would have to have an Ethernet cable going from the ONT to the wan of my router and then another one from the lan back towards to where the ONT is, to the switch that is connected to my TV, my Blueway player and VoIP. gkw in the post Fibre install to inside my garage said about
running WAN & LAN over the same CAT6, that may solve the problem, but I did not even know that was possible

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In which case they're welcome to pay £300 a month + VAT for a service that will guarantee speeds at gigabit.

If they really want gigibit, but all this stuff about having gigabit fibre is a lie then, or bending the truth, year we will install a system that can give you gigabit and you will pay for it, but you may not get it

If they lied about the guarantee I imagine you'd be among the first with the torch and pitchfork.

One of the reasons they changed the quoted speeds of FTTC to average is because people complained about the speeds they were getting. I am getting the average speed on my connection, someone in the next street may get a bit faster because they are closer to the cabinet. Broadband have never been the fastest available here, ADSL+ was about 3Mb/s max here, due to length of cable and FTTC is the same, the lower end of the speed that the technology can do because of distance of cabinet.
when I first had ADSL in 2000 at around half a Mb/s it was better than dial up and I could do more, the same when going to 3Mb's ADSL and then FTTC , but those speed increases were required because we started doing more on the internet and now we use it for video and music and running smart homes and working from home.

Yes, fibre is great if there are a few people in the house and their FTTC connection get saturated, I presume that is why a house a couple of doors down got Zzoomm, four in the house, including two teenage girls.

But it is only me here.

The sharing is why we pay what we do and we'd probably be paying less if people didn't get uppity at the first sniff of not getting what they think they pay for, though to be fair they're only following the example of the regulator.

I can understand the sharing is to cut costs, but the way FTTP is being sold makes people think it is the best thing since sliced bread and they will get their super-duper speed all the time, until they read the small print.

I've had comments made on my service due to it dropping 5-6% speed at peak times. The horror.

This person I was chatting to yesterday was saying that over the last week, since Openreach turned on their FTTP here, his broadband have gone slower, he seems to think it is being down on purpose to get him to change. Mine is fine, still at 36Mb/s, but then I have not had emails from Plusnet about changing. The offer I had was when I logged into plusnet site to check something. I noticed the offer have gone now, maybe they realised it was a silly offer. Would broadband providers slow down people FTTC connection just to get them to change?

5-6% could be a fair bit depending on the original speed.
As i said, mine is fine, I have had slow-downs, but not many and they normally affect downloads more than streaming, in fact the only streaming problem, I have had for a while is with You Tube.

oh well I have to go to work, back there after a week off sadly.