In reply to a post by DFScale:

I am on 220 FTTP, getting ~205 up and ~30 down. It is adequate. Of all the possible upgrades, raw headline speed does not interest me. I would actually prefer to go symmetric at 200. Marketing departments are getting this wrong by making symmetric the upgrade after all speed upgrades. It should the basic upgrade these days. We are no longer constrained by ADSL, where the asymmetric speeds were the optimum use of restricted bandwidth. But so much of the thinking these days around FTTP still seems to be constrained by the requirements of ADSL.

Same here, but the questions the marketing departments will have are:
1. how many people want 200/200 over 200/30?
2. how much extra would they be prepared to pay?

If the answers are "not many" and "nothing or very little", then there's no business case.

You can't(*) get 200 upload today, but you can get 115 - for I guess around £15 per month more than you're currently paying. Presumably the extra upload speed isn't worth that much to you?

I am on 330/50; I could get the 115 upload from the same provider for an extra £10. It's the difference between uploading 2.5GB in 7 minutes or 3 minutes. Either way, I'd have to do something else while it takes place in the background, so it doesn't make much difference in reality.

(*) Almost nobody sells the 1000/220 tier, not even BT. Cerberus is the only one I know - and they charge £212 per month plus £594 activation.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

(*) Almost nobody sells the 1000/220 tier, not even BT. Cerberus is the only one I know - and they charge £212 per month plus £594 activation.

Yeah shocking to be honest with 220 upload u pay expensive monthy fee and activate fee

https://i.ibb.co/PZPfsRKv/Screenshot-from-2025-09-01...

Edited by adslmax (Mon 01-Sep-25 22:04:13)

There is little evidence either way.

BT have their own reasons for not making symmetrical speeds affordable on their network. The reason no one is selling the 1000/220 tier might be something to do with what OR are charging for it?

We had the same arguments for FTTP, before OR started their FTTP rollout, the argument was there is no demand for the speeds, so as such there is no need for OR to do such a rollout. Marketing controls the demand, Altnets rolled in to town, suddenly a business case appeared for OR to do the rollout, and now marketing is in overdrive to generate that demand.

The prime driver for OR right now is keeping their customers, in non FTTP areas they are losing them, it does seem based on evidence their highly artificially asymmetrical FTTP product is enough to stem the flow, so because of that and their vested interest for market segmentation, it has unfavourable upload speeds, I think it is nothing more complex then that.

The surcharge for a boost in upload speeds is a legacy of the existing big players, VM charge for it on their XGS, and OR treat it as some kind of premium, but its bog standard inclusive on the alt nets.

If the day ever comes OR want to push higher upload speeds, then marketing will generate the demand for it.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

(*) Almost nobody sells the 1000/220 tier, not even BT. Cerberus is the only one I know - and they charge £212 per month plus £594 activation.

https://www.brsk.co.uk/

I'm on the 500/500 tier at £25pm fixed for 2 years. It was an early order last October, not installed until May. They had trouble getting telegraph poles up in some parts of the estate. The 150/150 was £19 at the time.

We were talking about Openreach there. Openreach FTTP only offers up to 1000/220 (or 1800/120).

If you have an altnet available then yes, they generally do offer symmetric speeds.

I was replying to your " Almost nobody sells the 1000/220 tier, not even BT. Cerberus is the only one I know - and they charge £212 per month plus £594 activation. In an overall thread about CityFibre (and Sky) 5Gb . I gave another example of fast symmetrics up to 2Gbps. At £55pm for that speed.

That post having been a reply to DFScale bemoaning the fact that Openreach don't offer 200 symmetric.