Tutorial on poss alternative solutions if FTTC isn't likely

Hi, We just started a S Fast Broadband group in our village prompted initially by the possibility of a DEFRA grant. The thing is we don't know which end is up or down. I did a search for stuff in the forums e.g. "ADSL2+ Explained" and got nothing.

The thing is a lot of folks here aren't 'currently' looking for 20+mbps BB BUT everybody knows we are being screwed for the little we do get (Market 1). So I would like to explore interim alternatives such as wireless (from the church tower) or ADSL2+ came to mind. If it turns out our village is going to be in a hard to reach area and we believe it will be is there any pointers/links the forum could give us for a Plan B implementation please? (ps looking for better than sattellite though)

Jamie

Where is your village and have you contacted your counties bduk program, as their are plans for white area's (areas where the market will not invest on its own) to be upgraded between 2013-2015 by the goverment and county funding that is matched by the market.

Our village is in S. Somerset, and yes we have had meetings with our county representative and yes now that the national negotiations have I believe been concluded with respect to approved providers, Devon and Somerset will be entering into negotiations with approved providers for SF Broadband hoping the provider will match their pot. My point is they are working top-down and we are working bottom-up and somewhere we are expected to meet in the middle. Now where the 'middle' will be is anyone's guess at the moment so I would like to explore Plan B's

Well looking at the Devon and Somerset superfast broadband site, the project will likely deliver the upgrade in the next 3 years up to 2015.

The tendering process should not be too long as very few companies have remained in the bidding, mainly just Openreach and Fujitsu, who have dropped out of alot of tenders at current mainly due to the sums not adding up.
Its expected that BT OR will win the majority, so FTTC will be the main upgrade across the counties where they win the tenders.

If you dont want to wait, wireless is your most likely soultion and their is a local company, though i would wait and see what the plans will be once the tender has been awarded.

http://www.wdi.co.uk/

Have you spoken to them about bringing their wireless service to the area or are you too far out. The budget you have via the proposed defra funds and what the community can raise will be the decider to what you can achieve.

What is the village name?

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Apr-12 00:13:14)

Thanks for the info....since posting I see thinkbroaband has published news of a project in Hampshire using the private network schools use. We approached Somerset Council a little while ago and our request to piggy-back on this fibre network was denied. I believe it was something to do with the contract Connecting Somerset signed. Shame as I'm 75 feet away from the cabinet (speaking purely selfishly of course LOL), besides that installing a 'replica' fibre cable smacks of mobile cells proliferating umpteen masts

Just last week we decided DEFRA's funding was a no go the reasons were:-

1) It has to be all inclusive and the LSOA map is used. That means if it is fibre fording a river an going 3 kms (adding wireless for 2-3 individually seems prohibitive
2) It all has to be installed & paid for (infrastructure part) before you can get up to 50% of the cost back from the fund but the real killer is next
3) We would be entering into a proposal when we didn't know how far our out of reach area would end up being because the negotiations are only beginning on the county rollout and the current DEFRA round submission is due end of May

Yes we are starting to talk to another wireless provider however we still have to know the answer to 3) above before that goes too much further

The exchange is Chiselborough.

Jamie

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Apr-12 10:17:14)

I forgot to mention an alternate dimension which arose out of our recently completed village survey was some feedback from people who would prefer a mobile solution i.e. enable them to get rid of their landline - I suspect that one might get kcked into touch though, however any input on the viability of this would be welcome as we know jack about any of this. I suspect the idea arose because we discussed a 300+ mbps wireless mast on the church (by the way the churchgoers are unaware of this so forget the name of the village eh

Jamie

You can edit the post with the exchange and village for 12 hours after posting it. So a bit after noon. You could always PM it to anyone who needs to know .

Thanks for that. Slightly anonymised now.

Maybe if I asked my questions more specifically I might get some pointers...

In 'hard to reach areas' is the provision of ADSL2+ more likely than fibre? Is it much cheaper than fibre to install? If BT isn't going to get fibre here, is ADSL2+ an interim solution for us which BT might consider?

Thanks

Depends what you mean by "hard to reach areas".
Do you mean areas which currently have no ADSL (i.e. still on dial-up) or do you just mean small communities in the middle of nowhere (but ones which currently have ADSL1)?

jayteepics forgotten to log in, or someone else ?

Any postcode in the village would be useful, and is there anyone there you know of getting a connection speed of over 6500kbps?

The reason I ask that is that if the village is that distance from the exchange then ADSL2+ wouldn't give much benefit to most people. Which might be the reason the money hasn't been spent.

Presumably there isn't any VM cable either, so it comes down to BT saying "we've got you cornered, so tough" .

The latter i.e. ADSL around 5Mbps looking toward superfast broadband via FTTC then copper. However by white area I mean the area which the private sector won't reach by 2015 but which will to some as yet undetermined extent be delivered FTTC via DevonandSomerset / private partnership initiative

Apologies for anonymous....

Post code TA14 6SG...

Update for me personally. Since I know that whatever happens here it will be a 2 year struggle and since for me Orange broadband SUPPORT failed me abysmally over the last 3.5 years I just moved to BT. Since my new service is only 3 days old I can't say much about speed other than I am getting at least 1Mbps more than the best speeds I had last week.this is the current status from the new homehub3...

ADSL Settings
VPI/VCI: 0/38
Type: PPPoA
Modulation: G.992.1 Annex A
Latency type: Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up): 8.9 dB / 26.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up): 28.0 dB / 14.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up): 19.9 dBm / 12.3 dBm
FEC Events (Down/Up): 8516 / 2
CRC Events (Down/Up): 18 / 4
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
HEC Events (Down/Up): 263 / 2
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 10 / 1

Thank you

Jamie

Just understood what you meant about VM cable...

As it happens some time ago NTL laid Fibre down the A303 The A303 is the same distance North from out village as the BT exchange is South from here if that helps.

So you aren't a really long way from the exchange, so ADSL2+ would be of benefit.

You've omitted the connection speeds from the stats, but I expect 8128/448, or quite possibly 7616/448 as you have interleaving on.

ADSL2+ connection speed would be getting on for 16Mbps. But there are no plans at the moment to provide it.

Can't tell you much more than that I'm afraid.

Re your question about speeds ove 6500Mbps......here are a few results from thinkbroadband speedtester over the last few days for my line...

Date Day Downstream Upstream IP Address Connection
28/04/12 17:11 Sat 5377 Kbps 341 Kbps 81.154.68.203 BT HomeHub
28/04/12 16:58 Sat 5672 Kbps 335 Kbps 81.154.68.203
28/04/12 10:44 Sat 6036 Kbps 355 Kbps 81.154.68.203 BT HomeHub
28/04/12 10:04 Sat 5856 Kbps 356 Kbps 81.154.68.203 BT HomeHub
28/04/12 09:44 Sat 6490 Kbps 354 Kbps 217.44.240.24 BT HomeHub
27/04/12 14:30 Fri 6421 Kbps 355 Kbps 217.44.240.24 BT HomeHub
27/04/12 14:28 Fri 6470 Kbps 353 Kbps 217.44.240.24 BT HomeHub
27/04/12 00:03 Fri 6496 Kbps 336 Kbps 217.42.44.38 BT HomeHub
26/04/12 21:53 Thu 6051 Kbps 354 Kbps 217.42.44.38 BT HomeHub

That we would benefit from ADSL2+ is great news! Thanks

As we have a meeting coming up fairly soon could you just take a mo' to tell me/us would getting ADSL2+ be more financially realistic than going for fibre given that we might try to raise funds to try to help make this happen?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

So you aren't a really long way from the exchange, so ADSL2+ would be of benefit.

You've omitted the connection speeds from the stats, but I expect 8128/448, or quite possibly 7616/448 as you have interleaving on.

ADSL2+ connection speed would be getting on for 16Mbps. But there are no plans at the moment to provide it.

Can't tell you much more than that I'm afraid.

Is this what I omitted?

Connection Information
Line state: Connected
Connection time: 0 days, 09:57:44
Downstream: 7.938 Mbps
Upstream: 448 Kbps

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

So you aren't a really long way from the exchange, so ADSL2+ would be of benefit.

You've omitted the connection speeds from the stats, but I expect 8128/448, or quite possibly 7616/448 as you have interleaving on.

ADSL2+ connection speed would be getting on for 16Mbps. But there are no plans at the moment to provide it.

Can't tell you much more than that I'm afraid.

Sorry not to have respomded just once to your post - regarding interleaving, not sure if I can influence interleaving?

Many Thanks

Jamie

You sure it's 7938kbps downstream? I've never seen it not divisible by 32 on ADSL. Which isn't to say things haven't changed.

Unless you are into serious gaming, interleaving ON is usually sensible. It increases latency by a bit, but makes the line more stable.

Well ADSL2+ requires little more than the wholesale provider (in this case BT / Openreach) to upgrade the dslams in the local exchange (which may be nothing more than a firmware upgrade, or "switching" something in the dslams).
Of course with increased speeds available to all, they may have to increase the link out of the exchange (back to the BT core network).

IIRC BT announced (last summer) an increased roll-out of WBC (which would include upgrades to ADSL2+) for just over half of the UK's exchanges - giving them around 90% population coverage.
This was supposed to happen before next summer (2013).

The main problem appears to be the size of your exchange (very small at just over 700 lines) so I'm sure BT will be needing some financial assistance because they're never going to get a return (on their investment) with such a small exchange.
Plus the fact BT is the only provider in your exchange (meaning nobody else has fibre links to the exchange, which means paying some other wholesale provider to "unbundle" your exchange is going to be stupidly expensive).

So; yes, ADSL2+ will be the cheapest option (as all/most of the hardware is already in place) and you have lines short enough to benefit.
Fibre may well be prohibitively expensive, especially if BT (or another provider) doesn't have a nearby access point or junction box.
Do you have a school in the village? That may have a fibre connection.

There's almost certain too few of you to afford paying for someone to install a fibre connection and a mesh wireless network.
BT are running a similar trial in Bute but with speeds little higher than you're currently getting anyway (as it's meant to fill not-spots rather than boost speeds for those who already have 8Mbps broadband).

At least your speed (with your line stats there's no reason why you shouldn't be getting the full 8Mbps available from ADSL1) is much higher than many on the perimeters of very large towns, so there are many who will have little sympathy for your plight.
Before I was able to switch to Infinity, I was so far away from the exchange I only got around 4.5Mbps (and that was with a heavily tweaked connection - most of my neighbours, with their 'straight out of the box' set-ups, were on little more than 2Mbps) and we're within the town boundaries.

As for satellite broadband; it's very expensive, doesn't work properly when it rains, and is unlikely to deliver much higher speeds than you already have.

Ade,

Many thanks for taking time to explain all that - it should probably be a sticky for others in our situation.

In fact we do have fibre to our village school right in the centre of the village and BT Openreach even upgraded it last summer (chatted to the BT engineers doing it).

When this 'logical' solution was put to Somerset Council the response was something along the lines of too difficult to renegotiate the contracts.

Not content with that I have written to our MP to see if something can be done like spending money to renegotiate contracts rather than reinventing the wheel **. In fact Thinkbroadband.co.uk news item about Hampshire using the public network was most timely.

Again many thanks to all for your valuable help.

Jamie

** just for completeness the letter also stated how crazy it was spending a fortune to push just 2Mbps to not spots saying that while the job is being done a much higher rate of service should be provided (clearly I'm a dreamer
J

there's been stuff in the news about the new PSN (Public Services Network) helping with flexibility and third party uses of things like schools connections.

In reply to a post by jayteepics:

Apologies for anonymous....

Post code TA14 6SG...

Update for me personally. Since I know that whatever happens here it will be a 2 year struggle and since for me Orange broadband SUPPORT failed me abysmally over the last 3.5 years I just moved to BT. Since my new service is only 3 days old I can't say much about speed other than I am getting at least 1Mbps more than the best speeds I had last week.this is the current status from the new homehub3...

ADSL Settings
VPI/VCI: 0/38
Type: PPPoA
Modulation: G.992.1 Annex A
Latency type: Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up): 8.9 dB / 26.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up): 28.0 dB / 14.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up): 19.9 dBm / 12.3 dBm
FEC Events (Down/Up): 8516 / 2
CRC Events (Down/Up): 18 / 4
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
HEC Events (Down/Up): 263 / 2
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 10 / 1

Thank you

Jamie

Sorry to go off topic, but how did you get those stats from the HH3?

http://192.168.1.254

settings (sign in)

advanced settings (continue to adv settings)

broadband

connection

Ah right, thought I was missing something.
I dont get those stats, but i'm assuming that's because i'm on BT Infinity, can anyone confirm this?
Thanks anyway

In reply to a post by steadyeddie:

Ah right, thought I was missing something.
I dont get those stats, but i'm assuming that's because i'm on BT Infinity, can anyone confirm this?
Thanks anyway

Confirmed .

Stats are only ever available from a modem. On ADSLx they are available from the HH because that contains an ADSL2+ modem. On Infinity the modem is the Openreach VDSL2 one and the HH internal one is bypassed. (You use the WAN port instead of the ADSL port).

The OR modem is locked down to stop you getting the stats. It's called nonOpeninfo. There is a hacked version of the firmware available, to get at them, but unless you are reasonably techie and know what you are doing I advise not messing.