Fibre broadband query

Can someone answer a trivial question as I have never thought about it before.

I have just moved from copper to fibre broadband (with Plusnet) and was just wondering what the actual practical differences is between the 40/20 55/10 38/2 options .

I assume the cabinets have the same basic hardware specs so:


1) Is it an ISP marketing ploy where they throttle the upload to persuade you to pay for better upload

2) Is it a BT wholesale ploy to do the same and that's what they sell on to the ISP

3) or is there a real hardware reason that we cant all have 40/20 all the time.


Thanks for any education

Mike

The various speed options are offered by Openreach who own and maintain the equipment, the various CP's offer whichever they wish to their customers.

The various speeds are 'profiles' set on the port in the VDSL DSLAM, these are set by Openreach on the requests of the CP's.

Distance from the cabinet is the first factor, the further away, the slower the connection possibilites.

After that it's Openreach/Wholesale/ISP dependant.

Openreach offer 40/2, 40/10, 55/10 and 80/20 options. I think Wholesale match these offerings to ISP's.

I think plusnet are unique in the 40/20 in that they buy the 80/20 from Wholesale/Openreach but artificially cap throughput to 40/20 on their network routers. 40/20 isn' available to new customers any longer I don't believe.

There are now four Openreach products on FTTC, which are the only ones available to ISPs. 40/2, 40/10, the new 55/10, and 80/20.

The ISPs cannot advertise those speeds, as at least 10% of customers have to be able to achieve the advertised speeds. Hence we see 38/1.9, 38/9, 52/9 and 76/19 or similar on their websites.

40/20 never existed, but Plusnet sold it for a period. It was achieved by providing their customer with Openreach 80/20 but throttling the maximum download speed to 40Mbps within their own system. This seems to have been a marketing gimmick, but was financial madness. They were paying Openreach for the fast product and charging the customer exactly what they had previously charged for 40/10 - the 40Mbps product they had sold for a long time.

Needless to say, it didn't last long. But Plusnet, as usual, stood by their legacy product customers and kept on providing it to those who had signed up to it. At the same time as stopping selling it they reverted to the 40/2 product that they had started with several years ago.

Like TalkTalk, Plusnet currently do not sell 40/10.

As of 1 August this year they have finally decided they need to cut out the 40/20 product, so are replacing it with 55/10 for the customers still on it. They do not, it seems, intend at the moment to make 55/10 available to other existing customers or new ones.

There are no hardware restrictions that I'm aware of. Purely the Openreach price of each product for ISPs to buy and what they choose to sell it at. Taking into consideration all the other factors affecting our own choices of ISP, and profitability and desired market share.

Ah - there is one hardware factor, but not specifically down to this. The underlying providers at exchanges - BT Wholesale Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone, have to buy from Openreach a GEA Cablelink to get the FTTC traffic from the Openreach exchange termination equipment to their own backhaul. The original one had a maximum throughput of 1Gbps and cost them £2000. They can now also have a 10Gbps one costing £10,000.

Given the huge increase in streaming bandwidth needs since FTTC first became available, it could be the higher speed ISPs wish to provide to customers will need them to upgrade their Cablelinks. Else have congestions at that point at times like Wimbledon and Euro football.

Thanks to all.... bit clearer now..

1) Is it an ISP marketing ploy where they throttle the upload to persuade you to pay for better upload

2) Is it a BT wholesale ploy to do the same and that's what they sell on to the ISP

3) or is there a real hardware reason that we cant all have 40/20 all the time.

The products are sold as 40/2 55/10 and 80/20
40/2 is the cheapest
55/10 second cheapest
80/20 most expensive.

To provide 40/20, Plusnet was purchasing the 80/20 speed, at the most expensive cost and then throttling speeds down to 40Mbps for customers. This financially was silly.

So it is not really a marketing ploy, they do not throttle down the upload speed, what you get is what the ISP is able to purchase.

I guess it's an openreach ploy, if you want to believe that exists.

No hardware reasons for 40/20, but ISP is paying for 80/20 and may as well just supply it.

I think BT Consumer (and I expect BT Business) are the only ISP(s) to have moved over to 55/10. 40/10 is alive and kicking.

I think BT Consumer (and I expect BT Business) are the only ISP(s) to have moved over to 55/10.

Didn't I read a post on here somewhere say (I think) PN may be doing it soon ?

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

I think BT Consumer (and I expect BT Business) are the only ISP(s) to have moved over to 55/10.

Didn't I read a post on here somewhere say (I think) PN may be doing it soon ?

Plusnet are moving customers on their legacy 40/20 product (Openreach 80/20 with the downstream capped at Plusnet to 40) to 55/10. The indications at the moment are that they will not be selling 55/10 to new customers.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

40/2, 40/10, the new 55/10, and 80/20. The ISPs cannot advertise those speeds, as at least 10% of customers have to be able to achieve the advertised speeds. Hence we see 38/1.9, 38/9, 52/9 and 76/19 or similar on their websites.

The reason the ISPs cannot advertise those speeds is because they are sync speeds.