fibre question

I'm on ee adsl, looking to upgrade to fibre. ee are quoting a minimum of 35 mbps, but vodafone are guaranteeing 69.2. the person at ee i spoke to said that everyone uses the same bt system and says i should be suspicious (of vodafone's high speed promise) and to check vodafone's small print. but it seems pretty black and white to me. she says ee will use the existing line (which is from a telegraph pole) to my existing adsl socket, into which i'll connect the brightbox2 fibre router. is this why ee can't guarantee as fast a connection? will vodafone use fibre into my house from a cabinet?

using this site:

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html

I see:

VDSL Range A (Clean) 80 75.3 20 19 69.2 Available -- -- -- --
VDSL Range B (Impacted) 80 60 20 17.6 39.8 Available -- -- -- --

there's the 69.2 figure vodafone mentioned,and on the second line there's a 39.8 number very similar to the 35 ee promise, plus a range of 60-80 which is what they've quoted as a maximum. does range a mean "fibre from the cabinet to your house" and range b means "dodgy copper from a telegraph pole" or is there more to it?

note: recently the line from the telegraph pole to the house was replaced and a new master socket fitted (by bt engineers on ee's behalf) so there's absolutely no internal wiring to contend with.

thanks in advance for any info! I don't want to make a mistake out of ignorance now and be stuck with a slow connection for 18 months.

Edited by deleted (Wed 16-Aug-17 07:57:24)

EE were probbaly quoting you on the lower tier package.

You must be really close to the cabinet. If you go for the top tier package I would expect you to get a connection rate of 69-80meg.

there's a cabinet very close to me (if you mean the green box by the side of the road...although the doors are often wide open and there's grafitti and litter inside!). i'm also close to the exchange so my adsl is pretty fast (22meg sync speed). but ee said no engineer needs to visit the house and that it'll use the existing line/socket, suggesting i won't be getting a line into the house from the cabinet. this is the main thing that i'm not sure about. what does the cabinet have to do with anything if the old phone line from the telegraph pole is going to be used? I did make clear to ee i wanted the faster of their 2 fibre packages.

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-Aug-17 20:51:25)

In reply to a post by sehnsucht:

(if you mean the green box by the side of the road...although the doors are often wide open and there's grafitti and litter inside!)

Prolly Virgin. They never got the hang of working locks.

The new signal comes from the new/shiny green cabinet near to the original cabinet.

It uses rhe existing connection from the cabinet. The engineer just swaps your line over at the cab to "inject" the broadband signal from the fibre enabled cabinet.

ok. but it still gets into the house from the telegraph pole, right? the cabinet feeds into the telegraph pole somehow?

Yes, nothing between the house and the cabinet changes.

The only difference is that your broadband is supplied from the cabinet using VDSL2, as opposed from the exchange using ADSL2+.

ok great, thanks.

so any idea why vodafone are confident they can promise me 69.2 whereas ee are much more cautious? if it's as simple as just reporting figures from that web-page why don't ee also do so?

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-Aug-17 21:16:49)

No idea sorry.

Some ISP's use the "impacted line" range to cover their backs.

Be aware with Voda you will struggle to use your own modem/router.

Most likely EE quoting you for their up to 38 Mbps service, and Vodafone quoting for their up to 76 Mbps (both providers sell both products)

"Range" in that context, is the Speed Range of the VDSL signals that you are likely to get, given the known and unknown variables involved.

Both are over your existing copper connection from the older PCP cabinet, with the link to the newer FTTC/VDSL cabinet added in.

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If the pole is very close to the old PCP cabinet, then you you should be able to get an accurate measure of the wire length, from the new BT NTE Socket in your house to that cabinet, through it and onwards to the new FTTC cabinet, including any vertical runs, such as on the pole.

Post that length on this thread - it allows contributors to make a much more accurate assessment of the likely Speeds.

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I upgraded from EE ADSL to EE VDSL in 2014.

You should receive the Bright Box 2, some days before the scheduled change.

In my case, I spotted the engineer arriving to do my actual upgrade, minor changes to the wiring in the PCP.

At present, your connection effectively and electrically goes straight through the PCP, arriving on a multi-way cable from the Exchange, departing to your house on probably a single way cable, depending on what arrangements there are on the pole.

For the up grade to VDSL, the straight-through connection is cut, with the Exchange side being now joined to a (new) Link to the new FTTC, where the VDSL signals connection is made, returning to the PCP on another (new) link, this second link then being connected to "Your" individual cable etc.

Much of the work has already been done when the FTTC was installed, so this final upgrade work is confined to that in the PCP.

At that point, you then substitute the BB2 for the ADSL modem.

On the first occasion, it takes about 5 minutes for the BB2 to "hand-shake" through the total system.

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Having spotted the engineer, I went over to the PCP, just as he was confirming that he had correctly identified my wiring, by attaching a phone temporarily to "my" wires and ringing 17070.

Having received that confirmation, he went ahead with the alterations, and as he tidied up, I returned to my house, swapped the modems etc, powered up, and in about b5 minutes, was on-line with VDSL.

The PCP work took about 5 minutes total.

So having spotted the van arriving about Noon, I was working on VDSL at about 12:25 at the latest.

It was as easy as that.

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I had selected the 40/10 EE package, as it was only £1 more per month; and although a use the Internet a lot, I don't watch videos or indulge in gaming etc.

Edited by deleted (Wed 16-Aug-17 16:55:47)

In reply to a post by sehnsucht:

ok great, thanks.

so any idea why vodafone are confident they can promise me 69.2 whereas ee are much more cautious? if it's as simple as just reporting figures from that web-page why don't ee also do so?

Look back at those 2 ranges you quoted:
VDSL Range A (Clean) 80 75.3 20 19 69.2 Available -- -- -- --
VDSL Range B (Impacted) 80 60 20 17.6 39.8 Available -- -- -- --

The "Clean" range is what applies when the cabling between your house and the cabinet is in good shape, and (more importantly) any poor wiring in your house has been adjusted to ensure it doesn't have an impact.

"Poor wiring" in this sense is an inadvertent bridge tap that causes signal reflections, and happens most when star wiring is used, and/or when rat-tail filters are used in an inefficient manner.

The "Impacted" range applies when poor wiring exists.

If you happen to have poor wiring, then you can maybe fix it yourself (with some guidance). Or an engineer visit ought to be enough to get such wiring dealt with.

Neither EE nor Vodafone know your situation, so cannot tell whether your wiring is poor. Instead, they choose to use a "guarantee". This guarantee isn't really a guarantee of what speed you will achieve. It is actually a guarantee that they will book an engineer visit if your speed falls below that threshold; with a further guarantee that they will let you leave without penalty if the engineer cannot get the speed up above the threshold.

Quite often, the difference in "guaranteed" speed comes from the initial order, and whether you go with an engineer installation, or whether you self-install. Companies like TalkTalk go the self-install route, but then only guarantee the "Impacted" "handback threshold" speed. Plusnet seem to go with engineer installations, and guarantee the "Clean" "handback threshold" speed.

The distinction eventually comes down to this:
An engineer should (almost) always be able to get your speed into the clean range.
The hard part can be, sometimes, getting the ISP to agree to an engineer in the first place.

Was that too complicated?

The simple version might be to recommend the Vodafone choice, because they are more likely to agree to an engineer visit if you end up with a bad speed.

I should also add, that when looking at one of the ranges, the following applies:
- The range you are shown is a range that similar lines get
- The upper speed is the 80th percentile, so 20% get faster than this
- The lower speed is the 20th percentile, so 20% get slower than this
- The "handback threshold" is the 10th percentile, so 10% get slower than this, and is the speed that Openreach will agree to an engineer visit for (*).

Your speed could end up anywhere on the range when you first get connected. And it can (and will) change over time - though should always stay in the range somewhere.

One of the biggest causes of changes to speed is crosstalk - interference from other subscribers. This is expected as more people sign up, but is also random. Don't expect your speed to necessarily stay static throughout its life.

(*) Openreach will agree to send an engineer if your line fails one of the copper line tests that an ISP runs when you call them, no matter what the speed is. However, if you are complaining about a low speed and your line passes the tests, then Openreach will only agree to an engineer when speed is below this handback speed.

Well I guess I'll find out next weekend what speed i get. I have no internal wiring as I only have 1 socket, with the router and a phone plugged into it (and i don't mind losing the phone if that's a problem) connected to the telegraph pole outside with new wire (earlier this year). I'm using either wifi or an ethernet connection over a homeplug ethernet over mains thing.

Rules around the self install FTTC product have been tightened and revamped recently, but even at the time of your cab job the engineer ought to have been spending a little longer on the task ...

At a basic level they are required to store a five minute sync test to their kit at the cab, they should also be ringing to apply a remote tone to identify the correct line, not just clipping on their butt ......

Doing these jobs right should reduce the failings that keep arising on newly provisioned circuits.

Keep in mind that I was standing several paces back from him, so as to avoid intruding, although he was happy for me to watch; it was the first and only time I have directly observed it being done; do not have your apparent every-day experience of such upgrades; and did not have a Stop-Watch or such-like to accurately time him.

Judging from the short time I have noted from a distance, when later upgrades are being done, the general time-scale appears to be similar to that one occasion.

Could you have produced your detailed and informative posting, given those circumstances?

I was attempting to reassure the OP that from the customer aspect, my upgrade was done quickly and quietly, with minimum interruption to the xDSL connections.

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About two weeks back, an additional duct was added to the FTTC, apparently to accommodate another two multi-way link cables, thus permitting a second tranche of up to 96 eventual upgrades, to have available up to 192 connections, out of the Huawei's 288 total potential.