Will i ever get fibre ?

Hi,

This is my first post so go easy on me but I have lurked this forum for quite some time.

I live in the heart of London, Westminster to be exact, and I am still suffering from slow broadband despite being next to one of the busiest and touristy locations in the whole of the UK. I have been trying to sign up with Hyperoptic for some time now and tried to get other people to register but nothing has come out of it.

In my household, we have over 8 devices connected to the internet and we all frequently use bandwidth heavy applications ( eg, Steam and Skype). When one person starts downloading or is having a call on skype we all suffer from buffering and latency goes up dramatically.

I have tried all the options. Virgin probably won't cable my street since the block of flats that I live in is on a busy and main road. Even though they provide broadband with houses 100m away. I have also tried Relish which went okay. During the time we don't use the internet that much the speed is great going up to 60mbps one time but when hop on it goes down to less than 2 Mbps. I considered using a MiFi router but the low data caps and how expensive it is is just not working.

I don't understand why Openreach won't provide fiber as I have checked postcodes for 4 buildings around me which also suffer from the poor infrastructure.

If anyone has some kind of info that would be extreamy helpful.

Information if anyone is wondering: SW1V 2RP (Post code)
Pimlico Exchange
Zen Standard ADSL (Up to 17mbps)
Speeds tend to hover around 10-11 Mbps.
I am using a wired connection.

Thanks

London is left to the commercial decisions of the operators, so the same reasons why Hyperoptic have not turned up may also be why Openreach have not.

So no new information.

NOTE: Steam can be configured to be more friendly on shared connections, so set a bandwidth limit so that others can still use Skype, streaming etc. Also on Skype the impact on others is probably down to saturating the upload size and delaying download ACK packets, so if you upload speed if 600 Kbps limit the camera broadcast to 400 Kbps to help improve performance for others.

In short term a second phone line might be best thing, e.g. dedicate one to the Steam/gaming side of life.

Games these days seem to get bigger and bigger and when even my top speed can take 8 hours or so to download a decent game. I have before limited the speed but still, notice some latency issues.

If I were to take out a sperate line will I need to have an engineer come and fit in another socket? Also, do ISP's provide bonded ADSL these days.

Really unfortunate and disappointing.

Yes another socket as its another physical line, most properties have two pairs, but in flats there is more variation.

Bonding is more expensive, but load balancing which should help with steam which is lots and lots of multiple sources and that needs nothing from your provider just you controlling the balancing hardware

http://amzn.to/2BnFR2F £54 for something that will load balance four connections

If upload is important then ADSL2+ Annex M may be worth a look, but if your sync speed now is 10 to 11 Mbps it is not going to do much, but people with 18-19 download speeds can see upload boosted to 2 Mbps, but they do end up giving up a meg or two of download speed.

You might qualify for USO upgrade by 2020 if your upload speed is below 1Mbps. In your case this would mean much more than 10Mbps download, as there is no way they can squeeze USO speed out of your current exchange only line.

Inner London is one of the most expensive and complicated areas to upgrade, and there is a lot to do in Westminster, E14 and SE16, and as long as gap funding is not available, very little will probably happen. I live in SE16 where ADSL lines only provide 2-4Mbps, and BT/OR do not have any upgrade works ongoing. Especially now when promises about money have been made, it would be unwise for OR to start upgrading lines now if they can get money for doing so in 2019-2020.

I would double my efforts in getting people signing up for Hyperoptic. It does not cost them anything. It will still be a long process, but not dependent on any gap funding or USO funding that may or may not be there one day. Of course you could start a "community project" and pay OR as well, but if your neighbours are not interested in signing up for free, they probably would not be too keen on paying £1k-£2k per flat either.

Hyperoptic seems to be the only option. I might just make some flyers and hand them out. Only need 13 more residents to sign up. I just don't know whether they would bother serving a block of 30 flats or so.

Of course you could start a "community project" and pay OR as well, but if your neighbours are not interested in signing up for free, they probably would not be too keen on paying £1k-£2k per flat either.

Our community funded network rearrangement that gave us our own AIO cab outside our development of 75 properties near the Oval SW9 cost somewhat less than that coming in at around £250 per property. The problem though isn't so much the cost but more getting everyone on board so that the costs are shared by all that will benefit rather than having some that will the benefit but are unwilling to contribute.

What does annoy me is that my whole street Vauxhall Bridge Road is all EO Lines. Surely if Openreach sorted out the problem they would get a good amount of renvenue. I am talking possibly over 100 flats not too sure.

Revenue is good, but how much of the revenue is attributed to paying back the capex spent so that you could order.

We were likewise all EO lines however we do need to remember that BT is company answerable to its shareholders who expect it to make a profit on its transactions. BT needs to be able to earn sufficient income from any network expansion/changes such as is involved in rearranging EO lines to cover the not inconsiderable capital expenditure. This is where BDUK has helped in areas outside the major urban areas such as London and Manchester leaving many of us in the cities on EO lines with relatively poor connections. At least you are seeing 10-11Mbps which is double what most were seeing here until we gap funded our AIO.

One of their thresholds is 30. Another is 50. Not sure how they use these.

I would definitely get the required people to sign up and then contact them. In many cases they lack a contact person in a block of flats, and things start moving quickly when someone appears to coordinate. If you have another block of flats next to you suffering from the same problem, you will want to talk to them as well. I managed to get Hyperoptic to our building of only 8 flats by persuading them to do us at the same time as they did a larger building next door.

If you are in this situation, get as many as possible from your building to sign up, and do the same next door. Then contact their sales team and ask if they could treat you as one project. They might even say yes.

In reply to a post by Sammm_:

I don't understand why Openreach won't provide fiber

Same answer as always: money.

In the commercial rollout, the average cabinet size was around 300 lines. Fewer than 200 lines was unlikely to be considered ... even where the PCP already existed. That gives an idea of the scale that Openreach thought viable.

The extra cost for putting a PCP in place, to allow EO line rearrangement, made it untenable without a subsidy ... and London wasn't involved in the BDUK subsidy programme.

Since the commercial programme finished, BT has been running a "London Extension Project" (LEP) that has started to upgrade smaller cabinets and, in a few places, deal with EO lines. There are 23 cabs on Pimlico that are part of this project, where the smallest appears to be 136 lines.

If Hyperoptic goes nowhere, and you need to try harder for a BT community solution, then you might find the Codelook website handy

Money and a wide choice of places to pick from in the commercial roll-out still

The building right next to me has Hyperoptic (60 Vauxhall Bridge Road, SW1V 2RD) They also suffer from EO Lines but its not a problem since they can get faster speeds. I might shoot an email to Hyperoptic. Its also been taking orders for some time now so it is not a new installation. Would they still consider it because from what i gathered from your post the other building was getting it installed whereas the neighboring building has had the service live for a long time?

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Dec-17 15:14:06)

If they are already next door, it will probably be very simple for them to extend it to you.

Get your neighbours to sign up first. Hold their hand if needed. You can remind them it does not cost them a penny, now or ever. They will not be forced to sign up with them even if they do come your way, and it does not cost anything to the building in service charges. In contrast, it might add a notch to property prices as people willing and able to pay inner London prices will expect a working internet connection.

Generally, there is no reason whatsoever why someone should not want them to do your building. When I was at that stage, I had to answer quite a many questions from our building and next door. People were worried about having to sign up or pay something even though it is stated clearly on their web pages that this is not the case. Some people simply did not believe anything would improve, as they did not understand the technology behind it. They had been switching from one ISP to another with promises of better speeds, and they did not quite understand what would make the difference this time. There were also occasional worries of signing up for Hyperoptic being "wrong" and against the interest of the surrounding community - probably assuming a large number of suffering people would eventually persuade OR to come this way and improve the situation for everyone.

Many, many questions and mostly easy to answer, and residents started signing up as soon as they got answers to their questions.

Thanks for the advice. I will ask Hyperoptic for a few of their leaflets and go around the building posting them up and answering questions. One of the problems I feel would happen is people won't understand what Hyperoptic will do and might just think that it is just a kid talking nonsense. Anyways I will give it a go. Wish me luck!

Hi, make sure to register to be our champion-> http://ow.ly/c8gv30cvMIu. Our marketing team will be contacting you to let you know of all the details how you can best promote our service to make sure your neighbours become familiar with it and that you're getting it at your building.

Thanks. I have just registered. Really hoping for a response.

WOW just looking at your postacode your just round the corner from a m8 i used to know years ago, anyway enough of that according to Hyperoptic all you need is 13 more residents to sign up so if you can find every address with that postcode (Royal mails website will give you that) then you could hit them and try to get your number up, one thing i can tell you is Hyperoptic are planning to lower their threshold of how many residents need to sign up before they do anything so that's good news for you, i had a phone call with someone about a month ago who gave me that info and was talking about it being 3-4 months away before that goes live, no numbers were given as i presume that is very private but he just told me threshold was coming down, so good luck to you Sammm.

All1

I've tried numerous times but due to my age people, i guess just think I am talking nonsense. Quite irritating to say the least. I am still waiting for a response from Hyperoptic regarding the leaflets. If anyone has a template I could follow and print out my self that would be greatly appreciated. Most of the addresses in the postcode are in my building. Except for a few on the ground floor which have their sperate doors.

In reply to a post by Sammm_:

I've tried numerous times but due to my age people, i guess just think I am talking nonsense. Quite irritating to say the least. I am still waiting for a response from Hyperoptic regarding the leaflets. If anyone has a template I could follow and print out my self that would be greatly appreciated.

I will send you a PM giving you an email address for the guy i have been talking too. He seemed keen to help me and others get people on board so maybe bunging him an email can at the very least give you the contact details for the right dept, having said that i don't know if he is just for my area or does whole of London but at least it's a contact for you to chase and very best of luck.

I want them now but looks like i will have to make do for 6 months until they will offer it to us, i do have FTTP i could use but price is putting me off but i'm lookin at taking out plusnet trial, so as i say very best of luck Sammm.

All1