"enough homes to support FTTC, you could always ask how much a FTTP solution would cost. It might be cheaper as the amount of digging remains the same "

Are you sure ? i think for FTTP there is a lot more digging unless you are very lucky ie duct and boxes are all in place and can be used.

Yes i am one of those sad saps living in shouting range of the big boys in canary wharf and all icould get normally 3-4 mbits but been lucky and have been able to get Relish (4G 30mbits) but i know this is coming to an end as new housing development is just starting and will block my line of site to the mast and kill my speed, BT/OR in their wisdon have sod all planned for me so even if they said yes we will do something it will take over a year.

Your not the only one living in the dark ages and to be honest i don't expect anything to improve round here for at least 3 years maybe even longer.

All1

In reply to a post by MC31:

"enough homes to support FTTC, you could always ask how much a FTTP solution would cost. It might be cheaper as the amount of digging remains the same "

Are you sure ? i think for FTTP there is a lot more digging unless you are very lucky ie duct and boxes are all in place and can be used.

Maybe I was lucky, the only digging was for the chamber on the phone pole before mine, where they had to make it larger to fit the FibreDP to the inner wall.

Then after installing all the DP's and Manifold's, BT decides to not give them FTTP, but to then pay even more money to install a fibre cabinet and give that to them.

That makes perfect sense to me LOL.

But yeah, FTTC should require less digging up than FTTP, like the connections between each chambers might not be large enough to also include the fibre cables, ours had loads of space.

Paul

Canary Wharf is one of the worst, friends I have out there also have constant drop outs. The BT network in that area is poor, attenuations of 63db are common, 3Mbps slap bang in the city.

Rotherhithe, Canary Wharf, Wapping and parts of Poplar form the bulk of London's super slow lines. All are former docklands, where lines meander around former docks instead of following current streets, local cabling is aluminium and not copper, 40% of the lines are exchange only and exchanges are far away even as the crow flies as there was no need to build a telephone exchange in a working harbour.

These areas were also converted to residential use only recently, mostly after cable tv heyday, so these areas probably do not have Virgin either.

Then there is the problem of Openreach and Ofcom regulation. There is no commercial reason to upgrade any of these lines. Most of us need the slow connection anyway, so they are generating money to OR instead of being inactive. If they upgraded our lines to something better, they would need to spend money but would earn exactly as much, as their line rental charge for 2Mbps EO line and FTTC line is the same.

Another problem is or was EU state aid rules. Government money was available to improve connectivity in rural areas, which excluded London and a couple of other places from any government money to solve the problem.

The third problem is London but especially these areas being transitional places. Not too many residents come to these areas to stay for life, for many reasons. Trying to raise gap funding from a non-existent community only staying temporarily in their own minds, has not produced to my best knowledge a single success story this far in these areas. Or actually I am wrong here. Of course there have been many success stories, but with Hyperoptic if the building is large enough to attract their interest. This does not require any gap funding, just a decision to let them in.

The current situation is the sum of many things, and no one has done anything wrong. Cabling decisions made when homes were built in the early 90's made perfect sense then. Pricing model geared to provide cheap connections for the 95% or so of the nation instead of forcing the vast majority to chip in to help the remaining 5% makes perfect sense for everyone in the 95%. Again, from the perspective of the 95%, it makes much more sense to give public money to NHS instead of telephone line rearrangement projects. And tenants and buy to let landlords who are not interested in providing any funds that cannot be collected in higher rent, or would benefit the next tenant or the one after them, make a sensible decision from their standpoint.

I do not have high hopes of anything major happening in the foreseeable future. Eventually USO might bring some help starting from 2020, but at that time and already now the main focus is to improve FTTC speeds from whatever it averages now.

H

Edited by deleted (Fri 28-Jul-17 11:54:40)

Are these EO lines on 20CN?

I haven't quite got it clear in my mind whether the replacement of 20CN exchanges will help EO lines at all or whether it is an entirely orthogonal issue.

Anyway, today I have had a reply from Openreach that confirms that they have no plans at all to upgrade my exchange (Netherend) or to address the remaining EO lines, so I assume that it will remain as a 20CN exchange until after the USO comes in.

Can anyone tell me whether the USO will require BT to provide a connection if there is a non-BT alternative available (all be it at a higher price)? I'm wondering whether they will simply abandon the EO lines for broadband in areas like mine if there is Gigaclear or even satellite available, rather than spend a lot of money to keep a group of customers that they see as uneconomic to upgrade.

Edited by sheephouse (Fri 28-Jul-17 12:46:28)

How I understand USO is that no one needs to provide anything if there already is a faster alternative. I am not sure what will be the situation if the alternative is a 4g service that provides over-USO speeds only at night and is severely congested at evening peak.

If you have Gigaclear available but do not want to subscribe for being too expensive, I do not think USO will change anything in your case. Your area then meets USO requirement, as one provider is enough.

The third problem is London but especially these areas being transitional places. Not too many residents come to these areas to stay for life, for many reasons. Trying to raise gap funding from a non-existent community only staying temporarily in their own minds, has not produced to my best knowledge a single success story this far in these areas.

Living on a development of 75 properties in Camberwell on the Vauxhall exchange that has gap funded an AIO cab to upgrade our slow EO lines I think there is one point that you are overlooking. Namely tenants have power in much the same way as property buyers. Roughly two-thirds of the properties here are not owner-occupied however landlords were starting to experience some difficulty in renting their property, or at least for the rent they wanted, due to the development being a slow-spot surrounded by properties with access to a fast FTTC service and in many cases VM cable. Landlords were losing tenants whilst those they got were often having to have 2 BT lines to serve the needs of the occupants. As a result the non-resident landlords were as keen as the residents to see faster broadband available on the development.

Our "community" is at best 8, and in practice only 3-4 max would be willing and able to contribute. This is why I have not been too eager to contact OR about it, as their quote will most likely be far too expensive. I also fear if we show any interest in a community project, we will be pushed to the bottom of the pile in their upgrade plans. This may just be me being paranoid, there is nothing to substantiate this.

Neighbouring large buildings have already FTTC, Hyperoptic or Virgin. There would be about 25 townhouses a bit farther away, but this creates another problem, as it would mean then FTTC instead of FTTP.

A friend of mine got his line rearranged to a cabinet in Rotherhithe a couple of months ago. Oh the joy. Except that he can get 21 Mbps down, downstream handback for his line is 18.9 Mbps (10.2 for "impacted", not sure which one to use). He is not that far away from the cabinet. Nor next to it, but if I included the townhouses in my community project and the cabinet would be there, it would be pretty much the same distance.

Sure, 21Mbps is better than 2Mbps, but I would not be happy to pay £1000+ to get that. The local cabling is aluminium, which complicates things. For him, I fear, this is the end of line until 2025 or so, and 21 Mbps will not be enough in 2020. It is barely enough for 4K streaming now. There is probably no way he will ever benefit from G.Fast or any future products until a FTTP roll out, and he is now low priority as his line meets USO unlike us.

I still hope to get Hyperoptic one of these days if there are no complications, but this area is a nightmare for community FTTC projects as the cabinet would need to be very close. FTTP projects might be a different thing but not sure if they make any financial sense with only 3 contributors. I will go and ask in Autumn if the currently ongoing council investigation leads to nothing and I have not been able to get Hyperoptic.

H

If an area has Gigaclear then USO will mean nothing