As Paul is on a 330/50 line I suspect he would have upgraded anyway.

However, my brother lives in West Sussex and has had FTTP for over 3 years. He is still on the Infinity 1 package and sees no reason to upgrade and is more representative I think of the country at large. He does gaming, he streams films, etc - he has no interest in 4K because like many "normal" people he doesn't really see a difference in video quality. In the end he could afford a larger package but doesn't see it as making any material improvement to the service so doesn't bother.

And with consulting hat, the fact that 73% of Virgin Media customers are on 100 Mbps or faster is largely the result of 'free' speed upgrades rather than decisions to buy that and the classic marketing tricks that mean if you sell three products, the middle priced one is invariably the one people will choose

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

And if you had say 22 to 28 Mbps via VDSL2 how readily would you have upgraded is really the question.

Well it would depend on the price, and our price budget, granted on ADSL we was paying £5 per month, so that was about £1 per Mbit we were getting.

Looking at the prices for FTTC where we are estimated to get between Range B: 32.4 - 54.5Mbps or Range A: 46 - 67.1Mbps £32 for Infinity, £42 for Infinity 2 (both unlimited) Infinity works out to be ~£0.60 per Mbit and ~£0.63 per Mbit.
So going with FTTC we would be better off in speed and price.

Now would we move from FTTC (if we already had it) erm, in our case yes, we have very bad copper lines that results in our line dropping out dead when it rains heavy, so we wanted to get off our copper line which is also why we moved over to FVA.

The price we were paying for FTTP was ~£32 (£21 discount) would be £53 per month (without line rental), we recently moved over to Ultrafast 2 due to funny enough it was cheaper than Infinity 4 and had no price increase after the 18 months, where as with Infinity 4 there was.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

We all exist in our own little bubbles, but the only way I see millions upgrading from VDSL2 to FTTP is if the price is pretty much the same or actually lower. My assumption is that many people are like me seeing bills going up a lot faster than static wages so actually have a lot less now to spend than a few years ago.

Well we had a set price we put aside for broadband and if the higher tier prices were too high we would of gone to a lower speed.
Well there is a few of us here that all chipped in for the broadband, if it was just me then I would go with Infinity 2 due to that would be my price range.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Don't get me wrong would love VDSL2 to disappear and UK have 20 million lines of FTTP but the realist part of the brain does see the logistical and financial issues with that.

Well funny that you say that, when I was speaking to BT (one of the several departments I got passed to) with the issue with upgrading to Ultrafast 2 a couple of them were saying that they do plan to roll out FTTP everywhere, but this all takes time and money to achieve, but that's their end goal.

And that FTTC was the stop gap that gets the minimal speeds increased and the Fibres closer, which leaves the final distance cheaper later on.

Now whether this is correct, it does make sense.

Paul

The FTTP everywhere end goal has been talked about years ago and several times since, but its a long term goal

But senior staff wanting and knowing its the end goal versus being given the money to make it happen today are two very different things.

CityFibre is burning cash currently but holds out prospects of a big payback in the future and the early investors have already got that it looks like with the proposed acquisition.

To date I have not seen any Vodafone FTTP like speed test results, so while lots of talk of building FTTH and they seem to be it is not turning into solid customers yet.

In reply to a post by ian72:

As Paul is on a 330/50 line I suspect he would have upgraded anyway.

However, my brother lives in West Sussex and has had FTTP for over 3 years. He is still on the Infinity 1 package and sees no reason to upgrade and is more representative I think of the country at large. He does gaming, he streams films, etc - he has no interest in 4K because like many "normal" people he doesn't really see a difference in video quality. In the end he could afford a larger package but doesn't see it as making any material improvement to the service so doesn't bother.

Like I have said to Andrews reply, if it was just me here and I had access to FTTP, then I would of gone with Infinity 2, but I was really more interested in the upload than the download.

I also have a neighbour that is on Infinity where BT has given them a free upgrade to Infinity 2 speeds, they have no reason or plans to upgrade to a faster speed.

They did say if they did upgrade to a faster speed it would have to be worthwhile price wise.
Like if you are paying £42 for Infinity 2 or you could pay £55 for 152Mbps (Ultrafast 1) or £60 for 330Mbps (Ultrafast 2) its all down to your budget and what you are willing to pay for.

Paul

I totally agree.

Paul

Like if you are paying £42 for Infinity 2 or you could pay £55 for 152Mbps (Ultrafast 1) or £60 for 330Mbps (Ultrafast 2) its all down to your budget and what you are willing to pay for

That is the crux of the matter. As many posts here are looking at the cheapest supplier they can find for VDSL then it is unlikely they would pay much more for higher speeds (especially as for most people they wouldn't notice any significant change from those higher speeds).

Well, I'd happily pay for Ultra Fast, or Super Fast, or I'd even settle for Fast. I'm currently spending ~£100 per month to get a just about usable broadband (by load balancing ADSL and 4G). I'd pay more for a better solution. I can't quite justify a leased line, but I have looked into it, and almost went for it. So there is demand - but not necessarily in the places they are building the networks.

I understand the problems you are having in getting what for you is acceptable broadband and I would probably be one of those who would opt for higher speeds, especially upload, if available. However my experience here on a development that paid for a network rearrangement and the provision of an AIO FTTC cab is that whilst many wanted faster speeds than the few Mbps they were previously getting only a small minority of residents have signed up for other than the slowest FTTC service available. From speaking to my neighbours this isn't so much due to cost but rather that the lower speed packages meet their current needs.

This seems to be a question that comes up a lot. But it misses out on some details.

I think when comparing ADSL/FTTC to FTTP most people are looking at it from a purely speed factor. The other major factor is the different technology on how this is delivered. Also the amount of faults will drop when we're all on a proper full fibre network.

As far as people not paying for the higher service. I think that could be put down to two things. 1. Can a line actually reach infinity 2 speeds, and if so by how much? The second thing is real world line quality.

There are probably many lines that are listed on the dsl checker that says they can reach Infinity 2 speeds but in reality they might get 60MB. So technically you could order Infinity 2, but in reality you're only paying for 8MB above Infinity 1. So on the stats sheet it looks like you chose to not pick the higher speed.

I think the mentality of people only wanting to pay for cheap broadband is a chicken and egg situation. When marketing is always pushing cheap prices on packages that can do everything you want then the whole question becomes more about price than having a better product. I think as time goes along more and more people are becoming educated about ISP's and broadband just like they have done about the Internet.

The paying cheap point is interesting in that people are buying other technology that they don't need and is way overpriced. But they still buy it. So if this only paying for cheap broadband phenomenon is going on then it is uniquely only happening in broadband and we should ask why.

I think this issue is interesting and well worth it to keep monitoring situations. But there is a real danger of using PAST statistics to drive future technologies. People don't like moving to new things. That's a general point on anything. Very few people embrace new things. We could use the same arguments about adsl2+ which can go 'upto 24MB'. So if the people pushing this argument won we wouldn't have had FTTC, as currently 24MB would be suitable for peoples needs.

We know what is coming down the line in other technologies. 4K TV's are a thing these days. There is a gradual moving to IPTV channels, especially with Sky embracing Internet channels along side their satalite dish. We also know everyone and their grandmother is going to be online soon. We're approaching the point now that the oldest generation of a family will be tech savvy. We know the gaming world are wanting to delivery games you can play through a 'dumb' terminal, so you dont have games loaded on your pc/console, but play them remotely over the net.

If network providers don't embrace full fibre technology then they are going to be left behind. Whatever peoples habits are a network builder as to keep ahead of the game. If the people in charge don't like embracing change then they need to work somewhere else imho.