In reply to a post by jchamier:

Which is why ignore the marketing, read the technical information sites, and wait and see. Generally if your phone has the right radio chip, most of the networks now include 5G capability for no extra cost. (Not all PAYG yet).

Smarty who i use is now doing 5G with no extra cost.

The councils sadly don’t have any scientific advisors, and many just reject based on ‘hearsay’ which is not how the UK should be working. It is likely a “new 5G mast” would be one of the Poles of Wonder from the Three network, which they need because their existing mast density is low, and it also carries 3G and 4G signals.

i have no idea, there is a strange mast over the road from a pub i go to now and again, it belongs to O2 Link is to Google maps. Street view. it is not 5G as o2 still don't do 5G here.

5G is seen as unreliable so far as the frequency allocated originally by Ofcom is very high so has poor distance and poor indoor coverage. The networks are allowed to use other licensed frequencies, and one of the benefits of 3G shutdown next year will allow the networks to choose to deploy more 4G capacity or 5G capacity.

That is going to annoy a few people who still have older 3g only phones, companies, once again, not really giving as monkeys and doing everything to cut cost and make more money for their shareholders. They say it is what people want, the company I work for says that when they make changes.
Not everyone wants a super-duper smart phone, so just want one to make calls and with bloated toad and out of reach knocking out analogue phone lines, people will have little choice but to have a mobile phone just in case they have a power cut and no phone. Again, not really giving a monkey about people, but just profit.

I have a OnePlus Nord (original), which like Oppo is owned by BBK, and all their handsets include 5G support for no extra cost.

The phone I have is still available at around £176, if i wanted to get a Oppo phone with 5G, I think the cheapest one is the OPPO A54 5G at £199, so not the same price, is it?
I presume it may reduce in price, I got my oppo a72 for a very good price, Huawei p10 lite went belly up, so I had to get a phone quickly and I vowed a few years ago that I am never going to go about the £200 for a phone. I got my A72 for around £150.

Quite likely in most built up of the UK, and something our government wants, competition. It is also possible that Zzoom are paying Openreach to fix issues in the ducts they discover when trying to use the Openreach infrastructure.

I really don't know, because a few days ago I saw a zzoomm person on a cherry picker doing something to a pole and i have also seen openreach. So I am still confused. The bloke I had a quick chat to today, was pulling, a draw rope from a GP manhole and up the road there was what I presume was fibre on a roll being pulled into another GP manhole. So they are certainly using openreach ducts, I bet openreach loves that

Oh yeah, competition is good and from what I have heard about and read about zzoomm's network in theory it should be more advanced than Openreach. The one advantage about openreach is that it uses overhead fibre. No digging up gardens and driveways. If i was going for fibre and I needed the higher speed, then i would no doubt go for Zzoomm, but they need to get the bugs out of their system first. But at around £30 a month for 150Mb/s, it is paying more for something I would not use. i have looked at prices of providers that use open reach FTTP and they all around the same price.
That is another £6 a month from what I pay now.

Toob in my town is having to install poles in areas where the OR cabling is concreted into the ground (no duct) and some are complaining. No sign of OR doing their own network here yet. We need some competitors to VirminMedia, whom don’t seem able to fix their failing infrastructure.

i was shocked when i heard zzoomm was coming here, I wonder how much they are being paid and by home, because Hereford is not really a city where any company in their right mind would come to.

I do think that if openreach are forcing people to digital voice, then they should be made to provide a battery back up system, they used to when they first started FTTP, now they don't, all about saving money.

I do think that if openreach are forcing people to digital voice, then they should be made to provide a battery back up system, they used to when they first started FTTP, now they don't, all about saving money.

They don't want to be in the voice game fullstop. Hence why as of 2025 they're existing stage left and leaving it up to the CPs/ISPs.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

They don't want to be in the voice game fullstop. Hence why as of 2025 they're existing stage left and leaving it up to the CPs/ISPs.

I thought it was the voice part that made the money, which is why they did not want people to have no phone.

i have just seen that this digital switch over for voice don't mean that copper cables will go, they will still be used for FTTC. I thought all dialling was done electronically anyway, no mechanical switch.

i remember the old exchange next to our cathedral, when I used to go past it and hear the activators dialling,, also remember when they moved the exchange, it is close to where I work, but most of it is now home to the transport police.

Moving the exchange meant that cables doubled back, and that was the reason why ADSl was so bad for me here, as the cables were twice as long as they should be.


I can understand fibre being better, more reliable, because it doesn't get affected by water and faster, also able to send more data. Plusnet leaves me alone at the moment as they know I can't get a faster broadband, but I do know of providers who bug people to update to the higher speed FTTC. I don't want that being done with fibre.
Also, i just can't be bothered with the hassle.

No it’s not profitable and hasn’t been for 15 years or more. Shrinking fixed line volumes/minutes, shrinking customer base + increasing costs to maintain end of life switching infrastructure in thousands of sites. VoIP costs a fraction of legacy switched/TDM voice,

Basically burning platform that is costing BT Group a fortune. They want out.

"Surly it will ba classed as a spoilt vote"

You've answered your own question. " Spoilt vote" the word vote gives it away.

If the voter puts the ballot slip in the box then it is a vote whether they put anything on the slip or not.

Not sure how voting on-line works as not sure if one can tick more than one box or not.

Edited by broadband66 (Fri 29-Jul-22 13:37:44)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

No it’s not profitable and hasn’t been for 15 years or more. Shrinking fixed line volumes/minutes, shrinking customer base + increasing costs to maintain end of life switching infrastructure in thousands of sites. VoIP costs a fraction of legacy switched/TDM voice,

Basically burning platform that is costing BT Group a fortune. They want out.

I realise that fewer people use landlines now for calls, but it was not that long ago when BT was saying they were not making a great amount on broadband, and yet their profits keep rising.
I also realise that VoIP is cheaper to run, no mechanical parts for a start, but openreach need to provide some sort of battery back, certainly for alarms and like. They did at first, but it seems as if greed and more profit have got in the way of that.

BT had the infrastructure for peanuts when the government sold it off, and they did very little with it for years, it surprises me that we are able to get the speeds we can over the cables we have. So I certainly don't feel sorry for them paying out money.

I have read that while they are changing people to digital voice, which don't affect me anyway as i already use VoIP and no phone is connected to the landline. I have also read that they are still keep the copper cables and FTTC infrastructure, If that is the case then I can stay on it.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

You've answered your own question. " Spoilt vote" the word vote gives it away.

If the voter puts the ballot slip in the box then it is a vote whether they put anything on the slip or not.

Not sure how voting on-line works as not sure if one can tick more than one box or not.

Still nto really a vote, just because it is called a spoilt vote it is not a vote, a vote is if you put a name down on the slip of paper.

Anyway, I don't live in Australia, I live here, so it is irrelevant.

The problem usually with battery backups is if they are powered all the time then the batteries tend to run out more quickly (seen often with laptops). And the other issue is if your battery has degraded the first time you may know that is when it cuts out 30 seconds into a power cut - the maintenance of ensuring batteries are still in good working condition could cost significant amounts for ISPs if they are required to give any level of commitment of length of up time in the event of a power cut.

In reply to a post by ian72:

the maintenance of ensuring batteries are still in good working condition could cost significant amounts for ISPs if they are required to give any level of commitment of length of up time in the event of a power cut.

Someone should ask Openreach as I understood most FTTC cabinets have UPS batteries in.

I expect so - and the cost of maintaining them is built in to that. The cost of maintaining batteries at every single premises I would guess could be pretty significant.