In reply to a post by broadband66:

Engage brain and read.

Two of us with the same problem?

Not me.

I'm still on ADSL, yet sure FTTC is available here. I know that's my lookout, and it's up to me to change it if I feel the time is right, but contrary to your friend's experience, Plusnet have never prompted or pushed me whatsoever. If they had, I might have done something about it by now!

I looked on my account to see if there were any juicy upgrade offers, but all it had was a discount for taking another 18 months of ADSL. Whilst I don't like being badgered by firms about products and services I have little need for or interest in, Plusnet could hardly be accused of that!

In reply to a post by broadband66:

I'm not saying that it is ok for everyone but my daughter was using Teams, Zoom, etc for her schooling and my wife was accessing her school SIMS from home and it all went smoothly.

It appeared to go smoothly to you, which is not the same thing as it going smoothly. Let me explain.

While everything looked fine to you, on any video call the person at the other end is going to see a blocky, stuttering, low resolution video. Meanwhile you think it is all good because the video you see with a 14Mbps download speed could easily be full HD if the person at the other end has a decent VDSL or better connection.

So unless you are on top of the exchange with something approaching maximum sync speed (which is a very small percentage of ADSL2+ users and not you) then ADSL technology is unsuitable for video calling. Even they you are going to be stuck with at best an SD video stream and anything else using the connection at the same time will tank the video quality for the other person.

Anyone claiming ADSL technology is suitable for video calling is sadly uninformed and just looks to those that know better a bumbling idiot.

Horses for courses

I checked with some end users and they were happy with our video at their end.

"Anyone claiming ADSL technology is suitable for video calling is sadly uninformed and just looks to those that know better a bumbling idiot."

I never said it was was suitable for everyone. It has been suitable for us and the people we conference with. Better to know actual information than be a know it all.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

I checked with some end users and they were happy with our video at their end.

"Anyone claiming ADSL technology is suitable for video calling is sadly uninformed and just looks to those that know better a bumbling idiot."

I never said it was was suitable for everyone. It has been suitable for us and the people we conference with. Better to know actual information than be a know it all.

It'll work at less than 1980's VHS quality of 360p as long as no-one else uses the connection. Soon as someone else tries to do something even that terrible quality will end up stuttering. You can forget group video chats too as even at 360p it's not going to work without interruption.

Teams needs 1.2mbps at 720p for upload, so you've got no prayer in having even a moderately decent quality call on your connection, even if it was idle. Luckily for most people teams prioritises audio so even when your face is stuttering the sound should still get through.

A couple of our directors where I work are on ADSL connections as they live in the middle of no-where and it's a frustration for everyone else when they are the ones holding the conversation up, everyone saying i can't hear you, the screen sharing going wrong etc, and then to cap it off them wanting a summary of what's going wrong. In the end they usually just end up phoning in after much time has been wasted.

Edited by gary333 (Wed 30-Sep-20 21:00:50)

Please explain why when the people viewing our feed said it was ok?

I can only go with the actual experience and not theoretical, even though the the maths says otherwise.

Edited by broadband66 (Thu 01-Oct-20 12:47:56)

In reply to a post by TLM:

I'm still on ADSL, yet sure FTTC is available here. I know that's my lookout, and it's up to me to change it if I feel the time is right, but contrary to your friend's experience, Plusnet have never prompted or pushed me whatsoever. If they had, I might have done something about it by now!

I looked on my account to see if there were any juicy upgrade offers, but all it had was a discount for taking another 18 months of ADSL. Whilst I don't like being badgered by firms about products and services I have little need for or interest in, Plusnet could hardly be accused of that!

Maybe push was a bit strange, but they sent them emails and stuff like that, even a letter once to their home addresses, saying that FTTC was available. They did try and push their TV service on me a few times until I told them I did not have a T.V Licence, so that was the end of that.

You should think about FTTC, unless you are really sure you will not use the extra speed, it is not just about the extra speed, it is that bit of headroom. The price difference is only a couple of quid a month.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Please explain why when the people viewing our feed said it was ok?

I can only go with the actual experience and not theoretical, even though the the maths says otherwise.

Maybe they couldn’t care less and just nodded along to get you to move on to the next question. Maybe they were not focussing on what you were asking and being an “end user” couldn’t see any reason to effectively criticise you and your equipment. Most people are happy to put up with rubbish quality, artifacts, hissing etc and think nothing of it.