ADSL life after FTTC

Can anyone point me to figures that show improvement (if any) to users staying with ADSL after FTTC has been taken up by others on the same cabinet?
I am variously told this: "... if the cabling between the cab and the exchange was of poor quality. You would see an increase similar to what would happen if we ran brand new copper cable to the cabinet"
and this "... the overall noise will drop just a small amount which could result in a small increase in speed, however, this could be offset by noise introduced by VDSL connections. So, possibly a small incease, but nothing to 'write home about'."

haven't seen anything to be honest. If the power masks are correct you shouldn't see much if any interference from the VDSL. I've never seen much crosstalk effect between ADSL lines, and I have two to play with.

Don't hold your breath - get on FTTC if you can !

I concur, nothing seen to support the idea that ADSL speeds get better as people switch to FTTC.

I agree!
My motivation for wanting to know is that our village's new cabinet is installed (a good start) and we keenly await (yawn) the arrival of the fibre cable and some mains power to the cabinet, and many of us can't switch over fast enough to our providers' fibre products - I expect I will go with BT Infinity 2 as I have no complaints with my Business Account except poor speed and reliability of the existing copper connection.

However, I am being asked by others: "Will we see our speed improve if we choose not to take up our provider's fibre product?" i.e. unless they take some new product, will their bandwidth remain terrible?

Anecdotes suggest they might see a slight improvement.

In reply to a post by trismegister:

Anecdotes suggest they might see a slight improvement.

I suspect this is a myth, certainly nothing I would want to base a decision on !

There's the chance the copper gets better or worse with any network intervention, but effects should be modest.

The answer is no.

Well, it's refreshing to hear such a clear and definite answer. To quote the message I had from BT:

I have had to speak with a colleague about this as to be honest i was not quite sure myself.
Essentially this can in theory improve the connection speed - not to fibre quality but still a good bit.
This would only improve the connection if the cabling between the cab and the exchange was of poor quality. You would see an increase similar to what would happen if we ran brand new copper cable to the cabinet.

I hope this answers your question

More BT flannel? "Still a good bit"

As is the one where folk report a slow down on their ADSL service just before FTTC goes live.

For those that dont upgrade to fibre there is no change to the wiring

This message is similar to the one I had when BT ran fibre 3km from the exchange to the cabinet about 300m away. We have a copper overhead cable from there, this installation being some 40 years old. Our 'up to 8Mb' connection had been running at 3 to 5Mb but on connecting the fibre it increased to 9Mb; we have seen 10Mb on occasion.

Then it can't be an 'up to 8Mb' connection.

I suppose a pedant might suggest that the fibre connected folk get their data quicker, so the exchange line is more bursty, and less 'latency heavy' for the remaining non-fibre folk.

That's assuming the fibre folk don't max out the bandwidth in the way they did prior to fibre. Equally pedantic, we could argue that the heavy users are the cause of contention issues, rather than the exchange bandwidth.

In the unlikely event that all other subscribers on the cable that routes back to the exchange was to move to FTTC I would have thought you would get a slight improvement - as sole ADSL subscriber.
This is because there are no longer any ADSL signals running in the E-side cable from the cabinet back to the exchange. So any cross talk in the cables from ADSL will cease to exist and your ADSL signal can have the cable to itself.
So less noise, higher sync and hence slightly better download speeds.

Will be best for those near to the cab' so short D side and long E side with the D side not seeing much FTTC x-talk
Whether this will be noiciceable in practice remains to be seen - principally by me as I'm in exactly that position and have no current need for FTTC when it arrives.

Edited by deleted (Fri 28-Jun-13 15:35:37)

Cross talk from ADSL might cease to exist, but the cross talk from FTTC would be the replacement, hence the three different power masks used.

Sounds more like an upgrade from ADSL to ADSL2+

To take the other extreme, if none of your village go over to FTTC because of the anecdotes, none are likely to see any improvement.

=============================

Back in the early days of dial-up, 1970s, our long-distance connections, 350 miles, worked better and more consistently during the heavy daytime/working hours usage, than in the evenings and nights.

I suspect that this was because of greater consistency in noise levels, cross-talk etc, allowing the equipment to work in steadier conditions, compared with overnight, when generally the lines were quieter/cleaner, but any NOISE BURSTS would have a more drastic effect on the equipment, more frequently losing connection.

My impression is that this might still be the case.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Sounds more like an upgrade from ADSL to ADSL2+

I think that was the case, if this makes sense:
Downstream 9,188 Kbps
Upstream 1,131 Kbps
Modulation G.992.5 Annex A
Latency type Fast
Noise margin (Down/Up) 7.8 dB / 6.4 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 33.6 dB / 16.4 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 15.4 dBm / 1.7 dBm

We have recently had an FTTC cabinet installed at the top of the road and the high speed upgrade is now on offer.

Also for some reason - I would love to know why - my peak speed has increased from around 6M to 12M and my Sync speed is 13M. Also in several tests I have done downloading large files I actually get a sustained speed of 12M. (e.g 320Meg file in just over 3 minutes)

So something has got better recently.

I suspect that because FTTC is being installed there has been a general upgrade of the system.

OR

Some sort of upgrade of the cabling or hardware has taken place between my house and the exchange.

I see all the comments when this is discussed saying that ADSL "should not improve" but the fact of the matter is that it has.

Has anyone else observed this ?

Several possibilities.

The amount of noise has dropped considerably; a connection was remade, your pair might have changed ...

Unlikely that new cabling would result in the increase you have seen. Hardware changes again are unlikely to give a massive improvement.

Do you have before and after stats?

I am afraid all I have is my memory of the last time I did a test and also my memory of a set of weekly downloads that I do almost every week when doing web site backups.

This involved several files of up to 300meg and I know these used to take "a lot longer".

So I started off thinking oit was the FTTC cabinet itself but I realise now having read discussions on-line it cant be that so it has to be some sort of side effect.

I thought I would post and see if anyone else had seen a similar effect.

May have had an upgrade to adsl2+ from adsl

My experience indicates the opposite. Since my exchange installed FTTC my ADSL speed has dropped from 1.9 Mbps to 1.6 Mbps. The normally low speed is due to my being 2 miles from the cabinet (rural area). I suspect this present drop may be due to the interference with the cables in the cabinet when they connected the fibre cabinet as we have experienced a change in speed on previous occasions when work has been done in the cabinet.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

haven't seen anything to be honest. If the power masks are correct you shouldn't see much if any interference from the VDSL. I've never seen much crosstalk effect between ADSL lines, and I have two to play with.

I have although it usually turns out to be down to a run of cable somewhere that's not using twisted pair, The effect can be quite dramatic as well.

In my case it was down to [censored] internal wiring, went from 20Mbit/s on a single line to 12Mbit/s and about 6Mbit/s removed that cable run and got about 18Mbit/s on one line and 22Mbit/s on the other.

Seen another instillation where adding a 2nd line didn't boost throughput as expected due to extensive crosstalk, in that case it was a rented apartment so I couldn't rip out the cable to replace it.