The reason I say that the Swedish cable network is probably better than ours is because of the poor job done installing a lot of the network when originally installed in the UK and not much has been done to it since apart from when an issue risen....

I've seen some very bad installs at homes and also in the street when they have had to be dug up....

FTTC upstream is effectively uncontended.
FTTC downstream whilst contended, its contended at a very low level, FTTC isp's contend far higher so we are unlikely to ever see congestion on FTTC cabinet backhauls unless openreach change their policy.

I am talking about FTTC to exchange tho, not backhaul after the exchange onwards.

But you yourself stated that 2 or 3 users could clog up the local network. If every one was guaranteed a speed of "insert reasonable figure here" then there would be more capacity for more users concurrently!

Therefore there should be fewer issues.

I might be being too simplistic but this need for VM and BT to win the war on speed seems to be causing some issues.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

The reason I say that the Swedish cable network is probably better than ours is because of the poor job done installing a lot of the network when originally installed in the UK and not much has been done to it since apart from when an issue risen....

I've seen some very bad installs at homes and also in the street when they have had to be dug up....

Quite a lot has been done to it since. It was built for cable TV and in some cases a little bit of interactive and is managing 400Mb/s downstream and 108Mb upstream per node on DOCSIS 3 ignoring all the rest on the same cable/fibre.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Apr-14 23:54:49)

On VM.... My thought is that this proposed clarity of available speeds http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6403-neelie-kroes... might mean that they actually put some effort into getting on top of the upload issues.

Personally I have no real issues with the 10% asymmetry of the overall system if it would stay at 10% but of course it does not. it can be <4.4% already and with the 150 download speed it is even worse at 3.5%

I suggest that VM have realised that they don't need to have a download cap as the upload cap is effective in limiting the speed of all handshaking protocols if tere is concurrent uploading taking place

I live too close to the BT exchange so no cabinet for me else I would have jumped months ago

I am a heavy user who is looking forward to truthful advertising about speeds. I would propose that this be done with a 24 hour graph for both weekdays and weekends and for light and heavy use. If such were the case then I guess BT would win everything.

In reply to a post by OldChapXS:

I suggest that VM have realised that they don't need to have a download cap as the upload cap is effective in limiting the speed of all handshaking protocols if tere is concurrent uploading taking place

I am a heavy user who is looking forward to truthful advertising about speeds. I would propose that this be done with a 24 hour graph for both weekdays and weekends and for light and heavy use. If such were the case then I guess BT would win everything.

I would suggest that concurrent use of upload affects 'handshaking' protocols on every ISP, just the level of concurrent upload that's the issue.

Advertising download speeds based on simultaneously saturating upstream through torrents, backups, whatever is absurd and impractical.

I would propose that if you want guaranteed speeds the best option is to pay the appropriate premiums, rather than relying on a best effort heavily contended residential service allocating no more than a couple of megabits to each customer, tops, and relying on intermittent usage.

Edited by deleted (Mon 07-Apr-14 14:41:57)

In reply to a post by pcoventry76:

The thing is that even the business products are the same, unless you start to fork out for a dedicated line. I know they are cheap but why can't VM do a line a few hundred a month symetrical? Even if it's 10mbps both ways it's a good start

The £55 a month business package is what I was looking at,

::I edited because I thought the only package was BB + Phone but I see there is a 50mbps stand along product so I stand corrected

The business cable is contended in the same way.

There are a number of dedicated, symmetrical 10Mb services for a 'few hundred a month', depending on location. Here's Virgin Media's.

Unfortunately products can't be advertised based on their performance running shedloads of MJ-12 clients through them. Giving varying speeds depending on time of day is also a little complicated.

Perhaps a simpler solution would be to advertise in a similar manner to Comhem, something I've been a fan of for a while, and advertise a speed range.