Renting A Metallic Path

This is as much to do with selection of a provider of a Metallic Path Facility (MPF) as anything and this seemed the best place to put this thread - though I'm open to correction.

I moved into a new home nearly four months ago and to date have managed fairy well with a Mobile Broadband service from Three. However, a change in my circumstances - i.e. a need for a much higher traffic cap as well as a faster service - means I'll be better off with a fixed line service. Given that my wife and I both have a "landline" number provided by Skype - calls to and from which we can make via our respective mobile devices - we want to avoid paying for a POTS voice service and we're not bothered about a VoIP service with the line which some suppliers can provide. I understand there are two options here...

1. Find a supplier which can provide a line of the Shared Metallic Path Facility (SMPF) variety and an ISP which can provide broadband via that.

2. Find a supplier which can provide both an MPF line and broadband via that.

I'd also like to know - and this is tied in somewhat with the above - how one can tell if the MPF provided by a supplier is Shared.

This looks quite difficult and I'd appreciate any pointers to resources where I can seek such - or recommendations of suppliers. I'd also like a "bare bones" service - i.e. putting my own kit in for the broadband - but that's not essential. (Any recommendations here for an ADSL/2/+ router which pumps out Ethernet would also be appreciated.) One other constraint is that I don't want to be tied into a contract of more than three months as I may move on after that - be it home or supplier/s. The three month contracts offered by "Be" look promising but being a tight-fisted Yorkshireman I'd rather not pay £10 a month for the (maybe Shared) Metallic Path Facility that they provide - and I''m not keen on the extra per month that they charge for it - nor the connection charge. In case it's of any use my exchange is this one.

Finally, I know I'm "lucky" enough to be be in the area where Digital Region are rolling out - my place being due to be connected in November - but their project plan doesn't fill me with confidence. (Look.) I'm also "lucky" in that I can't get BT Infinity yet - my wish being to avoid that company like The Plague given its continued dominance.) This is why I'm looking for an ADSL/2/+ service rather than a VDSL - and one which is better than, say, 5 Mbps - something I know one can never be sure of with basic ADSL until one's connected so an ADSL2 or ADSL2+ service might be the best to go for.

For broadband you have two basic choices: ADSL via a phone line, or cable from Virgin Media.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search will show if cable is available at your address.

ADSL/ADSL2+ have no speed guarantees. The speed you get depends on the distance between your home and the local BT exchange.

http://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/Community/Br... will give you a speed estimate.

You will need a fixed line from the BT exchange and will need to pay circa £11 per month for line rental.

On top of that expect to pay say £15 per month for broadband.

If you mention your BT exchange you will get ISP suggestions.

You did mention your exchange.

Sky or Be for ADSL2+ both make sense. Both offer unlimited downloads.

In reply to a post by john2007:

You did mention your exchange.

Sky or Be for ADSL2+ both make sense. Both offer unlimited downloads.

Except sky the min contract term is 12mths, and the op has already said he has looked at be 3mth min term contracts,
Well now the op knows that there is no escape from paying line rental on an adsl/ 2 /2+ service with the bb service charge on top of that, it's gonna cost more that i think they planned on, and it you did decide on one of the 3mth be packages you would also ideally need to find a telephony provider who also did a 3mth min term as you bt is 12-or 18mths

Only Sky & TalkTalk (or their resellers) provide Full LLU (MPF). All the other ISPs do Partial LLU (SMPF) based on a BT Wholesale WLR phone line, which you must rent from somebody in order to have ADSL BB.

The best broadband performance is usually through an LLU service, the two most relevant to you being Be and Sky. Be because of the 3-month, (but expensive), contract, and the Sky because its price is so low you may be able to pay off the remaining time if you leave before 12-months, and still be in pocket.

As has been said, speed is very dependent on distance from the exchange. You can get a guide to your address from two sources, though the first may rely on the second. Try them and see:-

1) Samknows mapping engine;
2) BT Wholesale Checker.

Please post all that the BT one says about your line in general. Some of it may look irrelevant to you, but it helps us assess the bits that are clearly relevant.

If the general ADSL2+ estimates are above 6Mbps then you have the above two options plus what I feel is your best one overall. If the ADSL2+ estimates are below 4Mbps then this third one is definitely what I recommend and is the lower of the "Extra" bundles on this Plusnet page.

Plusnet is 10-day notice for both line and broadband if you pay the upfront costs, which are suspended for a year then dropped if you sign for 12 months. That's the reason for this in fact being in your case my recommendation out of all three.

Thank you for your extensive help - and the others who have contributed.

For your information the Sam Knows enquiry generated this...

ADSL available at ~6.5Mbps

BT Total broadband
TalkTalk non-LLU
Sky Connect (non-LLU)
AOL broadband (non-LLU)
Pipex broadband
Plusnet broadband
Tiscali broadband
And many more...

Cable services available...

Virgin Media broadband (20M)
Virgin Media digital TV
Virgin Media phone

BT 21CN services available

...whilst the BT enquiry generated the folllowing...

Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial check on your address indicates that your line should be able to have an ADSL broadband service that provides a fixed line speed up to 2Mbps.

Our check also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL Max broadband line speed of 6.5Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 5.5Mbps and 8Mbps.

Our check also indicates that your line currently supports an estimated ADSL2+ broadband line speed of 12Mbps; typically the line speed would range between 7Mbps and 17Mbps. Our test also indicates that your line could support an estimated ADSL 2+ Annex-M broadband upstream line speed of 1Mbps and downstream line speed of 12Mbps; typically the downstream speed would range between 7Mbps and 17Mbps.

...and I look forward to any further assistance you (and others) can offer.

P.S. I had a look at your site - which I found via one of your posts when researching this before starting this thread - and very useful it was too. Having said that you may wish to expand the Glossary to include the likes of these...

BSAN - Broadband Service Access Node
DSLAM - Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer
MPF - Metallic Path Facilities
PCP - Primary Cross-Connect Point
SMPF -Shared Metallic Path Facilities
SLU - Sub Loop Unbundling
MAC - Migration Authorisation Code
POTS - Plain Old Telephone Service
VDSL - Very High Bit Rate Digital Subscriber Line
MLC - Metallic Line Characteristics

...many of which came from someone who works for an ISP via a local (to me) forum.

Edited by deleted (Fri 02-Sep-11 09:55:12)

As virgin is in the area, you could look at their 9 month "student" package - most other suppliers are going to land you with a 12 month contract somewhere even if its just for the line. I don't think anyone does broadband only, no voice on DSL.

What you are asking about is called 'Naked DSL'

You can see from that link, that BT claim that there is not sufficient demand for it in the UK; although I would imagine that they are probably thinking of the lost revenue from no longer having to force people to have a 'phone line' when they don't need it.

I've also read in the past, that people with Naked DSL often found that their line got disconnected, as when an engineer went to a street cabinet to find a free pair to the exchange, as there was no dial tone on the line when they listened across the pair, they reused the connection back to the exchange.

I'm also "lucky" in that I can't get BT Infinity yet - my wish being to avoid that company like The Plague given its continued dominance.)

You'll find yourself limited to Virgin then, as it's BT Openreach that will install and maintain you SMPF or MPF line.

how one can tell if the MPF provided by a supplier is Shared.

If you chosen supplier provides both PSTN and/or DSL from their own equipment in the exchange,then that would be MPF.. If the voice and DSL come via different suppliers, then that's SMPF.

What you are asking about is called 'Naked DSL'

No the OP is enquiring after MPF or SMPF.

I would imagine that they are probably thinking of the lost revenue from no longer having to force people to have a 'phone line' when they don't need it.

How would this 'naked DSL' get from A to B without a 'phone line' ?

I've also read in the past, that people with Naked DSL often found that their line got disconnected, as when an engineer went to a street cabinet to find a free pair to the exchange, as there was no dial tone on the line when they listened across the pair, they reused the connection back to the exchange.

AFAIK there is only one supplier who puts nothing but data down the line, all the other data only services use DC whetting, so at very least there's polarity on the line. It's not the E-sides that get pinched, it's the D-sides, but then most engineers test phones have a digital services alarm on them, so they would know there was 'something' on the line.

Yes, in theory they should test the line, but I hate to think of how many times I had to sort out a faulty SDSL line, coz an installer just checked for dialtone when looking for a spare

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

What you are asking about is called 'Naked DSL'

No the OP is enquiring after MPF or SMPF.

Erm, no, the original poster also stated

we want to avoid paying for a POTS voice service and we're not bothered about a VoIP service with the line which some suppliers can provide. I understand there are two options here

Naked DSL seems to fit that

I would imagine that they are probably thinking of the lost revenue from no longer having to force people to have a 'phone line' when they don't need it.

How would this 'naked DSL' get from A to B without a 'phone line' ?

Ok, so sematically, I probably should have said without a 'voice line'; as with Naked DSL, you wouldn't pay BT Retail (or whoever your voice line rental is with), therefore BT looses out on that revenue.

I've also read in the past, that people with Naked DSL often found that their line got disconnected, as when an engineer went to a street cabinet to find a free pair to the exchange, as there was no dial tone on the line when they listened across the pair, they reused the connection back to the exchange.

AFAIK there is only one supplier who puts nothing but data down the line, all the other data only services use DC whetting, so at very least there's polarity on the line. It's not the E-sides that get pinched, it's the D-sides, but then most engineers test phones have a digital services alarm on them, so they would know there was 'something' on the line.

Yes I know that they do; but was just stating what I'd read elsewhere.

You would pay BT or whoever as there still needs to be line rental for the line no matter what you're putting across it voice or otherwise though i could be cheaper ?

I'd have thought the "line-rental" portion of a naked DSL bill would currently be very high. No economies of scale.

Too true. [sad]

Thanks to everyone for their contributions. I've certainly got plenty of food for thought. A Digital Region Limited chap and one from an ISP on their network reckon between them that the cabinet "SHA029" which serves me will be commissioned on October 27th though it may well be another three weeks before BT Openreach connect it to their PCP. I can wait that long but suspect my wife won't as she buys and rents video from the iTunes Store et cetera. (She's due back from a period of working abroad at the end of September so I have time to choose.) So, to Be or not to Be - or to DR ISP... et cetera. I'll post an update when I jump.

Edited by deleted (Tue 06-Sep-11 18:43:16)

I gave up on the lack of landline option as there wasn't much (if any) choice and ended up going for an ADSL2+ service (with landline) from Plusnet (in other words BT) despite their "Internet For Idiots" advertising. (That annoys me every time I access my account as their advertising idiot pops up even on the login page.) We're getting around 10 Mbps downstream and (after getting it uncapped free) 1 upstream - which is fine for our purposes. It's also been fairly reliable with the only dropouts being occasional and brief - and then we suspect our (secondhand) router as I know it had problems in a past life. (I didn't want the "free" one from Plusnet as it looked awful and I'll get a new one soon with the current one being held in reserve.) One good thing about Plusnet is that they have a UK-based call centre - the likes of BE not - the latter being a typical nightmare to deal with when I enquired. I'm also glad, given the proposed sale of BE and O2 Broadband to BSkyB, of the choice I made as I loathe the Murdoch empire. I know they only have 39.1% but the day will come when they try again for the lot.

What are your router stats?

Please elaborate. My modem/router is a Netgear model and I am familiar with the web interface - including the "Show Statistics" page - so should be able to establish what you're after quite easily.

Yes, those or the "Connection Details"; I can't remember which. The ones that look like:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 18075 kbps 888 kbps
Line Attenuation 26.0 db 14.2 db
Noise Margin 4.1 db 15.2 db

Here you are...

(Downstream / Upstream)

Connection Speed... 11633 kbps / 1204 kbps
Line Attenuation... 26.5 db / 14.2 db
Noise Margin... 6.2 db / 5.9 db

As you can see, compared with mine at same attn, the Down Sync is terribly slow.

Are you getting stats from hidden test socket? Any extensions? Removed ring wire?

The property is a "new" build - 2007 - and I was surprised we weren't getting the maximum speed for ADSL2+. given that we are 500m from the exchange - as the crow flies - and the street cabinet is within spitting distance. (We're in a block of apartments and the Freeview signal here isn't ideal either so the developers were obviously cutting corners.) We're using the master socket - into which is plugged an ADSL filter - hence we're almost certainly losing speed there. (I discovered when troubleshooting a socket problem at a relative's house recently that such a filter virtually halved their downstream speed and when you consider they're getting 4 Mbps at best without it that's a big drop - hence I'm looking at putting a filtered faceplate in there.) I've not popped the faceplate off to look for a test socket - which I expect will be there - as we are happy with the speed we're getting. We have an extension socket in the bedroom but don't use it as we don't want calls in the night and the lounge and "office" handsets here - both running off one base station in the lounge - cannot be heard there. Whilst removing the ring wire may improve things we are, as mentioned, quite happy with what we're getting and, besides, given that we rent the place we don't want to alter it.

You need to use the test socket, before we can troubleshoot your line.

In reply to a post by Harry_De_Bustard:

into which is plugged an ADSL filter - hence we're almost certainly losing speed there. (I discovered when troubleshooting a socket problem at a relative's house recently that such a filter virtually halved their downstream speed

That's simply not true! Must be a faulty filter! My stats were taken with a common dangly filter. Sometimes filtered faceplates can be more unreliable.

The master socket is hidden behind something heavy and given that we're happy with the speed we're getting I'll not go to the trouble of trying the test socket unless the object is moved for another good reason.

I saw the line speed at my relative's halve and then recover (most of the way) when the ADSL filter was added then removed and you may be right about the filter itself being faulty. (My limited knowledge in this area was improved, perhaps, just recently by looking at this resource.) I plan to look at the matter further soon - again maybe introducing a filtered faceplate whether or not an alternative external filter exhibits the same problem - and will start a new thread if I need help or even simply if I gain experience which may be of value to others.

Thanks for your help.

Edited by deleted (Thu 07-Mar-13 01:23:52)