Full Fibre (FTTP) - how fast?

Didn’t think telephoning someone could be dangerous. :smile:

Actually I hadn’t tried to call anyone, as it rarely gets used, but just tried both VOIP and old socket phones, and they both successfully called my mobile.

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Oh, I see, that makes sense. The signal is shared back near the source thru splitters. With so many thousands of conections I guess they’d have to.
I do appreciate your technical descriptions and I get most of it. There’s certianly a lot more to it than a layman like myself would know about, especially as you say, the engineering description would be much different from the consumer marketing description.

I’m not surprised to hear that Bell is developing higher level products. They’ve been a very good supplier for the last 4-5 years in comparison to their cometition.

Interesting comparing different countries. North of Bristol UK we get about 47-50. In my German apartment in the Pfalz we get 150-160. Streaming music, Muso2 and ND5XS2, and watching 3 platforms of 4k movies doesn’t seem to make any difference. Could someone say why they would actually need 500, a 1000 or more? And be charged more of course. Maybe a block of 10 apartments all with a 4k TV?

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You are lucky, this part of “north of Bristol” seems to have a different story.
The only way to get fibre seems to have been Sky or Virgin. Then, the streets were blocked with Openreach vans, blokes paint writing on pavements, polishing cabinets. I asked one what was happening, told we would have fibre to cabinet in four weeks.
This seemed like a miracle after we had various phone problems earlier in the year and one engineer said that the number of customers in greater Bristol would take tens of years to connect.
So two weeks later I phoned our provider as the contract was due for renewal. I asked to upgrade. The agent explained that yes, work was being finalised and new connections were released each Thursday and he would phone me each Thursday.
Sure enough he has kept his promise for the past three weeks. No connections available.
Yesterday an Openreach engineer was working at a neighbours. I asked if he knew when connections would be made. They have been…
Just ten connections allocated to the nearest cabinet!
For years we have had a reasonable connection 8Mbs was adequate for two of us with tablets and catchup TV. The only problem being that there is a tree between us and the pole. Every so often a branch would damage the cable. They used to cut the offending branch and replace the cable. Now they place a connector block in the line saying it is stronger where a branch is rubbing. Now we are lucky to get 3.7 Mbs.

I am currently coming up to 8 years with FTTP (Gigaclear) Gigabit Ethernet straight to the router.
I have the service capped at 300mbit. I have to say it has been a complete game changer for working from home, which I have done for 8 out the last 10 years. In lockdown it was a dream, two of us WFH both using cloud services and zoom meeting concurrently with no issues at all.

Concurrent usage is the key differentiator. I have friends with 3 three kids, with Dad and the kids online gaming and Mum streaming a film. All with full performance and minimal latency.

Conversely I know people who ask why should I pay the extra for fibre, when they are a sole user, with occasional browsing and email. The answer is they don’t need it.

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An 8k TV needs 100Mbps so if you have a household with 8 children all with their own 8k TV, then of course you would need 1000.

It’s a good question on who actually needs 1000. Isn’t it strange how all the routers I’ve seen, don’t actually show your your usage. A usage graph for the day would be really useful, but of course they don’t really want you to know the truth. It’s just like they say that you need Fibre to run many more devices in your house. What a load of rubbish, I bet any house with 100 smart plugs could easily run on 1Mb. Of course it all depends on what you run

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Good observation, cheers

Mine shows usage (Orange France Livebox). Today fastest download speed used is 144 mbps. Thats me with the streaming plus pc plus iPad, Mrs Bruss with her iPad. Other devices connected in standby are firestick and Chromecast.

Perhaps it’s a UK thing, or just the routers I have had.

I have found the French system to be more forthcoming with information in many areas that the UK seem to regard as a secret only they shall know. :grinning:

Just out of interest I just did a quick snapshot of my usage.

Nothing like that on my TT router, or surprisingly Netgear Mesh

I have had FTTP for a couple of months now. I went for the 900mbps package as BT offered it for only a £1 more than I was paying for FTTC.

It has been rock solid but it is worth noting that whilst ethernet connection does give 900mbps speed (and the measured speed to the socket is considerably higher than that) via WiFi the speed is much less notwithstanding the fact that I have a BT Halo3 disc set up. I get c400 mbps on my Mac ethernet wired to a disc and around 150mbps on iPad and iPhone. This apparently is down to the BT Smart Hub 2 having difficulty with higher wifi speeds and also apparently the ability of mobile devices to run above c200mbps.

Smart Hub 3 is coming to address the router issues and I will await that before deciding whether to ethernet cable the house further.

I have 900 too but the router (a Fritz box) doesn’t usually manage more than around 350-400 around the house to my phone or laptop wirelessly.

I over specced the speed because I had been having problems in the house and wanted to over spec everything so as to get the best chance of having everything working well

Someone is telling you porkies,
Measured just now.
Samsung phone 428mbps
Ipad 780 mbps
Chromecast (slow device) 433 mbps

Maybe the case.

I think it’s more likely the Smart Hub 2. What measuring tool do you use?

Yes I can believe the router/hub can be limiting the throughout, but I don’t think its fair to blame the end equipment connection speed.
I have Orange here in France and there is an app that can be downloaded from them to control the livebox hub.

The firestick is showing yellow because its only ‘average’ and showing 650 mbps at the mo. :slight_smile:

OK. Thanks

I think for BT, offering an upgrade for £1 to say a million people, who in 99.9% of cases will never use it, is a no-brainer for them.

As you now have reliable Internet, you could even, dare I say it, consider dropping your package even further?

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My 18 month contract including Complete Wifi at 50/9 Mbps came to an end in August. I’ve now Started a 2 year contract at £29.99 with 74/18 Mbps without the Complete Wifi. However, if you don’t return the Discs they charge you £30 each. I bought 2 new ones for £90 each and now I cover all of a large garden ( about half an acre) as well! The £29.99 already had a discount built in. I’m very pleased!

Phil