FTTP (Real Fibre) finally being rolled out in the UK

[M4st4M1nd]

For years in the UK we've only had VDSL. Which is basically fibre to a unit outside and then copper to the building. Well it looks like Virgin have finally realised that's not good enough and they're rolling it out properly now. Its certainly about time we caught up with the rest of the world
 

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Virgin Media has announced that it will be rolling out fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) for about 1 million homes and businesses in the UK over the next few years. Yes, the UK is finally getting real fibre broadband, not that fake VDSL or coaxial stuff.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2016/04/virgin-media-will-roll-out-fttp-to-1-million-homes-in-the-uk/

[soup]

Realistically what difference will that make.  I already have 100(soon to be 150) Mbps on VDSL, the servers will only dish out data  so fast so what difference NOW will FTTP make.

[Master Disaster]

The majority of the UK is running on FTTC (or Fibre To The Cabinet) which was installed by BT over the last 5 years, Virgin services are only available to less than 10% of the entire country.

 

Besides that you can already pay BT a £150 fee and have the fibre extended all the way to your house (FTTP or Fibre To The Property) providing your local exchange has the required infrastructure in place to handle it.

 

At this point Virgin are just playing catch up to BT, strangely though BT still seem insistent on limiting the bandwidth available on their own network quite severely meaning despite Virgin running on older technology than the Infinity network Virgin still offer way faster speeds.

[porina]

BT are lagging woefully behind VM's network in terms or real download bandwidth delivered to end customers. Not that I consider VM to be any good either, as they have a joke of an upload speed due to the highly asymmetric nature of their network. As a country we're at least a decade behind the Far East (Japan, S. Korea) in terms of both speed AND cost for providing that speed. 100mbit FTTP symmetric connections were very affordable long ago in Japan long before BT started to offer consumer FTTC. While download speeds may be less important than they once were, upload speeds still have a lot of room for improvement to enable cloud services to realise their potential.

 

So UK, welcome to the 21st century at last (although I won't count it until it actually rolls out).

[JPotze]

yeah the upload speed is the problem. 

 

In the Netherlands FTTP is only available on new buildings if you are lucky. its not a rule. The majority of the country has internet by their cable company by COAXial cable.

my speeds are 220 Mbit down and 25 up. I am not complaining about the down but i like the fibre potential to have the same up speeds as down. 

 

I don't see the need for fibre myself but the rollout of fibre in my country is slow AF. (not to mention expensive, around $250 per meter from the cabinet to your door)

[ShadowCaptain]

im on 200 down on Virgin, are they going to make it even faster than that?

[Master Disaster]

19 minutes ago, porina said:

BT are lagging woefully behind VM's network in terms or real download bandwidth delivered to end customers. Not that I consider VM to be any good either, as they have a joke of an upload speed due to the highly asymmetric nature of their network. As a country we're at least a decade behind the Far East (Japan, S. Korea) in terms of both speed AND cost for providing that speed. 100mbit FTTP symmetric connections were very affordable long ago in Japan long before BT started to offer consumer FTTC. While download speeds may be less important than they once were, upload speeds still have a lot of room for improvement to enable cloud services to realise their potential.

 

So UK, welcome to the 21st century at last (although I won't count it until it actually rolls out).

I believe BTs Infinity network is capable of much faster speeds than VMs network in theory, its just that BT are throttling it for the end users in order to squeeze more monies out of us down the line, now that's kind of understandable as VM only fit their network into new build housing estates in certain areas of the country where as BT have quite literally dug up the entire country to install FTTC so BT's investment is certainly way beyond that of VMs (even when you consider the government subsidies to get the job done that BT acquired) however I do feel begrudged to be paying them for a 40Mbps connection on a network with theoretical top speeds of 10s of times that amount (well I pay Sky who pay BT).

 

I believe BT have recently announced their minimum speeds will be increasing from 40Mbps to 60Mbps in a few weeks with a maximum of 150Mbps available for those willing to shell out £100 a month (and pay to have FTTP installed), VM offer up to 200Mbps right now and it costs wayyyyy less than BT's 150Mbps.

[porina]

15 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

 

Yup, at the end of the day they just want to extract as much cash form us as possible, as would be expected for any profit making company. Little evidence of forward looking from any of them. I'm currently on VM's 50meg service which is adequate as I don't regularly download much more than games and several gigs don't take that long. I just wish there was more upload. And I need to phone them up and do the pretend to leave thing as they've been jacking up the price too...

[Bittenfleax]

9 minutes ago, porina said:

I just wish there was more upload. And I need to phone them up and do the pretend to leave thing as they've been jacking up the price too...

Yeah, same with BT. I need to pretend to leave as well 

[soup]

19 minutes ago, Bittenfleax said:

 I need to pretend to leave as well 

The trouble with that is occasionally they will say "all right then" right away and you either furiously back pedal or actualy leave..

[LukeTim]

I tried to get Virgin Internet but they said I'd have to pay for 300m worth of cabling to bring it to my building, which is a few thousand £s.

So, I'm stuck with 17Mbps down, 1Mbps up ADSL2+ as BT is only just starting to bring fibre to my cabinet... which should be ready by September at the latest.

[C2dan88]

Nice to see FTTP shame it is not for existing customers. This will be for new build properties only I expect.

 

I'm guessing there is going to another price increase to fund this project? 

[multifrag]

Don't forget that Virgin can throttle you down if you download more than they like. Up to 65%. So if you have 150Mbps it will be ~52.5Mbps. In reality it goes down even further for websites like youtube.

[LukeTim]

7 minutes ago, multifrag said:

Don't forget that Virgin can throttle you down if you download more than they like. Up to 65%. So if you have 150Mbps it will be ~52.5Mbps. In reality it goes down even further for websites like youtube.

That's not true. Virgin's policy only throttles based on upload usage. Downloads are not throttled.

https://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-thresholds.html

[multifrag]

2 minutes ago, LukeTim said:

That's not true. Virgin's policy only throttles based on upload usage. Downloads are not throttled.

https://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-thresholds.html

Explain why a 150Mbps line can't load a youtube video after long day at work?

[LukeTim]

27 minutes ago, multifrag said:

Explain why a 150Mbps line can't load a youtube video after long day at work?

 

What do you mean? It buffers a lot? It takes a long time to start up?

[Thony]

All sounds nice the only problem I have with Virgin is YouTube throttling.... At least last time I used their fibre optic broadband I was throttled. 

 

Now I live in Cornwall and Virgin Media doesn't provide its service here. But I'm stuck with 16Mbps on ADSL  a street around the corner is enjoying 80mbps or so...fml I ja te broadband topics... #MakeMeCriEveriTime.

[JAKEBAB]

2 hours ago, soup said:

Realistically what difference will that make.  I already have 100(soon to be 150) Mbps on VDSL, the servers will only dish out data  so fast so what difference NOW will FTTP make.

Ability to have 1gb or even 10gb right now, ability to have a passive network so even in power outages your Internet still works, line length factor more or less is eliminated and no more service degradation as the copper corrodes.

 

Origin, Steam and Xbox can saturate my 100mbps connection now.

 

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Besides that you can already pay BT a £150 fee and have the fibre extended all the way to your house (FTTP or Fibre To The Property) providing your local exchange has the required infrastructure in place to handle it.

 

Are you sure it's only £150? Fiber to the property? do you mean FTTdP (fiber to the distribution point)? That is better than FTTN but still no FTTP and would make more sense for it to be that cheap.

[Master Disaster]

50 minutes ago, JAKEBAB said:

Ability to have 1gb or even 10gb right now, ability to have a passive network so even in power outages your Internet still works, line length factor more or less is eliminated and no more service degradation as the copper corrodes.

 

Origin, Steam and Xbox can saturate my 100mbps connection now.

 

Are you sure it's only £150? Fiber to the property? do you mean FTTdP (fiber to the distribution point)? That is better than FTTN but still no FTTP and would make more sense for it to be that cheap.

 

Its a £150 fee payable on receipt of the order followed by a £2 per meter cable charge and a £500 one off connection fee so yeah, I suppose technically you are correct in that it is wayyyyyy more expensive than £150.

 

It also looks like BT has suspended FTTP sales for residential properties and now will only provide it to commercial and business properties, something I was not aware of.

[soup]

55 minutes ago, JAKEBAB said:

Ability to have 1gb or even 10gb right now,

Sorry should have made it more clear, "Realisticaly what difference will that make" TO ME, I already have 100Mbps the lines ability to take more data will not increase that speed

[Centurius]

4 hours ago, soup said:

Realistically what difference will that make.  I already have 100(soon to be 150) Mbps on VDSL, the servers will only dish out data  so fast so what difference NOW will FTTP make.

Most services let you go at 500-600 in my experience and having higher speeds allows you to run more things simultaneously. It makes a difference.

[Bittenfleax]

4 hours ago, soup said:

The trouble with that is occasionally they will say "all right then" right away and you either furiously back pedal or actualy leave..

Yeah, hahaha. But then I guess I move to VM. 

 

Or for you, visa versa  

[sof006]

Problem is, Virgin will only be in select areas. Whereas BT still owns about 80/90% of the telecoms. Its great to see Virgin doing this, but they are only able to do this as its on a much smaller scale. If BT does this it'll be slower as its very expensive to role out a technology like this. It took BT a while to role out FTTC due to technology constraints and also vast amounts of interference caused by electromagnetic waves.

 

My area got FTTC in September 2014 which was delayed from August 2014 due to planning issues. I happily get 80Mb down and 20Mb up with an unlimited data package and is only £40 each month. BT is planning on FTTH trials across more populated areas to see how it copes because FTTC in the more populated areas in the UK (London etc) is a lot slower due to congestion on the exchanges. 

 

Also, this is a good thing 

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/04/eu-clears-ofcom-plans-bt-dark-fibre-lower-prices-faster-installs.html

[multifrag]

5 hours ago, LukeTim said:

 

What do you mean? It buffers a lot? It takes a long time to start up?

Some days when I have to upload my work or download another batch(20-200GB, otherwise we just use courier with hdd) The internet slows down significantly, but websites like youtube are even more noticeable as you can't play a 480p video with out waiting. My phone LTE signal is quicker than ''150Mbps'' broadband. If it would only happen once...sure. But I moved homes and it happens pretty much every time.

[grayperview]

8 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

im on 200 down on Virgin, are they going to make it even faster than that?

Me too, do we really need it much faster??

 

Id prefer more upload to more download....plus there prices are going up way too much lately..