Cable Broadband Speeds 'Beat' Fibre - UK

[WelshDdraig]

A report just came to light from Ofcom UK suggesting that Fibre is slower than cable. WTF?

 

The article from the BBC claims that the average cable speeds were 43.3 Mbps compared to 42Mbps for Fibre.

Apparently this number has changed because so many consumers have decided to swap from cable to fibre, having less load on the system.

Note: Virgin have stated "they too have used fibre to cabinets, then cable to homes."

 

From me, that 43.3Mbps is bull s**t. I struggle to get 18Mbps let alone 43.3Mbps.

 

All I can really say is, What the Hell? 

 

Yes, less people using traditional coper will lighten the load for others and too be fair, it't only a marginal lead, but still. *EDIT: I thought fibre would have been much further ahead of cable*

 

Full details of this report can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29475570

 

 

Thanks for reading.

[Tech_Dreamer]

Damn! that's one HUGE difference right there... :mellow:

[Laputacake]

Female dog please, I get 4 mbp/s on fibre and used to 500kb/s on cable. All hail o' master BT

[Damikiller37]

I call massive BS. I get up to 76 down 20 up with BT Infinity (fibre) and some people near the town area can get double what I have. Where the fastest broadband you can get is about 30 down 10 up. Keep in mind that I don't even live in a big town.

[jaggysnake57]

20 down .9 up and can get infinity.....our internet is a joke really

[Prokart2000]

I call massive BS. I get up to 76 down 20 up with BT Infinity (fibre) and some people near the town area can get double what I have. Where the fastest broadband you can get is about 30 down 10 up. Keep in mind that I don't even live in a big town.

i have the same as you its ace

[WelshDdraig]

I call massive BS. I get up to 76 down 20 up with BT Infinity (fibre) and some people near the town area can get double what I have. Where the fastest broadband you can get is about 30 down 10 up. Keep in mind that I don't even live in a big town.

I know. I'm not with Infinity yet, my BT plan needs renewal soon so I will upgrade, but I thought the leap between standards would have been much larger. I get around 18Mbps down (I pay for upto 16Mbps, shhh. and an un-specified up of around 0.9Mbps.) 

[SMURG]

I can get 100Mbps over copper, still not 100% sure why anyone's bothering with FTTP. Surely it'd be better from a business perspective to save money by having copper as the "last mile" infrastructure between the property and the exchange, and spend the money instead on running fiber to more exchanges to enable faster speeds for more people. What's the reasoning behind running the fiber right to people's homes, especially since it requires new equipment and everything.

What I'm getting at is that at the moment fiber really is no faster than copper as far as the bandwidth you can get to your home as a consumer. Getting fiber to your house doesn't actually enable you to access faster speeds than you could potentially get over copper, it's the connection to your exchange that matters. As far as I can tell it's about future-proofing, and since the exchanges and other infrastructure are still the bottleneck this neck-and-neck relationship between copper and fiber is exactly what I would expect. For the time being, it is completely irrelevant whether your home connection is copper or fiber since you're not going to be able to get more than 100Mbps from your ISP anyway.

[dalekphalm]

I can get 100Mbps over copper, still not 100% sure why anyone's bothering with FTTP. Surely it'd be better from a business perspective to save money by having copper as the "last mile" infrastructure between the property and the exchange, and spend the money instead on running fiber to more exchanges to enable faster speeds for more people. What's the reasoning behind running the fiber right to people's homes, especially since it requires new equipment and everything.

There are advantages with going pure Fiber. Having a Synchronous connection is one (Same upload as download), and lower latency. Additionally, Fiber supports MUCH HIGHER limits. 1Gbps Internet isn't gonna be done over Copper unless there are serious innovations in the coming years.

 

With that in mind, FTTN is 100% acceptable for consumer Internet at this point in time. I have a 150/15 DOCSIS 3.0 connection, which is FTTN and Coaxial Cable for the "last mile". It's fast and kickass. Sure I'd prefer GoogleFiber but hey you can't have everything.

[sof006]

Right so lets fix what Ofcom have said here.

 

 

Cable has been around for a lot long so it has had more time to develop as a technology, it makes sense that it is "faster" for now. In a few years time FTTC/FTTH will completely take over.

 

Once BT implements vectoring technology into existing fibre optic exchanges it will boost average download speeds into the hundreds. At the moment my download speed on FTTC is 80Mb, when vectoring kicks in I expect that to go even higher. 

[Nineshadow]

What do ISPs do so wrong to only get ~42Mbps on fibre...jeez.

[SMURG]

There are advantages with going pure Fiber. Having a Synchronous connection is one (Same upload as download), and lower latency. Additionally, Fiber supports MUCH HIGHER limits. 1Gbps Internet isn't gonna be done over Copper unless there are serious innovations in the coming years.

 

With that in mind, FTTN is 100% acceptable for consumer Internet at this point in time. I have a 150/15 DOCSIS 3.0 connection, which is FTTN and Coaxial Cable for the "last mile". It's fast and kickass. Sure I'd prefer GoogleFiber but hey you can't have everything.

Synchronous connection is nice, but it's not something most people care about so again, from a business standpoint it's not exactly a priority. I too get FTTN and that's what I'm saying - just because you have FTTP doesn't automatically mean you're going to get faster speeds because we're still below the maximum bandwidth for copper as far as individual connections go - nobody gets >100Mbps really. I would expect the speeds of both cable and fiber to be almost exactly the same for this reason, and that is what we see.

[dalekphalm]

Synchronous connection is nice, but it's not something most people care about so again, from a business standpoint it's not exactly a priority. I too get FTTN and that's what I'm saying - just because you have FTTP doesn't automatically mean you're going to get faster speeds because we're still below the maximum bandwidth for copper as far as individual connections go - nobody gets >100Mbps really. I would expect the speeds of both cable and fiber to be almost exactly the same for this reason, and that is what we see.

I agree with you, except I'm not sure what you mean by

 

"nobody gets >100Mbps really"

 

I have 150Mbps, and I damn well get it. Obviously not every site can support that kind of speed. It depends on the web server that I'm connecting to at any given moment. But I'm not in the UK so I don't know if your national infrastructure has some inherent limits in it?

[bob345]

just because the average is lower does not mean that fiber is slower. Its all at the isp's end to deliver the speed. Fiber is not as physically limited as copper is when it comes to data transfer rates.

[SMURG]

I agree with you, except I'm not sure what you mean by

 

"nobody gets >100Mbps really"

 

I have 150Mbps, and I damn well get it. Obviously not every site can support that kind of speed. It depends on the web server that I'm connecting to at any given moment. But I'm not in the UK so I don't know if your national infrastructure has some inherent limits in it?

I meant more that it's incredibly rare. I've never heard of anything >120Mbps on a consumer line over here and nothing above 150 anywhere else in the West (though I appreciate some can get connections like yours).

[SMURG]

just because the average is lower does not mean that fiber is slower. Its all at the isp's end to deliver the speed. Fiber is not as physically limited as copper is when it comes to data transfer rates.

The point is more that fiber's increased bandwidth is irrelevant if the speeds provided by the ISP are still lower than the maximum for copper. Since both copper and fiber can do 100Mbps, it is largely irrelevant at this point which one you have.

[dalekphalm]

I meant more that it's incredibly rare. I've never heard of anything >120Mbps on a consumer line over here and nothing above 150 anywhere else in the West (though I appreciate some can get connections like yours).

True, here in Canada most people - even in cities, are still on 16Mbps DSL or ~24Mbps DOCSIS 2.0 Cable.

 

However, the major cities are rolling out 150, 250, and 500Mbps connections. The first two are FTTN, but I believe the 500Mbps connection is pure FTTH. With that in mind, using "Channel Bonding", there is "no theoretical maximum" for the number of channels used. Of course, there is the practical limit in how much speed the physical copper can take. You'd have to run multiple copper lines to overcome the physical limitation.

[Mooshi]

I'm guessing this "research" was conducted by someone invested with the cable cos. This is why I loathe any research that wasn't 3rd party. It'd be like government investigating itself.

[SMURG]

True, here in Canada most people - even in cities, are still on 16Mbps DSL or ~24Mbps DOCSIS 2.0 Cable.

 

However, the major cities are rolling out 150, 250, and 500Mbps connections. The first two are FTTN, but I believe the 500Mbps connection is pure FTTH. With that in mind, using "Channel Bonding", there is "no theoretical maximum" for the number of channels used. Of course, there is the practical limit in how much speed the physical copper can take. You'd have to run multiple copper lines to overcome the physical limitation.

 

Man, the UK is falling behind I fear. When I'm King, I'll make this a priority.

[dalekphalm]

Man, the UK is falling behind I fear. When I'm King, I'll make this a priority.

On average, your high speed is faster then ours though. Remember, Canada is huge... REALLY HUGE! So there are millions of us living in rural areas all over this huge landmass, and most of them only have dialup, or if they are very lucky, they have access to shitty Satellite or Shitty Fixed Wireless internet.

 

Just imagine if your entire country was the wilderness of Scotland

[LePawel]

They cap cable off at 20mbps in UK. Anything above is marketed as the one and only savior fibre. 

[cesrai]

Bullshit.

[dalekphalm]

They cap cable off at 20mbps in UK. Anything above is marketed as the one and only savior fibre. 

"Marketed", being the key word there. But it's not true Fiber. In most cases, you're getting FTTN (Fiber to the Node), with Cable or DSL going "the last mile". Not always the case, and I'm not sure about adoption rates of VDSL and DOCSIS 3.0 compared to North America, but I'd be very surprised.

[SMURG]

On average, your high speed is faster then ours though. Remember, Canada is huge... REALLY HUGE! So there are millions of us living in rural areas all over this huge landmass, and most of them only have dialup, or if they are very lucky, they have access to shitty Satellite or Shitty Fixed Wireless internet.

 

Just imagine if your entire country was the wilderness of Scotland

Yeah, the land is so cheap though. I'd buy a load, move out there and build a house if not for the internet troubles that come with doing that.

[Nineshadow]

I agree with you, except I'm not sure what you mean by

 

"nobody gets >100Mbps really"

 

I have 150Mbps, and I damn well get it. Obviously not every site can support that kind of speed. It depends on the web server that I'm connecting to at any given moment. But I'm not in the UK so I don't know if your national infrastructure has some inherent limits in it?

100Mbps connection is $8/month here...

Gigabit is $18/month.

 

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