Cable Broadband Speeds 'Beat' Fibre - UK

[dalekphalm]

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.

Indeed, unless you bought land in an area that was already being developed, you'd likely have to pay a fairly substantial fee to get one of the ISP's to run good lines to your house. And if you buy near developing areas, it isn't so cheap suddenly

[dalekphalm]

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

Gigabit is $18/month.

 

...

Assuming you actually live in Romania (as per Location), then yeah... Romania breaks all the rules haha... wtf Fireox (Chrome - derp I'm not on my Work PC) - my Browser thinks "Romania" is spelled wrong?

[Ren]

Fiber has higher potential bandwidth than cable but the cable was installed long ago (the existing infrastructure probably outclasses fiber, hence their reasoning for what's going on).

Sounds more like fiber providers are misusing their connections rather than being competitive and pushing out something that's useful/helpful. Tell me again how much better the U.K. is than the U.S. when it comes to the internet, people .

A few things to mention: Make sure they're not being picky about where this is or you can understand where they're comparing speeds (shitty fiber area vs phenominal cable area). If it's all major ISPs/all ISPs in the UK, I'm not 100% sure I can agree but it's not farfetched from what I know. Some people will get a better (or worse) connection than others based on what nodes they and others are connected to.

The last post on page 1 also mentions something that I'm not sure is relevant. Distance. Yes, fiber can send a stronger signal across a greater distance since it transmits data faster than copper wiring. How much of that speed matters is unknown to me since the U.K. is small as hell in comparison to Canada/U.S.A., various other countries. But there is something that is definitely known about and I mentioned before; bandwidth and competitiveness/infrastructure.

If U.K. ISPs that provide fiber connections aren't using a large enough network, the traffic might be too much. Keep in mind that in 2014 we humans probably consume double to triple the amount of data we did, say, 3-5 years ago. Or just whenever this fiber network was first installed. The fiber hype probably caused even more problems as the OP/source suggests. Nothing here is unreasonable, everything I'm seeing is plausible and far from outlandish sounding to me.

Just be wary 'cause it sounds more like ISP bullshittery has spread to Europe/already existed and people didn't know until now (hopefully anyway, if it's true). Maybe they will build a larger network and better roads at the same time.

[Ren]

Oh yeah, pricing for each type of connection at the same speed is totally relevant as well. Forgot to include that but it deserves its own post.

If fiber is still cheaper regardless, I would not think twice about this "potential problem" or whatever people might be calling it.

[deviant88]

Copper needs to go out of business !!! Light trought glass sounds sexier.

Copper peasants really.

 

[LePawel]

"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.

God I know that. Good luck replacing wire in every home and every block. Doesn't change the facts they pull this data out of ass.

[bcredeur97]

i have 100 mbit cable. I can see the point but just because it allows more data to flow through doesnt mean ping times are better. (keep in mind im from the US.. but my point holds strong)

 

PING is the focus on fiber technology. and fiber will be faster than cable in a few years anyway.. copper can only do so much.

[Scheer]

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

 

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*

 

That just means you have less than average. Pretty much the only package you get around here for cable now is 60mbps.

 

"Traditional Copper" is not the same thing as cable btw. Copper pairs = DSL/dialup, Coaxial = Cable.

 

And just because fiber is CAPABLE of being extremely fast, doesn't mean that they have to give you that speed. All the rural areas near me are going to fiber, but only offer a max of 10mbps service because the small companies cannot afford the backhaul.

[spartaman64]

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.

fiber is actually cheaper in the long term because it is easier to maintain. also fiber is more future proof copper cannot do 1000mpbs while fiber can. also ISPs keep complaining that they are reaching their bandwidth limits so thats why they need to throttle people and have no net neutrality. well if they had fiber they would be no where near a limit

[dalekphalm]

That just means you have less than average. Pretty much the only package you get around here for cable now is 60mbps.

 

"Traditional Copper" is not the same thing as cable btw. Copper pairs = DSL/dialup, Coaxial = Cable.

 

And just because fiber is CAPABLE of being extremely fast, doesn't mean that they have to give you that speed. All the rural areas near me are going to fiber, but only offer a max of 10mbps service because the small companies cannot afford the backhaul.

In this particular context, I actually beg to differ. Coaxial Cable is still a copper core. In this case, anyone specifically referring to DSL/Dial-up will use Copper Pairs. "Traditional Copper", or "Copper" used in a generic sense is a perfectly acceptable term for both.

[BWSSoldya]

I'm in the Netherlands and the fiber thats on offer right now is actually slower than we can get on copper. We have copper offerings of 180/18 (which I'm on btw), and fiber offerings of 100/100. Of course most people don't have the 180/18 package, they use (afaik) roughly 60/6.That being said, I read some posts in the thread claiming speeds in exces of 150 mbit's weren't doable in the west, well if I would actually upgrade my router thats behind my modem I would actually get my 180/18. Thats the fun part of living in such a small country, we actually get advertised speeds. 

[hmminteresting]

I get 152Mbps from virgin and its actually the speed I pay for tbh I'd recommend everyone in the UK who can get it to get it it's the best deal for your money I pay £38 a month for landline and fibre optic I think its a pretty good deal  

[MzCatieB]

i use Virgin's 152mb's deal.

I get 149mb/s down  and 10mb/s up on average, i got it with a custom package which has there VIP+ mobile Sim, the Caps are stupid Estimated 60tb a month of Data on 3/4g total cost is £65 a month... im happy with that

[Darren]

This is ridiculous. This only claims that the average cable speed a customer buys is faster than the average fibre speed a customer buys. Fibre is theoretically limitless. In NZ, end users have options as to how fast they want their fibre to be which ranges from 30Mbps all the way up to 1Gbps.

[Kobz360]

ADSL MASTER RACE

 

12Mbps down (which really isn't that bad), and an astonishing, absolutely stunning 0.2 up which really helps me for uploading

/s 

 

I was so shocked when I had to use my phone to upload a video because it uploaded a 150MB video in about 3 mins on the H Connection (can someone clarify what it is - my thoughts are it's slightly faster than 3G), compared to the 30-40 or so minutes it would've taken on my home broadband. When I'm not on 4G (that H connection again), I get 24Mbps down and 4 up. Getting to op, at least in Aus I think Cable might end up being faster than some of the NBN (fibre) as well, because the new Government has opted to go for Fibre-to-the-node instead of FTTH in order to save costs, and because they believe Australia doesn't and won't need those higher speeds for a long time.. 

[Blade of Grass]

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.

DOCIS 3.1 supports up to 10Gb/s down and 1Gb/s up.

[Blade of Grass]

fiber is actually cheaper in the long term because it is easier to maintain. also fiber is more future proof copper cannot do 1000mpbs while fiber can. also ISPs keep complaining that they are reaching their bandwidth limits so thats why they need to throttle people and have no net neutrality. well if they had fiber they would be no where near a limit

I'm going to have to disagree. 

 

If you want to see the math behind it, look at the long spoiler, otherwise the basic information is here.

 

Coax can carry much more than Gigabit. The newest DOCIS standard (3.1) allows for 10Gb/s down, and 1Gb/s up.

 

The equation for the theoretical maximum data rate (using the Nyquist rate, in a perfect world, without noise) is

 

maximum data rate = 2B log₂ V bits/sec

 

B = Bandwidth (in Hz)

V = number of discrete levels

 

Now, the bandwidth on coax (cable) is 1GHz. (going to make this conservative, Computer Network - A Tanenbaum isn't specific, but states it's "a few GHz"). And let's say that it sends 2 levels (for binary, although most systems send more).

Plug that in:

 

maximum data rate = 2 (1 000 000 000) log₂ 2 bit/sec

 

Plugging that into Wolfram Alpha, you get: 2.77x 10⁹ bit/s, or 2.77 Gb/s. 

 

So, assuming that cable only has 1GHz of bandwidth, and only sends two different levels, the maximum data rate is 2.77Gb/s.

 

 

Now, if you want to get into a more realist thing, you have Shannon-Hartley theorem which is 

 

maximum bit/sec = B log₂ (1 + S/N)

 

B = Bandwidth 

S/N = Signal/Noise ratio

 

Again, plugging in a bandwidth of 1GHz, and an S/N of 30 dB you get:

 

maximum bit/s = 1000000000 log₂ (1 + 30)

 

Again, plugged into Wolfram Alpha you get: 4.95 x 10⁹ bit/s or 4.95 Gb/s

 

Now, the difference between the two is that the Nyquist Data Rate only calculated for 2 discrete levels, while the Shannon-Hartley Theorem uses 4 discrete levels. Now of course, both of these are just theoretical maximums, but neither take into account different symbol rates, data compression or other techniques that can lead to more effective use of the available bandwidth. On top of that, we used the very conservative estimation of 1GHz bandwidth.

 

So, while coax may not currently offer Gigabit, it can (as the DOCIS 3.1 standard (10Gb/s down, 1Gb/s up) shows).

[spartaman64]

I'm going to have to disagree. 

 

 

then why are all the cable companies complaining that people are using up too much bandwidth and they have to throttle people in order to keep the internet working 

[Blade of Grass]

then why are all the cable companies complaining that people are using up too much bandwidth and they have to throttle people in order to keep the internet working

Where is that happening?

In Canada we almost solely use cable for the last mile and I've never heard of that before.

EDIT: just thought I'd add this, if a company has oversold their available bandwidth, they've oversold their bandwidth. It doesn't matter if it's fiber, cable, DSL or dialup.

[Spannerhands]

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.

 

Yea its total Bullshit LOL

 

Remember that higher connections can bring up an average! 

 

My virgin medial "cable" connection in Wales is always between 126 - 156 down and 10 - 15 up (upload on virgin is always 10% of down)

[patrickjp93]

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.

Unless you have Google Fiber. Then the limit is what your computer can process.

[coen113]

My cable can get up to 150 mbps, i think. Fibre is too damn expensive. 50 mbps 90 euros per month

[SMURG]

Unless you have Google Fiber. Then the limit is what your computer can process.

I think we can all agree that Google Fiber is the exception rather than the rule lol

[Snickerzz]

i get 50down (what we pay for) with my fiber, and im on wifi

 

[That Norwegian Guy]

I call massive BS. I get up to 76 down 20 up with BT Infinity

 

I'm not a Brit, but I'm on 75 down, 50 up, cable.

 

However the fibre around here goes up to 400/400 but then again, it costs £140 /month (converted)