avatastic
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 10:32 AM
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"The service will then be rolled out nationally."

I find this amusing, as some parts of the UK don't even have a scheduled date for ADSL2 never mind FTTC.

AAISP
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 10:33 AM
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One of the trialists has 58M sync and 56M on a speedtest... another line has 79M sync... more info to come :-)

Chris
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 10:41 AM
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It would be nice if BT stopped going for the headlines and started getting ADSL to those exchanges without any kind of xDSL broadband)...

Kudos to A&A for getting the trial and completing successfully.

Deduction
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 10:44 AM
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quote"between 57Mbps - 79.7Mbps"

Thats a big difference. Some like to peddle massive speeds are available at massive distances from the cabinet...... OBVIOUSLY NOT!

Jon
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 11:23 AM
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@AAISP - me want, me want, please, please, please. By the way I live in the middle of nowhere. Please help!

Michael
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 12:53 PM
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MarkJ,

I feel that your statement about 100Mbps with vectoring may be a tad optimistic about "cost".

I think both of BTs suppliers for FTTC Cabinet kit, and VDSL2 customer NTEs could not do a soft/firmware upgrade as they have just done for the new spectrum profile. It would require new hardware to be deployed I think because of the massive processing requirements to make vectoring work in the bundle.

Also current vectoring trials around the world would indicate that it can only work if "openreaach" controls the bundle performance.

MarkJ
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 1:02 PM
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Michael,

I don't think you read what I wrote correctly :) . With vectoring I said that the "solution would come at an extra cost".

Deduction
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 1:54 PM
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Indeed this is profile 17a, vectoring which brings the speeds into theoretical 100+Mb ranges would require additional investment in this countries "next gen" roll out. Aint gonna happen anytime soon despite what some regular BT fans have been peddling.
Im not that impressed with this UPTO 80Mb lark either, based on the early figures reported its giving a relatively small percent boost to speeds and this is only a trial where i imagine reasonable short distances and good lines were selected rather than the ropey old patched up lines that are all over this country.

VM
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 2:20 PM
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If BT FTTC can do 20Meg upload, then why isn't virgin media upload still 12Meg on the 120Meg soon. Surely virgin media must do 20meg upload to be competition against BT.

Deduction
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 2:51 PM
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They dont really need to, gonna be a while before everyone (if ever) gets a 80Mb/20MB FTTC product, and even if they did most people are still more interested in down speeds.

Bob Pullen
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 5:00 PM
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I'm participating in Plusnet's trial of the service and have to admit, I'm pretty pleased with the results! ;)

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1697617647.png

New_Londoner
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 6:28 PM
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@Bob
Pretty impressive speed, good to see what Profile 17a can deliver.

To clarify comments on future developments that would boost this still further, Profile 30a has the potential of up to 200Mb by allocating additional spectrum, just like Profile 17a expands on that available today from Profile 8a. I'm not sure if this can be done via a software-only upgrade if approved by Ofcom? If so it would be pretty much "free" to do - granted the potential for increased use of backhaul bandwidth does have cost implications for ISPs though.

Vectoring, which will cost to implement as others have noted, complements Profile 17a (or 30a), allows higher speeds at longer distances.

All of this goes to show that news of the death of copper for broadband has been greatly exagerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain.

DTMark
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 8:12 PM
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Anyone have any ideas on the maximum speed an 1100m aliminium D side will achieve (given with ADSL and an E side of 2580m it achieves an IP profile no better than 1750kbps)

I still remain uninterested in the "up to" speeds. After all, surely we could just deploy ADSL3+ with "up to" (insert number here) Mbps. Except, of course, practically nobody would see much improvement. Great for the headline speeds, though.

It would be so nice if you could just move to more or less any urban area in this country and be guaranteed a broadband connection at 5Mbps of better, and that's a very, very long way from being the case now (about a 20% success rate in my case, maybe I've just been unlucky)

Fast forward ten years. I'd hate to be saying exactly the same thing except substituting 5Mbps for 50Mbps. It would be an epic fail.

Sledgehammer
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 9:38 PM
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Why has it been left to AAISP to disclose this data, surely BT would have had some figures first?

Sledgehammer
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 9:46 PM
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Also what would be clearly interesting data is how many people took part in this trial.

The total number of people to date that have a FTTC connection.

DTMark
Posted: 13 January, 2012 - 10:58 PM
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Number of people, length of line from cabinet, which metal it is made of and what gauge would be handy to know.

Without that data it's hard to make any meaningful extrapolation.

Deduction
Posted: 14 January, 2012 - 4:18 AM
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New_Blunderer talking tripe again i see. Profile 30 and 200Mb is not doable without vectoring. It also involves doubling the carrier bandwidth from the 4.3125khz which is what profiles 8a, 8b, 8c, 8d, 12a and 12b use to 8.625khz for profile 30.

This would involve additional cost which there is no current funding for or plans.

Another case of me having to educate the off topic talking annoyance again.

For people interested in facts...
VDSL2 has a theoretical maximum of 250 Mb at source.
100 Mbs at 0.5 km (1,600 ft) and 50 Mbs at 1 km (3,300 ft), it then in THEORY degrades at slower rate from thata distance onward.

The resident BT worker and walking BT advert is welcome for being educated again.

New_Londoner
Posted: 14 January, 2012 - 6:24 AM
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@Deduction
Sorry to say this but Wikipedia is not always the best source of information. In fact Profiles 8a-d use 8.5MHz of bandwidth not 4.3125khz, Profile 17a uses 17.7MHz and Profile 30a uses 30MHz not 8.625khz.

AFAIK the upgrade to Profile 17a was done in software, did not involve significant additional cost, why would an upgrade to Profile 30a be different?

In terms of the expected performance of VDSL2 over distance, this of course depends on the profile used and whether methods such as vectoring are used, not to mention the line spec.

Deduction
Posted: 14 January, 2012 - 11:19 AM
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I didnt get the info from wikipedia.

I also said "CARRIER BANDWIDTH" which is measured in Khz.
Always has been is even for ADSL.

For FTTC it is either 4.3125khz or 8.625khz all profiles upto and including 17a use 4.3125khz as per ITU spec sheet.
Profile 30a uses 8.625khz. for CARRIER BANDWIDTH.

Bandwidth in the sense (INCORRECTLY) you are talking about is the "SIGNAL PROCESSING" IE frequency bands.

For VDSl there are 7 of those for each profile it is as follows....
Profile 8a = 8.832Mhz
Profile 8c = 8.5Mhz
Profile 8d = 8.832Mhz
Profile 12a = 12Mhz
Profile 12b = 12Mhz
Profile 17a = 17.664Mhz
Profile 30a = 30Mhz

Once again you are welcome.
Any doubts over that info and ill happily hunt and point to ITU spec sheets. Which should correct you stupidity once and for all.

Deduction
Posted: 14 January, 2012 - 11:48 AM
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Just realised i missed Profile 8b.... Opps!

Regardless the info about Tone spacing/carrier bandwidth which is measured in KHz and the various Profile info and the profiles bandwidth (which is measured in Mhz) i initially got from here for all to see.
http://adslm.dohrenburg.net/
(chart about half way down page)
NOT wikipedia as accused.

As noted profile 30 uses a different tone space/carrier bandwidth and thus would need extra investment, unlike the other profiles.

Will find the official ITU pages also to back up that sites info.

DTMark
Posted: 14 January, 2012 - 4:02 PM
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For heaven's sake.

I'm not exactly BT's biggest fan, having experienced their customer service and ancient network myself. You might have noticed.

And, yes, personally, I suspect New_Londoner does work for BT.

However, there's some value to "having someone on the inside" and all of the above technical discussion could have been had without resorting to the sarky comments.

Then, people like me could have focused on the technical bits without wading through the dross. You win an argument by debating technical points and being shown to be right. It's up to the reader to work that out for themselves.

MarkJ does not have to "allow" anyone to use this site.

I'm not "defending" anyone. But, if you won't listen to him, perhaps given that my stance is fairly evident and I have no pro-bias for BT, you might listen to me and wonder why I post this. It's a technical forum, not school.

Telecom Engineer
Posted: 14 January, 2012 - 11:58 PM
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Off top of my head at 630M of mixed copper / Ali using 17a I have seen a line (capped at 40 for now) report capable of 72meg. Another of similar length same makeup report while sync 40, reporting capable of only 56meg. Seen 700M copper line again sync 40 report capable 86meg.
Thats in the last few days.
The tech is capable, but to see the full benefit I believe BT need to raise the minimum threshold (from 15meg standard) to something like 65meg and give the engineers the time to raise the line quality to ensure best service possible. This would also involve using only the best engineers for the premium 80meg product. As the tech gets more demanding of the network trying to knock these out quick will have a very negative impact on customers such as found with the self install adsl and speed claims.

Telecom Engineer
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 12:09 AM
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With regards to bandwidths argument I suppose only the manufactures and the BT bods know if firmware updates could allow 30a on the current tech. Vectoring WILL require new cards fitted at the dslam (possibly new modems also), this is being looked into but when and where the tech eventually sees light of day is anybodies guess (could be 12months or 5 years). But vectoring would enhance any use of frequency even if just applied to 17a. BT do control the whole cable bundle at that frequency (aside form digital region areas) so is not an issue and the uncontrolled 2mhz and under of adsl is not seen as an issue by alcatel.
But at the moment the info today seems positive (and I would love to see the stats / prints for the 56meg line and see what improvements could be made).
AAISP can you ask Openreach to provide dside length / makeup or send a boost engineer to attempt enhancement?

Telecom Engineer
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 12:15 AM
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DT mark, I have seen a poor line (mostly ali) sync at 16meg at 1500M+, that was under the old 8mhz profile. I would expect more for you. Eside (aside from the adsl info) is not important - unless it is that section causing your problems.

locky
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 9:41 AM
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Wish I was part of the BT trials, I have so decent stats

Profile 17a


Max: Upstream rate = 35659 Kbps, Downstream rate = 97040 Kbps
Path: 0, Upstream rate = 10000 Kbps, Downstream rate = 39998 Kbps


350 meters of copper.

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 10:18 AM
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It sounds as though it may be possible to salvage something here. But it doesn't sound terribly positive for our area.

Line lengths (D-sides) from about 10m through to about 3000m, presumed (in the absence of any other data) a mix of copper and aliminium, since in a small area you have current speeds from ~0.8Mbps thru ~5.8Mbps (IP Profiles). (There may be slower, we're surveying residents, but don't have that many results to go on).

With an ali' D-side, what's the maximum useful length that can be before the speed drops < 25Mbps; that would indicate what percentage of the area would get something even current-gen, nevermind futureproof.

With regard to quality and replacement of D-sides - that has always been possible, to get the most out of what's there. But it's never happened, since such lines are "fine for voice". FTTC seems to be predicated on "doing the bare minimum" as usual.

New_Londoner
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 10:18 AM
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@Telecom Engineer
Very useful insight into actual performance in real world conditions. I'm guessing DTMark will be encouraged by the speed attained on 1500m of ali, so perhaps his aspiration of 25Mbps+ at 1100 is not totally impossible after all.

Always good to see comments based on facts so thank you!

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 10:20 AM
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.. and if we're on the subject of replacing the D-sides, why not replace them with fibre?

That would make perfect sense, unless you were an incumbent infrastructural monopoly with little or no incentive to do so. Nothing I can see gets us to the mechanism of raising quality standards now or in the longer term, that mechanism being, very simply, competition.

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 10:28 AM
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To put some "meat" on the bones of this, some real results:

A 'good' line:

Connection Speed 6944 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 41.0 db 26.0 db
Noise Margin 4.8 db 23.0 db

An "average" one:

Noise margin (Down/Up): 14.5 dB / 25.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up): 47.8 dB / 27.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up): 19.4 dBm / 12.4 dBm
Downstream: 3.75 Mbps
Upstream: 448 Kbps

A poor one:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1152 kbps 288 kbps
Line Attenuation 46 db 14 db
Noise Margin 12 db 24 db

Bear in mind this is a very small area.

If I remember rightly, the noise was high on our line, too. (something like 60db att, NM 15, 3680m D+E), I don't have stats for it since we haven't used it in 4 years.

New_Londoner
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 10:40 AM
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@Locky
Impressive stats, again helpful to see potential performance from Profile 17a on a real line. Not sure what % of lines are 350m or less, but being able to get close to 100Mbps downstream and just over 35Mbps upstream on an uncapped service looks pretty good, at least you nkow you'll not have a problem getting the maximum speed when the 80/20 option is introduced.

New_Londoner
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 10:47 AM
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@DTMark
Why not replace the copper with fibre, assuming you mean wholesale across the UK? SImple economics I'm afraid. You'll recall the BSG report a year or so ago which estimated it would cost teh best part of £30bn to deliver FTTP across the whole of the UK, which contrasts with teh £530m that BDUK has now, possibly a little more after 2015.

ALso bear in mind that current take up of FTTC and the higher speed cable services are still relatively low, suggesting that many people do not see high speed broadband as a priority when it is on offer. Obviously this is likely/will change over time, may be helped by the introduction of services like Youview, Netflix etc, but the combination of very high cost and low demand will not encourage investors, especially in the current climate.

New_Londoner
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 10:52 AM
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Contd.

A better bet could be the ability to offer FTTP on demand to fulfill actual orders that cannot be met by copper. So if my line can support a max of 50Mbps on FTTC and I want to order a 100Mbps service I get upgraded, but probably have to trade the upgrade for a minimum term contract. That would see reasonable, give my service provider some assurance they'd get their money back over time.

NO doubt others will have different views but its difficult to see any easy solution given the sheer scale of the investment if you want to provide FTTP across the country.

(You could of course say it would be a better use of the money than say HS2 but that's another story!)

Somerset
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 11:01 AM
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It would be a better use of the money than say HS2.

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 11:07 AM
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Actually the lines are longer than I had thought. These are such short geographical distances it's tempting to think they're shorter than they really are.

Can estimate the line lengths knowing the rough route the lines take (they don't go "round the houses", as it isn't clustered)

Guess this one is a copper one.

Connection Speed 1152 kbps 288 kbps
Line Attenuation 46 db 14 db
Noise Margin 12 db 24 db

E side 2500m
+ D side 3800m
= Line length ~5300m

What will he or she get with FTTC with a copper D-side of 3800m?

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 11:09 AM
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Er, maths. 2500 + 3800 = 6300, not 5300!

With the right figures it would be possible to work out what percentage of the area can get by with FTTC and what percentage needs FTTP.

Then replicate across the country.

New_Londoner
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 11:20 AM
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@DTMark
I think that's the approach being taken in Cornwall, however I think that the amount of money being spent per property is much greater than is being proposed in any of DBUK projects.

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 11:26 AM
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@New_Londoner

There has never been the "mechanism" to upgrade our line to something useful, because, it's a telephone line and very much viewed as such. It's 'fine for voice' (actually, it was very quiet), and therefore, BT still, to me, is a telephone company, not a telecommunications company.

I have no problem paying additional money for a FTTP install.

Though, BT are going to struggle with that in cabled areas. 30Mbps installed free (or near as) with cable, or some fee to upgrade a phone line to fibre (amount?) plus £129 line setup fee + activation fee, blah blah.

That's what you get for decades of underinvestment.

Ours is a rural area and sparsely populated, expectations have to be lowered. But most of the "final third" (which will always exist with rate adaptive tech) live in built up urban areas where we rally ought to be setting our sights a bit higher.

New_Londoner
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 11:43 AM
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WIth regards cabled areas, its worth bearing in mind that take up of cable remains pretty low in this country. And the recent speed increase may have the unintended effect of reducing the number based on comments in TBB relating to unhappiness due to congestion, particularly from some of the users of the faster services.

Unless the speed increase is accompanied by more backhaul and, most importantly, further segregation of the shared coax, the speed increases may actually lead to reductions in throughput.

Those with slower speed ADSL in urban areas really ought to see benefit from FTTC, but this depends whether it is important enough to the people affected for them to want to upgrade. Current evidence would suggest many have other priorities despite what we may think.

telecom engineer
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 12:17 PM
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dt mark, that poor line with attenuation of 46 seems to have an issue, unless the modem is reporting signal rather than line attn i would expect 5meg plus with snr of 6 or lower. did that line get stats when plugged into nte5 test socket?
btw there are now methods for reporting cables with lower than expected dsl performance, but not seen the process work locally. with 3500m of dside you would be unlikely to get any sync improvement with fttc over adsl due to current psd masks making the most usefull frequencies 2mhz and lower no more powerful than those comming from the exchange. the higher frequencies may attenuate too much at that distance.

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 1:38 PM
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@New_Londoner - you bring me nicely to my next point: contention. Especially with comparison to cable.

What *guarantees* are there from BT Wholesale regarding actual throughput, so we don't end up with the farcical situation we have now where the ISP - the contracted party - blames their supplier (Wholesale) becase the exchange is "VP hot" (and we can now add to that - the cabinet is "VP hot")?

Of course, were there competition at a loop level, that ISP could move to an alternate network. Competition raises standards.

We can clearly see what happens when you have too much demand on a network segment, as in some cable areas, which so far as I know don't have the issue that "the cabinet is full" - which is going to happen with VDSL, if it isn't already. Where does the second and third enormous cabinet go, what commitment is there?

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 2:01 PM
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I'd expect to see 5Mbps or better with our 2580m + 1100m = 3680m line. The ADSL world is very much predicated on "You *should* be able to get". Well, yes. But the broadband is just a side show, it's all about the line rental. Which BT could have had for the last 4 years if the kit were any use.

I don't know how that line is wired up, there are some rather choice comments in that survey since that user has tried to improve it without success, but I can't paste them in. It is not anywhere near the longest line.

Little here convinces me that FTTC is a medium term solution for this area and others * for more than a certain %. Just like, er, ADSL, except that all these years later, we're still having to use it thanks to the lack of competition (we upgraded from ADSL to 3G but that won't work for many, not at the same time anyway).

* The key is - how many "others"?

Telecom Engineer
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 2:45 PM
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Openreach give a minimum speed of 15meg from pcp to exchange, what happens on the backhaul is down to the ISP, I believe it is something like 12meg from bt retail. ISP could always VULA it and use their own backhaul.
Adsl is still the most popular tech in use around the world for broadband so its no suprise that we (as most countries) are still using it.
Yeah that line you quote should be much better, but as you say bt guarantee only voice and adsl is a chargeable product if isps want cables changed etc.
However FTTC is managed by Openreach and therefore must attain a standard (basic of 15meg), if the network cant cope it is down to openreach to sort it or not sell it - a much better position than the adsl situation.
Do you know why people are having odd speeds in your area? is it very rural? known to be fed by faulty cables? Has anyone had engineer visits (preferably a boost engineer)?

New_Londoner
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 4:04 PM
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@DTMark
Quote "The key is - how many others?"

Based on Andrew's comments at TBB, you're in the 10% that are more than 1km from their cabinet (I assume he meant line length both don't recall if he said so explicitly).

Deduction
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 5:46 PM
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Id say you are an offence to the entire universe.

Hows it feel to be wrong about VDSL specs????

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 5:48 PM
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@Telecom Engineer

Generally, their resigned opinion of BT is that it's a bit of a waste of time trying to even pursue it. The threat of charges is usually enough to silence a customer and keep them paying line rental for their substandard service (customers aren't 'tech', don't know the line lengths, and it's not as if they can go elsewhere, maybe selfishly I don't want too many going to 3G or there goes my broadband), many ISPs just fob the customer off with the "up to" line (you see this time and again on forums).

When ADSL was enabled here, it was with an est' of 3Mbps and managed 1.7Mbps. In terms of "expected speed", the database now corectly says 1Mbps, so that's the new expected speed, my money helped Openreach discover that and so the next customer at this address will sign up with an expected speed of 1Mbps and will get that so the ISP is "safe".

James
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 5:51 PM
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stop fighting kids! Don't make daddy crack out his meat hammer of justice. While ur at it give me FTTC, i don't care what profile bla, bla, bla....

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 5:57 PM
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I'd asssumed aliminium was to blame for the very variable performance of differing lines (our 1.7Mbps line is only about 300m longer than the line with 6Mbps).

As far as NTE5 sockets go, we don't have one, and given the age of the properties and network, I don't know how many other homes here have them. Could be another factor. That would be solved with a FTTC install currently, since it involves an engineer whereas a line or ADSL activation does not.

For this area I need more survey results in (we're running a campaign to get a private broadband network installed) to better estimate the capabilities of the lines and see whether what is here, beyond the ducting, if that, is any use going forward; a mix of FTTP and Wi-Fi currently seems like the best way to go.

Despite being called 'Open'reach and having a monopoly here, line length and cab data doesn't seem easy to get.

Deduction
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 6:00 PM
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You could always pay BT around £150 to come fit a NTE5 not a bad mark up on a piece of plastic worth all of 50p.

Im sure the BT worker that talks nonsense here would jump with joy.

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 6:04 PM
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Addressing your first line and ignoring the second one, I investigated that. I was quoted over £300. Then we had a dispute with BT, they cut the line off, and I discovered 3G performed the same as ADSL (1.7Mbps, since upgraded to 14Mbps of which we've had 11Mbps) and didn't look back :)

Hmmm. 240 properties @ £150 to bring the kit into this century with some 15 minute jobs. Nice work if you can get it. I'd rather we looked forward :)

Deduction
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 6:18 PM
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That price of AROUND £150 also does not included the wiring up of any phone extensions you may currently have within the house, to wire those into the new NTE5 (although you can legally do that yourself) is AROUND a further £25 per extension. Prices are from memory.

The full and exact prices which i assure you i am not far out on. Can be found somewhere in this myriad of BT clap trap here...
http://www.bt.com/pricing/

DTMark
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 7:10 PM
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Moving on, anyway:

Why is the 15Mbps guaranteed only as far as the PCP?

(The cynic might wonder if it will end up like cable in some areas)

As for "there isn't the money to fibre every property" - well, no. But, like FTTC, the engineer only need attend on placement of order, I thought cable was the same in that most of the ducting goes down but the last drop cable only gets pulled through when the property requires service if it's not there already) and BT already have the ducting.

After all, we can already order FTTP. I got a quote for a basic 10Mbps service in our nearest town (which has had its FTTC rollout, but no businesses can get it) - £4k install (what's that, 2 man days plus kit?) and £2k/month. For 10Mbps.

That's not ubiquitous, nor high speed. Having FTTC should see that £4k come down since it's less work (distance). But then, so would competiton.

Deduction
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 8:14 PM
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15Mb is not even guaranteed (dunno who said that probably the resident disinformation fountain) lower than 15Mb is the rate on FTTC before BT consider it a fault. Its not guaranteed in any way. If you can not obtain more than 15Mb on FTTC they will advise you take ADSL2+.

The fault threshold is even lower for R/VDSL (or reach extended) which some people miles from a cabinet and rural may end up with eventually. The fault rate for that is 5Mb.

No doubt the resident disinformation fountain will challenge that also and ill have to link to more evidence to shut it up again.

Telecom Engineer
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 9:14 PM
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15meg was the minimum backhaul bandwidth of the fibre guaranteed to each user - i.e. call it phase one getting from exchange to cabinet over fibre(although you will be hard pushed to find a situation where anyone will see only 15meg due to this - plus it can be upgraded easily).
The 15meg standard Deduction is on about is say phase 2 the sync speed (which is also at min 15meg) unless a special 5meg product is taken out (although the capacity is still there at the cab for 15meg per customer at all times - working just like contention at an exchange but at higher speed per user).
The inter exchange speed is down to the ISPs own network.

Second, can a mod please clean up these forums? Some of the comments are childish, if people cant keep the debate above an adolescent level perhaps they should be encouraged to take a holiday so the adults can get on?

Deduction
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 10:18 PM
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Or the long and short of it 15Mb is not guaranteed.

VM
Posted: 15 January, 2012 - 11:57 PM
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BT FTTC is rubbish! Virgin Media win hand down!

Deduction
Posted: 16 January, 2012 - 1:17 AM
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Agreed in an average speed contest Virgins fibre system wins hands down.
There is no way BT FTTC can compete with docsis systems.
FTTP/H... Yes, but seeing as BT are only doing about 2% of the country with that it doesnt even really factor into debate.