Openreach’s G.fast Ultrafast Broadband Pilot Covers 390000 UK Premises
Openreach (BT) has announced that their new 330Mbps capable hybrid fibre G.fast broadband network is “now available” to thousands of people in Bath, Glasgow and Edinburgh, although none of the major ISPs have launched public packages and the final EMD phase still hasn’t begun.
Back in August 2017 the operator announced that their G.fast pilot would be expanded to include 26 additional locations across the United Kingdom (total of 46 locations) and this rollout was then “expected to reach a million premises by the end of the year” (here), although more recent updates have clarified that they actually meant “the end of the fiscal year” (BT’s financial year ends on 31st March 2018).
Openreach and BT Wholesale had originally said that G.fast’s Early Market Deployment (EMD) phase, which is the final phase after the pilot and before full commercial service availability, would begin in September 2017 (here) but it appears to be lagging a little behind that plan (ideally they should have completed a bit more than 390,000 premises by now).
A number of ISPs had also been planning to put their own public pilot packages live alongside, or slightly ahead of, the EMD phase during the October to November 2017 window but they now appear to have pushed those plans back into early 2018 (this doesn’t include Sky Broadband or TalkTalk, which have remained fashionably coy about their launch plans).
Industry sources have indicated to ISPreview.co.uk that the decision about whether or not to enter the next EMD phase will be taken soon (possibly during February) and if that’s accurate the earliest date for EMD would be around March / April 2018, which means that a full commercial launch seems unlikely to start before June 2018 at the earliest.
As it stands only a tiny number of ISPs actually have G.fast based packages and nearly all of those are still testing it as part of closed trials (see TalkTalk’s G.fast service), although we hope to see the first public pilot packages going live during Q1 2018 from a few smaller ISPs (assuming EMD isn’t further delayed).
We have asked Openreach to clarify their expectations for the commercial launch, although getting a reply during the Christmas week is perhaps an exercise in wishful thinking. In the meantime we anticipate that Openreach will throw out some similar “now available” style press releases for the other 26 pilot additions, which were first announced in August 2017 and are now slowly reaching completion.
However a lot of those with the desire to be early adopters may be disappointed when they realise that in a fair few areas the old FTTC (VDSL2) service can sometimes deliver a faster speed than G.fast tech, which prefers much shorter copper lines (ideally sub 350 metres). There’s a cross over point where we’ve been seeing VDSL2 speeds beat G.fast by a significant margin, although G.fast’s Fault Threshold of 100Mbps should help to keep some separation at the retail ISP level.
The 46 G.fast Pilot Locations
Armley, West Yorkshire
Balham, South London
Bath Kingsmead, Somerset
Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire
Bolton, Greater Manchester
Brierley Hill, West Midlands
Brighton Hove, East Sussex
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Cherry Hinton, Cambridgeshire
Chorlton, Manchester
Derby, Derbyshire
Donaldson, Edinburgh
Eltham, South London
Gillingham, Kent
Glasgow Bridgeton
Glasgow Douglas
Glasgow Langside
Great Barr, West Midlands
Hammersmith, West London
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
Hunslet, West Yorkshire
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
Kidbrooke, South London
Liverpool Central
Lofthouse Gate, West Yorkshire
Luton, Bedfordshire
Manchester East
Mansfield, Nottinghamshire
Newbury, Berkshire
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newmarket, Suffolk
North Birmingham
Parsons Green, West London
Portsmouth North End
Pudsey, West Yorkshire
Rochdale, Manchester
Rusholme, Manchester
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
South Clapham, South London
St. Austell, Cornwall
Swansea, Wales
Swindon, Wiltshire
Upton Park, East London
Wandsworth, South London and
Whitchurch, South Glamorgan
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Well, when this comes to West Wales i’ll try it out!
My line is around 330M from the PCB so it should work with G.Fast. I’m getting 79.99 sync down and 19.99 sync up with G.INP enabled to it’s looking hopeful 🙂
What sort of xDSL modem router would be needed to support G.Fast? Any specific profiles needed? Anything on the market to support it?
Kind Regards
Simon
Early G.fast adopters will either get Openreach’s own G.fast modem or a device supplied by their ISP. At the moment I’d avoid buying third-party G.fast kit until we’ve seen what works with the new network and what doesn’t.
So let me get this straight. It’s taken the whole year to get to 390k coverage, but their target is to get to 1 million by April? That means that need to add another 600k+ in just 3 months. HAHAHAHA Who are they kidding? At this rate we might see G.Fast rolled out to everyone by 2050 if we are lucky.
G.fast is very quick to deploy in most areas so I’m sure they can ramp up when ready, after all the plan is still to reach 10 million by 2020. The pace will have to surge at some point.
You clearly unfamiliar with large projects like this. There is always an early stage where lots of staff have to get trained, project managers taken on, detailed planning done, orders placed, processes streamlined, systems capacity added, workforce allocated and so on. It starts off slowly and ramps up. As G.Fast pod deployment is much less dependent on infrastructure provision such as groundworks, power provision and the build out of fibre to new location, it should build up very quickly. Later on, it will slow down as there are fewer easy targets. It’s exactly how VDSL2 FTTC proceeded. Slowly at first, then a peak level for a few years and then a tail-off.
Projects which have bottlenecks such as the limited availability of workforce to do ground-works are another matter.
@Steve Jones Are you unfamiliar with the word You’re? Shame people don’t know when they are supposed to use it, but then again I blame the poor Education system in this country (that’s a subject for another day).
As you may remember, FTTC deployment in the UK did not take this long and considering that G.Fast is just an addition to an already existing system it should not be that complicated to train staff.
@JustAnotherFileServer: The excessive trials mentality shown by BT has been discussed before on the ISPReview forums. However, Steve is right, you can expect a relatively fast deployment of G.Fast during the first few months of the new year. Whether G.fast makes sense at all, is another topic. IMHO G.fast will suffer from lower than expected takeups because it is being deployed in the wrong areas.
@JustAnotherFileServer
Several of the trial areas have had G.fast pods fitted but Openreach haven’t enabled them for customer orders yet – so I imagine Openreach can easily increase their coverage figure whenever they want.
For instance, I know in Wandsworth PCP’s had G.fast pods fitted some 6 months ago but customers can’t yet order the service yet.
Having said that, if Openreach were expecting a delay, perhaps they would have been better off waiting for the new Amendment 3 kit to be available then whatever they have currently installed.
How’d you know that it isn’t in more areas that are being announced in the release? I know many other areas that have pods installed that aren’t on the first batch being announced.
@ GNewton
“The excessive trials mentality shown by BT has been discussed before on the ISPReview forums.”
This not a mentality, it’s part of their OFCOM undertakings and industry commitments – something which by your previous comments, you fail to grasp.
It just seems odd that these trials have been delayed for various reasons, yet people think that it’s magically going to be implemented just by turning on the pods. If that was the case then why hasn’t this been done already?
^ Our regular troll with JustAnotherName…
@JustAnotherFileServer
It was a simple editing mistake. I had originally written “You are”, but in making alterations to the wording just before filing, I failed to noticed I’d accidentally deleted the “are” part. Unfortunately, once posted, there is no editing feature on this site.
As for education, my qualifications include 8 ‘O’ Levels (including English Language), 4 ‘A’ levels and a BSc in physics from Imperial College. What didn’t doesn’t eliminate, at least in in my case, is the possibility of making careless mistakes in editing. Those are down to me, not of the education system.
What your excuse is for introducing an irrelevant observation to the thread I’ve no idea.
@FibreFred Regular troll? hahaha. I only comment about once or twice every six months or so. If you think that’s regular commenting then I feel so sorry for you.
@Steve Jones I take it then you are not a measure twice, cut once kind of a person then? Always good idea to check what you have written before hitting the Post Comment button.
You ask people to check what they type before clicking the post comment button yet you were wrong about everything to do with fttc development and deployment.
As you know, you comment all of the time. Just using different aliases, just as you have done for years.
Hopefully (but incorrectly) assuming people will not notice.
@FibreFred Excuse me, have you got any evidence of this? I can assure you that I do not go by any other name on this website or ever have done. You have accused me of being a troll, when in fact you are trolling me.
@ilikehaggis I’ve had FTTC since the original trials of it and know in detail it’s development and deployment and can assure you that the trial of FTTC did not take as long as the trial of G.Fast
FTTC trials began in 2009 and commercial deployment started in 2011, if I recall correctly.
Although BT began trialling G.fast in 2014, it wasn’t even an ITU approved standard back then. The purpose of those trials was to work along side the hardware manufacturers to develop the hardware.
BT isn’t really far behind the curve with G.Fast. If you look at other countries, it’s mostly only this year that has seen the commercial deployment of G.fast. Also you need to remember that BT has to wholesale out its network, so a large amount of trials and tests are system related to be able to provide wholesale access to those products.
@AndyH Yep, that sounds about right. Two years for FTTC and soon to be 4 years for G.Fast
Though most of the Euro deployments happened in 2016, the US mainly deployed in 2017.
Considering that BT has said that deployment should be in full swing by 2020, that does put the UK far behind everyone else.
@AndyH: “so a large amount of trials and tests are system related to be able to provide wholesale access to those products.”
I think you have never worked on larger ecommerce projects. Otherwise you’d know that it doesn’t take these excessive trials to update their ordering systems.
However, trials were needed for completing the actual technical developments and hardware, to make sure systems can run smoothly in real world scenarios.
@ GNewton
I own 3 companies, 2 of which are solely eCommerce. I employ a full time programmer and often outsource large projects to specialist teams.
I worked with BT Wholesale and Openreach for over 2 years. I’ve been on Working Groups with both companies, to hear and see first hand the development and improvement of services. I’ve seen the 1000s of changes implemented as part of EMP releases to support changes and Openreach’s equivalence commitments.
I would love to know what qualifies your statements about Openreach’s trial being excessive – particularly from someone who failed to grasp the difference between a naked VDSL service provided at ISP level, compared to one of the biggest changes to the telecoms market (SOGEA) this decade.
@AndyH: Your bragging about your ecommerce projects and work for BT doesn’t contribute to a useful forum discussion, especially when digging up old threads in an futile attempt to present others as stupid. But it certainly explains your extreme bias towards BT and Openreach. I am not starting to list all our ecommerce projects on a public forum, this would do nothing to change your bias. Suffice to say BTs ordering systems are not efficient, and that part of the trials were excessive! Sorry, if you can’t see that, especially when you should have the skills in the software industry.
@GN – your use of the word ‘stupid’ confirms you are Carpetburn and subsequent names and Mr Neuhoff?
I never said I worked for BT – they were one of my many suppliers for one of my previous businesses.
@ TheFacts – You can add Brian to that list. That personality disappeared when Mark deleted his posts for posting behind a VPN/proxy.
“As for education, my qualifications include 8 ‘O’ Levels (including English Language), 4 ‘A’ levels and a BSc in physics from Imperial College. What didn’t doesn’t eliminate, at least in in my case, is the possibility of making careless mistakes in editing.”
“Doesn’t” that “didn’t” equate to another “O” NO I used my over qualified English Literacy Skills again?
“I own 3 companies, 2 of which are solely eCommerce. I employ a full time programmer and often outsource large projects to specialist teams.”
Impressive i assume the offline business is your newspaper round? The specialist team being Mum and Dad who put the Newspapers in your delivery bag before you go out on your BMX.
“I never said I worked for BT – they were one of my many suppliers for one of my previous businesses.”
Did you supply Yahoo accounts to Nigerian spammers?
In case you had not got the point. Your contribution has been nothing more than contradictory, abscess filled gunk. Im seriously impressed how much Pseudologia Fantastica can affect you in just one news item comments.
@ Mark – Can we do something about this comments please? I know it’s the holiday period, but the childish insults really aren’t appropriate.
It’s constantly the same two people who constantly troll this site under a plethora of aliases.
@AndyH I agree.
Also think that the comments software could do with an upgrade so that you had to register an account to comment, as it would be easier then to ban those that abuse it.
@Sunil Sood correctly stated that the Wandsworth pods were connected but apparently not released. There seems to be a problem with the OR main website checker in that PCP7 that I am connected to shows as SuperFast whereas other checkers show that GFast is orderable. I’ve orders via Cerberus who were quick off the mark when OR enabled ordering.
Fingers crossed as the predicted speeds are 329/49 and the handback is only 5mb/s lower so OR must be very confident. And no I don’t live on top of the PCP but about 200m away from it (as the wire meanders – tongue-in-cheek).
“It’s constantly the same two people who constantly troll this site under a plethora of aliases.”
There is only one troll but obviously its NOT the person which apparently owns 3 companies, employs a full time programmer and often outsource large projects to specialist teams.
That person is such a busy beaver with all his hiring of people and being the next Alan Sugar with businesses popping up everywhere.
I hear its taken miracle advances in science for them to do all that and fit a further 20 hours a day in refreshing comments on here and TBB to post replies and whinge about others.
BT Corporate employees really are modern wonders in more ways than one. Bless ’em.
One of those green side pod things has just appeared on my street cabinet.
Locks Heath, Southampton doesn’t appear on any trial lists I have seen.
Much like the early VDSL2 deployments, Openreach will probably be trying to conduct G.fast as efficiently as possible and combining it with existing work programmes too. I expect to see quite a few pods popping up outside of the currently known pilot areas.
First G.Fast pod ive seen in carlisle on cab 55 (Orfeur St), Lots of student housing in the area with the university of cumbria being a 2 min walk away.
sounds like a good idea, shame virgin just finished rolling out in the same area and put a cab within spitting distance.
For me I lose speed even though I get max on VDSL BT say I will get less on G.fast.
G.fast is reliant on shorter lines than VDSL, hence it will only benefit users on relatively short lines. However, these already have good enough VDSL speeds, therefore only few users will be willing to pay more for a product like G.fast. G.fast is not a substitute for proper full-fibre rollouts.
“therefore only few users will be willing to pay more for a product like G.fast.’
Do you have evidence of this?
AS you always say nobody needs those kind of speeds.
100M from the cab getting 80/20 but lets be fair VM are doing a good job for me at 383/21 so unless BT came out with 1Gbps why would I bother? Chances are VM would react and do the same if they could.
VM reacting would be a good thing. Anywhere that either of these providers enjoy a monopoly is almost guaranteed to be bad for consumers.
For BT line users bad because if you’re at the end of a line, you’re at the end of a line and that’s that.
For VM customers because VM’s sales practices are shoddy as all hell and they happily sign up customer after customer onto network segments that have been overutilised hundreds of signups prior.
If you have a choice of how your broadband is delivered to you, from a tech standpoint, this puts the power in your hands to some degree. That is unless you’re super unlucky and both are rubbish where you live.
Does “390000 covered” simply mean that many lines are connected to a G.Fast enabled cabinet? What about details on speeds available. I.E. X can get 100Mbps+ and Y can get 200Mbps+?
This is actually a very important issue as we still have BT claiming that everyone on a FTTC cabinet is FTTC enabled yet some (5~10%) are likely to get less than 30Mbps or no FTTC service at all. With G.Fast this is even worse as the range is so limited.
Any news on remote note (pole mounted) G.Fast deployments?
Yes- not going to happen
Would be nice to get even broadband speeds I run at about 2 meg when lucky INGLETON NORTH YORKSHIRE
Sounds great. Meanwhile there’s a million plus of us in the country Living with nil or pathetic speeds less than 2 Mbps. Openreach ought to get their priorities right.
Why Openreach, other providers who could install in your area?
BT and the 10Mb USO will save you all, much like their promises before that.
interesting the USO now that a real interesting can of worms — the ministers says its just like ordering a phone line !!!!! don’t forget (or to let know know if you don’t alrerady) i if you have a phone line that costs more than £3,400 to install – the susbscriber (requesters pays the bill – less 3,400) – if they choose to charge the USO the same as a phone line — so say is cost 10,000 to install you’d could end up with a bill for £6,500 — lots more discussion / mileage around what is / is not covered or who will have to provide it
I think a lot of this was also discussed earlier this year with the Scottish Caravan Park article, and included exceptions of non-permenant dwellings and, in the case f the POTS USO second lines and if I recall correctly holiday homes were also mentioned.
The USO has already stated it will be an affordable solution for people.
there are no costs around what the USO might cost individuals or who will fund it as ye in understand or even who you can demand the USO from — don’t assume it will be cheap — note my comment on phone line anything over 3,400 to install and the subscriber pays the excess
Costs of phone lines have nothing to do with the 10Mb USO. BT could provide a wireless 10Mb connection or satellite both of which are solutions they have previously touted.
Solutions such as satellite should not have variable costs to end user… It costs the same to bolt a satellite to a wall no matter if the premise is inner city of 200 miles away from one. Though im sure you and BT can come up with some BS why it does not.
Just leaving Sofia after a great Christmas here. Gotta laugh. My home in Hampshire gets 0.25mbps. in Sofia (so called poorest most corrupt EU member) has a speed of 1gbps….
330mbps …. well played BT, well played….
Then why not stay in Sofia?
People that work and have time off go on these things called holidays, your mental condition should look them up.
so sofia city centre of back end of Beyond — I assume you in back end of beyond in Hampshire — so not sure the relevance of the argument
…Even less sure of the sense that was supposed to make.
By the time it arrives in our small (albeit largest in England at least) village of just 6,000 (but increasing) population. Everywhere else will
have TBPS broadband. And I can see it turning out like the current Infinity infrastructure, some towns seem to have a cabinet every 30-50 houses on a main road, such as Reading, and in towns like Swindon you could have one cabinet for about 200 houses, and if your the at the end of the road cabinet is at, hopefully happy days (not sure how much cabinet congestion could slow speeds?), but if your at the other end? Forget it!
These are valid questions. I know of cases where densely populated towns of 10 000 couldn’t be commercially served by FTTC. Quite often commercial deployments were postponed in the knowledge that taxpayer’s money would come in for BT, see e.g. the BDUK farce.
I can quite believe that cases on a cabinet by cabinet basis in some towns may not have been viable for the initial deployment, and don’t forget the first couple of phases were mainly led by where ISPs voted.
I’m starting to think WarwickNet is more advanced in their trials than openreach and will have the same upper hand in deployment too.(Sorry to state the obvious)
Has openreach even got G.fast too work the full 212mhz of spectrum with the ECI kit because I have a feeling those cabs as going too be troublesome with G.fast just as they are with FTTC. Living 350-500metres away I have that opportunity too find out I suppose
warwickenet area n SLU (sub loop unbundler) you can only buy a service from Warwicknet — Opereach has full open access with circa 550+ service providers able to use its network of which in excess of around 150 I understand use it to consume FTTC _ spot the difference
@Marty
The g.fast rollout isn’t affected by the make of FTTC cab fitted – the pods are added to the PCP instead
G.Fast has gone live in Bath, nothing on DSL Checker yet.
http://news.openreach.co.uk/pressreleases/new-ultrafast-broadband-network-launched-in-bath-2350124
Once again West Sussex gets nothing. I’m still struggling with my current connection. It will be good to see Openreach spend some of this money in rural areas and at least try improve out current connection of 4 down and .85 up.
Wishful thinking.
Other providers are available.
@ThgeFacts: Dream on! Come back to the real world.
@GN – Gigaclear?
I’m in Bath, nothing showing for me on DSL Checker yet.
What about Southampton?.. I live 5 miles from City Centre on main thoroufare and Broadband is rubbish 5mb … Old copper wire . Cheap shoddy BT work. Techicians always working on BT boxes installed along Avenue fixing What?
Lots of g.fast pods (I’ve counted 20+) appearing on existing cabinets in Taunton, Somerset in the past few weeks. Unsurprisingly, they seem to be focusing on the most densely populated areas of the town first, I live in a neighbouring village so do not expect to see a pod on our Fttc cab for some time. I’m more interested in the upcoming revisions to fttpod pricing.
Well.. lucky for some!,,, I’m still only getting 4 mb .. hadn’t they better fix these ones first before starting on something like this?.. needless to say.. how is any of this fair?
“how is any of this fair?”
Well life generally isn’t fair however you do the best you can instead of always moaning.
to all those in rural area’s still complaining here’s my 2p
how are openreach going to pay for it (and lets be honest it WILL be openreach who do this on a large scale because no one else wants to ) without the income from the people in cities buying it first?
Are you willing to pay 4 or 5 times as much to make it viable for them?
Maybe move the hospitals into the countryside so the 500 odd people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere can get instant help and the 1,000,000 odd in cities have to wait or travel many miles to get help.
Lets solve this right now. EVERYONE gets satellite broadband, that way everyone gets the same and it can be rolled out a hell of a lot faster then FTTP/C/G.Fast
Well done BT while the rest of use in the highlands still can’t get speeds over 700-1.3g but if you keep the majority happy that’s what counts. We have to pay up to £55 for line of sight just to get 10g. Let’s all thanks BT for their hard work this year
You get 10 gig for £55?
That’s amazingly impressively cheap. A year of that won’t even pay for the transceivers let alone the bandwidth.
My bad I mean meg not gig typing in rage
Can’t even get 1mbps download speed and openreach won’t even connect me to new fast fibre cabinet 300m from my house but to exchange 2.5miles away,the worst company in the world to speak with someone who could do anything about it,poles are outside house just needs wire swapping but they can’t do that even though there engineers outeide working said it could be done
there will be Specific reasons why you cannot be connected to the cab (which might look easy enough to a layman) if it worsens the ADSL and forces you to FTTC (that a Big no no as it disadvantes copper selling service providers, if it connects to the wrong headend that the current headed you cab is connect to (that’s a big no no) but you could fund FTTP for yuourself as that would be possible as it doesn’t affect your copper route if you were so inclined via the Openreach community fibre programme
I have the same issue
Stuck on vermin media as vdsl is ~25mb ~ 1.5km even though the 2 closest cabs are ~100meters away and every one else on our street other than the last 5 houses is on the closest cab. Openreach contractors where out the other week, blocked my drive over night to push conduit under the road to the duct a meter away from the pole these last 5 houses connect to. This is the same duct that connects the closest cabs I guess to the exchange.
If I could find someone to do FTTPod I know it would be relatively cheap as the nodes are less than 200 meters away, but in a year we may have fttp so may be cheaper just to pay VM.
It would be interesting if g.fast included re polling if needed as I’d definitely jump on that.
We really don’t need more than ~30mbs, faster upload would be more appreciated.
I would like to just get fibre! Openreach web site say next 4 months, said this for the last 8 months !!
Took 6 years for OR to add the Huawei cabinet to the other pcp, at other end of village here.
to add the fibre cab — means someone had to fund it I assume one government BDUK progammes (as the cab was not commercially viable) where about In the country are you
Bathampton,Bath, both cabs were done by OR, no BDUK help.
Cab 30 only got it’s twin a few months ago,it now needs to reshelled for a G Fast pod to be added.
Thank goodness I’m on Cab 39 it had it’s G Fast pod months ago.
For the love of God do some trails/pilots in Northern Leicestershire. We EXIST! I’m sure there’s probably a reason why they do it in these locations but I’m tired of being akin to the Highlands in terms of when we receive new telephony technologies.
Gfast sounds good but what can people who live over 1km from their cab expect in the future for improvement.I can’t imagine for a minute that BT will string fibre all the way to my DP £££££££!
I had a visit from an Openreach engineer for a line fault a while back.
I asked about the G.fast pod that had been installed on the local cabinet and was told it wasn’t G.fast, they are using the same pods with different insides to extend over subscribed cabinets. I don’t know if this is true or not ?
There are side extensions to PCP to allow for more copper pairs, but these extensions lack the vents of the Gfast pods
Not true. The pods used to extend the cabinet look different
I’ve been puzzling over these pods too. They are not GFast and they are not pcp extensions. I collared an OR technician and he said it was “ to extend broadband capacity “ and then went ultra quiet when I asked what the technology was. That pod type is generally only on PCP without GFast pods with very few exceptions. This type of pod seems to be on the edge of industrial estates. I’ve only seen two PCP’s with the mystery pod and GFast. I’m betting these are fibre related.
I asked about these side pods on the forum, as one has appeared on side of my pcp cabinet around 4 months ago. It’s for extending capacity I believe, and definitely not g.fast (we’re in a village location).
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/showthread.php/34563-Additional-PCP-box
The green addition in https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/showthread.php/34563-Additional-PCP-box is to allow for more copper pairs on a cabinet
Have seen a number of people confuse these with the Gfast pods, the lack of vent slots is the giveaway.
Yup but I live in Wandsworth were GFast is pretty much at saturation there are less PCP’s without pods that with pods where we are. None of the resi PCP’s have the mystery pods. Only PCP’s that are in commercial or semi commercial areas or areas where EO dominates. On phone poles where FTTP has been deployed there are similar sized boxes. My suspicion is that this is because OR want to use some form of semi active splitting at the head of the duct so that they can wholesale a darkish fiber product to the home/business that is agnostic of technology.
What is interesting is that I haven’t seen a single one for these pods open in all the time I am driving around. If they were expansion pods that should open just as much as the main PCP. They appear in the dead of night.
The only connection that I have seen into them are a twisted pair of blue/yellow but the gauge of the wire was much thicker than phone and they were multi strand so clearly they are for drawing power. Hence the semi active thesis.
Maybe I will be proved wrong. But OR are on the ropes and being fibered out of all the big developments round here by Community Fibre and Hyperoptic and they need to start doing cheaper real fiber very quickly and they must realize that. After all once you are connected to something that works why are you going to change other than price if the SLA is agreeable.
If they really were doing something that exotic they’d have needed to engage their customers as part of the process. I’m not aware of any such briefings being provided.
FTTP and kit on poles if it this http://blog.thinkbroadband.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/pole-mounted-fibre-splitter.jpg then that is the fibre splitter, i.e. splitting the optical signal and is a key part of GPON.
As for EO areas with G.fast pods, does nothing for the EO lines and will only help those connected to a PCP.
Knowing exactly where the poster is talking about in Wandsworth could lead to some firmer responses
I’m only 1 mile from a big town. This is not the middle of no-where. I’m only 400m from a FTTC enabled cabinet. Which is co-located with my cabinet.
I put up with them digging up the road to put the fiber from the exchange 2.5 miles away to the cabinet.
I pay BT full price.
I get 0.8MB/s.
Bit sick of people complaining they only get 20MB/s.
Why can’t infrastructure start with most disadvantaged?
Prioritising most disadvantaged is normal practice in other government funded social projects (none of which I’m a beneficiary of).
Why does this seem to have started with those already comfortably connected?
you post makes no sense are you actually connected to cabinet that 200m from you (and youy with a service provider that does not offer fibre and you could have had it for 5 years — if you had moved provider so you won’t be the first or the last I found) or are you connected to another cab further away or directly fed from the exchange — if you are directly fed suggest or from another cabinet futher away suggest you register for community fibre partnership and get you community to fund either new FTTC cab or FTTP for your EO cluster (if you are directly fed from exchange)
@Fastman I think you meant “Your” instead of you at the beginning of your comment. Also the person stated 400m not 200m.
@Nick
If you are connected to a cabinet only 400m away, assuming that you mean 400m of cable run and not 400m as the crow flies, you should be getting much higher speeds.
Have you checked that you are connected to the cabinet in question? If so, have you asked your ISP to upgrade your broadband to fibre? What was the speed estimate that you were offered and how does it compare to the speed recorded?
My assumptions are that either the cable length is significantly longer than 400m or that you haven’t upgraded your service (it isn’t automatic). If these assumptions are both false then you have a fault, either with the connection to your property or to your home wiring (or both).
@New_Londoner: “have you asked your ISP to upgrade your broadband to fibre? ”
I don’t think he has this option. He may be able to connect to the cabinet which is 400m away and get a VDSL service, and perhaps a future G.fast, but that’s it pretty much.
It is possible that he has an exchange-only line, not connected to the cabinet at all, in which case it would be even more difficult to upgrade.
justanother that semantics whether its 200 / 400m the post still stands
Well complaining that someone’s comment doesn’t make sense while not making sense themselves is not very helpful and is also rude and insulting. Maybe you had a little too much to drink before the new year celebrations, either way Happy New Year.
@Mark Jackson do we have any idea how the product is performing for customers on the trial with providers such as BT and TalkTalk?
thanks for your replies!
Sorry if my info was confusing, but I think it is accurate.
Without going into personal info, I live 1 mile north of a largish ‘county town’. But I am not connected to any exchange there.
For perhaps historical reasons, I’m connected to an exchange in a ‘village’ 2.5 miles north of me. The fibre follows the main road from the exchange southward to a crossroads. It is called ‘cab 2’. I know i’m on it – btwholesale checker confirms it. Neighbours who live near the cabinet are allowed to order FTTC. For me, copper then runs west on poles, following a country lane. Everyone in my ‘hamlet’ gets the same poor service. In fact , I get the best, as I’m first house served by the run.
I’d be pleasantly surprised if I can request to move exchanges to the county town. I’d be pleasantly surprised if can ask providers to ‘reconsider’ their ‘technical refusal’ to provide VDSL etc. Please tell me how to make such infrastructure requests if mere domestic customers can do so. As a consumer I’m just told to pay up and wait my turn.
Changing ISP makes not the slightest bit of difference. They all use the same last mile of copper, and all give me the same estimate: full price and <1MB.
@Nick You can request an exchange move but only if willing to pay all the costs involved in doing this, i.e. read a figure with a number of zeros involved.
On the technical refusal, if the issue is the length of the copper to the cabinet and its such that VDSL2 is done at the no point level e.g. 1 to 2 Mbps
Of course it is possible the BT Wholesale checker is wrong, but as we don’t know any specifics its impossible to say. I can look at what the thinkbroadband system says plus speed tests from others and compare to the public checkers but would need to know your specifics and if there looks to be an error chase up with Openreach.
I had the pleasure of an Openreach engineer this morning over a line issue, he informed me that the village up from me (approx 5 miles away) is getting G-Fast, roadside poles have loops of fibre wrapped up top, no boxes yet though. Given that I’m 1.62km from the roadside cabinet, it gives me hope for the near future. That’s said, as I’m at the end of the line, they will no doubt forget me.
I stand corrected from my original post, I believe this is more like FTTrN