Openreach UK Extend Pilot of 1.2Gbps and 1.8Gbps FTTP to End of 2023
More bad news for any broadband ISPs that were planning to launch faster packages based off Openreach’s forthcoming Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) tiers, which push top download speeds to 1.2Gbps and 1.8Gbps (both offer 120Mbps upstream). The current service pilot has just been extended for yet another 3 months.
The original pilot started in December 2022 (here) and was due to run until 31st March 2023, but Openreach later extended it to run until 31st July 2023 (here) and at the same time expanded the availability of their new tiers from the Swansea (Wales) exchange to also include exchanges in Ipswich (Suffolk). After that, they extended it again to run until 30th September 2023 (here), albeit while adding various exchanges in Northern Ireland.
At the time of the last extension, Openreach said they “reserve the right to expand the number of Pilot locations further to scale-up operations and supply chain in preparation for launch.” Unfortunately, the network access provider has now revealed (here), in a particularly vague update, that they’ve extended the pilot for yet another three months until 31st December 2023. No public reason is given for this delay (we’ll try to find out for Monday).
At present the only broadband ISP that has openly announced their intention to launch packages based off the new tier is EE (BT), which back in June 2023 revealed (here) that they were planning to introduce a 1.6Gbps (average speed) service later this “summer“. But that was before the last two pilot extensions were announced, and as such, we don’t now expect their new package to go live until early 2024.
Openreach’s service, once out of pilot, will be accompanied by two new optical modems (ONT / ONU) – the Nokia G-010G-T and ADTRAN SDX 611Q (pictured), both with 2.5Gbps LAN / Ethernet ports. So even if you already have an ONT from Openreach, then those who order one of these faster tiers will require another engineer visit to put the new kit into place. ISPs will also need to supply more capable routers.
Part of the challenge is that their network is still using a Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON), which places limitations on how fast they can go before capacity becomes an issue. The GPON standard supports a capacity on each trunk line of up to 2.5Gbps downstream and 1.24Gbps upstream, which needs to be shared between several premises. This makes what they’re trying to do a bit harder, especially since they seem to be returning strong take-up (currently 32%).
At present the fastest FTTP download tier available to consumers on their network is 1Gbps (115Mbps upload for homes and 220Mbps for business lines) and those GPON limitations are the main reason why Openreach may not wish to push uploads beyond what already exists. The operator did once have a plan to adopt 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology, but they’ve been silent on that for a long time.
Most of Openreach’s rivals have already, or are in the process of, adopting XGS-PON and some are even putting the next generation 25G-PON into play (here). Openreach was actually the first to test the latter back in 2021, but they’ve been silent on their future plans for that too (here).
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 X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Maybe the NOT manufacturers aren’t producing GPON NOT with 2.5GB ports at scale. I can imagine many producing gigabit GPON and 10G XGSPON
NOT is full I meant ONT
Openreach have a good supply of 2.5GbE ONTs from Adtran and Nokia. Already being used outside of trials ares.
I personally don’t think 120 up is enough to fully support 1.8 down, a 0.9 Steam download can use approx 70-80Mbps up from my monitoring/experience. How 120 up going to support a 1.8Gbps Steam download?
It’ll support it just fine. VM customers could max out their 1.15 Gbps on Steam just fine on the 52 Mbps upload (that’s doubled now).
As the TCP window increases, the % of overheads in TCP ACKs decreases. The fact you saw a high upload rate suggests the window was still quite small and there were multiple download streams. If you give it time and have a stable connection, it’ll reduce.
However, please do give us more upload!
True, if Steam modulates the number of simulataneous streams it will be fine and no doubt it does. Comment was purely from my personal observations in this environment. Definitely more upload would be good though!
‘Cumulative Acknowledgment: the receiver acknowledges that it correctly received a packet, message, or segment in a stream which implicitly informs the sender that the previous packets were received correctly. TCP uses cumulative acknowledgment with its TCP sliding window.’
A single 40 byte acknowledgement can acknowledge receipt of megabytes of data.
You can only culumatively ACK per stream, and Steam happily uses many. On decent connections it uses at least 20 on a 1 Gig wide throughput. For Steam to operate the way it wants to in an unconstrained environment, you evidently need more than 120 up for 1.8 down.
Bob,
16 streams.
https://freeimage.host/i/J9obQob
Try this again and hope I don’t hit the spam rules.
Bob, 16 streams, max download 8.3 Gbps, max upload didn’t hit 20 Mbps.
https://freeimage.host/i/J9obQob
Sorry, 8.6 Gbps down, slight late measurement.
18.1 Mbps maximum up.
32,000-ish 40 byte packets acknowledging 709,000 1500 byte packets just do the maths. A 40 byte acknowledgment every 22.2 1500 byte gross, 1460 byte payload means each 40 bytes is acknowledging over 32,000 bytes of useful data: ratio 800:1.
Good morning XGS
I tested a download this morning. It starts with quite a lot of streams and then gradually stabilises around about 8, so you are correct that it’s 16 or less. Here is a screenshot of a 1 gig Steam download:
https://i.imgur.com/AGWvoml.jpg
Seems to be pushing about 70 Mbps upstream to achieve that performance, in my scenario.
I would like higher upload speeds, not because I max it out all the time, but because I have opted to use online storage in lieu of buying a NAS. Since I tinker with my computer a lot, I need to do clean installs often and the backups can be annoyingly slow even on my 115M upload plan. There’s not many options for 220mbps upload, and like many people, I would take a 500/500 connection for the same price as I am currently paying for a 900/115.
If I were running a business, I would of course get a leased line.
I considered getting a business line since I work from home, but I don’t get reimbursed this expense, and it made more financial sense for me to get a high allowance mobile plan that I can use as a backup when my main internet goes down vs paying for a business line of 900/115M.
Yes, Bob.
Multiple things at play here. One is that you’re using Teredo IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnelling and have a tiny MSS alongside a bad TCP stack that may have been artificially tuned to acknowledge every packet in an attempt to improve World of Warcraft or similar performance.
An IPv6 TCP acknowledgement is 60 bytes. Even if you were acknowledging every packet individually, and you really shouldn’t be, that’s still a ratio on a 1500 MTU link of 24:1. The smallest allowable MTU IPv6 allows to be advertised is 1280 which still leaves a ratio of over 21:1.
With that in mind you evidently also have something else using upload bandwidth. You also potentially have a bad Internet connection so are having to ask for lots of retransmits. Giving you’re tunnelling through Teredo that would explain the issue: it’s not meant for high bandwidth transfers.
Disable Teredo or disable IPv6 if Steam allows it and you’ll settle into a more sane ratio.
My mistake – you actually have native IPv6. I misread the address as 2100::
Okay: you definitely have something else using up bandwidth for the reasons described earlier. To get to the ratio you have you’d need to be acknowledging every packet, which is stupid, and have a tiny TCP MSS.
With nothing else running on the PC soaking up upload you’d literally have to sabotage your own machine to get that ratio of upload to download.
I’m not a gamer, so I have no idea if upload speed is relevant to gaining an enhanced experience in online gaming, I would have thought low latency would be a far more important requirement. If you look at the recent headlines, in relation to Microsoft and Activision, the CMA are of the opinion that cloud gaming will dominate in the future, so things are likely change in the gaming space anyway.The latest big thing is AI and multi dimensional vector databases, which will no doubt influence everything including gaming. Whether things like cloud and AI increase or reduce future bandwidth requirements, remains to be seen.
No doubt i’ll get vilified for suggesting that 99% of households probably need no more than 100mb download, and much less upload, since most are currently coping with FTTC speeds of around 35mb/s download, 5mb/s upload. I can see why a business running multiple servers/services, and hosting media/data for a significant customer base might need high bandwidth upload capacity, but a few of those on a shared XGS-PON would likely hog bandwidth and slow down the whole pipe for everyone. Also the reason Altnets are moving to XGS-PON is to increase the number of premises served via a single fibre, with the marketing hype an added bonus; They’re also relying on the fact that people may pay extra for capacity they’ll never utilise. Personally i’ll buy the cheapest service that serves the household requirements, why pay extra when I wont see any performance difference?
Have you ever run a professional home office, maybe making intensive use also of cloud uploads, video and/or graphics design? Or running your own servers? These are just a few of countless scenarios where even a simple symmetric 100Mbps would be far more useful then many of Openreach’s asymmetric fibre packages.
Speaking as someone who spent 5 days uploading a terabyte of data to BT cloud over a 20Mb FTTC connection personally I’d find it more useful if they made their existing 900Mb service synchronous before bringing in higher download speeds.
Dave if you regularly upload large files, maybe you’re in the 1% who need to buy a faster connection.
Gnewton I have worked from home, now retired, and managed perfectly well on FTTC; My daughters boyfriend is an animator for a large games developer, and he uses an FTTC connection without issue. The vast majority of home office workers don’t need more bandwidth than standard home users, that’s a fact; There’s an argument that high bandwidth business users, supplying services and server access, should pay for business connectivity with better SLA’s, since they can’t complain when their business suffers as a result of extended outages, losing significant revenue during downtime. Would you run a centralised call center VOIP server, or a server where customers download large media/content files using XGS-PON connectivity? If my business/income was dependant on connectivity, I’d purchase a dedicated connection with good SLA’s and offset it against my tax.
OMG, you must be ex-BT.
“FTTC good enough for me so y’all going get this cr**”. Move along please, just because you don’t know how to max out your connection others need more speed, particularly for uploading to cloud.
It’s a typical out of date BT response when they were peddling FTTC (they even made a mess of that due to ECI cabinet issues and rubbish VDSL vectoring profiles!!!). They used to say that FTTC was good enough for everyone to try and not roll out FTTP.
man has a point however. If people want that sort of usage and that sort of availability they really should be paying for a system that does not impact everyone else. No one with any sense can deny what he said there.
As a Tech Support for an ISP I have at least 1 conversation a day with a customer with a 900mps connection about the “slow” speeds. Nearly always over WiFi. And they use it for streaming Netflix and reading emails. And there’s the “I work from home and need a stable fast connection guaranteed 100% of the time” brigade. So get a business account with a backup service, and/or move back out of your idyllic rural cottage into an area with a better service than ADSL. Same with gamers, get a critical care ethernet business account (and don’t use the free router or its WiFi).
@CarlosTheGuru, like the username 🙂 Anyway, i see people on the facebook page of the provider I am with complaining about slow speed, that they are not getting what they are paying for and the normal stuff. Then it comes out that they are using Wi-fi. Wi-fi has its uses, but so many things can affect it. I have been getting over 500Mb/s with my provider on my computers that are wired since I have been with them, which is two months more or less. Apart from the start of the week when Zzoomm had some problems for a couple of days, but we will ignore that.
If I do a speed test on my phone I get about 100Mb/s if I am lucky, depending on where I am in the house, My Mac if I use the Wi-fi is around 450Mb/s, it is in the room above the room the router is in.
My mac is connected via ethernet, my PC is as well, everything I can connect to Ethernet I do, including my LED printer.
As for business, a home office should be fine with even low speed broadband, around the 36Mb/S range, unless they are downloading huge files, the main problem will be uploading, certainly with the openreach network, even on Fibre upload speed is around half of the download speeds.
i see these new speeds, only offer a 120Mbps upload.
@CarlosTheGuru
I agree. Did that for 21 years level 2 and had a lot of conversations like that. My mum for example is 74 and she has 550/75 as it’s cheaper for some reason than 145 with her ISP (long time promo I assume she’s been with them for like 30 year or something)
She is the same, Netflix e-mails and her online bingo. “it’s more than fast enough for me” she says.
I always used to hate the “I pay for this” and “I expect that” but always on up to services. I’ve only come across 3 people in the last 5 years who actually know the tech and more importantly the limitations. I actually inspired a business customer to order a leased line once. They were paying around £250 a month for a bonded FTTC service + Backup and at the time we were doing a LL for something like £230+VAT for I think 250/250 and we just had an honest chat and I went through the different between a PON and a AON, and they were all for the AON. They even got a free FTTC backup included and I got an e-mail to my then manager praising me. I then went on to be the Manager and have been in that job for 10 years and I am always telling my floor to be honest with customers when it comes to what tech can and can not do. This includes the “well if you work from home you need to invest in your connection more” but of course fluffed up. That said we are around 78% Business customers so that’s not often a conversation that has to be had.
So yea I totally agree with you and some of us out here are trying to clear the waters on that front. I have 129 agents via 6 team leaders under me so always pushing fo rthat.
@CarlosTheGuru
Although I have to say the average gamer (unless professional of course) won’t be interested in the cost of DIA. I know of 1 person who got a 50mbps DIA line with Virgin Media because they were part of the EA Sports crowd of gamers and that was the cheapest option available to them but it still does the job nicely. I think they charge something like £150-£200 a month for that.
@Ad47uk
Newer macs are doing better. I have a M2 Mac Mini than can pull 1Gbps down over WIFI as long as it’s in the same room but a lot depends on the Router. I use a TP-Link AX3000 and a 3 kit set of DECO pods and I get 800-900 all around.
All broadband products are built around people buying way more capacity than they actually use.
People usually pay more for burst speed, not because they need to saturate 1/2/3/8 Gbps 24×7.
They pay for a product that both covers their needs and their desire for very fast downloads of large content when they want it.
This has been done to death. If you don’t game, fine. If you do enjoy downloading 150 GB at 9.5 MB/s.
If we’re really talking about needs you don’t need 4k streaming: your TV can probably upscale so go with 1080p and use 38 Mbps FTTC.
@BTMan, This is a modern Mac, a Mac mini M2 pro. I still prefer Ethernet anyway, more constant when I am using the nas.
@XGS, a lot of people go for higher speeds because they can and some use it as a boast, look at me, I have 1Gb/s internet. Not all, but some. I bet there are thousands of people that have broadband speeds that they don’t use to the full, myself included. One person I kind of know, I talk to them when I see them around is having zzoomm installed and going for the 2Gb/s, not because it is needed, but because they can.
More money than sense I say
They pay their money and make their choice. If they can afford it more power to them: they had different priorities to you in mind and that’s okay.
Ex Telecom Engineer: meet SD-WAN.
‘Also the reason Altnets are moving to XGS-PON is to increase the number of premises served via a single fibre’
Most of them were XGS from the start. Only CityFibre have announced a large scale upgrade involving increasing the split ratio.
When they eventually get around to it Openreach are highly likely to follow suit.
It’s not really a bad thing to move 2 sets of 32 prems on 2.5/1.25 each to sharing 8.5/8.5, is it?
More capacity, better statistical contention. Capacity becomes an issue decombine them. I don’t get the problem.
Maybe Openreach put a bit of effort into taking their broadband beyond the mighty 27-44Mb down/ 5-8Mb up provided in my town of 50k+ people before worrying about this?
This costs basically nothing. Upgrading your town would cost £15 million+ and take upwards of a year.
@XGS – Not the original poster but I get his frustration (Town of 10K+ in a similar scenario). We are continuing down the path postcode lotteries. It is irritating when you see Openreach roll out to a nearby village with Giganet/Trooli and you’re in a nearby town with nothing you will get people annoyed.
Any idea what exchanges in NI?
LOL you couldn’t make this up!
I have said it before, BT and their endless trials. By the time they get to accept into service, it will be old hat, everyone else moved on.
It’s a new ONT and speed with most ALTNETS if over 1gig, but BT with their dead in the water GPON…..
Hello, Netomnia to your 8gbps SYMMETRIC service NOW and others who offer over 1gig….
Openreach need to run these trials ….. They have millions of customers running over there Infrastructure including Government & MOD, Compared to these small Altnet companies.
0/10 trolling
netomnia are available to how many customers, exactly? even if you added all the altnets together (which would be misleading since there’s so much overlap) they still can’t beat openreach’s footprint today, let alone where they want it to be.
turns out that the biggest and oldest FTTP network also takes time to integrate new features. I think we’d rather have that than a major outage.
Ivor
Or be here today and gone tomorrow!
Here come the ex-BT employees or vested interest people.
Right lets get this straight, if BT started today like the ALTNETS they simply wouldn’t be in business. Left behind in the dust.
The only reason BT has so many customers is because it was once a monopoly and people have gone from ADSL > VDSL to FTTP. It’s historic customer base. It’s not because they are good at anything, except deploying out of data technologies or offering limited services.
They would have sweated FTTC for another 100 years if they could have done. At the time only Virgin Media was their rival and a thorn. Now VM are realising the ALTNETS are ahead and coax won’t cut it going forward.
BT and Openreach hasn’t been a monopoly since the 90s, if their offerings were not in tune with customer demands then they’d have long gone by now.
It turns out that people just want reliable internet that works, and Openreach does that extremely well, whether it’s copper or fibre. On the fibre side, they could upgrade to XGS any time they want without too much drama. Netomnia’s 8Gbps generates a lot of headlines, and no doubt some people will pay for it just for the speedtest results, but that’s about it.
I assume the costs of XGS equipment are still a little too high (remember that unlike the altnets, they actually have an appreciable number of customers and a successful financial strategy) and they don’t yet feel the extra capacity is necessary.
Condemning BT/OR and lauding the altnets ignores the reality that BT aren’t “sweating copper assest”, they’re saddled with copper assets (and USO).
Altnets build relatively small networks, some even using OR ducts and poles. They don’t have to provide connections across the length and breadth of the land, they don’t have to balance the books between profitable urban customers and unprofitable country areas. They don’t have to maintain a huge mix of technologies built across many decades. They don’t have to pander to government, they don’t have a vast pension liability that dates back to the days of state ownership. Meanwhile, the altnets are cherry picking mostly urban areas, whilst leaving BT with a customer portfolio that’s slowly becoming the less attractive, more expensive to serve customers. Think that trend through, and where it leads, because no government is going to follow it to its logical end, meaning that sooner or later, the altnets will find themselves paying a universal service levy.
It’s very fashionable amongst the commentators here to condemn BT/OR. I’m sure there’s a lot they should do better. But the common presumptions of narrow selfish and commercial rationale for BT’s behaviour are themselves shortsighted and inaccurate. And for the avoidance of doubt I’ve never worked for BT, have no investments in BT, and no other conflicts of interest.
@anonymous, OR/BT being a monpoly for so many years is the reason they have so many customers, you are 100% correct, even if the BT fanboys will disagree with you. It is also why they will be ahead with customers on FTTP, because of the amount of people on their FTTC network. Hopefully more people will see sense like I did and change to altnets.
We have been installing these 2.5g Nokia and ADTRAN ONTs for a while now. We get asked to put them on 1gb orders. Even in areas where the tests ain’t happening.
No idea when we are going to switch to XGS-PON but it was mentioned in one of our monthly emails about future technology. Years off I would imagine though make too much money off ethernet lines to cut into that money.
And this is WHY BT are laughable.
ALETNETS using XGS-PON right now, this minute and those like Cityfibre who started earlier are upgrading GPOn to XGS-PON this year.
Netomnia *and others* offering XGS-PON packages of > 2gbps and as high as 10gbps (but marketed as 8gbps due to overheads).
Meanwhile BT carrying on with GPON deployment. We were told their new network was super and easy to upgrade. “A future technology” LOL – noooooooooo, it’s available right now!!!
And add Virgin Media who will have around 20 million with upgrade of HFC kit and their new Nexfibre network all going XGS-PON and symmetric. Work happening and been happening.
So BT fan boys defending BT on here, do the maths yourself it’s not just a few ALTNETS.
Don’t forget Ogi are using 25G PON
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/12/ogi-become-first-uk-isp-to-deploy-nokias-25gbps-full-fibre-tech.html
Anonymous, BT have been in the game for a long time and they have a pretty good idea of what the average customer requires. The Altnets are likely using XGS-PON to increase the number of premises served per OLT, and banking on the customers buying faster speeds under utilising the purchased capacity. As far as BT offering XGS-PON, or other DWDM services, it’s as simple as connecting a compatible OLT to a splitter at the exchange, running the new service in tandem over the fibre and supplying interested customers with a new ONT. Time will tell if marketing XGS-PON as superior to GPON will pay off, but I suspect people will go for the cheapest service fulfilling their needs.
Once the fibre rollouts are complete, OFCOM will have no excuse to pin BT/Openreach down, so the market will become truly competitive at that point; And judging by the amount of noise Equinox 1 and 2 generated, Altnets will struggle to maintain low pricing should BT/Openreach decide to compete aggressively.
Openreach are always well behind the curve when it comes to technology. Spending years sweating VDSL technologies, wasting time on g.fast instead of future proofing. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming onto fibre, only when they had no other choice. A telecomms company that is never forward looking, always looking to do the bare minimum. If they had their way, we’d probably still be on dialup. It’s kind of hilarious how you see every so often they take part in technology trials, when you know they’ll be one of the last companies to start deploying it.
Too many defenders keep saying how easy it is to upgrade the Openreach network to XGS-PON, which means nothing if they won’t do it. The technology exists right now and other companies are building out using it. Openreach will probably do it in 5 years time. Virgin Media at least have the excuse that they need to massively overbuild their existing HFC network.
And all for fear of losing leased lines, when a single fault will teach those businesses why they pay for the SLAs.
@anonymous
I agree with some things you say. Paying several hundred pounds a month for 1Gbps leased line on BT vs someone paying £99 for up to 8Gbps on netomnia is laughable, but not for the BT customer. That said the leased line won’t go down like a tart’s draws on overtime when more than 1 person starts to use it. And that’s why it’s worth the price to all those I speak to
Sorry if I’m being dense here but why would 8 Gbps go down because multiple people are using it while 1 Gbps DIA is immune?
I mean sure the 8 will see some contention at peak times on a busy PON but it’ll still deliver way more than 1 Gbps at all times.
The SLA is about the only reason why a business would go with DIA over broadband and there are ways around this to nail down the performance while using only broadband 🙂
“The SLA is about the only reason why a business would go with DIA over broadband and there are ways around this to nail down the performance while using only broadband”
The only way I can think of to get around SLA issues is to have multiple connections, using diverse routing. To get true diversity with Fibre, you’d have to ensure the route to your premise wasn’t the same, so you’re talking different ducts ruling out PIA providers. Other alternatives are using LEO or 4/5G as backup, but you wont get close to Fibre speeds on those. Dependant on location and business sensitivity, many businesses will choose dedicated leased access with good SLA’s in preference to less secure PON. BTnet is currently £299 for a guaranteed 1Gb/s symmetrical uncontended service, which might not be as fast as some Altnet offerings, but it comes with an SLA repair time of 5 hours and resilience options.
You are not being Dense and maybe I am not understanding how this XGS-PON thingy works. I am still learning about all this as it’s not something my ISP currently uses. I assumed that if 5 people all tried to download at the same time the speeds would drop? If I am wrong fair enough.
And I agree. The 4-5 hour fix is the main reason.
Oh that!
Sure: it’s just vanishingly unlikely due to the small amount of people sharing the bandwidth.
Have a look at the small print in the 8G product’s listing. It’s almost certain to hit that.
Your average household consumes 6 Mbps at peak times. The XGSPON networks have certainly less than 50 customers sharing the capacity so loads free to sell a really high tier.
Same reason Openreach sell 900 services that produce very few complaints of congestion, CityFibre are to be selling 2G down over GPON and Openreach likely 1.8.
8G over XGSPON isn’t uncommon in the world. Canada, the US, Singapore, South Korea, UAE, Japan and others have such products.
Fair enough and thanks. I understand it a bit better now.
I do understand but OR don’t do that speed outside of DIA as far as I know. So if you had 4 people who wanted to download you are saying the speed would be maintained? I’ve seen you and other quote 10Gbps as the connection to the PON’s – is that backed by maybe 100Gbps elsewhere?
The maths does not make sense if 4 people can download at full speed on a 10Gbps backhaul.
Looking at the specs on ADTRAN 622v that Zzoomm provides, it says it is capable of 10Gb/s. Does that mean if Zzoomm offered a 10Gb/s service that the ONT could cope with that?
Zzoomm offers a 2Gb/s service, so I suppose it makes sense just to supply one ONT.
@Ex Telecom Engineer:
“BTnet is currently £299 for a guaranteed 1Gb/s symmetrical uncontended service”
That’s not what its website says! See e.g. https://business.bt.com/products/networking/bt-leased-line/
From 200Mbps = From £299.00 (ex VAT)
From 500Mbps = From £370.00 (ex VAT)
Many times more expensive than a typical Altnet symmetric FTTP broadband which typically is around £55.00, or slightly less. And you could easily use a couple of them, or an extra G5 mobile connection for a failsafe.
@Ad47UK the adtran sdx 620 range only has 2 with voice, the 622v and the outdoor version of it.
@Gnewton kind of, Openreach sell the 1G EAD circuits around £180pm plus a £2k one off connection charge. The backhaul is up to the ISP so many (TalkTalk, Hyperoptic etc.) will provide a full 1G leased line for less than £300pm.
BTnet leased lines can all peak at 1G but only for a limited time with the majority at the specified speed. Idea being that occasionally (e.g midnight backups) you’d use the entire speed. BTnet lines are well known for being good quality but very expensive compared to competitors.
I’d like to see Openreach offer a FTTP frequency service which would allow one frequency over normal FTTP fibre. Openreach can make their money by offering additional SLAs on top of it.
‘BTnet leased lines can all peak at 1G but only for a limited time with the majority at the specified speed.’
They should hit full speed all the time. Alongside the SLA and support that’s kinda the point of them.
This is annoying! My current FTTP contract is due to expire on October. Does BT usually allow in-contract upgrades if I sign up for another deal from October and then need to move onto 1.8Gbps from January?
Provided you agree to a new term, you can do that whenever you like.
Certainly Plusnet upgrades to FTTP can be done anytime from FTTC. In all other cases there is a 3 month rule but this does not apply when we put people across to BT FTTP (which is always mainly for the voice service)
BT are happy to upgrade you mid contract, anyway for them to get more money lol
@James
Considering the amount they are losing by not charging ETF’s it balances it out. Oh and of course the fact it’s cheaper to set up and run.
Get with the symmetrical!
Good old Openreach, slow and inefficient!
I cant say its slow , its not the fastest but its still excessive to what 99% of the nation will actually use it for .
I am looking forward to getting FTTP I don’t know what people are whinging about.
I wonder if some of the delay in public launch is due to BT having a delay with the new Smart Hub3 that will be required to use the higher speeds.
I know technically Openreach and BT are separate companies but when of your biggest customers says they are not ready to use the service and Sky i believe are still not offering their new Hub yet to Sky Q customers
I don’t see why retail ISP preparations would delay launch. You’d want to start getting the new ONTs into homes anyway so that a future upgrade is seamless, and it’ll still provide the lower speed services until then.
While BT is a dominant ISP on OR’s network, they won’t be deciding OR’s roadmap.
Really wish they’d just stick to network adapter speeds rather than inbetweens.
The network technology they’re using can’t deliver 2.5G.
I’m guessing you are referring to the IEEE 802.3 standards That’s just not how it works unfortunately and never had
Absolute joke from bt my full fibre 1 gig runs out at the end of the month , I’m jumping ship to you fibre cheaper and WiFi 6 sorry but I’m not waiting no longer for this new router