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Bonded VDSL

As we're looking at moving home I'm having to spend time trying to ascertain where we can move to - that can get broadband at reasonable speeds.

Have got used to around 30 to 50 down and 45 to 50 up here, with 4G. Something like that would be acceptable but could do with faster.

The probability of moving to a cabled area is almost nil. The location therefore must have at least multiple 4G options for fast speeds (which will need to be checked on site) and ideally VDSL too.

VDSL can't get near that upstream without bonding. Was attracted by an ad for bonding and thought I'd try it for this address. Says 2 lines might manage 41 down and 8 up. 4 lines might manage 16 up. It's basically useless. But then "here" is about 800m from the cab so VDSL isn't any use.

But then that's really near to the cabinet in relative terms. I doubt very much we'll be any nearer to a cabinet than that, it's just a short hop.

In establishing whether it's even worth bothering to consider bonded VDSL I have a few questions:

1. Pair availability - if I ordered that here, I have a feeling that there aren't any spare pairs. I say this since BT regularly pop round to shift lines at the pole presumably trying to find one that works. If you order the 4 line product in such a location, what happens? Is the order simply knocked back immediately?

2. Pair quality - just picking out any 4 random pairs could theoretically result in worse speeds than carefully selecting matched pairs assuming they are available. Is this basically a telephone installation with no attention paid to the data side and it either works well or it doesn't or is this a sort of "special order" product?

3. If it doesn't work well, am I right in thinking that none of the consumer protection to get out of the contract applies since this is B2B and so if it's basically useless then I'm stuck with it and I'll have to pay for that and 4G as well?

Thanks.
 
1. On this point you'd need to ask Openreach directly or enquire via an ISP that supports bonding. A lot of properties can manage 4 pairs but others cannot and so it's a bit like gambling but you can probably expect nearly all homes to support 2 lines or more. As for the order, good question. I recall AAISP once having a problem where the order went through but some lines weren't activated, which is despite checking first. However you can always discuss this with the ISP first and agree (in writing) that if all pairs aren’t available then they should let you out of the contract.

2. From Openreach's perspective they'll just be activating several copper lines for FTTC. A bigger worry might be the impact of crosstalk once those extra pairs go live. Bonding gives diminishing returns so it's never double the speed for double the lines.

3. Business connections do generally get less protection, although Ofcom did recently expand their code to B2B lines but only for certain ISPs:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/codes-of-practice
 
Thanks Mark - will go and take a look at those.

I don't mind paying out a couple of hundred pounds to "give it a go", but the bonded option is £3,000 per year and that's simply too much money to "take a punt on it being useful", and if spending that sort of money I'm looking for "pay us x, you get y - guaranteed" and not "pay us x and you'll get something" which could turn out to be useless and has a long contract; that money spent here would get near to doubling the upstream but would lose most of the downstream versus 4G which costs less than a third of that.

I'm fully expecting to have to go with 4G anyway for speed, that being a more likely bet than fixed-line in a quiet area. But even 4G isn't commonplace hence having to look around at options.
 
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I hadn't simply because I'd assumed it would be pie-in-the-sky pricing.

For example - Virgin Business (just happened to be the first one I picked out) provides only a fairly slow 30Mbps symmetric service and that's "from" £325/month (!) on the cheapest package.

OK, that's not intolerably much slower than we have here, but 4G is only £75/month and a backup solution of a Three SIM card costs just a few quid to use if it's needed. We actually 'have it quite good' here.

if the from price applies to businesses that are right next to the 'aggregation point' then I can only wonder how much it would cost if the business is two miles away or more which is easily possible. I'm not going to know where the "connection point" is anyway to factor that in the decision.

It would depend on the ultimate end location but the probability of it being at a "copper-suitable distance" (e.g. a few hundred metres) is very low indeed so I suspect the installation cost is going to be BT comedy gold pricing.

I shall ask for a quote for one of the properties for a basic 100Meg symmetrical circuit and see what that comes back with.
 
Have you considered bonding VDSL with 4G? You can allocate bandwidth from the 4G to compensate for the slower VDSL upload and preserve your 4G data limit. You then have a more symmetric service with added resilience from either leg being down.
 
If you really would consider a leased line option send me a pm.

I know you like your 4G but the benefits of a true fiber based connection if your business is ready for it will always be beneficial and not something that would be unused.
 
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Have you considered bonding VDSL with 4G? You can allocate bandwidth from the 4G to compensate for the slower VDSL upload and preserve your 4G data limit. You then have a more symmetric service with added resilience from either leg being down.

I did think about that for here, but the 4G is fast enough by itself plus we get 100GB/mo and have no kids eating up bandwidth/data, and only watch maybe at most about 7 hours of streaming TV a week when bingeing on it, so the speed and data suffice. There's no need for fixed line. Although the latency would probably be a little better the speed is just too poor (upload of a single line is shambolic, sub-3G speeds). Because the line is 1280m long and probably none the better for being maybe 70 years old.

EE has gone down about three times in as many years, only ever briefly, and it only takes a minute or so to pull out one SIM and put in another PAYG one and top it up with ten quid. The cost of having that resilience has been negligible and we can get four 4G networks here 3 of which would be deemed as "superfast".

So although we don't have a fixed line option here, we do have three reasonable broadband providers via 4G. But I might have to be a lot more flexible at the new place..

It really isn't looking good so far. I know I can solve all of this by just moving somewhere cabled (accepting the poor upstream speeds in the hope that they will improve but the 300Meg down might help to make up for that) or with a decent FTTP alt-net but that doesn't fit with where we want to live. Not quite the middle of nowhere but not in a built-up area.

I shall "continue the research".
 
If you really would consider a leased line option send me a pm.

I know you like your 4G but the benefits of a true fiber based connection if your business is ready for it will always be beneficial and not something that would be unused.

I'd be interested to know what a 100Meg symmetrical connection would cost here:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-64345193.html

Approximate postcode is PH16 5RP.

A 50 Meg connection would suffice but I'm assuming the price gap between that and 100 Meg won't be that significant?

OK, we missed out on that one, but it's very typical of what we're holding out for - that house isn't stunning, far from it, but the location is, and those sorts of places don't come up often.
 
I can't imagine a leased line, a proper one, costing less than £3,000 per year.. heck I would have thought for a 100Mbps line it might be more like £7,000 to £11,000 but it does depend on so many factors and I'm not really considering the install cost.

ManOfMeans will probably have a better answer.
 
The biggest factor is where the nearest fiber node is and the contract length, on longer contracts the install cost can be got down to 0.

That does look quite "rural" LOL. It would be a shame to dig anything up there to put fiber in.

Even if it is a bit more than the "punt" of a possible bonded VDSL working is taken out of the equation and it would be a guaranteed fiber connection, its a whole different experience knowing its just going to work all the time. Also dont forget they are unlimited bandwidth.

Personally if a company realizes they need that peace of mind that a leased line can guarantee they will wonder how they ever did without one before.
 
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I thought that things might have moved on a bit in 10 years since we last moved home.

It's easier to end up "near a cabinet" than it is "near an exchange", clearly. So I don't rule out plain VDSL though I'd be loathed to take it if it's the only network available and have to rely entirely on one set of infra.

It's not that rare to have entire villages go offline thanks to infra damage that takes weeks to repair and around here in high winds/heavy storms the phone lines come down from the poles occasionally, or the exchange loses power, so leased lines don't enthral me that much in terms of reliability (I realise that would be prioritised, but an SLA credit would be preferable to a custom repair I suspect), I'd rather simply have a secondary connection/failover.

That's where we're lucky here to have 3 decent (4G) networks and the option of (slower but enough to get by with for a while) VDSL too. Something like that would be good. Not asking much eh? A rural area with two infrastructure options.. ;)

Of all the ones I've checked, getting on for about 30 now, there is one that reports a VDSL result when verified by address. Others might be "in a superfast fibre area" but there's no VDSL hit because it's too far away.

Oh, for some reliable checker where you can put in an address and it then comes back with a list of networks and providers including 4G and alt-nets - would make this much easier. For that house in Pitlochry - I can't see at a glance if there's an alt-net or wireless network there. Have had a look through Mark J's provider listings which appear to be the primary resource (thanks for those!)

I really need a BT network map showing where all this stuff is and where they might be able to supply at a vaguely reasonable "menu" cost. "Where can BT do broadband in Scotland?"

But, out there, there will be rural places which do have the same sort of setup as here, maybe even with a VDSL option (e.g. line no more than about 500m long - the cabinet is incredibly nearby), and that could be bonded. The rural idyll does exist, it's just a question of finding it ;)

I know the answer is "just find a town that's cabled, make sure the address is cabled, and then verify it can have either VDSL and/or 4G too as a failover" which would immediately open up stacks of possibilities. But I'll keep on looking for now..

Any ideas on how to get a map of all the BT cabinets and nodes in Scotland..
 
There will be no VDSL at that property it is an EO line if you put postcode on the whereandwhen on BT's website it is listed as EO line.

Exchange name: Tummel Bridge
Exchange status: Coming soon
Cabinet number: -
Technology: Pending - EO Line
 
There will be no VDSL at that property it is an EO line if you put postcode on the whereandwhen on BT's website it is listed as EO line.

Exchange name: Tummel Bridge
Exchange status: Coming soon
Cabinet number: -
Technology: Pending - EO Line

I think the ADSL result for that was "up to 1 Meg". There's no fixed-line broadband there. Unless there's an alt-net. Would have to be a leased line.

Believe I've found a spreadsheet of the BT cabinets, not sure how up to date it is, but that's helpful. Trying to go "properties mapped to BT availability" is too tortuous, it makes more sense to go "BT availability mapped to properties".

There is a Scotland "When and where" website which purports to check availability of superfast speeds, but like the England one it actually does nothing of the sort, it simply says whether you can get VDSL and it doesn't show you where the cabinets are.

I now need to draw a map and put little ~400m circles around all the cabinets to see where our potential options are. Something to do at the weekend.
 
I think a leased line is out of the question, I didn't expect it to be quite so in the middle of no where.

18km of fibre would need to be installed from Pitlochry exchange for a start.
 
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I think a leased line is out of the question, I didn't expect it to be quite so in the middle of no where.

18km of fibre would need to be installed from Pitlochry exchange for a start.

The exchange surely can't be 18km away or there would be no ADSL at all?

But this is what's bugging me. We've spent a stack of cash making sure everyone can get 2Mbps+.

Except we haven't. About 90% of the properties I've looked at cannot get 2Mbps via fixed-line and there doesn't appear to be any database I can look at to see if there are alt-nets.

So after all this time and money we haven't even got the backhaul anywhere near the properties and we don't even have any kind of costed plan to do so?

I'm not going for "middle of nowhere" really. If I were selecting the only house within five square miles then fair enough but I'm not. I accept that rural is harder to serve, but then that's why we had a government project. And I'm not even expecting fast speeds, just 50 Meg symmetrical would be enough to work with.

I am guessing that 90% (of population) able to get superfast in Scotland actually equates to something like 10% to 20% by geography.

So basically 80% to 90% of Scotland, by land mass, can't get any form of broadband (2Mbps is not broadband, is it) unless there's a 4G cell nearby. And having spent a fair bit of time there, admittedly only with O2 and Vodafone, there are swathes of areas - even populated villages - with GPRS only or no signal at all.

Some of the islands have seen upgrades, but this one is near a major town and not far from a city and has nothing at all.

OK, we won't be taking the one above anyway as it was taken by someone else and if there were no 4G then it would be out of the question anyway. But it is typical of what we want.

The database of cabinets that I have seems to be too out of date to be much use.

Apparently, BT likes this data to be confidential and not easily accessible. Yet, it's absolutely essential when planning a move as the network's capabilities are so dire. Trying to find somewhere in Scotland with broadband really is a "stick a pin in the map at random" exercise.

Aren't the people of Scotland really angry about this by now..
 
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