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Can Unsymmetrical get turned into symmetrical

That's it. Why would they use bang up to date stuff that costs more when it brings them no benefit? Often people are moving from FTTC to really low packages bringing them very little extra income each month given most of these folks were paying for copper.
Just to reiterate that point: most people who are on FTTC 40/10 now, are likely to take 40/10 FTTP. If they don't need any more speed, why would they pay more? That accounts for a large proportion of users.

This means that in many parts of the country, there originally wasn't any business case for upgrading to fibre. When Openreach is the only choice, they would simply be stealing their own copper customers. At wholesale, FTTP and FTTC are priced almost identically (the 40/10 products have pricing regulated by OFCOM, and are about £1 per month difference). So you end up with happier customers on a more reliable network, but almost no cash return on the investment. Some people will take faster speeds, but the pricing difference at wholesale is not very big anyway.

The business case only came about because of the altnets. When they start building in an area and taking a non-trivial subset of customers away from Openreach, Openreach has to build fibre to retain or regain them. It then becomes an existential issue for them, to avoid their legacy network going the way of the dinosaurs.

The altnets' business case also derives from the OFCOM-regulated pricing: they can cherry-pick the cheapest areas to build in, and undercut Openreach (since Openreach are not allowed to respond by reducing their own prices, or vary prices geographically)
 
If other companies where to unite just for this I bet it would be done in half of the time openreach would take by itself better yet give Fibre Engineer incentives like if certain objectives are met by certain dates like they'll get Pay rise or Bonus of Eyz I can think of so many ways
 
Just to reiterate that point: most people who are on FTTC 40/10 now, are likely to take 40/10 FTTP. If they don't need any more speed, why would they pay more? That accounts for a large proportion of users.

This means that in many parts of the country, there originally wasn't any business case for upgrading to fibre. When Openreach is the only choice, they would simply be stealing their own copper customers. At wholesale, FTTP and FTTC are priced almost identically (the 40/10 products have pricing regulated by OFCOM, and are about £1 per month difference). So you end up with happier customers on a more reliable network, but almost no cash return on the investment. Some people will take faster speeds, but the pricing difference at wholesale is not very big anyway.

The business case only came about because of the altnets. When they start building in an area and taking a non-trivial subset of customers away from Openreach, Openreach has to build fibre to retain or regain them. It then becomes an existential issue for them, to avoid their legacy network going the way of the dinosaurs.

The altnets' business case also derives from the OFCOM-regulated pricing: they can cherry-pick the cheapest areas to build in, and undercut Openreach (since Openreach are not allowed to respond by reducing their own prices, or vary prices geographically)
Thats sucks for bt why not make the market like the us the only regulatory system is there for the customer so they don't get done by companies but other than that in the USA market in that particular area it runs smoothly Either its Ofcom who feck it up or Openreach/BT i dont have enough information to determine which
Nvm its definitely Ofcom
 
If it was a little less biased towards downstream, I wouldn't mind. It's just too downstream focused imo. It's kind of heart-wrenching when I pay so much for the service and I only get 115 up to do my backups. Things shouldn't be this way imo.
There is another factor at play.

People like to have "unlimited" Internet: bandwidth caps or usage limits are an anathema in the market.

Generally, when you give people a faster download speed, they don't use any more Internet: they just download the same amount of stuff in a shorter amount of time. After all, once you've downloaded a game you've got to play it.

But if you give people faster upload speeds, there are some users who will fill it 24x7. If they're not doing backups then they're doing torrent-style filesharing, or running TOR exit nodes, or whatever.

A relatively low upload bandwidth speed helps keep a lid on that sort of usage without having to introduce a FUP.

Of course, the likes of Cityfibre have decided just to allow the full symmetric and take the risk.

If Openreach were truly independent, it could choose to push the risk onto the CPs: after all, if the CPs fill their cablelinks, it's up to the CPs to upgrade them. But as it would create headaches for BT retail and EE, I can imagine the BT group wanting to keep the status quo.
 
Openreach will *never* offer symmetric packages because EAD is also a product that exists, even on XGS-PON and above. It's not a technological issue, it's a protection of their other products issue.

They will offer it if CityFibre and Nexfibre are symmetric by default and Openreach customers (the ISPs) start losing customers as a result.
 
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They will offer it if CityFibre and Nexfibre are symmetric by default and Openreach customers (the ISPs) start losing customers as a result.
Maybe, although I suspect very few people (outside of forums like this) will switch services for a higher upload.

Yes there are uses cases like WFH and content creators, but the mass market is focused on price and to an extent download speed.
 
People will switch if ISPs advertise it as a differentiator - "upload your YouTube/Instagram/TikTok/whatever videos 10x faster than BT" is a simple concept to get across.
 
You're trolling now.

Do you know what the Internet situation is like in the US, outside of major cities?
MSN is still going pretty strong, let me just get the landline up 😂

Is there actually still any dialup services that still work here? MSN was discontinued here iirc and AOL probably hasn't worked for years (after all, that's gone through a turbulent time).

Like mentioned earlier, I'd honestly be pretty happy with what the OP has, the majority of people don't need symmetric. I have 26mbps upload with Virgin and the only time that it's being stressed usually is with my Google Photos backups (which are quick enough to be unnoticeable) and video calls.
 
Its business decisions, they dont even need to go to XGSPON to do symmetrical. They have another market which is more lucrative they will want to protect, combine that with the residential market doesnt have high enough demand, is the most likely reasons their products are spec'd how they are.

I agree with the other's even having access to something like 1000/120 is pretty amazing, when I was on 1000/100 on VM DOCSIS I was still very happy with my internet connection.
 
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If it was a little less biased towards downstream, I wouldn't mind. It's just too downstream focused imo. It's kind of heart-wrenching when I pay so much for the service and I only get 115 up to do my backups. Things shouldn't be this way imo.

I spend about £948 per year on my service, I pay because I want good quality service, support, a v6 delegation, a v4 block. I run an system with pfSense and support systems, I spend a lot more on additional services. I don't think it is unreasonable to have an option for more upstream. This is what really annoys me, there is no affordable option to pay for faster upstream even if it exists.

Why can't I pay like 10/mo more for like symmetric or 250 up or 500 up? Why can't this be done? This is what frustrates me. I don't dispute the product range, but there should be options for enthusiasts. And the whole "get a leased line" thing - I can't afford that. All I want is a bit more upstream.
No alt nets where you are?
 
People will switch if ISPs advertise it as a differentiator - "upload your YouTube/Instagram/TikTok/whatever videos 10x faster than BT" is a simple concept to get across.
I agree, but I also see a problem with this. none of the big ISPs are solely alt net, meaning if they start advertising that, it would then only apply to part of their network (such as CityFibre), and cause some awkwardness. All of the ISPs that are solely alt nets wont be advertising this I expect due to having pretty much no advertising budget. At the very least though I agree they should be making a bigger deal out of it on their website, I checked yayzi home page and there is a one line small text 100mb video upload time quoted.
 
None here either, Virgin Media hybrid fibre coax or Openreach ADSL that can't even break 2MB/s 😂

CityFibre doesn't cover my area, no plans afaik, Virgin might upgrade us to Nexfibre next year idk


There is technically fttc up to 80 here (upload up to 40 iirc), and based on checkers it says it should be almost bang on max speed, only on ADSL (well adsl2+) but they do have fttp in the works around, new fibre cable being fed underground not far from there's also two addresses on likely the same cabinet we're on who have fttp now.

VM is also in the area but hasn't fully covered as it's unavailable (not that we would go back with VM given that 48 hour outage with no internet or phone years back) although it was likely from an outdated router, they sent us a new one shortly before we had to move, and was a pain to cancel without having to pay the money etc, still had to pay even though at the the time VM wasn't in the new area at all.

The best option for us would probably be a router which has access to 5g and some 3/3mvno SIM to access that fast 5G from the POW outside - and cheaper than what maximum fttc would cost as well, the only downside may be added latency as even on adsl2+ pings have been relatively low unless there's file uploads going on which can brick it entirely for hours depending on how big the file is, downloads don't really cause much of an issue.

with 60 hours of uploads (was doing a backup some years ago) it bricked almost anything else from loading whilst it was doing them (and it wasn't just on my own device either, no other devices worked during that time on any website
 
I would take FTTC 80/20 over any sort of 5G connection.

When 5G works, it's fine. But when your local mast goes out of service for two weeks (as is not uncommon) and you failover to something 10 miles away, you'll wish you were on FTTC.

Not sure why you persist with ADSL; the pricing of FTTC vs ADSL is generally the same these days.
the only downside may be added latency as even on adsl2+ pings have been relatively low unless there's file uploads going on which can brick it entirely for hours depending on how big the file is
Firstly, if that's an issue, the 20Mbps upload on FTTC will be *much* better than 1Mbps or less on ADSL.

Secondly, if you're seeing long RTTs during heavy uploading, that's due to "bufferbloat" and a good router will be able to do some traffic shaping to make that much better. I use a Mikrotik and a simple queueing setup makes interactive behaviour much better during uploads (this is with 50Mbps upload on FTTP)
 
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I would take FTTC 80/20 over any sort of 5G connection.

When 5G works, it's fine. But when your local mast goes out of service for two weeks (as is not uncommon) and you failover to something 10 miles away, you'll wish you were on FTTC.

Not sure why you persist with ADSL; the pricing of FTTC vs ADSL is generally the same these days.

Firstly, if that's an issue, the 20Mbps upload on FTTC will be *much* better than 1Mbps or less on ADSL.

Secondly, if you're seeing long RTTs during heavy uploading, that's due to "bufferbloat" and a good router will be able to do some traffic shaping to make that much better. I use a Mikrotik and a simple queueing setup makes interactive behaviour much better during uploads (this is with 50Mbps upload on FTTP)
It's mostly because we don't want to end up in say, a 24 month or longer contract just to have fttp installed in the next year or so that's why we haven't switched to fttc yet.

On the long RTTs side of things; it's only upwards of 6000ms on uploads whilst uploading large files, but that's enough to cause issues. Then again, I'm hardly surprised as it was the ISP supplied router which is really bad by today's standards, only 100mbps ports, no 5ghz, etc.

1716881207727.webp


I don't believe there was any large uploads in the last 24 hours, however this is probably about average with what happens in a 24 hour period if I'm honest.
 
Thats sucks for bt why not make the market like the us the only regulatory system is there for the customer so they don't get done by companies but other than that in the USA market in that particular area it runs smoothly Either its Ofcom who feck it up or Openreach/BT i dont have enough information to determine which
Nvm its definitely Ofcom
Where you get what you're given at the price you're given, usually with tons of fees attached, and for most outside of urban areas the choice is the cable company and copper, inside the cable company and the telco's own ISP?

Nah I'm good with paying less for more choice. You're quite wrong on regulation too. Try building an ISP without a franchise agreement with local government carrying tons of conditions. Try building infrastructure generally: permits to dig are a pain and oftentimes the local government own existing utility poles. Ask Google Fiber. So much for smoothly running free market.

EDIT: Good timing mentioning the USA. I will be there in about 12 hours. My colleagues in the US almost universally prefer our system.

I'm loving that you blame Ofcom for Openreach not offering symmetrical.
 
For what it is worth, I don't think there's any trolling going on in this thread; just a general lack of knowledge of how the markets and technology work. Without being disrespectful (because no disrespect is intended by it!), I believe there's a certain personality type we're responding to... and I'm more than happy to respond to that person and work to improve their understanding of the topic we all clearly enjoy chatting about.
 
It's mostly because we don't want to end up in say, a 24 month or longer contract just to have fttp installed in the next year or so that's why we haven't switched to fttc yet.
Two options for you there:

1. Take FTTC on a 1-month or 12-month contract. (e.g. IDnet or Aquiss)
2. If you know who your preferred FTTP provider will be, check if they allow in-contract upgrades from FTTC to FTTP. If so, you're good. Several do.
 
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