Fibre Optic Broadband - is it worth it?!

Andy B

Andy B

Well-known member
UKGSer Subscriber
Joined
Apr 6, 2006
Messages
2,576
Reaction score
60
Location
Lea & Perrins country
One or two companies (BT, Sky and Virgin) are offering fibre optic broadband where I work and I need to upgrade what I've got at the moment. However, BT is claiming to bring it in through my existing telephone lines.

As a techno-numpty in this area, can someone explain how fibre, routed through my copper for the last part of its journey to me, can be any better than the copper from the street to my office? Is the offer of fibre down a copper cable just a marketing gimick?
 
I believe it is fibre to the green cabinet in the street then the last leg will be fed over copper, depends how far you are from the cab i'd say, if close by then you should see a significant speed increase.

I only work for BT so know nowt about it :augie :D

(will see what i can find out, also Mr K may have more info when he gets on here tonight)
 
Two different technologies.
BT have what's known as fibre to the cabinet (trade name is BT Ignight IIRC). That means that there is a bit of fibre from the exchange to a road side cabinet somewhere 'near' you and after that there's a black box that converts that to something that can be run over a copper pair. Speed is "Up To" 40Mb/s but will vary depending on how far you are from that cab and the quality of the wiring between you and it (I've seen speeds as low as 8Mb/s). This is probably also what Sky are offering (although I think at the moment they only do ADSL, so up to 24Mb/s).
The Virgin offering (if you're in a cabled area) will be using fibre to a much closer point to your premesis. As such, there's much less copper cable between you and it and therefore they (we, I work for them) are able to offer (currently) up to 50Mb/s speed, and you'll pretty well get close to that 50Mb/s.
Hope that helps.
 
. . . . Speed is "Up To" 40Mb/s . . . . .I've seen speeds as low as 8Mb/s . . . . only do ADSL, so up to 24Mb/s . . . . . 50Mb/s speed
Click to expand...
Eh?

These are speeds I can only dream of - here in rural Kent (10 miles from Cantebury anyway) - 2Mb is the norm, might occasionaly see 4Mb, but more frequently speeds of <1Mb.

Maybe they should roll-out proper broadband more widely first.:mad:
 
stolzy said:
Eh?

These are speeds I can only dream of - here in rural Kent (10 miles from Cantebury anyway) - 2Mb is the norm, might occasionaly see 4Mb, but more frequently speeds of <1Mb.

Maybe they should roll-out proper broadband more widely first.:mad:
Click to expand...

For the likes of me and you we're never gonna get a decent speed. It's not financially viable. We can get a BT line but no one else where we live, cable will never be offered to us, those companies are only interested in the large cities/estates where they can hit a lot of households with minimal outlay. It's a good job BT are there to supply a basic broadband and dont get me started on Payphones :mad:
 
I hear you on that. I get about 1/2 Mb/s from my ADSL line. 300 metres down the road they get 50MB/s on VM cable, or up to 40Mb/s on BT infinity. I swear one of these days I'm going to dig the trench myself to get the cable the extra 300 metres.
 
Last edited:
Buz said:
For the likes of me and you we're never gonna get a decent speed. It's not financially viable. We can get a BT line but no one else where we live, cable will never be offered to us, those companies are only interested in the large cities/estates where they can hit a lot of households with minimal outlay. It's a good job BT are there to supply a basic broadband and dont get me started on Payphones :mad:
Click to expand...
Must be a UK thing - my home in France (about as rural as you could get - 30 km to the nearest supermarket) and I normally get 6-8 Mb, people in the centre of the village all get 12-18Mb.

Then again, instead of just talking about the empowering effect of the internet (especially in the countryside) the French just get on a do it.
 
I have the Virgin 20MB fibre optic connection. The green box is about 100 yards down the road which is then 'copper' fed to my house.
It feeds both my broadband and my cable TV supply.

Virgin advertise it at 20MB, I've NEVER seen it lower than 19.7MB and it never fluctuates during what you'd describe as peak periods.

It's FECKING INCREDIBLE!

I get about 2MB per SECOND when I download Apple updates and such like.

I do however live in Epsom so not too far out of the big smoke.
 
I have a 50 meg virgin line at home with the wireless N router. It's blisteringly fast, and doesn't seem to suffer with high local network usage.

I have Opal business broadband in my office (I think they are the business arm of talktalk) and have had no outages or issues whatsoever. It tends to average around 10 -14 meg)

Personally, unless you're downloading or streaming large amounts of media - I'd say that 10meg is plenty.
It's not always the broadband that's the bottleneck - sometimes it's the wireless router, or the PC/Laptop in question. It's akin to the megapixel fixation ;)
 
BT's biggest switch centre in Birmingham is bang opposite my office so 50 feet to my front door? Still only get about 6Mb on what is supposed to be a 10Mb package. As I have more and more people in the office it needs to be a bit more robust.

Had decided to go with Virgin but they say they don't have any fibre in my street!:blast
 
stolzy said:
Eh?

These are speeds I can only dream of - here in rural Kent (10 miles from Cantebury anyway) - 2Mb is the norm, might occasionaly see 4Mb, but more frequently speeds of <1Mb.

Maybe they should roll-out proper broadband more widely first.:mad:
Click to expand...

Rural Cheshire, miles from the exchange (that's a rural one too) 0.5mb but at least it's consistent :)

Dave
 
Wouldn't say 'no' to that upload speed as well! I use Windows XP Remote Desktop to talk to my PC in the office and lack of upload speed severely hampers its capabilities!
 
Andy B said:
BT's biggest switch centre in Birmingham is bang opposite my office so 50 feet to my front door? Still only get about 6Mb on what is supposed to be a 10Mb package. As I have more and more people in the office it needs to be a bit more robust.

Had decided to go with Virgin but they say they don't have any fibre in my street!:blast
Click to expand...

Chances are the cable that feeds your offices could well be a mile or more in length. There's a couple of hundred premises within a 50 Metre radius, there's no physical capacity for each premises to be directly wired to the Exchange. There will be large cables radiating to the cabs (these are being replaced by fibre eventually) then smaller cables feed the premises. Distance wise you can be 50M from exch but 500m from the cab, someone who is located nearer the cab but further from the exchange could get more bandwidth, if you know what I mean!

BT can supply a landline to virtually every premise in the UK, majority are getting Broadband of at least 1Mb, how many other suppliers have a Network of such capacity? Whilst other Companies are simply installing cables to the highly populated areas BT are upgrading existing cables as well as installing new ones and getting slated by any issue that is communication based.

Just my 2p worth :augie
 
You can have fibre all the way to your house if you're prepared to pay (or persuade your employer to pay) .... The means to put fibre in "overhead" is now in place.
You probably only need it if you're doing mega CAD stuff or holding video conferencing in HD .......

I'm getting 6Mb on "metal" now, which seems plenty.

:beerjug:
 
BT are trialing 100mb service on Fibre to your door in areas of Ashford.
Also due to try this service elsewhere in the country soon.
 
Yep, the 'other' Ashford...

Mines gone down from 8 to 1 Mbps since the infinity gear went into the exchange, and its been 2 weeks without much progress.

Due to go live later in the year, I'm sure it's a not so subtle ploy to get folks to switch.
 
Blowzorn said:
BT are trialing 100mb service on Fibre to your door in areas of Ashford.
Also due to try this service elsewhere in the country soon.
Click to expand...
And that's not cherry-picking when big areas of the country struggle to get a couple of Mb?
 
stolzy said:
And that's not cherry-picking when big areas of the country struggle to get a couple of Mb?
Click to expand...

Not as much as Virgin/Cable etc, at least BT will give you a couple of meg throughout the Country.

You cant stand still with technology, supply it to the ones who are easy/cost efficient to supply then you start getting revenue in to move further afield
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom