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Switching broadband provider, any thoughts?

rob zombie PM me your BT phone number at the location and the full address and I’ll double check what’s available in your area. rherr are places where we have built FTTP but not all the CPs offer it.

FTTPoD is where we construct FTTP to your house starting price usually about £2500 but can go up to more than £10k depending on how much construction we have to do. (It cost me a lot to get my place done as three roundabouts in Woking were closed for 4 nights).

Neil.


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its not just fibre or copper that affects your speeds, contention ratio will vary from product to product this will also affect speeds.
 
I live in fairly central London (Kentish Town) and the fastest connection I can get is BT Fibre 2 at around 70Mb or the equivalent from other providers. It's depressing. Virgin Fibre literally runs up my street and they originally said that they'd be able to run it in. Went through a load of hassle getting permission from the property management company / freeholder but after a couple of months of dicking around Virgin told me the work request had been denied. I'd do bad things to get a 300Mb+ connection installed.

My mate just moved to Leeds for a year for work and the building he's ended up in has Hyperoptic up to 1Gb. I can't tell you how jealous I am.
 
I could not get any decent broadband except for Virgin media (I refuse to go back to them!)

Been with Sky for a couple of years that of course runs down BT wires. Got pee'd off with 15 meg absolute maximum.

BT put 'fibre to the premises/home' lamposts up our road and surrounding roads. They took the ones down my road down (as we are classed as Bournville and they do not allow new posts !). I was holding out for this for over a year and it is not happening now..... So, a friend of mine recommended going for a Vodafone gigacube.

As I am in a 4gb area I paid for the 5g subscription which is £50 a month as that is unlimited..... Hopefully 5g will be added soon to our area.....

With 4gb I am getting these results:
DOWNLOAD - 100MB (previously I got 12MB on average)
UPLOAD - 20MB (previously barely got 1MB!)

What is also good, if I go away - I can take it with me and get broadband wherever I go. My pal gets nearly 3 times the speed I do on 4g.

Not for everyone I know. But an option

 
The loss that they are making on that would make your eyes water.


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I live in fairly central London (Kentish Town) and the fastest connection I can get is BT Fibre 2 at around 70Mb or the equivalent from other providers. It's depressing. Virgin Fibre literally runs up my street and they originally said that they'd be able to run it in. Went through a load of hassle getting permission from the property management company / freeholder but after a couple of months of dicking around Virgin told me the work request had been denied. I'd do bad things to get a 300Mb+ connection installed.

My mate just moved to Leeds for a year for work and the building he's ended up in has Hyperoptic up to 1Gb. I can't tell you how jealous I am.

I have BT FTTP 1G (and another line with 40G on it that I built myself (long story)).

On the 1G line I go over 70Mb/sec less than a dozen times a month and that’s usually always to download a game update, if you leave your consoles in standby they often do the download out of hours so it’s ready when you want it.



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Looks like I could get 330mb/s, but guess I would have to pay BT to run a fibre cable which is a straight 50m ish run.
Wonder what that would cost?

When we do FTTPoD it’s not to the cabinet - it’s to the nearest optical node which isn’t always near the cabinet and usually not obvious to average Joe. Also we won’t take cables over bridges if there is a route that avoids them. We only do a limited number of FTTPoD as it’s super expensive to manage the permitting etc.

Right now our FTTP roll out is world leading - more than 20,000 homes passed every week. We built more than all the other providers added together! Still going to take 5 years+ to do the whole country but we are coming. If you live in Salisbury now we have built the entire city with fibre. And we are building in rural at the same time.

Hyperoptic is a joke in my view - the contention they have at peak is scary.


Most of the altnets are just trying to hoover up a base so they can sell their company on and have tons of hedge fund money. I’ve had loads of them try to hire me.

Cheers,
Neil.


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I have BT FTTP 1G (and another line with 40G on it that I built myself (long story)).

On the 1G line I go over 70Mb/sec less than a dozen times a month and that’s usually always to download a game update, if you leave your consoles in standby they often do the download out of hours so it’s ready when you want it.

Just did a quick speedtest and I'm getting 65Mbps at the moment, although that's normally closer to 68. I tend to max out the connection on a daily basis for several hours at a time as I'm a bit of a data hoarder. I know that having significantly faster down speeds wouldn't necessarily directly improve the quality of my life, but that doesn't stop me from wanting it.

The bigger issue for me is the up speed - as of this moment I'm getting 18Mbps which is frustrating. I run a 24/7 Plex server and streaming 4K content away from home doesn't really work. I also have a few family and friends with accounts (excluding the 4K library) and the bandwidth starts to struggle with two high bitrate 1080p streams, which means it often ends up transcoding to 720p on the fly. Not an issue from a hardware POV, but who wants to watch media in 720p? It also kills my down speed at the same time.

If you could nudge them to install FTTP in NW5 I'd appreciate it 😉
 
I hope all that plex content you are sharing you own the rights to do so!

And we have something super cool coming soon that’s going to nerf all the pirate IPTV providers mwahahahaha!

Neil.


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And we have something super cool coming soon that’s going to nerf all the pirate IPTV providers mwahahahaha!
Ah, the classic arms-race of DRM versus pirates - some wars will never end! Interested to see what's coming down the line then, I don't watch any TV at all so I'm purely in the peanut gallery, reminiscing about the good old days of LensLok, fuzzy bits and dodgy receiver boxes that your Uncle knew way too much about.
 
Y
I’d be amazed if anyone is throttling these days, costs more to throttle than it does to deliver the traffic!


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I thought most ISPs installed traffic shapers
Vodafone - especially are throttling their new cellular unlimited deals 👍
 
Y

I thought most ISPs installed traffic shapers
Vodafone - especially are throttling their new cellular unlimited deals [emoji106]

No idea about Vodafone they seem to spend insane amounts of money and have terrible networks

Our mobile network runs twice as fast - don’t get network envy!

I can tell you that there is absolutely no throttling of any kind in any BT group network for internet services.

We use rate limiting if you buy a product with a maximum speed such as ethernet.



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Virgin media offer big numbers and throttle it to hell.....

Im happy with the results off my vodafone gigacube. However I would of prefered fibre to the premises. But that isnt going to happen in Bournville birmingham...
 
I hope all that plex content you are sharing you own the rights to do so!

And we have something super cool coming soon that’s going to nerf all the pirate IPTV providers mwahahahaha!

Neil.


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Depends on how you look at it really... I mean technically, no, I don’t own streaming rights, but the vast majority of the content I own legally one way or another - either via physical media or digital purchase. I hate having to use physical disks though (honestly, I‘m just a sucker for a nice box) or rely on my internet connection to access media that I ‘own’ so after purchase I’ll rip it or download it and store on my Plex server. I have Cat 6 throughout our home which means that all my content is available on every screen via one interface - and why shouldn’t I be able to organise and store media that I’ve purchased in the way that best suits me? I’m sure the letter of the law says otherwise, but my moral compass says it’s a grey area.

In terms of streaming to select friends and family, I view it as an alternative method to lending them the Blu-ray which I’d be equally happy to do - and believe I would be legally able to do as long as I’m not charging. Again, I’ve purchased the media and ‘own’ it, so my moral compass doesn’t register this as an issue. I don’t charge of course and only have a few users.

I will happily admit though that some of my content is 100% pirated. If there is no legal way of obtaining a specific film or TV show in this country but it is available elsewhere in the world and therefore ends up online, that’s on them. I own films on DVD that I have 1080p copies of on Plex because the BR never came out in the UK and the US disc is region locked. I’m not going to watch the 480p copy I own when there is a 1080p copy available just because they can’t be bothered to release it over here. Similarly, there are some TV shows that can’t be purchased over here, no matter how much I’d like to do so. I can’t even purchase the digital copies on Amazon US due to region locking! I’d much rather give them my money, but if they don‘t want it then I’ll find alternative methods. It’s a shame as with some of the more obscure stuff I end up with lower quality copies than those I could and would purchase if only they’d let me.

Good news re the IPTV providers, can’t stand people profiting of off other people’s work and I’m honestly amazed at how brazen they’ve become. I’m more of a Sky Q man myself which I absolutely love.

Neil, as our resident expert - what are your thoughts on home 5G broadband?
 
I've getting a leased line installed, fibre is in the house, but waiting on the job to be finished, ordered in Feb.

About 1 mile from exchange, cost around 6.5k , before the grants.

Council keep delaying the road closure...
 
So the question I have is currently on a copper connection but get a 72mb speed as I live close to the green box at end of the road.

BT appear to have put fibre to the pole opposite me but haven’t installed the Node yet.

So back to the question would going to FTTP I believe it would be 330mb be beneficial for me as we only use Netflix on 4 smart TVs and internet devices and don’t really struggle now I suppose I just like the idea of fibre to the house.


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@daveyp - perhaps @Neil McRae can confirm this. I do not think standard cat 5 cable will carry 330mb.

You would (if you get this) have to put in Cat 5e at least (better cat 6). Not sure of the maximum speed of wifi within your home.

Be interested to know Neil's opinion.
 
So the question I have is currently on a copper connection but get a 72mb speed as I live close to the green box at end of the road.

BT appear to have put fibre to the pole opposite me but haven’t installed the Node yet.

So back to the question would going to FTTP I believe it would be 330mb be beneficial for me as we only use Netflix on 4 smart TVs and internet devices and don’t really struggle now I suppose I just like the idea of fibre to the house.


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Probably not. But fibre is much more reliable than copper. Eventually by 2030+ we want to start shutting down the copper side. We also have 120M seri e over fibre (I think!)


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Probably not. But fibre is much more reliable than copper. Eventually by 2030+ we want to start shutting down the copper side. We also have 120M seri e over fibre (I think!)


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some of the exchanges are already fiber only, as ive got a pilot going on from Salisbury this month. ADSL starting next year, EFM, thats DSL bundle copper goes EOL 2023 and ISDN is 2025...so i’m going to be quite busy ordering OR to rip that lot out, and moving it all to fiber.
 
Depends on how you look at it really... I mean technically, no, I don’t own streaming rights, but the vast majority of the content I own legally one way or another - either via physical media or digital purchase. I hate having to use physical disks though (honestly, I‘m just a sucker for a nice box) or rely on my internet connection to access media that I ‘own’ so after purchase I’ll rip it or download it and store on my Plex server. I have Cat 6 throughout our home which means that all my content is available on every screen via one interface - and why shouldn’t I be able to organise and store media that I’ve purchased in the way that best suits me? I’m sure the letter of the law says otherwise, but my moral compass says it’s a grey area.

In terms of streaming to select friends and family, I view it as an alternative method to lending them the Blu-ray which I’d be equally happy to do - and believe I would be legally able to do as long as I’m not charging. Again, I’ve purchased the media and ‘own’ it, so my moral compass doesn’t register this as an issue. I don’t charge of course and only have a few users.

I will happily admit though that some of my content is 100% pirated. If there is no legal way of obtaining a specific film or TV show in this country but it is available elsewhere in the world and therefore ends up online, that’s on them. I own films on DVD that I have 1080p copies of on Plex because the BR never came out in the UK and the US disc is region locked. I’m not going to watch the 480p copy I own when there is a 1080p copy available just because they can’t be bothered to release it over here. Similarly, there are some TV shows that can’t be purchased over here, no matter how much I’d like to do so. I can’t even purchase the digital copies on Amazon US due to region locking! I’d much rather give them my money, but if they don‘t want it then I’ll find alternative methods. It’s a shame as with some of the more obscure stuff I end up with lower quality copies than those I could and would purchase if only they’d let me.

Good news re the IPTV providers, can’t stand people profiting of off other people’s work and I’m honestly amazed at how brazen they’ve become. I’m more of a Sky Q man myself which I absolutely love.

Neil, as our resident expert - what are your thoughts on home 5G broadband?

I have sympathy for your viewpoint on plex but yes in every circumstance you describe you are flouting the law.

Less than three years of 5G broadband pays for a FTTP connection to your home.

Our wired network for our consumer broadband carries 16Tbit/sec - mobile network carries 600Gbits/sec.

Mobile and wireless networks just aren’t scaled for home broadband or high bandwidth flows and it’s stupidly expensive compared to fixed line service.

In my own personal opinion the price of mobile broadband has to go up as more people take it up - at the moment the product gets away with **** returns on there being spare capacity... don’t get me started on unlimited!


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some of the exchanges are already fiber only, as ive got a pilot going on from Salisbury this month. ADSL starting next year, EFM, thats DSL bundle copper goes EOL 2023 and ISDN is 2025...so i’m going to be quite busy ordering OR to rip that lot out, and moving it all to fiber.

Yup Salisbury has FTTP available everywhere now. Exchanges themselves are irrelevant in an FTTP world.


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@daveyp - perhaps @Neil McRae can confirm this. I do not think standard cat 5 cable will carry 330mb.

You would (if you get this) have to put in Cat 5e at least (better cat 6). Not sure of the maximum speed of wifi within your home.

Be interested to know Neil's opinion.
Depends on how far you want to send it.....

Officially, cat5 will go 100mb, Cat5e 1Gb up to 100m.... Cat6 10Gb for 55m....
Real world can find that things are better or worse depending on your own individual setup....
 
Less than three years of 5G broadband pays for a FTTP connection to your home.
But as soon as you step outside of that then you get zero.... Depends on circumstances....

we want to start shutting down the copper side.

Problem is the pure size of the BT network.... to fibre every single premise is a massive job - i would be surprised to see copper out of BT network before 2040...
 
No idea about Vodafone they seem to spend insane amounts of money and have terrible networks

Our mobile network runs twice as fast - don’t get network envy!

Vodafone - Best mobile network for Data (2020) - UK’s best mobile data network by nPerf 2020, and the Best SIM Only Network by Uswitch 2020....
 
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