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Griffin to be part of BT FTTC trial
Tuesday 02 June 2009 11:36:16 by John Hunt

Griffin Internet, the channel focussed business ISP, has confirmed it will be participating in BT's first fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) trials starting on the 1st of July. Only two Exchanges are involved in the pilot, Muswell Hill in London, and Whitchurch in South Glamorgan. Users will be testing the new service that offers 40meg (megabits per second) download and 2meg upload. Around 49 street side cabinets are being deployed by BT with fibre links back to the telephone exchange. Each cabinet will have a VDSL2 DSLAM which connects to the users premises using a standard phone line.

Griffin has invested in multiple Gigabit interconnects into BT's 21st Century Network (21CN) and plan to double the capacity of their 10Gbit/s metro fibre ring which was installed last year.

"Griffin has had a close working relationship with BT Wholesale since we developed the UK's first Managed Broadband platform for them back in 2003. Being first to market for our Partners is less important than knowing that products work first time every time and are fixed quickly when they go wrong. Our policy is to trial and test with our suppliers as early as possible so that new products are brought to market quickly without compromising quality."

Adrian Sunderland (CTO), Griffin
[ Topic: Internet Service Providers | 110 comments | link to this item ]
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Comments

Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
'Up to' 40/2 as standard with 40/5 as an extra cost option on VDSL2+.

Garbage, but thanks for the confirmation, however many times I read the product brief I did struggle to get my head around that BT would blatantly cripple the residential version of the product so they can charge more for the 10 and 15Mbit variants as business products.

More to the point that they would cripple the standard residential variant to a lower upstream speed than their existing exchange based ADSL2+ services are capable of unless you pay more.

Should be 40/5 with 40/10-15 as the additional cost option!
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
"however many times I read the product brief I did struggle to get my head around that BT would blatantly cripple the residential version of the product so they can charge more for the 10 and 15Mbit variants as business products." - But that's always going to be the problem when resi products start getting as good/fast as business ones something has to give or the massive business market could start buying much cheaper resi products and taking a risk on support
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
Agreed Dixinormous... I previously got a week ban here for harping on about BT FTTC likely to only have a 2Mb upload... I was shouted at not only by BT fanboys but also staff and accussed of having no proof. I guess this shows once again i was right and the complaints about me from the BT mob AGAIN as usual were not justified.
2Mb upload and they have the nerve to call it fibre?? It will be the laughing stock of European areas that have REAL fibre.
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
I spose BT see it as a step forward though... Spending billions to give people 2Mb uprates even though the likes of bethere have given a 2.5Mb for a while... Heck even the downrate of 40Mb is a joke, I hope all the BT supporters that have whined about Virgin calling thereself a fibre service are paying attention. Typical BT junk!
Posted by Pigmaster 10 months ago
"so they can charge more for the 10 and 15Mbit variants as business products"

This has always been the case but how many businesses did what I did for my firm 5 years ago.

We had a 64k leased line to the internet that cost £12,000pa
BT/Demon would not lower the price point of the leased line so we went for multiple ADSL lines, each had 2Mbit down and we bonded 2 other them and left the other 2 as singles for backups and for extra capacity. Saved my firm a freaking fortune!
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
@GMAN99 LMAO still supporting BT. 15Mb "GOOD/FAST" Bwahaha i get 18+Mb right now. I cant believe even the most stupid BT supporter is going to say this is a GOOD and FAST service, its the tortoise of the fibre world.
Posted by Aqualung 10 months ago
To be fair its pathetic.

BT wholesale and Ofcom are a joke and only the gullible can see what they are up to .They will install equipment capable of massive speed and then drip feed it to us as "upgrades". for substantially more money.

We once led the world in communications we are now third rate at best.They cant even get a reliable service out of adsl2+ if they have engineers spare perhaps they could concentrate on that first.
Posted by krazykizza 10 months ago
2mbps is nothing for an upload. Be* users get 2.5 on Annex M with half that speed. Should be 5mbps upload standard. Also why just two exchanges? and why only 49cabs?! That means only a handfull of users even int he area will get their hands on the speed; of which I hope will be comming free.
Posted by AndrueC 10 months ago
@krazykizza:"Also why just two exchanges? and why only 49cabs?!" Because it's a trial. The clue is in the headline.
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
@Aqualung, very well said agree with every point you made. Icluding those about their ADSL2+.

@krazykizza yep i spotted and commented on bethere providing 2.5Mb also, I sincerely hope all the BT fanboys that have bashed Virgin about their fibre claims (they know who they are) have the sense for once to keep their gobs shut now. Though saying that an fanboy will be along shortly to explain and try to convince us BTs marketting trip wont actually call this service "FIBRE".
Posted by AndrueC 10 months ago
40/2 doesn't sound very impressive on its own but if they offered it everywhere it'd be a step up for a lot of people on the downstream. The upstream is a bit weak but as long as it's enough for ACK transmission I doubt it will bother most people.

Personally I think that FTTc should be used to shorten lines where FTTH is unlikely to be viable and the places now slated to get FTTC should be getting FTTH.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
"2Mb upload and they have the nerve to call it fibre?? It will be the laughing stock of European areas that have REAL fibre."

As opposed to Virgin who bleat about nothing but fibre and have a what.. 1.5 upload on their top package?
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
"I cant believe even the most stupid BT supporter is going to say this is a GOOD and FAST service, its the tortoise of the fibre world." Personal attacks? That aside again you seem to have no business sense at all. If your going to release a fibre product they'll do what they always do.. drip feed faster products over time. Do you think they are just going to release a 200down/up straight off? When Virgin released their first fibre product what was it? 2Mb about 256k up?
Posted by AndrueC 10 months ago
I don't see any major change here until/unless customers learn that bandwidth costs money. Right now BB is seen as a frippery. Something to pay as little as possible for.

That needs to change if we want FTTH. I've long maintained that finding a good reason to pay extra for FTTH is difficult but that's what's needed.

If you want FTTH tell your ISP that you're willing to pay for it. Offer them £50pcm for entry level FTTH. That might cause serious movement on the fibre front.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
Your right AndrueC, I think the way its going to end up going is that you will be able to get a fat pipe at little cost and will get limited to a set bandwidth and you will pay extra if you want to burst it for say.. downloading a film, downloading a game etc. I think bandwidth is going to be the way ISP's make money in the future as that's what is on the increase and what they'll want to tap into. There's no point in offering faster speeds to the public and then punishing them for using them so we can't progress. It will have to be flipped on its head.
Posted by gbswales 10 months ago
The same old answer - the consumer must pay more. Why not look for a different model - consumers are potential customers of web based companies - tax companies to subsidise fast consumer services. We will still pay more of course by slightly increasing prices of goods we buy but it will paid more fairly by the people who spend the most
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
"BT wholesale and Ofcom are a joke and only the gullible can see what they are up to .They will install equipment capable of massive speed and then drip feed it to us as "upgrades". for substantially more money."

That is exactly what they'll do. And what all companies do its business.... Apple iPod's etc etc. Do you think they just invent new lines of products a few years after the release of the first or have them planned for a scheduled release?
Posted by AndrueC 10 months ago
I've often thought that if I was a network administrator I'd never allow the network to run flat out.

I'd start off with a healthy reserve that I gradually feed to users while planning and implementing upgrades.

That would allow a buffer so that I could appear to always be meeting demand without bottlenecking (I'd still complain mind you :) ). Then again I'm a bit of a git and would probably derive far too much pleasure from being able to hoodwink users.
Posted by otester 10 months ago
I don't get why anyone is defending BT or Virgin.

They both suck, they are both evil greedy corporations.

If England was truely at it's peak we'd all be on 1GBps FTTH.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
I'm not defending anyone, merely pointing out all companies adopt a similar approach of drip feeding out better and better products so they can hit them again and again for charges, its nothing new but some people think its some trend BT has just invented with this trial ;)
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
GMAN - 1st Virgin cable service was 512/128k, the marketing people only decided it was fibre in 2007.

I do wonder if you read my first post however. VM have rubbish upload because they don't want to pay to improve it, BT will have the capability they just don't want to allow residential users to have it.

AndrueC - you've never worked for an ISP obviously. Capacity that isn't being used is wasted capacity, it's not an enterprise environment. We're not even discussing that, the upstream side will be a total non-issue capacity wise, they just don't want resi connections to have it.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Likewise all this discussion about people paying more, etc, is also a non-issue. The main loading on the networks will be downstream not upstream, and residential customers will have the same 40Mbit that super expensive business circuits will. Explain this for me. Ebbsfleet. 100/2 FTTP. What does that have to do with people paying or otherwise when the GPON architecture offers a 2:1 ratio down:up? ISPs had to shout a bit for symmetrical products of any description at any level on the FTTP.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
To be honest I don't really understand the obsession of some with upstream. Ok for hosting online gaming sure but that still makes up a very very small percentage of internet traffic so its still niche, apart from that what else would you want loads of up for? If its for hosting your own web hosting well that's certainly not what any ISP wants so I doubt you'll ever get it unless you pay through the nose for it.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Then surely GMAN if no-one is really going to use the upstream as there's no real applications and no-one uses it why bother artificially restricting it to levels inferior to CO based Annex M services?
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
Some people would use it though, to host etc... which ISP's don't want.
Posted by bezuk 10 months ago
Legitimate uses for lots of upstream:
- working from home (as a web developer I am forever uploading things to FTPs)
- online backup services - strange how the worst upstream ISPs advertise these
- uploading videos to YouTube or similar - even uploading many high-quality photos
- Slingbox and similar devices
- videoconferencing at a halfway decent quality

There was a brilliant blog on this called One Way Internet but it rarely gets updated these days.

Devastated about the lack of upstream on the FTTC product, but I suppose we all knew it was going to be this way.
Posted by bezuk 10 months ago
I suppose one question is can a "LLU" provider take the Openreach FTTC product and set their own upstream speeds as they do now with their own equipment? I really don't know anything about how this will work.
Posted by bosie 10 months ago
Ditto on the poor upstream comments. I have Annex M specifically to speed up my online storage activities, video chat, screen sharing, moving files between computers that sort of thing. I'd happily sacrifice a few Mbps on the downstream to get more on the up. There is one company in my area offering 5Mbps symmetrical ethernet but it costs £499 + VAT each month.
Posted by AndrueC 10 months ago
@bezuk:Doubtful. LLU won't mean quite as much with FTTC. The DLSAM is BT's equipment so you'd be asking BT to configure their router in a way that they didn't plan for. I would have thought that LLU operators will only be able to use whatever stream rates BT chooses to make available.

Still - it's probably not a technical limitation. Just a matter of persuading BT to let you tell them how to configure their equipment.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
@bezuk - Sorry about that! Duly updated.
Posted by otester 10 months ago
I'm on a Business package now for the extra upload speed, works out well because of the longer off-peak hours as well.

5Mbps isn't that great but I'd expect when 60Mbps is finally released they'll up it to 10/15Mbps.
Posted by otester 10 months ago
Hmm, reading on the net seems to suggest 40Mbps will come with an 10Mbps.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Reading on the site of the company that will be actually offering the products to the service providers seems to suggest and then confirm that 40Mbps will come with 2Mbps with 5 as an additional cost.

http://tinyurl.com/qb5for
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
quote""2Mb upload and they have the nerve to call it fibre?? It will be the laughing stock of European areas that have REAL fibre."

As opposed to Virgin who bleat about nothing but fibre and have a what.. 1.5 upload on their top package?"

And 50Mb download = BT beaten and 200Mb trials = BT beaten..... Seriously hush you look stupid.
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
quote"'m not defending anyone, merely pointing out all companies adopt a similar approach of drip feeding out better and better products so they can hit them again and again for charges, its nothing new but some people think its some trend BT has just invented with this trial ;)"

Rubbish you are a BT defender bethere dont even have fibre but they can provide more than 2Mb on the upstream and more than the 15 odd Mb Bt are going to offer business.
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
I cant wait until BT start advertising these services and so obviously tagging them with the word "FIBRE" in their TV adverts. It will be very funny to watch the BT fanboys get a great big 2 fingered salute fom Virgin users whos service (although rightly) has been bashed senseless by the BT fanboys here for its fibre claims. No real shocker even though Virgin are dreadful they still manage to beat BT on top headline speeds. The pathetic attempts to support this service are hillarious, 40Mb down and 2Mb up, must be one of the slowest fibre services in the WORLD LOL
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
Lets go one step further... Everyone raise a hand if you think it will also follow typical BT form and have some type of monthly limit or throttle.... Oh and the cost, i wonder what that will be? No doubt they will good as copy the Virgin pricing model, Just like they copied LLU and ADSL2+ services. BT are as original as a fake £1 coin. I wonder how many cockups will occur ast launch like what happened with MAX and their ADSL2+. Thank god other companies are also trying to get fibre services up and going, roll on the market equivelant of FIBRE LLU.
Posted by CaptainW 10 months ago
Apparently both Sky and Carphone Warehouse are in on this trial and have already selected their own local customer's for this trial.
Posted by imbsuk 10 months ago
Wow, even with BT's legendary conservatism, I was still genuinely expecting in the area of 40mb upload. It's hardly going to feel like a 21st century service. What a disappointment, pretty embarrassing in fact, not far from what I already get from BE. I guess it was naive of me to believe that the future of the internet was to not have any constraints in the bandwidth department. Why not be idealistic?
Posted by imbsuk 10 months ago
I guess I will have to wait til I am 50 to get more than 100mbs upload (I'm 24 now). And btw there are a ton of legitimate uses of upload speed. Photos for a start. They still take a while to upload at over 1Mbps upload speed. Isn't the point of a futuristic service that you don't have to spend ages waiting?
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
CB ignoring the facts again as it favours him. So did Virgin go straight to releasing a brand new product? No they trialled it before release, just a BT are doing. Everyone knows VDSL2+ is capable of more but the whole idea of a trial is to see how well the entry product works and build on it. Virgin did it and BT will do it. The only person that looks stupid is yourself on virtually every post you make as pointed out by countless others.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
"working from home (as a web developer I am forever uploading things to FTPs)" - But that's business use on res product? Can't really complain that it doesn't suit your needs as it clearly doesn't nor is it meant to.

"online backup services - strange how the worst upstream ISPs advertise these" - Is the speed relevant though do you want to backup quicker. Mine backsup as changes are made after the initial upload, I don't notice it.

"uploading videos to YouTube or similar - even uploading many high-quality photos" - Is getting it done faster 'critical' tho?
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
"Slingbox and similar devices", dunno not used them

"videoconferencing at a halfway decent quality" - Yes agreed bandwidth as a whole cripples any decent uptake of VC

I'm not saying we don't need a bit more upload but 100up? The majority of internet users still pull more data than they push and that will be the case for a long time if not forever and today's products reflect the needs of the masses, much more download than up
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
CB - this discussion is about the Openreach product with low upload, what ISPs do at retail wrt throttling etc is irrelevant.

GMAN - VDSL2 has been around for a while commercially, trialled for longer, its' capabilities are well known and the 2/5Mbit is not a 'trial' it is the product, please note the price list. The two exchanges are a trial of the GEA over FTTC OSS systems, etc, not of the technology, that was done a while ago.

Hundreds of thousands work from home monthly, it's an expected use of residential services now.

Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
Ok its a product then.. and one I'd gladly take compared to what I get now. And I do work from home. It still suits the majority is all I'm saying. If your employer is giving you the ability to work from home and your residential product doesn't fit your needs (why should it?) they should buy you a business one surely or.. you just put up with it as its cheap.
Posted by bezuk 10 months ago
I wouldn't have *too* much of a problem with the base 2Mb product so long as the "cost option" wasn't 5mb, but instead "let it sync as fast as it can with the technology". I don't know what the max theoretical up speed is with VDSL2+ but I'm certain it's a lot more than 5 megabits.

@Dixi - Yay for OWI updates!

@GMAN - Believe me, I'd pay *substantially* more for higher upstream internet access, but there is simply nothing out there for a remotely reasonable price over Be Pro ADSL2+ Annex M service.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
Well its symmetrical I don't know what they got out of it on trials but in theory it can do up what it can do down its just an artificial limit unlike the hard limit of ADSL
Posted by bezuk 10 months ago
I don't think any of us are asking for symmetrical - it would be nice of course - but according to Dixi's blog update, VDSL2 deployments in other countries are at about the 60 / 20 level - I think that would be ideal.
Posted by rian 10 months ago
I think upload is more important nowadays as many of us will upload video onto youtube, running gaming or web server. Download is more than enough for general use.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
Yeah but rian, youtubing aside running a web server is a no-no, its not what any ISP wants as it breaks the rules of a good network design, not just the internet any network. You don't have servers located at the edge of your network, they belong centralised where bandwidth and high speed switching exists not on the end of a residential connection otherwise its a contention nightmare.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
It's nothing to do with contention at all, Openreach have stated they will run services with a downstream contention from cabinet to ISP handover of 2:1, it's up to ISPs to decide how they want things to go from there. As these backhauls are symmetrical this would mean that upstreams could be 50% of downstream and every customer run them flat out without Openreach having contention issues, up to ISPs how they would deal with it which isn't Openreach's problem, they are there to sell bandwidth.

Next please :)
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
I will also relay your comments to Verizon, the various cable companies listed, along with various FTTP and FTTC companies around the world that they are running inefficient network designs, committing network suicide, etc, for daring to give their customers better upstream ratios for these past years. They'll only abuse it and bring the networks to a halt. Oh wait...
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
So your saying having people running their own web servers on their own connections is a good thing and a good network model to adopt? Equivalent to a business running the companies exchanges servers on an access layer switch along with other users? I didn't know the contention (until now) but I still say running web servers at home is not what any ISP wants
Posted by AndrueC 10 months ago
@GMAN99:"I still say running web servers at home is not what any ISP wants". It is also clearly what only a very, very, vanishingly small number of customers want.

Upload is becoming increasingly more useful though. It depends how much boosting the upstream to 5Mb costs. I also note that in other documentation BT have claimed that 15Mb is possible. As long those with a need can pay to get more I think it's fine.

If you don't want to pay more to go above 2Mb then you clearly don't have a real need :)
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
I feel the discussion is getting misunderstood. :) I'm not against greater uploads and can see why they would be needed for some (but not for others) I'm stating that running web servers on home connections is not something any ISP would surely want to encourage or provide services for.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
I'm not saying it's a good or bad model for networks GMAN, I'm pointing out that it's a harmless model for Openreach based on their mandate to sell bandwidth. What ISPs do and do not do from there on is their business, however Openreach doing this I just regard as another symptom of the abysmal level of infrastructure competition in the UK.

It's actually totally perverse - Openreach are supposed to be doing FTTC Bitstream - the more bandwidth they sell the more money they make!
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
@AndrueC this isn't about the retail or wholesale aspect or what consumers pay, it's about what ISPs pay.

I did understand BT mentioning 15Mbit being possible but I can't find anything in the FTTC pricing about it. I do note them saying it's quite possible if SPs can demonstrate market demand, though that's BT totally missing the point. Costs them nothing to provide it they just won't until SPs write in blood they need it. Have to protect the LES-10 revenues...
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
http://tinyurl.com/o8lnhf

'2/5/7/10/12/15MBit/s are all viable upstream options within GEA over FTTC.'

Here's hoping someone has a change of heart and actually implements them onto the product if they are so viable. I refuse to believe service providers don't want as many product options as possible.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
If an ISP were allowed to bring out a 15MBit/s upload "Online Gamers Package" in the UK it would clear up.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Probably, but the more bizarre thing is simply this - Virgin Media offer a 50/1.5 service. If Openreach for technical reasons are concerned about competing on download why not push the upload path? If ISPs can sell more of their FTTC products it means Openreach make more money, it's that simple. As I said in the blog I'm amazed no-one pushes this harder in their advertising.
Posted by bezuk 10 months ago
I am reminded of this news article on this very site - at this point I really beieved there was a possibility of seeing the good upstream products at launch:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3867-bt-fttc-could-see-vdsl2-in-the-uk.html

I just don't see why they can't resurrect that 15 megabit product as an extra extra cost option for those of us who really want it.
Posted by mikeblogs 10 months ago
Could you comment on the way the PSTN service is maintained.

With this connectivity which I am expecting to pay £40-£50 a month for the Broadband service, I would expect to start replacing PSTN with a SIP based service, or add a femto cell.

By the looks of things I will still be forced to pay for a legacy pstn service.

Also I could not find any reference to the nature of the peak hour backhaul allowance - any views.
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
quote"I am reminded of this news article on this very site - at this point I really beieved there was a possibility of seeing the good upstream products at launch:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3867-bt-fttc-could-see-vdsl2-in-the-uk.html

I just don't see why they can't resurrect that 15 megabit product as an extra extra cost option for those of us who really want it."

Welcome to the world of pre-release BT BSing and hype..... Reality has now dawned, as usual its more carp from BT
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
Im loving this, in fact so much so im gonna say it to whoever it was who at the time banned me for saying uprates will be something rubbish like 2Mb and NO 100Mb service will be available... And to all the fanboys that i annoyed...... Ready "I TOLD YOU SO" HA, Fibre, pfffffttt even Virgin have BT beaten, and my god thats saying something bwahaha. I cant wait for more comedy and see how they advertise this carp or the script they give poor old Kris Marshall to read in TV ads.
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
Im sending them the tosh and pack of lies as we speak not that they need them, i predict quotes such as "SUPER FAST FIBRE".... "FASTEST SPEEDS IN THE UK" "BEST UPLOAD RATE"....... Add a sprinkling about music and video somewhere in the middle (EVEN THOUGH THEY THROTTLE ANYTHING THAT DARE STREAMS CURRENTLY ON ALL SERVICES INCLUDING 21CN) and the pack of lies and convincing of more sheep is complete.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
AFAIK the PSTN service will remain as is and maintained as it is now
Posted by mikeblogs 10 months ago
GMAN 99 - thank you. Much of the 21C design seems to be about maintaining that legacy service and revenue.

Even the indicative bandwidth prices seem tied to the cost of a call if converted into a cost per kilobit sec at peak.
Posted by GMAN99 10 months ago
Your right 21C isn't all about new features (not yet anyway) a lot of the change is for cost saving purposes making the network cheaper and easier to maintain and run. But once everything is IP based adding new services (like SIP) should be straightforward in theory. Also BT have acquired http://www.ribbit.com/ so I expect in the future they could be using some of those features on 21CN
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 10 months ago
Yea Carpet, you keep on rambling!

Back in the real world, if you're using a conection for business? Buy a business connection, with the appropriate upstream...
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
For the 300th time throttling is nothing to do with Openreach. BT Retail who throttle iPlayer don't even buy DSL services from Openreach, they buy Central Plus from BT Wholesale. There will be many ISPs that use FTTC and some will probably not throttle so raising those issues detracts from the central point of the issue - Openreach despite alledgedly offering Bitstream services whose soul purpose is to sell bandwidth artificially crippling upstream on their FTTC services.

21CN is a BT Wholesale network anyway, the issue is Openreach's GEA over FTTC product, end of.
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
quote"Yea Carpet, you keep on rambling!

Back in the real world, if you're using a conection for business? Buy a business connection, with the appropriate upstream..."

Oh the real world, you mean the world where BT thereself said speeds were originally going to be this....
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3867-bt-fttc-could-see-vdsl2-in-the-uk.html
The same BT where the uprates are now not even 50% of what they originally promised. Meanwhile on your planet lalala world... you soon enough forget the false previous promises.
Posted by CARPETBURN 10 months ago
Dixinormous, lets cut the carp and arguements about who does what then and just take it down to bare facts that matter to a consumer, simple question......... Given ALL (YES ALL) BT consumer purchased broadband services thus far have throttles, Do you deny the chances are this service also will are high?
(You may insert waffle to deny it here... Ill wait to the reality of the service comes along and then laugh at you with a reminder pointing to your post) Looking forward to your reply LOL
Posted by mikeblogs 10 months ago
This is very good evidence of the Bandwidth scarcity myth in practice, defining or limiting parameters to create scarcity and justify a price.

Now bandwith has a cost, and I wish we could establish what it might be. This is why I was intrigued by the Ofcom / Analysis Mason report showing backhaul bandwidth going from circa £80 per mbps (bits) per month to £5 mbps over 10 years - all volume related.
Posted by chrysalis 10 months ago
amusing that BT treat downstream as free for all (no premium charging for it) but treat upstream like it is gold.
Posted by chrysalis 10 months ago
andruec ahh I see you changed your view now? GMAN99 probably has the answer as to why we not going to see widespread FTTH deployment soon, BT will always have one eye on their business profits, FTTH would murder the leased line and sdsl markets. I got no issues with drip feeding speeds however its odd that BT are only doing it on the upstream and not the downstream where it would have a far bigger impact.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
CB - let's try this once again this story is nothing to do with BT Retail, purely Openreach trials. There is nothing in this or any other story I've seen on this site about any BT Retail FTTC provided service so it's not relevant to this discussion.
This was an interesting conversation but again you've degraded it to wholesale BT bashing.
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 10 months ago
chrysalis - Even FTTH ADSL would remain utterly technically unsuited to any sort of major business deployment. SDSL, perhaps, but that's never been amazingly important.

Small business services with higher upstream will be avaliable..why is this surprising?

Dixi - It's what he does. Shrug.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
FTTH ADSL and SDSL? FTTH is used all over the place for business connectivity. It can be trivially used for business quality connectivity with similar levels of reliability to dedicated fibre circuits and with similar SLAs and monitoring.

Most implementations of FTTH offer symmetrical or nearly bandwidth, that BT offer the derisory 100/2 on their product is the exception rather than the rule.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
By FTTH I'm talking about the same PON technology that would likely be used in an FTTH widespread build by the way, not a dedicated point to point service. ONTs are smart and OLTs can guarantee bandwidth to certain ONTs to avoid congestion conditions.
Posted by jumpmum 10 months ago
Try looking at http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/pricing/loadProductPriceDetails.do?data=XHIojooRMmWpOFx8XhpwOyUycYeyp0LS%2FM7XrdsmaHfgP3UPszSry78iVKC0gUAr for the details of FTTC service and Price. Including free offer!.
Posted by jumpmum 10 months ago
FTTH is nothing to do with ADSL/SDSL or VDSL.
You have to start looking at PON technology which is more like CableTV system each PON has BW spread across all users on the PON. It can be guarenteed for each user or burst into that remaining but total is total. So 100Mb guaranteed both directions means less that 5 users on a Gb PON, BT is 30 users with 10Mb/2Mb + burst to 30Mb or 100Mb bothway bandwidth + Voice so 370Mb guaranteed + ~550 for contended burst.
Posted by john (Favicon staff member) 10 months ago
Here's a short version of the link to the Openreach pricing page: http://shurl.net/clf
Posted by chrysalis 10 months ago
Dawn_Falcon I would guess any small and medium business currently paying 5 figure+ for a leased line would very quickly change to a FTTH alternative if available, BT and other isps will be aware of this. Its whats been happening in america during their FTTH rollout.
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 10 months ago
Dixi - ...

Yes, that's why I was saying *consumer ADSL* is unsuitable regardless of the medium it's carried across for serious business use, except as a backup or preferable second backup. Sigh.

chrysalis - And they are not ADSL services being offered in America, and neither is the tehnology equivalent - for example, Verizon's FIOS uses PON, is not only a broadband service and is effectively recieving government funding.
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 10 months ago
Sigh, "uses an advanced PON protocol" I mean
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
FiOS uses pretty standard GPON and even some BPON and is indeed triple play.

It is not, however, receiving government funding either literally or effectively at this time. Whether this may change in the future due to the broadband stimulus budgeted we'll see but certainly thus far it's been entirely private money as far as I'm aware.

jumpmum - GPON is 2.4/1.2Gbps split between max 64 premises.
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 10 months ago
The way the tax structure is working for Verizon, while there is not explict funding, there is de-facto funding.

And I believe they're both using 32-person splitting and their own derivatives of common protocols.

Bear in mind that PON's have severely limited upstream bandwidth, especially as the number of connected devices grows...
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Dawn - it's either 2:1, 2.4 down and 1.2 up for straight GPON or symmetrical in the case of GEPON so I'm not sure where you got that there is severely limited upstream bandwidth. BT may have this in their mind with their 100/2 Ebbsfleet farce but it's not the case it's just BT being idiotic. The majority of FTTP deployments throughout the world are symmetrical for good reason.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago

Verizon use standard BPON/GPON straight out of the box for IP services. I understood that they were sticking with 32 premises splits.

Verizon play some games with customers however customers pay this, not the tax payer and it's not directly related to fibre optic deployment but a US telco-wide thing.

BT receive direct tax concessions on business rates (such as the fibre tax) at approximately 2% while others pay up to 10. Where's our FTTP? ;)
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 10 months ago
Dixi - And as more devices get connected, you have issues with packet lag, yea. Or you can accept a lower upstream and make it work more smoothly. And no, tech working on it says they are /not/ using the "standard" because it's simply not optimal.

The tax thing? Sorry, no, it's related to "infrastructure build" which technically every FTTH connection is.

And BT's "concession" might make up for, oh, 1% of the regulation they specifically, as opposed to everyone else, suffers under.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Dawn BT's concession / de-facto funding is alledgedly worth 12bn to them in the last 10 years, ignoring the barriers it puts up to competitors.

Of course Verizon would configure the configurable bits but they haven't reinvented PON technologies.

PON upstream is a TDMA mechanism, it can saturate of course but it's not as vastly efficient as you portray it - perhaps you'd care to explain how Japan and Korea got by with symmetrical 100Mbit being offered over BPON (622/155M)

Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Dawn - given that as you mentioned GPON as standard does 32 homes per split how exactly can you attach loads of devices?

Then there's the issue that G(E)PON is perfectly capable of dynamic upstream burst allocation depending on demand and SLAs.

Struggling to find a Verizon customer who sees this serialisation your mentioned, or NTT, or..

http://tinyurl.com/qn8n39
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 10 months ago
As I said, it's a tiny fraction of the costs to them from their regulatory burden.

And right, you need extensive management of upstream capacity because of the nature of PON networks. I'd rather money was spent on FTTC now, and on an active FTTH network in the future where such extensive management isn't necessary, because it either restricts upstream bandwidth or kills latency...
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Again Dawn why do you need this extensive management, I'd welcome a fully technical and strenuously proven argument as to why upstream on PON is such an issue.
I have some (limited) exposure to PON and have never seen massive upstream issues, the crunch point on the networks for both latency and bandwidth being almost without exception backhaul from OLT, not individual PONs, and even where an individual PON segment was saturated upstream the OLT handled management between ONTs just fine. No 'extensive' management, a bit of OLT config.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
Just as a reminder even the areas where BT are releasing FTTP are not P2P fibre but PON. I don't see any reason why BT (the only really viable operator due to business rates) would begin a P2P deployment at this time.

ITU-T G.983.4 - check it out, dynamic bandwidth management, first produced 2001 and a part of standard OLT design for a while.

In short no excuse on PON or otherwise for 100/2-like services.
Posted by Dixinormous 10 months ago
A couple of links, one from NTT discussing PON, another showing the DBA mechanisms that exist, all of course provider tweakable or usable with pre-programmed systems:

http://tinyurl.com/mraumd
http://tinyurl.com/lnrbuc

Seems to me that OLTs have had the capacity to manage upstream oversubscription by 4x and upwards making 100Mbit upstreams for all 32 customers on a PON doable and latency stable and well below DSL or cable levels even if all 32 were to attempt to saturate simultaneously.
Posted by bezuk 9 months ago
This discussion about PON is a bit technical for me, so I'll just quickly go back to a point that Dixi raised in the very first comment...

"so they can charge more for the 10 and 15Mbit variants as business products."

Is there any indication that they intend to do this, even at "business prices"? I was equating 2Mb to the Max 448k ADSL1 product and 5Mb to the Max Premium/Office 832k ADSL1 product.
Posted by chrysalis 9 months ago
dixi perhaps BT are scared that if they rolled out a 100/100 consumer service the precious entertainment industry would sue them for aiding the 120 billion annual loss :)
Posted by Dixinormous 9 months ago
I'm unsure now bezuk, I understood that there would be 20/5, 30/10 and 40/15 products from a news story a while ago, though we have to wonder now.
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 9 months ago
Dixi - The article *you* linked described the immense technical runarround required for upload on PON's, making my point quite nicely.

In practice, there's no excuse in wasting cash n a full FTTH PON network, FTTC for the moment and FTTH active optical when practical is far, far more future-proof.
Posted by Dixinormous 9 months ago
How is it anything of a technical run around for operators, OLT manufacturers perhaps but that's like saying DOCSIS upstreams are a run around for cable operators.

You should speak with BT given that they are deploying this technology to greenfield sites.

Agreed active is more future-proof, but then PON is far more future-proof than FTTC. Total waste of money and appauling for the environment.
Posted by Somerset 9 months ago
Unfortunately I suspect our verbally challenged friend has been denied the ability to help with this discussion.
Posted by chrysalis 9 months ago
if we talking about technical runaround, I think anything supplied by BT is that anyway, given that they tend to take simple products and break them by applying things like profiling. I would also like to know how FTTC is more future proof than FTTH, thats an interesting comment I have never heard anyone say before.
Posted by bezuk 9 months ago
Another point raised by a poster whose name I cannot remember when I first started moaning about BT FTTC upstream in the Entanet forum (can't locate the post) is that back in the days when the Max spec was being drawn up, BT were quite happy to go with the 832k upstream for everyone but the ISPs (Plusnet foremost among them) begged them to cripple it to 448k.

True or not I have no idea, and nor do I recall what that poster gave as the ISPs' reasons for doing so, but I suppose it is possible.
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 9 months ago
Dixi - The costs in deploying FTTH/PON and the amount of roadwork required mean that you're looking at a minimum of several decades before the infrastructure can be changed again. With the current rate of technological advance, bad idea.

FTTC is far, far lower impact and will allow far faster services. Even if you don't like BT's initial speeds, I'd point out that they can raise those over time on a FTTC network.

(And sorry, the actual upstream is a MAJOR deployment issue and nobody is finding the stock soloutions successful!)
Posted by Dixinormous 9 months ago
Again Dawn I'd appreciate some links to these upstream issues. Some citations would be good, not that I don't trust you but evidence would be nice. Regardless it's irrelevant to BT's farcical 2Mbit upstream on PON.

BT's FTTC speeds are low purely due to commercial decisions and nothing at all to do with the technical side of things. It's likewise a pointless waste of money given how quickly things do change. For a project due to deploy 2010 - 2012 commercially that it doesn't even match what VM deliver now is laughable.
Posted by Dixinormous 9 months ago
Why would a PON to P2P upgrade require roadworks given how slender fibres are? Would the extra 32 fibres to each PON splitter require extra ducting given how much space copper consumes?
Posted by Somerset 9 months ago
Dixi - fibres have to be covered by something!
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 9 months ago
Dixi - The link YOU gave explains them, even.

And VM don't deliver anything like their stated values to the majority of their users, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to laugh at that one.

You might not like BT's starting upstream, but there's still plenty of scope for it to rise inside a FTTC setup.
Posted by Dixinormous 9 months ago
Somerset - of course, but I was thinking more of ducting space an active solution requires over a PON solution. I'm still very big on P2P solutions though and not a huge fan of PON by any means.

Dawn - I still don't get your point and I guess won't, I linked a technical solution to the potential issues, and a more specific solution that allows overbooking. To me that's problem solved but will agree to disagree.

Not going to get into the VM discussion but has been a good one! :)
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