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[waltergmw]

Gentlefolk,

I expect there will be some happy (and very relieved) bunnies in this part of Oxfordshire.

http://www.appletonbroadband.co.uk/home/

Kind regards,
Walter

[CurlyWhirly]

I'm glad I ditched BT years ago !

[c6em]

The location is another ideal one for this sort of standalone project - like Hambledon before.
It is a compact hamlet/village making the number of properties passed/metre run of fibre length high.
The compactness also means no houses on the outskirts outraged/disgusted that they are being passed by and not included.
Although it is fed from the "Cumnor Exchange", that exchange is actually not in Cumnor at all but at the bottom of Cumnor Hill in Botley(outskirts of Oxford) .....so this hamlet is indeed a very long way from the exchange.
As a result they are also likely to get a high takeup as the ADSL speed is so dire.

What will be interesting is what happens in say 5 years+ time when the rest of the UK is all on FTTC via lots of different ISP's. Will the likes of Appleton be a bit 'locked in' to the fibre supplier with no options to choose other suppliers

[waltergmw]

@ c6em,

Crystal balls would indeed be very useful if they existed !

However I think I can confidently predict even now that there are many who would be overjoyed to escape the monopolistic antics of the incumbent as described here (including pictures) -

http://www.ewhurst-broadband.org.uk/?p=2751#comment-405

Kind regards,
Walter

PS Appleton residents also have the benefit of far more reliable and much faster symmetric services.

_______________________________________________________________________________________
SUMMARY

On 7th July 2012 BT Openreach had to replace a 20 pr overhead cable span but were incapable of reconnecting 12 wires and testing them. This resulted in two phone and broadband services lost and left completely unconnected in a lash up polythene bag hung on a pole allowing rain to enter the bag. The total disconnections continued for 25 and 28 days respectively. After that, two further engineer visits were required to reduce the line noise. Despite the involvement of Ian Livingston by an independent international specialist, in addition to the repair and complaints dialogues, BT Openreach engineers weren’t allowed to reconnect both services at the same time ! BT Retail’s Consumer repair complaints team last wrote on 28 August 2012 and the matter is not permanently resolved over two months later.

The individual residents were left to the mercies of the Indian call centre(s) to solve their disconnections themselves. At least 6 faults were raised and 4 cleared down (Very good Sir - more brownie points for our call centre !) as the lines naturally tested clear. After the dial tone was restored one line had a further two BT visits to reduce the line noise.

We were informed that BT Openreach were to replace the temporary lash up with a permanent solution on Sunday 9th September but they failed to arrive and the 6 pairs (including a rapid response telemetry control line to Thames Water plant) remain without any spares. The poles have not been re-inspected so a platform lift and traffic lights are required when the next fault occurs. Around an extra £10 would have allowed for two 4 pair cables providing 2 essential spares accessible at ground level.

[waltergmw]

Hello everybody,

I've just spotted the speed test in the second link below from Appleton to Amsterdam. I'm quite surprised that the tester was capable of recording such speeds.

http://www.gigaclear.com/what-is-it/


http://youtu.be/_6TFt72Wm0s

Kind regards,
Walter

[c6em]

principally because the system is not yet "live"
so it's a special test - well, well, who'd have guessed that!.

[waltergmw]

@c6em,

Sour grapes won't disguise a symmetric service, and if you look at their specifications you will note that the high figures are burst rates and not guaranteed in any case.
I would be quite happy now for a quarter of those speeds, having just downloaded some substantial systems upgrades.
I would also be relieved that such a sustainable infrastructure is so much better "Than one of the worst mistakes humanity has made**"

** Peter Cochrane, former BT CTO, in evidence to HoL enquiry.

Kind regards,
Walter

[kitz]

>>> I'm quite surprised that the tester was capable

thats one to bear in mind then, since some of the local ones on speedtest.net cant cope with my current upstream.

>>>  you will note that the high figures are burst rates and not guaranteed in any case

In a way I can see what c6em is getting at, if you just look at that one page link - without doing any further research,  then it could be construed as misleading.

Unfortunately that page does not make it clear that the gb backlink will be shared between other users,  once you get a few people connected then those speeds arent going to be seen. Even on other pages it just mentions "bursting at 1Gbps" and I found it hard to find mention of anticipated speeds based on contention.

When I did find it I notice it says "10+10Mbps reserved".  It would be interesting to know how they are reserving the bandwidth, if they are just using contention ratios (100 users per gb backlink) without some sort of specialist traffic management,  then real-time speeds could be much less than this.  For example if you have a neighbour with 3 teenage kids using p2p they would eat into that link much more than someone streaming a HD movie, and streaming is first to see the effects of latency :/

Dont get me wrong, I think its absolutely fantastic that companies set up to do this sort of thing :clap2:, I just dont want people being mislead.  About 8 yrs ago a company set up around here (Wyreless broadband) to provide broadband to an estate that couldnt get adsl due to TPON or aluminium (cant recall which now as we had one estate TPON and the other alum).  Anyhow Wyreless bought a dedicated symmetric link which was then shared between the number of subscribing households on a contention ratio basis.    Unfortunately it didnt take long before the link became saturated and it was impossible to attain anywhere near even the reserved bandwidth.  Certain internet protocols are more 'greedy' than others and can grab more than their share, when it comes to contention.

Granted a Gb link has more bandwidth to play with than the old dedicated links of old, but its still something that should be born in mind.  Good luck residents of Appleton.  Well done 

[gallafent]

Although it is fed from the "Cumnor Exchange", that exchange is actually not in Cumnor at all but at the bottom of Cumnor Hill in Botley(outskirts of Oxford) .....so this hamlet is indeed a very long way from the exchange.

Cumnor exchange is in fact at the top of Cumnor Hill: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/SMCNR … but yes, that's some distance from Appleton!