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Author Topic: Will fibre eliminate ADSL faults?  (Read 2866 times)

holmbase

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Will fibre eliminate ADSL faults?
« on: September 02, 2012, 08:46:46 PM »

Hi

I have been on O2 LLU for 2.5 years and been very happy. £9.50 per month for unlimited usage and a very steady sync speed of 5.2-5.8mbps. This contrasts with my early years of BT-based broadband (Powernet, Freedom2Surf and AAISP) where I had intermittent services and sync rates rarely exceeding 4.5mbps. All in all I have been a happy punter.

In this last week, speeds have dropped by 40% which looks very much like the recurrence of problems from the past. For instance, several years ago, it took about 18 months to find a faulty line card in the exchange, and recent events are reminiscent of that. My guess is that something in the PCP or exchange has been damaged or knocked, as Openreach have been beetling around recently, presumably provisioning fibre services. The irritating thing is that O2 refuse to investigate because the lower line speed is "within tolerance". So unless whoever affected my line carries out an equal and opposite act, I may well be stuck with 40% lower speeds.

Therefore I am kind of pushed towards fibre.

I am concerned though that I might move to a fibre service and carry over a latent fault, which will then affect my fibre service as well. In provisioning  fibre, do the engineers check and repair/move/adjust all my line connections (house, PCP, exchange) - thus eliminating faulty connections as the source of problems? Leaving only (presumably) the quality of the cable from PCP to home as the source of connection problems?

Thanks in advance.

John
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Ixel

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Re: Will fibre eliminate ADSL faults?
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2012, 08:51:45 PM »

From what I understand the engineer will go to your local street (PCP) cabinet, filter out the DSL signal from the exchange on your line and then connect you up to the fibre cabinet. If there's a problem with the DSLAM you're connected to, at the exchange, or a problem somewhere on the copper/ali between you and the exchange then the problem should disappear, but if it's not either then the problem may remain.

Source: BT Business Infinity installation and chat to engineer who installed it.

Hope that's helpful, I'm sure someone will correct me on something though so wait for more replies :P.
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Bald_Eagle1

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Re: Will fibre eliminate ADSL faults?
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2012, 10:40:04 PM »

FTTC installations eliminate all the copper cabling from the exchange to the cabinet as it is replaced by fibre.

In my case, the vast majority of my ADSL connection was from the exchange to the cabinet.

On switching to FTTC, around 4.3km of copper from the exchange was eliminated.
I am up to 1km from the cabinet, so my FTTC sync speeds are not fantastic (now around 28Mb or so).

I did experience quite a few connection issues for around 11 months (finally resolved in May), which really confirms that the copper between me & the cabinet was the "problem".
So, yes, an existing defect COULD be carried over.

Installation engineers/technicians do carry out various tests & most of them will indeed rectify "obvious" existing faults.
However, fault threshold speeds for FTTC services are ridiculously low (12Mb or 15Mb for an "up to" 40Mb service) that it is really difficult to prove that any given connection is underperforming ("below acceptable limits") & potentially "faulty".

What FTTC speed estimates have you obtained to date? They are USUALLY fairly conservative.

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holmbase

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Re: Will fibre eliminate ADSL faults?
« Reply #3 on: September 03, 2012, 08:26:55 AM »

Hi Bald Eagle

My speed estimates have remained pretty much the same since the checker started working: 72.5mbps down/20mbps up.

So I'm hoping for good things but this fault - which I have to concede may also be noise on the line to the cabinet - worries me slightly.

John
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Bald_Eagle1

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Re: Will fibre eliminate ADSL faults?
« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2012, 09:41:52 PM »

Your speed estimates suggest that you are not too far from the cabinet at all.

Do you have any idea how far your cabinet is from the exchange itself?

If it is a long way from the exchange, ADSL signals will be fairly weak by the time they reach the cabinet, so the power on your FTTC/VDSL2 connection may be automatically turned down a notch or two to avoid it causing crosstalk onto the nearby ADSL signals.

Would you be completely gutted to achieve any stable but lower speed connection than 72.5Mb, or would say 30Mb or more increase on your current connection speed be seen as a massive improvement?

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holmbase

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Re: Will fibre eliminate ADSL faults?
« Reply #5 on: September 03, 2012, 10:32:00 PM »

I think the line length is about 3.8km.

30Mb would be fine from where I am today but then.........I would feel somewhat cheated if I got less than half the estimated speed. Certanly that speed, if stable, would meet our needs.

I guess the real question is how that speed would develop as more people move to fibre. Presumably if everyone on the cabinet was on fibre, there would be no need to reduce the power and speeds would increase?
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