Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => FTTP Rollout => Topic started by: Weaver on October 31, 2021, 10:56:19 PM
-
We’ve discussed this before and we’ve talked a bit about R100. Is there anything I can do to get gigabit-capable FTTP installed here? Somewhat to the north of IV49 9BN, which is No. 6, quite a way south, whereas I am at Torr Gorm, the first, northernmost house in Heasta. I’ll have to wait at least five years for FTTP and then probably nothing will happen at the end of that; we’ll all just still be left out.
Any suggestions about politics, pressure, money I could throw at it, but don’t have ?
-
The R100 checker shows this for properties in your postcode.
A new superfast connection is being built in your area. It's part of the Scottish Government’s broadband improvement scheme.
Your connection will be delivered after the end of 2021. Based on the current engineering schedule your address is in scope to receive its superfast connection in 2025.
The new connection will mean your address can get faster internet speeds. That’ll make it easier to videocall loved ones, watch shows online, work from home, and more – without any hiccups.
What about between now and then?
You may be able to get a one-off £400 voucher from the Scottish Government. You will have to engage a provider to apply for this funding on your behalf by 31 December 2021.
This voucher can be used for the cost of fitting a faster commercial broadband supply in the meantime. Think of this as a temporary way to speed things up until the permanent connection is up and running.
Options might include things like satellite broadband, 4G, fixed wireless and more.
OpenReach show your area is in plans to receive an Ultrafast full fibre connection.
You have zero hope of an Alt-Net deploying to you. Putting pressure on anyone is unlikely to make any difference at all. With such a remote location your only hope is a publicly subsidised OpenReach connection.
FTTPoD is an option as 1 of your lines shows connected to an FTTC cabinet.
That would be 5 or 6 figures to install (or even 7 figures for the highest quotes).
-
Perhaps you could use the £400 voucher to buy a decent 4G modem or maybe subsidise a satellite connection?
-
Latest comments from government say that 0.3% of premises are considered 'very hard to reach' and work is ongoing to find solutions.
When you're talking the kind of money it would take I don't think political pressure will get there. Even a leased line would have huge excess construction costs.
-
A 4g connection would still be a noteworthy upgrade for you Weaver.
Maybe also keep the ADSL as a backup, and do some fancy routing so all multimedia goes over the 4g, and simple content like this site goes over the ADSL.
-
Would Starlink be a viable option when/if its available? The satellites don't appear to go over the north of Scotland yet but I don't know if that means you can't get it?
-
Wouldn't Starlink be WORSE than 4G though? It only really makes sense if you don't have mobile coverage.
-
From what I can see, Weaver only has one mobile network available and that is unlikely to give 4G indoors.
Starlink will allow a pre-order and says for his locationStarlink is targeting coverage in your area in 2022. You will receive a notification once your Starlink is ready to ship.
-
From what I can see, Weaver only has one mobile network available and that is unlikely to give 4G indoors.
Starlink will allow a pre-order and says for his location
You don't get Starlink "indoors" either. ;)
-
The comment about 4G indoors was more an indication of the likely speed (if you can get it indoors, an external antenna should give excellent speeds). As it's not good indoors, even with an external antenna, speed may not be that great.
-
You don't get Starlink "indoors" either. ;)
No difference to FTTC - it needs wire to get it from the cabinet to inside my house! :P
-
From what I can see, Weaver only has one mobile network available and that is unlikely to give 4G indoors.
Ofcom's checker (https://checker.ofcom.org.uk/en-gb/mobile-coverage) suggests outdoor 4G coverage with EE and Three, but I don't know how accurate it is as Three's own checker says only 3G coverage.
-
If you go to cellmapper.net not many people have cellmapped where Weaver is, but the local mast are shared by EE and 3, and only seems to Broadcast on Bands 3 and 20
EE
https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=234&MNC=30&type=LTE&latitude=57.1735944665964&longitude=-5.8515138562171165
3
https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=234&MNC=20&type=LTE&latitude=57.1735944665964&longitude=-5.8515138562171165
O2
https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=234&MNC=10&type=LTE&latitude=57.1735944665964&longitude=-5.8515138562171165
Vodafone
https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=234&MNC=15&type=LTE&latitude=57.1735944665964&longitude=-5.8515138562171165
I'm not sure if Weaver owns an android handset to update the above with slightly better results.
-
My original question was about FTTP only, and I was interested in the politics of R100 and whether or not it is serious now things may have moved on a little.
4G (true) modems are very interesting, as is Starlink but both of those deserve threads of their own.
-
It's hard to see any way in which you will get FTTP in the next few years (unless you shell out £k's) which is why many of us think you'd be far better off looking at the alternatives.
-
My original question was about FTTP only, and I was interested in the politics of R100 and whether or not it is serious now things may have moved on a little.
My only statement will be .... yes, it has become a very serious workstream of ours. :)
-
.... yes, it has become a very serious workstream of ours. :)
It's no great secret to say that B*Sheep is having trouble in training the new, local to Skye, recruits in creating ducts, in the underlying limestone, that run in sensible directions. The wee beasties, the haggis, can chew through anything but for those who think that herding of cats is difficult just wait until you try to get a haggis to cooperate! :D :angel:
-
My original question was about FTTP only, and I was interested in the politics of R100 and whether or not it is serious now things may have moved on a little.
4G (true) modems are very interesting, as is Starlink but both of those deserve threads of their own.
Extremely unlikely. The costs are huge. Unless R100 has you covered no chance. Have a look at the Openreach price list for construction and think about getting to your nearest property from you.
-
It's no great secret to say that B*Sheep is having trouble in training the new, local to Skye, recruits in creating ducts, in the underlying limestone, that run in sensible directions.
Limestone on Skye?
-
It's no great secret to say that B*Sheep is having trouble in training the new, local to Skye, recruits in creating ducts, in the underlying limestone, that run in sensible directions. The wee beasties, the haggis, can chew through anything but for those who think that herding of cats is difficult just wait until you try to get a haggis to cooperate! :D :angel:
Ha ha - I've given up with those feral haggis beggars, far easier to get the neeps and tatties to conform !! ;D
On a serious note, as I say ... the R100 programme has joined our other programmes front and centre. We had an all-hands call just the other week explaining as much, underpinned with the emphasis on just exactly how challenging these places will be !!
Whether or not Weaver's own locality ends up within the programme, I wouldn't know ?? But I can say, it certainly isn't a lip-service, will never happen 'thang'. :)
-
Limestone on Skye?
Yes. Or so I was told when discussing the hardness of the water from the bore-hole.
-
The OR reply suggests that we all get together and shell out a fortune as a group for something that others, say in Harrapul or in Breacais, don’t have to pay extra for. Community Fibre.
There are a lot of houses in Heasta now, I forget how many. But 10G or more divided by n should be useful if it happens.
I’m not after enormous amounts of downstream speed just for the hell of it. I want my choice of ISP and all the rich services that come with that, I want fabulous reliability, which I have now already. Right now, line #2 is a very sick puppy so has been turned off all week, but everything else sails along and no one notices. I can still do Zoom calls with only two lines up.
If I had the money, I would get FTTPoD or even a leased line and share it with my neighbours, but I would need a lot of muscle power to run fibre down through the village. (About 1 km, very roughly, down to the shore from my house, which is the highest, northernmost dwelling.) But then that would surely be wasting my money given that at some future date, if I had only been patient for another x years, then I would have presumably got fibre for free when PSTN was retired altogether?
It would be madness to run fibre just for myself and not share it, surely?
Doesn’t help me, but I note with interest that the ISP Bogons has run fibre for locals in the Highlands, in Perthshire, around Both Chuidir, (extremely unhelpfully) anglicised as "Balqu(h)idder". Like B4RN. But Bogons-type things go against my freedom of choice of ISP thing. I wonder how they hook it up to BT. Perhaps they don't. They perhaps have a leased line, point to point, and go into an Internet Exchange. I can’t remember.
I don’t understand the earlier comment about ‘one line going via an FTTC cabinet’. FTTC is 3.5 miles away roughly. My line #2 iirc was installed via a green cab, a cab belonging to a pair, but of course it won’t be the FTTC one in that pair it will be the PCP one (only), no? That was at that time the fourth and latest line, chronologically. (A & A designation: cwcc@a.2.)
It’s good that Black Sheep says that R100 is something real, to some extent. If they don’t do the ‘hard to reach’ houses/villages, then they’ll end up missing out a huge chunk of the target folk.
One of my neighbours came around for a céilidh tonight and we had a serious blether. I’m told there are 27 or 28 (I forget which) houses in Heasta now. I would have guessed 20, shows what I know. There will surely, no?, come a point when we become a significant small community which is to be interconnected to other communities and it hopefully won’t be about the mindset of running long connections to individual single properties any more. For 450 Mbps downstream minimum, times 27 properties, that’s, what, ~12 Gbs, so a 10 Gbps link isn’t quite enough if they’re serious about the minimum downstream guarantee. Upstream is equally important for me.
-
The downstream guarantee isn't committed bandwidth it's based on statistical contention. I live in a new build estate where everyone is on FTTP, 2.4G split 32 ways, and never see any visible contention.
Until the next big thing application comes along a few Mbps per customer is fine, leaving loads of capacity on GPON for burst.
-
I don’t understand the earlier comment about ‘one line going via an FTTC cabinet’. FTTC is 3.5 miles away roughly. My line #2 iirc was installed via a green cab, a cab belonging to a pair, but of course it won’t be the FTTC one in that pair it will be the PCP one (only), no? That was at that time the fourth and latest line, chronologically. (A & A designation: cwcc@a.2.)
FTTPoD (the bespoke, build fibre to my door for a lot of money product) is only available to properties that are connected to a fibre enabled PCP, even if that cabinet is too fast away to receive service.
1 of your 4 (*now 3) lines does exactly that.
-
FTTC availability may in future no longer be a requirement to be able order FTTPoD see the item in the news section of the forum. Doesn't make it any cheaper though. :no:https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,26479.0.html (https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,26479.0.html)
-
https://infralink.scottishfuturestrust.org.uk/
The consultation is open until 28th January 2022 and can be found on the Infralink website, along with the standardised leases and payment guidance. All of this could help to support both the commercial 5G rollout, and the new £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) industry project, which aims to boost geographic 4G mobile coverage of the UK to 95% by 2026
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/11/consultation-on-new-tools-to-help-telecoms-negotiations-in-scotland.html
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/06/gov-updates-on-uk-4g-shared-rural-network-rollout-progress.html
-
The OR reply suggests that we all get together and shell out a fortune as a group for something that others, say in Harrapul or in Breacais, don’t have to pay extra for. Community Fibre.
As has been said, you don't need to do anything but wait. The R100 checker says that Heasta is in scope for faster speeds.
Lot 1 (North Scotland and the Highlands) will cover around 59,000 properties at a cost of £655m
-
You want a faster connection but you're not prepared to compromise on ISP, yet it's very clear it's going to be a long time, if ever before you can get a faster connection via A&A. Meanwhile your wife and her guests suffer on an extremely slow connection. As mentioned before, there are potentially faster options, such as 4G and Starlink (if that covers your location), sometimes you have to compromise.
-
That's a fair shout from Ronski to be honest .... a bit like broadstairs with his issue, that could also be resolved quite easily .... sometimes you just have to compromise, otherwise it comes over as just putting barriers up for the sake of it.
-
My original question was about FTTP only, and I was interested in the politics of R100 and whether or not it is serious now things may have moved on a little.
4G (true) modems are very interesting, as is Starlink but both of those deserve threads of their own.
-
You want a faster connection but you're not prepared to compromise on ISP, yet it's very clear it's going to be a long time, if ever before you can get a faster connection via A&A.
While I agree, even if FTTP speeds were already available to Weaver now, A&A don't offer the same speeds as other ISPs - currently limiting their download speeds to 160Mbps
-
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not about speed, solely. Reliability is crucial, and top priority. That currently excludes 4G. I couldn’t care less about the 160 Mbps thing, as that’s so much faster than I need, probably 10 times faster than I need. Good point about the her guests thing. We imagined originally that we were going to do that, and I bought a lot of expensive hardware, but as it turned out, Janet doesn’t want to have to administer it, it doesn’t make any money, only costs some money, and if we change our minds and do decide to go for it we would offer guests a WLAN connected to 4G. And because that keeps them off our own LAN we don’t have any worries about security, which has already been dealt with however, and concerns about guests’ network-hogging, which would have to be dealt with by rate-limiting if we were going to have only one subnet. So we can change our minds and the lowest risk option is 4G-to-WLAN. The final thing is that guests never ask about internet connections; they all have mobile phones, there’s good 4G and if they have the wrong SIM then they can get the right SIMs locally at low cost. Perhaps they don’t ask about internet because they want to get away from all that.
I understand Black Sheep’s point and agree. I am putting up barriers in a way, but not for the sake of it. I’d be happy with say Zen, and did indeed use them for a year, but switched to AA only, rather than running both ISPs because AA had a far richer range of services and much more comprehensive support. The support I get from AA is hugely important for three reasons: firstly I have a lot of faults, which will go away in the far distant future one day; secondly I get support that is more than just ISP support as they support my Firebrick FB2900 to a fantastic extent; thirdly I’m not with-it, whereas you all are 100% compos mentis but I’m exhausted and full of pain drugs half the time, so I have huge needs which don’t apply to you.
Remember points 2 and 3: AA is more than just an ISP and I’m not ‘normal’ whereas you are. So I hope that makes sense. If I’m ever away in hospital and out of it I know that Janet can just call AA about anything and it’s always their problem, with no buck-passing. And probably I’ll ask them to supply my next WLAN hardware so I can get free config and free support too. AA is fantastic for disabled users, and for people such as me and my wife who are both telephone-phobic: can always do IRC/SMS/email instead.
You all on the other hand find download speed very very important, don’t have many faults, don’t have problems you can’t fix/diagnose yourself because of your unusually high expertise and only want ISP support and no other facilities. Don’t care about geeky things like IPv4 blocks and domain name definitions (can get latter from DNS hosting companies).
I’m now moving all my important domain names to AA after I screwed up, in a drug-addled state, and missed a renewal allowing an evildoer to grab the domain tlachd.com (iirc) for which I had to apologies to my wife in horrible embarrassment at having let her down. With AA’s domain hosting, you can never forget a renewal because they take care of it all for you and just bill you for it. It’s a bit expensive but the 100% reliability is crucial so definitely worth the money. I seem to remember that some employee of Coca-Cola screwed up a domain renewal of maybe (guessing) cocacola.de or something (I really have no idea!) and a student lad took it over. Presumably someone got the sack. Luckily my wife didn’t sack me.
One more point. You only ever ‘see’ me on my good days. When I’m not with it or in bad pain I can’t write to you all. Like earlier tonight when my neighbour came round to give me morphine at 01:00, because Janet is currently in hospital. I now feel well enough to write this post. So it might appear that I’m better than I actually am. I have this problem with some NHS people.
> is only available to properties that are connected to a fibre enabled PCP, even if that cabinet is too fast away to receive service.
Thanks, I didn’t know that. And I don’t understand PCPs clearly. I didn’t know fibre comes anywhere near them. I thought they were a copper-only thing that would go when PSTN goes, but what do I know, don’t know where I got that idea from.
-
> Limestone in Skye?
Burakkucat is quite correct. We have a layer of limestone pavement visible right by the road, and below our house. The layer then runs under our house and up into the mountain Beinn nan Càrn. That’s where our water now comes from.
> as has been said, you don't need to do anything but wait. The R100 checker says that Heasta is in scope for faster speeds.
Many thanks for that. That’s the question I wanted an answer to in my original post and is thoroughly on topic. This thread was supposed to be confined to FTTP or politics. Wonder where the checker is, will Google it. I don’t mind waiting, have waited 20 years already. (Remember, you all are not the same shape as me. :-) )
> A&A don't offer the same speeds as other ISPs - currently limiting their download speeds to 160Mbps
That’s simply wrong. A&A will happily sell you a 1 Gbps symmetric or iirc 10 Gbps connection; it would be a leased line and cost a terrifying amount.
-
Couple of things about the Superfast Scotland R100 program and checker.
Firstly I don't think there is any commitment that particular premises or areas will definitely be served with FTTP. All they're promising is a "Superfast" connection, meaning one with at least a 30meg download speed. I can see this within my local area where if I check my address it says "Your connection will be delivered after the end of 2021. Based on the current engineering schedule your address is in scope to receive its superfast connection in 2025." However if I check an address served by our exchange but within FTTC range it tells me a Superfast connection is already available.
The second thing, and this may be me being cynical, is that I am sure there are loopholes allowing them to miss off individual premises. Checking various premises within some local exchanges I note that the R100 checker always gives the exact same date for all. That suggests to me that the date is the date of planned exchange works, and not confirmation that the actual address will be connected. I have asked a few people to clarify, but not received an answer.
So given these points I think there's a high risk that come 2025 or whatever date is promised then some people will not be connected fibre but will simply be offered 30meg satellite to tick the R100 box.
-
That’s exactly what I feared. By that technique, the whole country is already "done" right now. No need for BTOR to spend billions then. I’d like to find out if they can be called out on this loophole.
-
Wonder where the checker is, will Google it.
Missed that, the Superfast Scotland checker is ..
https://www.scotlandsuperfast.com/how-can-i-get-it/check-my-address/
-
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not about speed, solely. Reliability is crucial, and top priority. That currently excludes 4G.
Why does that exclude 4G?
My 4G speeds vary quite a bit but reliability and uptime is excellent
-
Couple of things about the Superfast Scotland R100 program and checker.
Firstly I don't think there is any commitment that particular premises or areas will definitely be served with FTTP. All they're promising is a "Superfast" connection, meaning one with at least a 30meg download speed. I can see this within my local area where if I check my address it says "Your connection will be delivered after the end of 2021. Based on the current engineering schedule your address is in scope to receive its superfast connection in 2025." However if I check an address served by our exchange but within FTTC range it tells me a Superfast connection is already available.
The second thing, and this may be me being cynical, is that I am sure there are loopholes allowing them to miss off individual premises. Checking various premises within some local exchanges I note that the R100 checker always gives the exact same date for all. That suggests to me that the date is the date of planned exchange works, and not confirmation that the actual address will be connected. I have asked a few people to clarify, but not received an answer.
So given these points I think there's a high risk that come 2025 or whatever date is promised then some people will not be connected fibre but will simply be offered 30meg satellite to tick the R100 box.
Lot1 (north Scotland, Weavers area) was originally intended to be 86% FTTP is now planned to be 100% FTTP
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/progress-update-on-north-scotlands-r100-broadband-rollout.html
1. Precisely how many premises will be covered under LOT 1?
The contract we have signed with BT is expected to deliver to 59,276 premises. The total number of premises connected as a result of the contract may vary however due to matters beyond our control. For example if a property is demolished prior to a superfast connection being delivered it may be removed from the R100 Lot 1 (North) contract build plan.
2. What proportion of the LOT 1 deployment will be FTTP?
All of the R100 North contract build will be fibre to the premises (FTTP).
3. Is the completion date for LOT 1 still by the end of 2026?
We expect build in the R100 Lot 1 (North) contract to be completed during the financial year 2026/27.
That doesn't mean all properties will be covered. It does however mean all properties done by OpenReach will be 100% FTTP.
Lot3 is also intended to be 100% FTTP.
-
The second thing, and this may be me being cynical, is that I am sure there are loopholes allowing them to miss off individual premises. Checking various premises within some local exchanges I note that the R100 checker always gives the exact same date for all.
Not sure if it's a loophole - R100 only mentions superfast so zero commitment to any technology. Potentially more of an oversight.
The cost of delivering FTTP to Heasta will be astronomical. The cost of delivering it just to Weaver will be huge. R100 doesn't have an unlimited amount of money and Openreach, spending as they are 250-350GBP per premises passed, are going to balk at a kilometre+ run to serve one property with presumably a similar distance to the next one. Whether R100 will have the budget to provide the level of subsidy required no idea. Weaver is going to be in that 0.3% that are most challenging, no question.
EDIT: That said it could be worse. If Weaver were a long way from other premises I'd be more concerned. If the poles are viable for fibre it's doable. It's not a kilometre and there are poles. I guess a full survey is going to need to be done - Openreach have a premises count to cover and a budget to do it with, not ubiquitous coverage.
-
.. are going to balk at a kilometre+ run to serve one property with presumably a similar distance to the next one.
That's more or less our situation. From the pole at the public road it's around 900m to us with a 250m or so branch to another house. Beyond us it's another 400m to the final property.
-
Not sure if it's a loophole - R100 only mentions superfast so zero commitment to any technology. Potentially more of an oversight.
Maybe "loophole" is the wrong word, but it would seem contradictory to advertise that something will be available in 2025 (in this case), then when 2025 comes round to just offer a a service that's already available today.
-
Reformed is completely wrong. :-) Have a dig and find my earlier posts about my own location, with pics. There are 27 houses in our village and fibre is not to me, it’s to all 27, so that cost is divided down by 27, a not insignificant factor. I’m right on the edge of my village of Heasta (north of, not at, IV49 9BN) not separated from it.
Secondly, the whole of the Gàidhealtachd Highlands is exactly like this ie not the gallda ie. non-Gàidhealach east coast and far south. Take a close look at a detailed OS map. If they’re going to be serious and not lie about the commitment that J0hn so helpfully quoted (thank you so much J0hn!) then they have to spend what it costs because otherwise they won’t be doing anyone outside the few major towns and large villages near main roads and there would be a riot.
-
When you note I'm talking about relative to £300 per premises passed, the cost for covering mostly terraces and semis, not so much. 27 properties is a very small area.
I actually stalked you on Streetview :)
Hopefully be okay. Very much depends on cost of getting the fibre to the village in the first place as each property won't be cheap.
The £10k per property subsidy might get it there. Everything crossed.
-
> I actually stalked you on Streetview :)
Good for you! Burakkucat has done the same and we’ve talked about my location. I did the same in an old thread where I described my line.
I understand that 27 properties is a very small area but the whole of the Western Highlands and the Hebrides inner and outer are like this, Muile less so as there were ‘farms’ set up in some places and the setup isn’t quite the same. Here we don’t have farms, just ‘crofting townships’ ie small villages everywhere. Many villages are harder to reach, take our neighbours to the west, Torran - similar to us - and then Ealaghol which is a far longer run. Here in Heasta we have two hospital doctors, other NHS workers, people who work from home on horrible internet connections and connect to destinations in England, people who work at home sometimes and reach servers at smo.uhi.ac.uk here in Skye and uhi.ac.uk in Inverness and people such as my wife who runs a successful small tourism business and relies on the internet. I do five evening class courses at citylit.ac.uk in central London currently, using Zoom, connecting to Zoom servers and then on to tutors and other students all over the place.
Because of my use of Zoom I require an ultra high quality internet connection, no ES, no CRCs, no packet loss. However, I’m not sure that Zoom is mad keen on a multiple bonded line setup because of the possibility - I haven’t checked - of packet reordering. I’m assuming, but don’t know for sure, because I have been too tired/lazy to look into it, that Zoom doesn’t use TCP, so is very sensitive to errors. Since I’ve started using Zoom, I’ve increased target SNRMs to get near 100% connection quality rather than maximum sync rates. I can’t do anything much about the tutors’ internet connections, although I did once intervene and remotely rescue my Old English tutor, dying due to low SNRM. It seems Zoom even works on about 5 / 0.9 Mbps, because one line is down at the moment, due to a fault, and Zoom still works.
-
I think we've all stalked Weaver on Streetview. ;) Its such an interesting place he lives and as I recall specific instructions of how to find him were posted in a thread at one point.
I'd love to visit but as I have no car it would seem highly unlikely.
-
I've stalked Weaver many a time on street view, measured the distance to his cell tower etc, and am well aware of his situation. As I and others have said many a time he could keep one or two lines and use 4G to give his speeds a boost, the 4G connection could even be routed via AA, I forget the term, as my memory is not great, and I'm certainly not very technical minded, and often struggle with the technical side.
-
You really do live in a beautiful part of the world, Weaver. Hopefully full fibre can arrive sooner rather than later. 0 ES / SES on that as standard.
Bonding of your kind doesn't work great for real time applications without some extra help.
-
Alex, you will be very warmly welcomed. You can fly to Inverness from London, Birmingham, Manchester, maybe Derby East Midlands. You can train it here all the way from London to the Skye Bridge (best) or the Mallaig ferry (scenic, v. slow). The former from London Kings X to Inverness with no changes on the midday train, changes otherwise, change at Inverness for the direct train to Kyle of Lochalsh and The Bridge. Also sleeper overnight train to Inverness from Euston and continue in to Skye in the morning.
To get to Mallaig, and the southern ferry, train from London direct to Glasgow, taxi ride or walk cross town to Queen St Station for the train direct to Mallaig.
-
I'd love to visit but as I have no car it would seem highly unlikely.
Likewise. I even looked into the cost of travelling by train . . . and that was multiple £100's (there and back).
-
Because of my use of Zoom I require an ultra high quality internet connection, no ES, no CRCs, no packet loss.
I don't think end-to-end zero packet loss is ever going to be achievable over the Internet. However I use Webex quite a lot and MS Teams less often and both work perfectly well over my 4G connection, as well as the ADSL connections that a couple of colleagues use. I would be surprised if Zoom is significantly more picky. In general audio and video systems are more tolerant of drops than variable latency. I've never considered out of order packets, I imagine they'd be dropped although it's possible the de-jitter buffer could accommodate them.
-
I manage many Zoom meetings on 4G with no issues at all.
-
Likewise. I even looked into the cost of travelling by train . . . and that was multiple £100's (there and back).
I went to Glasgow a few years back and that was pricey, but at least I could walk from the train station to where I needed to be (though it was a hefty walk). Somewhere more remote, do Taxis even go into villages, I've never been anywhere that remote to find out?
-
I was thinking that the difference in upstream speeds between my various lines is going to cause jitter. But now I think there is no direct end user to end user traffic: isn’t it all indirect? ie goes from source end user into the Zoom server, server creates a new stream of data, and that goes to the destination end user. Is that correct? I’m thinking it has to be like that when for example someone sees tiled pictures of all the participants. Also maybe has to be like that because of firewalls. Unless the Zoom clients know how to do firewall busting? So anyway, the server would see my jitter, not the remote end user, if this idea is right. Is that correct?
See speed difference between my lines below. Note: Line #2 has been taken down because of a current fault and line #4 is similarly faulty too just now. Couldn’t book engineers because Janet has been away in hospital so no one to let them in.
Modems:: Live sync rates:
#1: downstream 2.676 Mbps, upstream 653 kbps
#2: ?, ? (either modem #2 is down, or is coming up, or link #2 is down)
#4: downstream 1.418 Mbps, upstream 389 kbps
--
* Estimated combined IP PDU rate totals (*):
downstream: 3.621 Mbps
upstream: 921.58 kbps
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
(*) Calculated from: IP_PDU_rate = sync_rate × fudge_factor;
fudge_factor = protocol_efficiency ( 0.884434 )
× modem_load_factor ( assumed = 1.0 ).
Assuming: ADSL and ATM, assumed PDU size = 1500,
DSL overhead bytes = 32 ⧴ protocol_efficiency
----------------------------------------------------------------
-
> do Taxis even go into villages, I've never been anywhere that remote to find out?
Yes certainly. But if you wish to visit the whole Island, as it’s so very large, you would definitely need a car; it’s over twenty miles through the mountains just to get to Port Rìgh even, although there are buses. Heasta as you know is remote, so a 4.5 mile walk to Broadford for the Co-op. Or thumb a lift from the many locals on the Heasta road. But Janet has had guests staying, who, contrary to her firm advice in advance, did not have a car, and they weren’t happy, even though they had been warned. There are some fantastic walks from Heasta though, but not easy going in some places.
Flying is far far cheaper than the train. Which is completely insane. Greed of the train companies.
-
For those of you concerned about loopholes, etc with R100 (and I'm sure Black Sheep can confirm this) BT/Openreach have confirmed to the Scottish Government that the build program for Lot 1 (ie, Perth & above) will be 100% FTTP. In addition, the timescales stated on the Scotland Superfast site are generally a 12 month period for everything programmed after 2022. This is because it is going to be an extremely challenging and resource intensive build for OR so from start to finish in each particular area will be a fair chunk of time.
From my point of view, I am watching R100 as both an ISP and also as an alt-net participating in the Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme and it's going to be very interesting to see how the build progresses given the vast challenges that lie in wait for OR. I certainly don't envy their task!
-
It’s just like building the whole original phone network 120 years ago, but doing it in a shorter timescale?
And a very warm welcome to robwfs!
That’s a good thing about BT/OR.
But aside from BT, will there be government loopholes in some small print somewhere, or do they genuinely mean 100%?
-
I really can't see it being a full 100%, there must be some places just too remote, and therefore too expensive.
Hopefully for Weaver as I think he said there is 30 houses in Heasta, that would make it doable. I'm sure someone at some point costed FTTPod for weaver, but cant remember the six figure price, even if it was just £100K that would be circa £3300 per premises past.
-
I'm sure someone at some point costed FTTPod for weaver, . . .
I seem to recall that CarlT made some informal enquires via his contacts and the figure was around £900,000 plus. :swoon:
-
I really can't see it being a full 100%, there must be some places just too remote, and therefore too expensive.
Lot1 (North) and Lot 3 (South) of the OpenReach R100 award will be 100% FTTP.
That does not mean every property in Lot1 or Lot 3 areas will get FTTP.
It just means every property being covered by OpenReach in the current tendering process for those areas will be exclusively FTTP.
Other properties will no doubt be missed or perhaps covered by alternative technologies like satellite.
OpenReach won't be deploying FTTC in either of those areas though (or anything other than FTTP).
Lot2 (Central) still has a bit of FTTC planned though the majority is FTTP.
-
I’m not doubting what j0hn has said, but I’m confused.
1. Presumably the Scottish Parliament wants 100% then they’ll have to pay Openreach whatever it costs to do it, or break the promise to the electorate. The latter is I assume routine. But the existence of crofting townships ie. villages/hamlets in the highlands and their reachability isn’t a secret and the government knew all this when they decide to make this commitment[?]. So I can’t see that Openreach would care and the more people they do, the more future ISP customers BT will have and thus more income.
2. What will happen to Heasta come 2025 ? If POTS is scrapped, then they can’t make us do telephony via satellite (or can they) and BT will still have a USO obligation to provide telephone service so will that mean FTTP ? Because we won’t be able to keep on using copper lines, no?
-
2. What will happen to Heasta come 2025 ? If POTS is scrapped, then they can’t make us do telephony via satellite (or can they) and BT will still have a USO obligation to provide telephone service so will that mean FTTP ? Because we won’t be able to keep on using copper lines, no?
The POTS turn-off in 2025 and the (much later) withdrawal of metallic pairs are two totally different events. After 2025 telephony will be VoIP based.
-
Ah, didn’t know that. But that merely pushes things back a bit, doesn’t it. So in 2025 will my neighbours have to get ADSL over copper with VoIP running over it? I’m sure 8km ADSL won’t be reliable enough for telephony using VoIP, given the number of faults aside from connection quality, also a fair number of them don’t use DSL for their internet connections but rather the unreliable local long range wireless network.
I’m assuming that the telephony USO will still exist in 2025, so will there be a lot of copper line users who are forced to get an ADSL connection just for telephony if nothing else ? And then if ADSL won’t be workable for reliable VoIP telephony, then will that force Openreach to go FTTP ?
-
You have asked good questions. All I know is that xDSL technology will be used.
There is already a VDSL2 product (at 500 kbps DS & US) available from Openreach for VoIP telephony.
-
I seem to recall that CarlT made some informal enquires via his contacts and the figure was around £900,000 plus. :swoon:
Well, that makes it circa £30,000 per premises past.
-
Thank you for your generous and helpful replies J0hn. Could I ask something :
> every property being covered by OpenReach in the current tendering process
Clarification on this - do you know the details of this ? Is the tender document or the original spec from the government so detailed that it goes down to listing individual properties, or individual villages ? (Because the government needs to know exactly what they’re getting and BT needs to know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing for the money paid.)
If the government misses out properties, then it’s not R100; if BT/OR is allowed to just miss some out then it isn’t R100 either, but the government might think it at least has a pathetic excuse "it wasn’t us, it was evil BT" as if they don’t control what BT does.
-
You want a faster connection but you're not prepared to compromise on ISP, yet it's very clear it's going to be a long time, if ever before you can get a faster connection via A&A. Meanwhile your wife and her guests suffer on an extremely slow connection. As mentioned before, there are potentially faster options, such as 4G and Starlink (if that covers your location), sometimes you have to compromise.
For me I am going to try VM's giga1 and link it with aaisp's L2TP to keep static ip. As you said compromising as good as I can. AAISP are raising the rate limit on the service, I dont know how far though.
-
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not about speed, solely. Reliability is crucial
In my experience 4G is extremely reliable at my home location including through power cuts, affectively its tied into their voice network, and voice networks have to be kept up. The question mark is going to be over varying performance rather than the service actually going down. However I do accept I probably have redundancy in the form I am in multiple tower's range, whilst you may only have a single tower at your location.
-
I only have one strong basestation; there’s another near Mallaig possibly, but there are some moors / low hills in that direction, which would be roughly SSW, and it’s also looking straight into the six-foot thick gable-end stone wall.
The problem I have with 4G is that it sometimes, not often, disappears for a couple of days.
-
I only have one strong basestation; there’s another near Mallaig possibly, but there are some moors / low hills in that direction, which would be roughly SSW, and it’s also looking straight into the six-foot thick gable-end stone wall.
The problem I have with 4G is that it sometimes, not often, disappears for a couple of days.
Could you combine it with maybe 2 of your ADSL lines? So a hybrid setup?
-
Thank you for your generous and helpful replies J0hn. Could I ask something :
> every property being covered by OpenReach in the current tendering process
Clarification on this - do you know the details of this ? Is the tender document or the original spec from the government so detailed that it goes down to listing individual properties, or individual villages ? (Because the government needs to know exactly what they’re getting and BT needs to know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing for the money paid.)
Yes.
ISPReview cover most of the changes/updates to the R100 contracts.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/progress-update-on-north-scotlands-r100-broadband-rollout.html
1. Precisely how many premises will be covered under LOT 1?
The contract we have signed with BT is expected to deliver to 59,276 premises. The total number of premises connected as a result of the contract may vary however due to matters beyond our control. For example if a property is demolished prior to a superfast connection being delivered it may be removed from the R100 Lot 1 (North) contract build plan.
2. What proportion of the LOT 1 deployment will be FTTP?
All of the R100 North contract build will be fibre to the premises (FTTP).
3. Is the completion date for LOT 1 still by the end of 2026?
We expect build in the R100 Lot 1 (North) contract to be completed during the financial year 2026/27
The next comment...
If the government misses out properties, then it’s not R100; if BT/OR is allowed to just miss some out then it isn’t R100 either,
It is R100.
As I said previously in the thread, everything I've mentioned regarding R100 Lot1 (where your live) is specific to the OpenReach tendering process.
OpenReach will not be covering every single property.
Later down the line properties that were missed by OpenReach's contract will be served by other technologies as part of R100.
As it stands, R100 Lot 1 being done by OpenReach is 100% FTTP.
You appear to be within that rollout. If that's the case you should have FTTP by April 2027.
I'm confident you will be covered from what I've read.
-
It is R100.
As I said previously in the thread, everything I've mentioned regarding R100 Lot1 (where your live) is specific to the OpenReach tendering process.
OpenReach will not be covering every single property.
Indeed, sadly "The Scottish Government has committed to providing superfast broadband access for all" doesn't mean all by one technology/provider.
Its really frustrating that its all about speed with zero consideration for reliability/consistency it seems.
-
But aside from BT, will there be government loopholes in some small print somewhere, or do they genuinely mean 100%?
So the Government aspiration is 100% but they have always known that the main R100 program wouldn't achieve that. This is why the Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme came about as a subset of the R100 program, to allow smaller providers to fill in the gaps. And to be fair, they've been pretty generous with the funding on this - as a provider we have access to £5000 per property that isn't getting covered by the main program to bring a minimum of 30Mbps. And we can pool those properties together up to a maximum of 100 properties in a project.
One potential plus which may help is that SSEN have said they are going to make it easier to get access to their infrastructure so we may soon be able to get our fibre onto their power poles, etc although we'll see how easy they actually make the process.
-
As far as I'm aware, there's an extensive programme in place to get all OR plant removed from electric poles.
It has been mentioned right at the very top, that the practice should never have been allowed in the first place, from a H&S point of view. One of which I wholeheartedly agree with. There's nothing worse than ascending your 'blue ladder' to erect/repair a wire, especially in the rain. There's obviously safety distances involved between the electric conductors and the OR wire, but it's only approximately one metre.
No amount of awareness around the laws of physics, can stop your mind playing scary tricks on you.
-
Black Sheep is scaring me. Do the electricity board guys where - I don’t know what they’re called - Faraday cage-type suits with wire in them, or something ? Some vague memory that is no doubt all wrong.
> Could you combine it with maybe 2 of your ADSL lines? So a hybrid setup?
Yes good point. I thought a lot about this; someone else said no, and I agree now I think about it.
I already have a disaster 4G wireless router (Solwise). I have AA/AQL/Three 4G on all iPads, and all-you-can-eat EE 4G on Janet’s iPhone which we can uses as a router if disaster strikes.
But the problems as I understand it with combined 4G and DSL are :
1. MTU difference - I would have to go down to the lowest common MTU after IP is tunnelled through L2TP and accounting for reduced IP MTU in 4G devices, eg the 3G dongle is only IP MTU 1440 [!], so whatever the 4G dongle is. I think the Solwise router is IP MTU 1500, not sure. My iPad 4G has a reduced MTU I think.
2. Latency mismatch. Someone else warned me about this in an earlier thread. The 4G latency from my iPad via AA 4G in to AA is ~95 ms, pretty horrendous, so not the same as the 45 ms I get with DSL, so there could be some weirdness with packet reordering possibly when DSL and 4G links are bonded into one pipe?
[Mind you, due to bufferbloat and/or link hogging, I can get spikes of 500ms+ as recorded by clueless.aa.net.uk on the CQM graphs, which show latency. I will try to fix that by slightly reducing the max load on the links downstream to 98% instead of 100% and maybe even down to 95% if needed. The ‘modem load factor’ upstream (my term for the fraction of max possible IP upstream rate per modem when taking away all DSL protocol overheads, ie max_IP_rate = modem_load_factor * us_sync_rate * 0.884434 for my situation) is set to 95% in my Firebrick config, which should, I hope, sort out the upstream bloat, by keeping the ingress queues into the modems down to a modest max amount.]
I thought BT was rumoured to be combined 4G/5G and DSL or maybe FTTP ? I think they would need a special tunnel protocol, a TCP-like tunnel to fix the MTU limitation and prevent any 4G packet loss. I know that TCP is verboten for use as a tunnel transport for eg TCP within it, but I think I could design something suitable given time and a lot of false starts. Something that would fragment things at L4 not L3 and be L4-transports-aware, so understand TCP and common UDP-based transports, maybe my beloved SCTP too; could even use that as the outer tunnel carrier, as it understands messages iirc rather than carrying a byte stream.
When we have a big lightning storm, it knocks out the 4G basestation. So we have no electricity and no 3G/4G for failover from DSL, which can get knocked out by the lightning. Surely they’re got a UPS and a generator? Basestation operators to be shot if not - what about emergency calls to eg ambulance / police? Maybe emergency services sometimes use mobile phone network out here, although I seem to remember something about special separate emergency services’ networks years and years ago. (TETRA was it way back when?) I don’t know if such as police rely on eg EE out here?
—
Thanks to J0hn for that extremely clear and helpful post!
-
I wouldnt bond the 4G with ADSL.
Instead just have 4g as the higher priority, it doesnt need bonding for performance, it will out perform the ADSL easily. Then if and when the 4G goes down the ADSL kicks in as your backup, this way you maintain connectivity whilst at the same time have much higher performance during the periods the 4G is online.
Lower latency is nice but its importance at the low capacity you have is below the throughput capability.
For specific traffic if you have a personal preference for the ADSL you can flip the preference on your routing to favour ADSL where throughput isnt important.
-
I was thinking that the difference in upstream speeds between my various lines is going to cause jitter. But now I think there is no direct end user to end user traffic: isn’t it all indirect? ie goes from source end user into the Zoom server, server creates a new stream of data, and that goes to the destination end user. Is that correct? I’m thinking it has to be like that when for example someone sees tiled pictures of all the participants. Also maybe has to be like that because of firewalls. Unless the Zoom clients know how to do firewall busting? So anyway, the server would see my jitter, not the remote end user, if this idea is right. Is that correct?
I think that is probably correct for Zoom, as it's how multi party conferencing works for other services. You send your audio and video to the conference bridge, and the bridge decides what audio and video to send to the participants. So you would be sending and receiving only one audio and one video stream.
-
1. MTU difference - I would have to go down to the lowest common MTU after IP is tunnelled through L2TP and accounting for reduced IP MTU in 4G devices, eg the 3G dongle is only IP MTU 1440 [!], so whatever the 4G dongle is. I think the Solwise router is IP MTU 1500, not sure. My iPad 4G has a reduced MTU I think.
2. Latency mismatch. Someone else warned me about this in an earlier thread. The 4G latency from my iPad via AA 4G in to AA is ~95 ms, pretty horrendous, so not the same as the 45 ms I get with DSL, so there could be some weirdness with packet reordering possibly when DSL and 4G links are bonded into one pipe?
That was certainly my experience when doing basic load balancing, had lots of problems with web pages freezing if the MTU wasn't matched.
Also when I did speed tests, combining 4G and 5G was pointless, it just seemed to prevent full utilisation of the faster link. Also combining DSL with either seemed problematic, I think as ACKs can come back much faster/reliably on DSL it again drags performance down on the faster but more unreliable/laggy links.
I can only imagine that being so much worse when trying to do proper bonding where packet order is important.
-
I think a very clever scheduler could sort out problems of packets arriving out-of-order, by timed-send algorithms. Calculate what time a packet will get out of the local WAN i/f and then just before it gets wound out down the line, submit the second packet, considering also the lengths of the two. Don’t submit the second packet so late that you don’t keep the link busy 100% of the time; no ‘bubbles’ in the pipe. For all the links you have, initially submit packets into all of them, highest priority ones first, then the shortest and round-robbin according to any non-hard-priority considerations (ie if a stream has a please give me 50% of the link rule.) If the situation is one where links have differing outbound-trip latencies - not round-trip! - and the scheduler is able to obtain this information, a big ‘if’, then the scheduler has to account for these time delays and adjust the tx-times accordingly.
(When I was writing a scheduler, 40 years ago, I pre-calculated a map of what was to happen in each of 256 time slots, done in advance and then the time-critical code, when a timer goes off, simply obeys the next instruction in the map - in this case ‘send data from stream x’. When I wrote the scheduler, it was for running threads in a game engine where each thread handled movement of sprites and had to draw them in new positions, so it was scheduling code, not i/o. Each thread got a certain amount of the cpu, but the allocations of cpu time were all broken up and scattered, for maximum smoothness and no hogging of the processor for long periods by a high priority process; the high priority process gets a lot of cpu time, but not in a contiguous block; instead its allocation would be all broken up and scattered around the map.)
-
At the receiving end audio and video need to be played at a fixed rate, so any sort of re-ordering needs a buffer and the depth of buffer will determine how much out of order can be corrected. Conversely there's a quality impact, deeper buffering means more delay which particularly impacts speech.
Just for fun and info I grabbed the stats from a Webex meeting just now. Interesting that jitter is significantly higher for video, I don't know if that's by design because you would certainly prioritise audio over video if you could, or whether it's just because the video packets are bigger.
-
Is that pretty bad jitter then compared to the latency? Absolutely you need a buffer and I suppose if you put it further away from the audio output back up the processing chain then you still have time to handle out of order packets arriving late and you can belatedly put them into the holes / vacant slots they belong in without leaving any audio g ps in t e sou d.
-
b*cat finds an "a", "h" & "n" in his buffer and offers them up to Weaver's stream. :P
-
Belated they were because of the jitter, but now they can be dropped in into "gaps in the sound"
-
We’ve discussed this before and we’ve talked a bit about R100.
I was going to post this in the thread that has just been locked but I wanted to reply to Weaver's post (https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,27430.msg461442.html#msg461442)
I’m really hoping that in Scotland where we have the Scottish Government’s R100 promise that we are safe in taking that to mean, as it already seems to mean, 100% FTTP and no cop-outs with satellite or long range wireless schemes
The R100 scheme in Scotland will not be covering 100% of properties and not all will be FTTP (though most are) and I believe you are in scope for it.
In fact I think quite a few properties in Scotland not covered by R100 will need to use non FTTP options due to the geography and expense of rolling out FTTP to them.
There is some recent information on the R100 rollout is at https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/12/scotlands-r100-fibre-broadband-build-wont-finish-until-2028.html
-
No need to schedule. As long as everything leaving the LNS terminating the L2TP has a sequence number a small buffer and reordering algorithm at the receiver will work. Ideally a buffer that will adapt to changing conditions so will have a maximum wait time with an adaptive wait time that will go no higher and flexes depending on jitter.
Looks to me like you want SD-WAN, Weaver.
-
I was going to post this in the thread that has just been locked but I wanted to reply to Weaver's post (https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,27430.msg461442.html#msg461442)
The R100 scheme in Scotland will not be covering 100% of properties and not all will be FTTP (though most are) and I believe you are in scope for it.
In fact I think quite a few properties in Scotland not covered by R100 will need to use non FTTP options due to the geography and expense of rolling out FTTP to them.
There is some recent information on the R100 rollout is at https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/12/scotlands-r100-fibre-broadband-build-wont-finish-until-2028.html
From a group conference call, with one of the people at the very top of the OR chain - approx 95% will be FTTP. That is the aim.
-
From a group conference call, with one of the people at the very top of the OR chain - approx 95% will be FTTP. That is the aim.
Is that across Scotland, including the areas previously quoted as being 100% fibre? And is 95% of all premises, or 95% of those not currently getting 30meg?
-
Looks to me like you want SD-WAN, Weaver.
I'm not sure what implementation of SD WAN you're thinking of, but wouldn't it need an equivalent box at the other end?
-
From a group conference call, with one of the people at the very top of the OR chain - approx 95% will be FTTP. That is the aim.
I wonder if we'll reach a point where DSL is no longer possible to maintain so 100% FTTP becomes the only option to keep a broadband service provided? How expensive do we think it is to maintain ADSL for just a couple of customers in remote locations? Will they just let that fall on 4G/5G?
-
Is that across Scotland, including the areas previously quoted as being 100% fibre? And is 95% of all premises, or 95% of those not currently getting 30meg?
The question was posed, 'What does the 'R' mean on 'R100 Scotland'.
The reply was 'Reach 100%, but it's currently looking like approximately 95%, at the moment.'
As in any major works, never mind the 2nd largest engineering project in Europe ... scopes will change. But as we know, there are other methods being deployed to pick up the pieces, if you like.
-
I wonder if we'll reach a point where DSL is no longer possible to maintain so 100% FTTP becomes the only option to keep a broadband service provided? How expensive do we think it is to maintain ADSL for just a couple of customers in remote locations? Will they just let that fall on 4G/5G?
See above, Alex - I do not live or work in Scotland, so only get info when it is made available to the wider OR audience.
-
The question was posed, 'What does the 'R' mean on 'R100 Scotland'.
The reply was 'Reach 100%, but it's currently looking like approximately 95%, at the moment.'
They claimed 95% coverage at "Superfast" speed in 2017. That was 24meg back then, whereas it's 30meg now. Does the current 95% mean 95% FTTP, or 95% getting at least 30meg?
-
The target is >30 Mbit. Sounds like this will be delivered to about 95% of the remaining properties that don't have access to this right now.
The build is to 112,232 premises of which 110,815 will be FTTP: 98.74%.
-
See above, Alex - I do not live or work in Scotland, so only get info when it is made available to the wider OR audience.
I was thinking across the whole UK, there must be a tipping point, just could be a decade away or more.
-
Cheers. Looking up my address on Digital Scotland they say
"Based on the current engineering schedule your address is in scope to receive its superfast connection in 2025"
But from what you say that could just mean 30meg 4G or satellite, ie nothing we don't have already. I'm kind of resigned to this, but I wish they'd be a bit more honest.
-
If you're in the North or South region it'll be FTTP. If you're in Central 95.6% chance of FTTP.
-
I wonder if we'll reach a point where DSL is no longer possible to maintain so 100% FTTP becomes the only option to keep a broadband service provided? How expensive do we think it is to maintain ADSL for just a couple of customers in remote locations? Will they just let that fall on 4G/5G?
I thought I'd seen an indication of how long ADSL (SOTAP) was supposed to be offered after 2025. Can't find it now but the word "Transitional" suggests not long.
-
Cheers. Looking up my address on Digital Scotland they say
"Based on the current engineering schedule your address is in scope to receive its superfast connection in 2025"
But from what you say that could just mean 30meg 4G or satellite, ie nothing we don't have already. I'm kind of resigned to this, but I wish they'd be a bit more honest.
As XGS points out 100% of the R100 work by Openreach in Lot1 (North and Highlands) and Lot3 (Southern Scotland) will be FTTP.
Most of Lot2 (Central Scotland) will be FTTP with under 5% being FTTC.
So if in Lot1 or Lot3 and R100 shows plans then you're getting Openreach FTTP.
Not everyone is currently being covered by R100. Those that haven't been scheduled to be covered so far (which is pretty much just the Openreach contract for now) will likely receive alternative technologies like 4G or satellite.
I thought I'd seen an indication of how long ADSL (SOTAP) was supposed to be offered after 2025. Can't find it now but the word "Transitional" suggests not long.
SOTAP will only be available to anyone with no FTTC/P availability. There's no current deadline on when SOTAP will end, or it will become unavailable if you have FTTC/P rolled out to you.
It doesn't even look like they have ironed out the final details on it yet.
-
Great news for those in Rural Scotland then, very high chance of R100 coverage been FTTP.
Inverness etc. pray they get 100% commercial coverage.
-
We’ve discussed this before and we’ve talked a bit about R100. Is there anything I can do to get gigabit-capable FTTP installed here? Somewhat to the north of IV49 9BN, which is No. 6, quite a way south, whereas I am at Torr Gorm, the first, northernmost house in Heasta. I’ll have to wait at least five years for FTTP and then probably nothing will happen at the end of that; we’ll all just still be left out.
Any suggestions about politics, pressure, money I could throw at it, but don’t have ?
Late to the party as usual!
Have you looked into Hebnet, currently on Egg doing wireless and fibre system around the Hebrides?
Regards.
Dwight.
-
Hi Dwight, that system is used by many of my neighbours now. Not remotely for me, not for business users, and zero maintenance my wife has lead me to believe.
I have recently started seeing what I can do to get FTTP right here. Far too early for any estimates of the chance of success.
-
I have recently started seeing what I can do to get FTTP right here. Far too early for any estimates of the chance of success.
I'd imagine nothing (at least from OR), if you are indeed already covered under the scheme. As we know FTTPoD orders are rejected if you are already "in plan".
-
As we know FTTPoD orders are rejected if you are already "in plan".
That is interesting. I am in a position to able to place an order and am told it's available to order... I guess if I attempt to order it (because OR claim to be in my area within the next 12 months) then this would get rejected and I won't have to fork out any money for civils, simply sit back and wait another year... I think that has just decided it.
-
I have recently started seeing what I can do to get FTTP right here. Far too early for any estimates of the chance of success.
Do your local authority (Highland Council?) have access to any information? This is what I received from our LA's "Digital Engagement" when I asked whether cancelling our existing landline and DSL could mean we're excluded from R100 builds. Note the comment about access to an R100 mapping system. But also note that "the majority" rather than "all" nearby properties appear to be included.
Many thanks for contacting the Digital Engagement Team. My apologise for not coming back to you sooner. I can confirm that the status of your landline has no impact on the R100 full-fibre deployment plans.
The R100 programme was designed to improve digital connectivity on a premise-level basis, improving on older Government programmes which aimed to get a percentage of households connected to better broadband. Because of this setup, your property was included in build plans, which have been created and agreed between BT/Openreach and Scottish Government. In addition, using a mapping system we have access to for the R100 programme, I can see that the majority of properties around you are all also included in build plans. BT/Openreach would actually do themselves a major disadvantage to exclude properties when they are building the network out into the area anyway – as they will have to go back and improve the connection at some point anyway, so they’d be as well doing when Scottish Government are paying them to do it.
Additionally, if you choose to cancel your phone and fixed broadband services delivered by your phoneline, your connection still exists – it just remains unutilised. Therefore it still shows as a ‘live’ connection to your property on Openreach systems, and awaits upgrade.
-
That is interesting. I am in a position to able to place an order and am told it's available to order... I guess if I attempt to order it (because OR claim to be in my area within the next 12 months) then this would get rejected and I won't have to fork out any money for civils, simply sit back and wait another year... I think that has just decided it.
You used to be able to get a desktop survey with an indicative price, without commitment. Then I think it would be a non-refundable deposit to get a fixed price. I kind of lost interest because at home, or my colleagues' homes, or our business premises, all got rejected at the desktop survey stage.
-
That is interesting. I am in a position to able to place an order and am told it's available to order... I guess if I attempt to order it (because OR claim to be in my area within the next 12 months) then this would get rejected and I won't have to fork out any money for civils, simply sit back and wait another year... I think that has just decided it.
I can't speak for if its the same now, but certainly I saw quite a few posts on forums about people who tried to apply for FTTPoD after say their exchange was marked as Fibre First, and even though it was years away the orders were rejected.
-
I’m not talking about FTTPoD and can’t discuss anything yet, for various reasons, the main one being that it’s still way too early to have anything to discuss.
I mentioned before that someone on the east side of The Island, according to an OR engineer, shelled out ~£20K for FTTPoD when he/she was about 100m from the main core link that goes from The Skye Bridge to Broadford and then continues northwards into the mountains to connect to the entire north of the Island, and then on to the Western Isles according to the BT submarine cable installation maps that came out a few years ago. So the run to this installation might be very short but there would not be any conveniently sited appropriate hardware there. What did we guess for FTTPoD to be run out to me, some years back in another thread ? log10 (FTTPoD/£) = ~ 6 ?
-
I mentioned before that someone on the east side of The Island, according to an OR engineer, shelled out ~£20K for FTTPoD when he/she was about 100m from the main core link that goes from The Skye Bridge to Broadford and then continues northwards into the mountains to connect to the entire north of the Island, and then on to the Western Isles according to the BT submarine cable installation maps that came out a few years ago. So the run to this installation might be very short but there would not be any conveniently sited appropriate hardware there.
It would be the distance to the nearest aggregation node that determined the price and not the distance to a passing fibre link. :)
What did we guess for FTTPoD to be run out to me, some years back in another thread ? log10 (FTTPoD/£) = ~ 6 ?
Yes, I believe that is the correct order of magnitude. First find your nearest fibre aggregation node, then cost the provision of a (haggis proof) fibre run from it to Torr Gorm.
-
You used to be able to get a desktop survey with an indicative price, without commitment. Then I think it would be a non-refundable deposit to get a fixed price. I kind of lost interest because at home, or my colleagues' homes, or our business premises, all got rejected at the desktop survey stage.
Cerberus gave me a desktop quote of £5K
I suppose I could try that for free and see if it gets rejected, if OR's website is accurate it should get rejected on the basis they are rolling out in 12 months..
-
Cerberus gave me a desktop quote of £5K
I suppose I could try that for free and see if it gets rejected, if OR's website is accurate it should get rejected on the basis they are rolling out in 12 months..
Risky though, if they don't reject it you'd be paying more to get it done in likely exactly the same time frame.
-
Risky though, if they don't reject it you'd be paying more to get it done in likely exactly the same time frame.
And therein lies the problem :)
-
Hi Dwight, that system is used by many of my neighbours now. Not remotely for me, not for business users, and zero maintenance my wife has lead me to believe.
I have recently started seeing what I can do to get FTTP right here. Far too early for any estimates of the chance of success.
Wow! Not Business! That does surprise me, would of thought there was a lot of self-employed up your way trying to make ends meet! Also that's how they started on the fish farms. Also how far off is the airport, does it have any formal fiber infrastructure you could buy into?
Best of luck, as I Google your Post code and it looks idyllic up there and definitely see your problem!
Dwight.
-
There’s no proper airport on Skye just now. There’s an excellent airstrip, but they haven’t developed all the rest of the facilities. The nearest airports are either in the Western Isles, Na h-Eileanan Siar, or Inverness airport which is about 85 miles away (around 2.5 hrs driving time one way) on the east coast of the mainland. I really wish they would get on with it and get the airport going again, as flights to the Western Isles, to Glasgow and Edinburgh and Heathrow and all the English airports etc would be fantastic. How I would love to be able to fly to Orkney, as the drive up to the North coast is very tiring even though the Orkney ferries are superb.
The ‘business’ part I was referring to is that small businesses in the area are in general all obsessed with saving money regardless of quality and reliability so they use the worst domestic-grade services and kit. I don’t know if that wireless service even offers IPv6, or blocks of routable static IPv4 addresses as we need them. And no business-grade maintenance contract, so I would think, but I don’t know, just guesswork. There is no chance on earth of me using such a service instead of A&A who provides all the aforementioned features, a rich and full service.
-
How long would the drive have been in the 1980s? I remember when I went to Scotland as a child before they built those bridges for the A9.
-
I drove it in the late 1980s and apart from no Skye Bridge it was all the same if you go straight across to Loch Ness and then up. Going by the North Road up through Srath Carrann was the same. The A9 is of course much further east, and doesn’t go up the Great Glen.
-
Well our first trip I remember we had to drive all the way around a big Loch I think was at least an hour road time, but when we back about 5 years later, was a new bridge built across it.
-
Why not drop the boss of Openreach an email politely asking if his team have any idea what the score is, copying in whomever is running R100 in the 'To' field so it's aimed at both?
-
@XGS That’s pretty similar to what we’ve already started. Way too early to have anything to report though.
-
You folks will be an interesting test of where these projects are going. Your property is a nightmare, but a nightmare that can be forgotten about once the build is done: it'll save so much in maintenance costs which is a major driver behind the migration to FTTP: Verizon in the USA have been quite open about how much in operational costs FTTP is saving them.
From nearly 8 years ago: https://www.theregister.com/2015/05/20/verizon_fibre_is_so_much_cheaper_than_copper_were_going_allfttp/ and deployment costs have dropped since as GPON has gotten cheaper - XGSPON is a similar cost to where GPON was in 2015 I imagine.