Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => Broadband Technology => Topic started by: Weaver on October 16, 2016, 12:58:56 PM
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[I have probably mentioned this before. Recap.]
Some years back, I tried to order a further two copper lines, to make it a total of five, BT wanted many hundreds of pounds, can't remember exactly, possibly because they were running out in the main bundle, or else just because they hated me for having more than my fair share or because I must be a rich business customer and they saw an opportunity to fleece me. But whatever, it put me right off completel, so they just shot themselves in the foot with their own greed. Which was extremely unfair to the poor ISP.
Does anyone know what BTOR’s rules or practices are for extra lines?
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I wonder if I dare try again? Answer: just risk it and see. ulp. ???
Is there any chance things might have improved, as there has been a flurry of new house building in the village and I wonder how this may have affected BT ? I wonder what happens when they outgrow the cable bundle into the village.
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Yes, the answer will be just to order and see what they say.
If it had been your first line than Openreach would not have charged you anything under the USO assuming it cost less than £3,400 to provide a voice service
If they had to remove a DACS unit to provide a service then the limit would go up to £8,000
Otherwise, Openreach will generally only cover the first £1,000 of installation costs if it needs to increase network capacity to provide you with new lines.
The relevant Openreach page is here (https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricing/loadProductPriceDetails.do?data=pAWshrQ7XRSLb9S%2BW8IAk0G8vUtdrlJTUevDC2QqJZ8lMnGHsqdC0vzO163bJmh34D91D7M0q8u%2FIlSgtIFAKw%3D%3D)
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These are probably all good questions for the ISP, but I though some knowledgeable kitizens might know something relevant, and that link is useful - thanks for that.
God, what a nightmare. It doesn't sound from that like there’s much hope, as there’s no mention of anything that seems to possibly be linked issues with the total capacity into the village. I can't tell what the ‘length’ of cable would be, as I don't know how to determine what point that length starts from. It could be anything, from the length of a new drop cable, to the total of over four miles of cable to the exchange in Broadford.
Nor can I tell what a ‘cable’ is. How many pairs?
Actually, a thought occurs to me. Perhaps I should have tried asking for one line, not two, because I presumably have a spare pair in the second existing drop cable, which could be used immediately provided there is a decent pair at the other end. When I asked for two additional lines at the same time, perhaps I blew it immediately because they saw that the fifth line would not fit into an existing drop cable? And I wonder if I was getting quoted single or double per-metre charges back then. But they make up the rules as they see fit, that document is so vague. Wherever there is an opportunity to profit out of you, maybe they just go for it, rather than having a responsibility to minimise the charges for you by not quoting for unnecessary items.
And I don't suppose you can get anyone else to do most of the work, although I do see there is something about laying/burying the cable yourself.
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It seems so unfair to ISPs that BT can just suppress demand for extra capacity in this way, as there's nothing an ISP can do about it presumably. Perhaps all charges should be abolished and there should be a flat charge to ISPs, with more multiple (‘dark’) pairs being installed into drop cables as a matter of course. That would help ISPs, help small businesses to grow and it would grow the internet. OfCom?
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Why would anyone want to change the system to install more copper pairs rather than putting in fibre optic cables?
I might consider it unfair if everyone has to pay for loads of excess copper pairs being put in everywhere, of which very few would ever be used. It might sound great, abolish the charges and make Openreach do something for free, but in reality, it's going to be paid for by everyone else.
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God, what a nightmare. It doesn't sound from that like there’s much hope, as there’s no mention of anything that seems to possibly be linked issues with the total capacity into the village. I can't tell what the ‘length’ of cable would be, as I don't know how to determine what point that length starts from. It could be anything, from the length of a new drop cable, to the total of over four miles of cable to the exchange in Broadford.
Before they proceed with the installation, Openreach would carry out a survey and via your CP - seek your agreement to any costs before proceeding.
Actually, a thought occurs to me. Perhaps I should have tried asking for one line, not two, because I presumably have a spare pair in the second existing drop cable, which could be used immediately provided there is a decent pair at the other end.
No harm trying this approach if there is a spare pair already in your existing drop cable.
It seems so unfair to ISPs that BT can just suppress demand for extra capacity in this way, as there's nothing an ISP can do about it presumably. Perhaps all charges should be abolished and there should be a flat charge to ISPs, with more multiple (‘dark’) pairs being installed into drop cables as a matter of course. That would help ISPs, help small businesses to grow and it would grow the internet. OfCom?
Here I disagree for several reasons:
a) these charges affect relatively few people;
b) the charges are regulated by Ofcom;
c) consider the 'payback time' for Openreach to make a return- they get <£10/month per active line and will only charge excess costs if it costs more than £1000
d) drop pairs to residences already normally have more than 1 pair in when they install them though it could also be a lack of capacity elsewhere (one of the big cables going back to an exchange - would cost £££ to add more capacity) though this is much less likely
e) abolishing all charges or adding lots of unused capacity by default would also just end up raising the connection charges for the majority to subsidise a small but very expensive minority.
Expect similar cost issues/caps to also appear when they finally announce detailed plans for the 10MB broadband USO.
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Good luck! I wouldn't like to be paying your line rental though, 2 is bad enough!
Chunks
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Btw: My ‘line rental’ is 3 * £12 per month which I pay to AA direct, well that’s what AA charge for an additional copper pair, with no voice service on it, so that’s possibly not the same as the usual ‘line rental’ to someone like BT Retail, for which you get voice service? I'm pretty pleased with the additional monthly cost of one more copper pair.
@ejs, @gt94sss2 - I hear you about putting up costs for everyone else, this indeed would be a showstopper if it really affected other people’s charges by a noticeable amount. Buut as for extra capacity, that’s why I used the word ‘dark’. I was wondering if it would cost much more to supply drop cables with more pairs in them either by default or as an option, with only one pair initially connected. Anything that would reduce differential costs, saving on labour.
And as for FTTP, indeed no one wants encourage more copper at the expense of FTTP, but there's no foreseeable chance of me getting FTTP in this political climate. I can't afford to lay 4.6 miles of fibre, and I'm not even sure if the exchange could handle it.
It just seems that there is something wrong in a system where I have to pay BT for something and then I don't even own it afterwards, they do, and then they charge me every month for something that I've already paid for?
And it still just feels wrong that ISPs are trapped in the middle over this, that they are effectively at the mercy of BT as far as being able to offer customers room for expansion. I'm not saying I have the answer, I don't, but I wonder if some better plan could be found, and as the guys have said it would have to be without hurting other users noticeably.
(Lots of local users around here used to have two lines, one for a dial-up modem and one for voice. One local person had three lines, a voice line, fax line and one for a dial-up modem! I tried to persuade her to go DSL and get rid of all the line rentals and use an internet-based fax-to-email gateway service that another local user was familiar with.)
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Odd idea: The alternative would be to bring the mountain to Mohammed, or whatever the cliché is. For me to go out to meet BT, I would have to park a DSL modem or two out in a field at some point somewhere and run an Ethernet cable out to meet it, plus supplying power for it (poss. power-over-Ethernet, unless distance limits would stop me). I'd have to build a tiny weather-proof hut (basically my ‘cab’), I’d have to pay BT who knows what to connect up in the little hut, and expect bureaucracy if the hut doesn't have an address (unless it's my address and they can understand ‘outbuildings’). Then I'd need to run some ducting and bury it. I'd also probably want to multiplex/demultiplex the pipes to the two modems as in any case I'd need to keep the two instances of PPPoE separate (if memory serves), and even if I wastefully used an Ethernet cable per modem, I've run out of free Ethernet ports for PPPoE connections on my router and so I have to use VLANs for multiplexing at some point.
Madness.
The alternative would be to use RF, which might be a lot less fiddle, but I'd still need to supply power, and there is none anywhere near BT-land.
My house is very high above the road and the main BT cable bundle run into the village is parallel to the road (north-south) on the far side (east side) of the road. The existing cable route to me (I'll describe it in the direction heading towards me) goes up a pole on the far side of the road and then high over the road slanting upwards to a much higher pole on my side, on the top of the bank right near my house, and then from that second pole it comes straight into my upstairs office horizontally at high level. They could have actually not bothered with the poles at all as there's a bridge right by the cable where the stream goes under the road, so they could have used the opening under that bridge, and would not have had to to cross the road at all. I would use that under-bridge route.
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Surely the final drop cable is the easiest part to replace anyway, because it's the shortest? It would involve putting another cable up a pole or pulling it through a duct. There doesn't seem much point putting lots of extra pairs in if it's easy to add some later anyway, in the very unlikely event more are wanted.
The installation costs would be mostly for the labour, rather than the materials, and the ongoing line rental then covers the maintenance and repair.
Are they really at the mercy of BT? Is there anything stopping any other company putting in their own cables?
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In fact, there is pic showing the poles here
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,16585.msg306715.html#msg306715
This is taken at the entrance to the village looking south. The BT main cable bundle is buried on the left hand side of the road, my house is high up on the right, just off the edge of this shot, right next to the big tree shown. The river bridge is underneath the road, not visible because the photographer is more-or-less standing right on it.
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> Are they really at the mercy of BT? Is there anything stopping any other company putting in their own cables?
I think perhaps others would know the answer to that. I don’t suppose that you could make BT connect up their copper directly to your own copper though, if you ran your own cable? Wouldn't they just say that they have to own the whole thing. (I think our posts crossed over, btw.) Running my own Ethernet out to meet them and having their formal network termination be nearer to them and further away from me and differentiated by a change of medium would be different of course.
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> Are they really at the mercy of BT? Is there anything stopping any other company putting in their own cables?
What I meant was, there's nothing stopping other companies building their own networks.
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@ejs, @gt94sss2 - I hear you about putting up costs for everyone else, this indeed would be a showstopper if it really affected other people’s charges by a noticeable amount. Buut as for extra capacity, that’s why I used the word ‘dark’. I was wondering if it would cost much more to supply drop cables with more pairs in them either by default or as an option, with only one pair initially connected. Anything that would reduce differential costs, saving on labour.
That's what BT traditionally did - hence I think most dropwires having more than one pair in them.
However, if it hasn't already I suspect this may change in future - given that I suspect demand for send lines is falling given that fax machines and dialup internet are less popular than they one where and xDSL more popular.
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I'm confused. People I know in your position either suck it up that they are stuck on slow copper lines or pay for a leased line.
Not try and make BT pay so you can have 5 copper lines?
What are you doing that is so bandwidth heavy that you need 5 lines for?
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@thesmileyone
These are very long ADSL2 lines with nothing faster available (apart from some sort of leased line). So about 2Mb downstream or slightly more per line.
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Weaver it may be worth reaching out to providers to try and get one of the following arranged locally to you.
Public wifi providers.
Satellite broadband providers, one who was interviewed by a parliament committee within the last couple of years said they were deploying in scotland.
Someone having to pay out for 5 ADSL lines to get decent broadband to me isnt right.
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Well satellite is hopeless for so many reasons that I don't even know where to begin. Dodgy companies, famously horrid latency, no IPv6 unless you tunnel, funny HTTP tricks, service blocking, traffic-type shaping, uploads dodgy, horrible usage limits, enormous charges. I would never even consider it. Too many locals tried it and given up on it. A business customer even paid me a lot of money some years ago to get them out of the mess that they were in with satellite and get put back onto dialup the 0.5Mbps DSL.
As for public wifi, there is a long range RF network of some sort available in the village. According to their limited specs, it's slower than my current situation at best, and it's shared bandwidth so what you actually get is a complete pig in a poke, could be anything down to dialup speeds for all I know if someone else is using it as it's an unlimited buffet. Rumour according to a neighbour who was using it is that it's hilariously unavailable with many weeks of downtime and no maintenance SLA underlying it, so when it breaks it just stays broken, for an indefinite time period. That neighbour didn't give up his DSL in favour of it.
The political reality is that we have no LLU, no cabs and no fibre optic pipe to the village. And no prospect of change, despite some scathing emails from me to the politicians. In the highlands only urban areas matter, and percentages of population are the figures they keep quoting, as if making things even faster for those who already have very fast network connections is something worth doing. And meanwhile we remain at the mercy of BT because no one else does local loops that are viable and give ISP-choice through wholesaling. Probably it will be G.Fast next for people in Inverness because 80 Mbps isn't fast enough already, while get have users on sub 1.0 Mbps ADSL2+. BT and the politicians seem to be judged on how well they serve the most fortunate low-hanging fruit. I don't know why BTx is allowed to charge the same for a 0.5 Mbps copper line as for a 21 Mbps line. If they had to charge according to results delivered, then things might be different. BT would suddenly care about giving a high performance service. Of course from experience most locals around here just want to pay the absolute minimum possible as many are really hard up and some are either very stingy or just don't put spending on their internet connection high on their list of priorities, and don't care much about speed, if they even know what their speeds are. So this is a mismatch with this idea of mine.
Things are so wrong with the political setup and the BT monopoly that I don't know where to begin. We need FTTP. If cities I would like to see Virgin be compelled by OfCom to wholesale like BT has to. And I would like to ban all public spending on altnets unless they agree to wholesale, so that we can't be fobbed off with new monopolies of one crap but supposed ‘fast enough’ local altnet RF provider as is happening all over the highlands, small heaps of money being wasted and zero ISP choice and no controls over quality that local businesses get saddled with.
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I don't really see how having hundreds of different companies re-selling the exact same thing improves that thing.
Of course from experience most locals around here just want to pay the absolute minimum possible as many are really hard up and some are either very stingy or just don't put spending on their internet connection high on their list of priorities, and don't care much about speed, if they even know what their speeds are. So this is a mismatch with this idea of mine.
... We need FTTP.
Who is the "we" in the "we need FTTP"? You just said that most people there aren't interested or can't afford it!
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My mistake, if I could get serious FTTP then I would give some of it away to my own neighbours. I should have said FTTV ie fibre into the village. My fault, brain fail. ???
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My idea I meant having it alongside your adsl.
So the adsl still gets used for web browsing email etc.
But your movie downloads would be done over satellite.
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Understood.
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(I sent Amazon a feature request asking them if their app could be upgraded to handle cron jobs, i.e. to handle queued timed movie download requests in the middle of the night. That way, I'm not disturbing Mrs Weaver who is trying to work, and I'm using AA’s night time 1 TB per download ‘unit’ cheap rate. Netflix is an utter pain in that you can't even download flat out at all, only live streaming.)
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The political reality is that we have no LLU, no cabs and no fibre optic pipe to the village. And no prospect of change, despite some scathing emails from me to the politicians.
Playing devils advocate but you/your village are paying less than the real cost of providing a service to yourselves - with your service being subsidised by other customers.
And in 2020, you will all be entitled to minimum 10MB under a USO - again subsidised by other customers who will be effectively paying more as a result.
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http://wccftech.com/netflix-reportedly-offline-mode-year/?utm_source=traqli&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=115
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Hi weaver
I hope you don't mind, and I do not know your area where you live, but one of your posts made me think
Is it a possibility, if you are near a town or city with fttc, and the distance not too far (you mentioned 4 miles to cab -circa), that you could ask a person in that to town, to have a second line installed, provision fttc to the line, and run your own fibre to your village/house, then either setup your own ac wap network for village, or just use for your own
Obviously, your cost would be upfront but I guess is doable, without the expense of bt/cp
It's just a thought
Many thanks
John
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Not enough info to give a definitive answer to your original question, but here are my own thoughts on the subject ......
Forget the drop-wire, as mentioned earlier, replacing this or adding another is child's-play and will have no impact on the final decision making/costing. As an aside, current drop-wires are single-pair only as opposed to the older two-pair wire. We also have a four-pair drop-wire (CAD55) that can be used for aesthetic purposes.
The likelihood is there is going to be a shortfall of 'pairs' at your DP (Telegraph pole) to provide an additional 2 lines. If an order is confirmed, it will go initially to a 'desktop survey' to see if a 'pair divert' solution can be achieved (ie: take pairs from another DP and divert them to yours). If this is out of the question, then a more in-depth survey will be carried out and as again mentioned earlier, there is a price-ceiling to this.
I understand your predicament, as I've stated umpteen times before, but the reason nobody else is running cables to your village is because it is a financial money-pit. The ROI would likely be a lifetime !!.
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Could you and the villagers get together and do a B4RN style install?
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I don't know why BTx is allowed to charge the same for a 0.5 Mbps copper line as for a 21 Mbps line. If they had to charge according to results delivered, then things might be different.
Just a thought on that ^ which is a common misconception.
In reality the line serving 0.5 Mbps costs more to provision than a line capable of 24Mbps adsl. Far more copper, often higher gauge, more poles, more digging etc. The cost to provision a 24Mbps capable line is next door to the exchange is negligible in comparison.
Both will use the same MDF and both use the same DSLAM, the 24Mbps line is far less likely to require maintenance and suffer from line faults, so is also cheaper to maintain.
Whilst I really really do sympathise with your situation... its because pricing is the same regardless of length, its the shorter lines which subsidise the cost of the longer lines.
In a way I guess we were lucky that it was the GPO that put in telephone lines in the first place, if not then like any company cost and ROI would be a major factor.
Have you also noticed the amount of new homes being built without gas these days even though they may be relatively near a decent size town.. if the cost of installation exceeds budget then its electric only. I know quite a lot of houses around here that only have electricity for that reason. :/
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I hope you don't mind, and I do not know your area where you live, but one of your posts made me think
Is it a possibility, if you are near a town or city with fttc, and the distance not too far (you mentioned 4 miles to cab -circa), that you could ask a person in that to town, to have a second line installed, provision fttc to the line, and run your own fibre to your village/house, then either setup your own ac wap network for village, or just use for your own
He's somewhere around here: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Heast,+Isle+of+Skye/@57.1863259,-5.8978477,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x488c21a980aba4c7:0xab3a4cdd697af450!8m2!3d57.186323!4d-5.895659?hl=en
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@black sheep - the pole on the far side of the road by my house is right on the (one and only) main cable bundle into the village and I'm the first house. So my pairs must peel off from there. So is it the case that the critical thing is the number of free pairs in the main cable?
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@kitz - I quite agree. But my point was a mental exploration of a hypothetical alternate reality where carriers were required to charge by results delivered, I didn't mean this as a practical recommendation or prescription. In such a fantasy world, BT would suddenly be mad for FTTP as it gives the most band for the buck, and lowest maintenance cost, and its length-independent. It was purely a thought experiment, which I didn't make clear. :(
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@d2d4j, @ronski - I have often thought about making some kind of link to a friend in civilisation. A length of 4.6 mi of fibre or an RF link. The problem with the latter is that there is no line of sight. There are so many problems with the former that I don't know where to begin listing them all.
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@black sheep - the pole on the far side of the road by my house is right on the (one and only) main cable bundle into the village and I'm the first house. So my pairs must peel off from there. So is it the case that the critical thing is the number of free pairs in the main cable?
Yes, as mooted previously ..... if there are spares in the 'main cable', then 'pair diverts' are an option. Additional work may also need to be done on the DP feed (the cable that runs up the pole), as there may be a shortfall of pairs in this also ??
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@kitz - I quite agree. But my point was a mental exploration of a hypothetical alternate reality where carriers were required to charge by results delivered, I didn't mean this as a practical recommendation or prescription. In such a fantasy world, BT would suddenly be mad for FTTP as it gives the most band for the buck, and lowest maintenance cost, and its length-independent. It was purely a thought experiment, which I didn't make clear. :(
That would indeed suddenly change their business plan, however your village probably still wouldnt get FTTP as there would be decisions made on ROI still, and a small village at the end of a few miles of cable would likely only get FTTP with political intervention.
Also if anything rural areas are getting the better deal currently, with BDUK etc. vectoring, long reach vdsl etc. all targeted at rural areas, bulk of UK FTTP is also in rural areas, cornwall a good example. Your best bet is to pressure your MP, councillers etc.
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I'm not sure, but I think I heard something about how FTTC is coming to some parts of Skye. However, we are just left out as we aren't an important location and don't have any cabs. I wrote a viciously nasty email to HIE, which probably did me no favours at all, after they had sent me some smug advert for how well they were doing. MP sounds like a more sensible plan.
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@d2d4j, @ronski - I have often thought about making some kind of link to a friend in civilisation. A length of 4.6 mi of fibre or an RF link. The problem with the latter is that there is no line of sight. There are so many problems with the former that I don't know where to begin listing them all.
Start by contacting B4RN, see if they are interested in helping, talk to locals see if they are will to pay.
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At the end of the day you choose to live there, if nothing is available you can't go blaming the companies as you are doing, hell even if those restrictions were put in place you wouldn't get wired. We live in a capitalist country, so if you live somewhere remote, you buy a leased line. I lived in Cornwall for 20 years, all my friends in Cities were on 2mbps when I was on 28k, then 12mbps when I was on 1mbps...I sucked it up because my parents chose to live in the sticks.
If I was a millionaire I could go and buy a house on its own land and enjoy the privacy of outer city life here in Cheshire.... but there would be no FTTC which means again, paying for a connection out of my own pocket.
It always interests me that people on FB etc say something like "F the government cos I can't get fast internet in the middle of the moors in my council house" but then their attitude towards rich people in the same predicament is always "Good, why should he get fast broadband, the tax dodging scrote".
What I would advise you to do is stick with ADSL and use satellite internet for what it is designed to do - burst transfers. Buy a 10gbps seedbox for £20 a month, use bit torrent to get your media, zip it all up via SSH and burst transfer it once a week by the terabyte via satellite. I'm sure there is a more legal way of doing this also. Not every service is streaming only.
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smiley has given you good advice, I agree with it.
You can even get a seedbox for around £6, I have one, its on a 2.5gbit port and maxes out my line single threaded. It is capable of throughput of around 400mbit/sec which is amazing for the price.
Check online.net. Those are dedicated boxes not shared, using cheap atom cpu's.
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I'm with a well known Dutch seedbox company, £10 a month, 10gbps, 1TB of data, no bandwidth restrictions (none at all) I regulary see it download files at around 400MB/s (megabytes per second, not bits!) and then I download from it via FTP and it maxes out my line!
I recommend a bigger one for more monthly outgoing as 1TB really isn't much these days.
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The only reason I believe I have not seen higher than 400 is because the hdd maxes out its i/o.
400mbit/sec should be plenty of throughput for what he want.
I dont think he wants to sit there seeding huge amounts of content, which would be the only reason to need more storage. His problem is getting the content to his home.
Also it might be helpful to name your seedbox provider, I dont think is anything illegal about getting and selling seedbox services. Bear in mind tho if weaver is concerned about his privacy of what he does a shared seedbox will have less of that vs a dedicated box.
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Unless he delves in CP, the server company (Feral hosting) won't care what he puts on the shared box!
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Thank you for naming the company, they may not care but personally I prefer to use a dedicated box, but if weaver doesnt care then yes that may be a better option, especially as with feral the software is already setup.