Kitz Forum
Announcements => News Articles => Topic started by: Bowdon on July 25, 2019, 12:34:42 PM
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https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/07/ireland-doing-what-the-uk-asa-failed-to-do-ban-fake-fibre-ads.html (https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/07/ireland-doing-what-the-uk-asa-failed-to-do-ban-fake-fibre-ads.html)
According to the Irish Times, the ASA for Ireland (ASAI) plans to impose stricter guidance that will stop providers promising “fibre” in their broadband adverts if the connection(s) still relies on old copper or aluminium lines (FTTC / VDSL, Hybrid Fibre Coax etc.).
I can't help but think that BT/OR shot themselves in the foot by not supporting CityFibre when they challenged the UK ASA on fake fibre. Now we have a situation were people think they already have "fibre" so are less likely to move to genuine full fibre when that option becomes available to them. Ironically BT/OR will be the most affected by this because its only them that have called hybrid products full fibre, and also allow their customer isp's to misrepresent what the OR product is.
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Even this annoys me. Hybrid fibre - no such thing because the bottleneck is all that matters and that’s the copper. I am not going to start calling my EO ADSL 2 copper lines ‘hybrid’ because there is fibre running for 500 mi from London to the Broadford exchange. Yes that 500 mi of copper is highly relevant because it is vital, yet it’s a universal now, everyone has fibre to their exchange from the outside world, so it is not a consideration. My line is the bit going into my house and only that segment. This much is obvious to every one of us.
The ASA fibre thing was a disgrace: simply blatant lying was allowed and excuses were made for the indefensible, given presumably for corrupt reasons or incompetence, who knows?
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The UK is the only country I know off worldwide that allows copper services to be advertised as fibre. At least on a widespread basis.
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Just for the record, I personally fully support the UK ASA’s position. :)
My opinion remains... My own broadband speed is about ten times as fast as my closest neighbour, because I purchase an FTTC package, he purchases a legacy ADSL package. To the layman (as he is), using the word “fibre” to distinguish the two is entirely appropriate, in these very common circumstances. And to the expert (as many here are), we won’t be confused, as we all know the differences between FTTC and FTTH, and all the in-betweens like FTTdP.
But all these arguments were done to death a few months ago, when ASA ruled against CityFibre’s complaints, quite correctly imo.
I was careful to just state above as ‘an opinion’, as I know others feel differently, as spelled out in previous threads. Come what may, let’s agree to mutually respect one another’s points of view? :)
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OK, my opinion is I totally disagree with your opinion, but I accept its your opinion :P
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I know this is rehashing an old thread and I do respect your opinion 7lm, sure the distinction is clear in you and your neighbours case.
But if you forget about the technical inaccuracies of calling DSL "fibre" and take a view solely based on end user experience, eg - your 10x connection with 'fibre' vs his, you have to consider that the product being sold as 'fibre' comes with it all the technical difficulties that DSL has had all these years and more. Degradation due to crosstalk, susceptibility to noise, sensitivity to CPE devices, the myriad faults that can occur on a copper line due to bad joints - damage - water - etc that take a monumental amount of effort by end users and openreach to sort out. All the things that people come to this forum to seek help with. They are almost completely eliminated with an actual fibre connection.
If you call DSL with the box a bit closer to your house fibre you devalue the actual reality of a fibre connection and reduce consumer pressure to ask for a better network.
Anyway, soap box away and apologies for bringing it up again. ;D
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I’m not calling the copper bit fibre, I’m calling the fibre bit fibre. And it is the fibre bit that makes the difference, between circa 2.5 Mbps and circa 25 Mbps. Granted, the copper bit helps too being vdsl, but even if it were just adsl, the fibre bit still be having a massive contribution, reducing the length of copper from several miles a few hundred hards.
Another consideration is, my neighbour has his house on the market. Potential purchasers are alarmed at his 2.5Mbps downloads and enquiring “isn’t fibre available?”. They ask that question to distinguish from other properties and villages that do not have Fibre at all, not to the home and not even to the village. I have no hesitation in telling him to answer “yes, we have FTTC fibre to the village, Mr Muddle next door gets over 20Mbps”.
I’d far prefer that the answer was “Mr Muddle has FTTP”, or “... FTTdp”, or “..FTTR” of course. But for now, “Mr Muddle has FTTC” is an accurate and helpful answer. In each of these cases of course, there is ‘F’ as in ‘Fibre’.
But I don’t expect to persuade anybody here, just reiterating my own firmly held opinions. :)
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Another consideration is, my neighbour has his house on the market. Potential purchasers are alarmed at his 2.5Mbps downloads and enquiring “isn’t fibre available?”. They ask that question to distinguish from other properties and villages that do not have Fibre at all, not to the home and not even to the village. I have no hesitation in telling him to answer “yes, we have FTTC fibre to the village, Mr Muddle next door gets over 20Mbps”.
And if you had paid for FTTPoD but your neighbour could advertise their house as having fibre too?
Bah, its clear we are not going to change each others minds. I hope the discussion becomes irrelevant in the not to distant future :)
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Bah, its clear we are not going to change each others minds. I hope the discussion becomes irrelevant in the not to distant future :)
Unfortunately I can’t see that happening We live in a country with surprisingly sparse population densities, even within 50-100 miles of London.
For Fibre to universally go any further than the cabinet, seems to me we need to either persuade rural dwellers to abandon their homes and move to the cities, or to impose a USO on the providers. Latter would be my preference, but politically unthinkable as the providers would then need to massively increase charges to everybody. Who, among the existing FTTP urban users, would vote for a party with that in their manifesto?
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Who, among the existing FTTP urban users, would vote for a party with that in their manifesto?
Who would vote for using tax revenue to pay for infrastructure that makes every citizen more productive?
I think we are singing from different hymn books... :lol:
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If you call DSL with the box a bit closer to your house fibre you devalue the actual reality of a fibre connection and reduce consumer pressure to ask for a better network.
Is that really because it's being falsely marketed as fibre, or could that actually be largely due to an FTTC connection being good enough for a lot of people?
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The other point to bear in mind is, 100% fibre with 0% copper is just not necessary, even for gigabit speeds.
I have no idea how a tower block, containing dozens of dwellings, would normally be provisioned with FTTP. But I would imagine a possibility might be to have fibre to the building, with copper ethernet distribution therein. There’s a company called Hyperoptic that, I think, does just that - not just to apartment blocks, but to office blocks too.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/hyperoptic-expansion-investment-1gbps/
So, would the “copper is evil” mantra extend to above? Would Hyperoptic be told to stop referring to their product as “fibre”? That would be a pity, as it’s a cost-effective way of getting extremely fast, and extremely stable broadband, to large numbers of people, in a realistic timescale. And it is made possible because the main part of the route uses optical fibre, even though copper is used in part, as well. ???
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Coax or CAT5/6 ethernet cables and UTP are different animals... are you really comparing telegraph pole technology from the turn of the century with fibre to a premises in an apartment building?
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Coax or CAT5/6 ethernet cables and UTP are different animals... are you really comparing telegraph pole technology from the turn of the century with fibre to a premises in an apartment building?
Absolutely agree. Ethernet was designed to carry 10/100/1000/10000Mbps at reliable speeds. You wouldn’t run an office network over fibre. You terminate the fibre at building entry and distribute the connection over cat 5/6. Same with a block of flats.
The stuff we have to run broadband over now was originally intended for analogue voice only. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s amazing that I’m getting 290Mbps over my phone line, but I’d rather have fibre all the way.
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Coax or CAT5/6 ethernet cables and UTP are different animals...
Cat 5 and successors 5E, 6 etc, are normally unshielded, UTP. Coax was used for ethernet in the early days, but (iirc) limited to 10Mbps. UTP is now infinitely more common, providing gigabit and more.
I do find it interesting that, whilst I remember being taught the ‘seemingly miraculous’ qualities of UTP in my 1970s degree course, I wonder whether anybody then really foresaw its future deployment as DSL and high speed ethernet? :)
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Just for the record, I personally fully support the UK ASA’s position. :)
My opinion remains... My own broadband speed is about ten times as fast as my closest neighbour, because I purchase an FTTC package, he purchases a legacy ADSL package. To the layman (as he is), using the word “fibre” to distinguish the two is entirely appropriate, in these very common circumstances. And to the expert (as many here are), we won’t be confused, as we all know the differences between FTTC and FTTH, and all the in-betweens like FTTdP.
But all these arguments were done to death a few months ago, when ASA ruled against CityFibre’s complaints, quite correctly imo.
I was careful to just state above as ‘an opinion’, as I know others feel differently, as spelled out in previous threads. Come what may, let’s agree to mutually respect one another’s points of view? :)
you killed your own argument tho.
You justified it on the means your connection is 10x as fast as your ADSL neighbour, what about the cityfibre neighbour who is 10x as fast as you? yet they described the same in advertising.
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My connection is 15 times faster :P
And it is true fibre to the premises, then converts to coax to enter the house.
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I think that it is false advertising, and it wouldn't surprise me if this situation was created due to a marketing campaign to try and make people think they have full fibre when really it is a hybrid connection.
They could have used any other term that didn't already mean something. But by using fibre it becomes confusing. Most people aren't tech savvy and they rely on the experts for their knowledge. If the experts have given a false impression, that the person thinks they have full fibre with a FTTC connection, then it is the industries fault for not properly communicating the situation.
I think we also have to remember that when lines eventually become 100% fibre many of the problems both adsl and vdsl suffer from goes away i.e. electrical interference. You should always get your full speed, what you actually paid for, rather than the inferior adsl and the slightly less inferior vdsl.
As I said in my first post, this as probably been pushed by BT/OR early on because they were still pushing the "why do people need faster speeds?" mentality and in their minds back then didn't expect full fibre to come in to focus this soon.
Also in another place people are talking about being left behind, as they are on adsl or have a very low speed. This isn't like the upgrade from adsl to vdsl, every line will be upgraded to a full fibre because that is the next generation. It would become too complicated to be still running a copper system while everything else is setup to work with full fibre. It might take many years for all lines to be converted but I think it will happen.
On the VM situation. I don't really see why they have to latch on to the full fibre issue. They use cable and thats a different type of technology. But there is nothing to stop VM setting their own marketing standards and as long as they make it clear what technology they are using then I can't see a problem with it. I know full fibre will always come out on top. But cable can also keep up for many years yet.
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Bowden the confusion point you raised is interesting, because some marketeers will admit that confusion can be a deliberate strategy.
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I don’t actually agree that non-techies will “think they have full fibre”, they provably have no idea what technology is used. They *should simply assess whether the connection meets their needs and if not, ask for, or demand something faster. I very much doubt whether they care whether the service is delivered over fibre or copper (say, ethernet, as with Hyperoptic’s service), as long as it meets their needs.
That’s what they should be doing. It is also possible they are being influenced by FTTP marketing, and noticing the headline-grabbing complaints to ASA, and concluding, “Wow, I need full fibre”. In fact they don’t, they simply need a sufficiently fast service, even if a stick of wet celery is involved as a comms link.
Here’s that link to the Hyperoptic article again. I think it would be ridiculous if they were banned from selling their product as “fibre”, but it’s definitely not full fibre as per a dedicated FTTP to an ordinary house....
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/hyperoptic-expansion-investment-1gbps/
Emphasise again, that’s my view. Accept that not everybody agrees. :)
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I had a read of the hyperoptic article.
I'd say that was FTTP as fibre is entering the properly. How its distributed from that point is up to the people living there. It would be like having an FTTP connection to your router then using wifi to connect to it. Wifi wouldn't get the full speed. But you'd still have a fibre connection.
I think the big problem with FTTP is there isn't enough advertising of the product. When joe and joanna bloggs gets a leaflet through their door advertising full fibre when they already have FTTC, they are going to think "we've already got fibre, why change?". This is going to be a big problem as part of the full fibre rollout is updating the entire network. So there could be quite a few modern day mildly educated troglodytes protesting against the rollout.
I respect your view SLM. A lot of people have it. One of the problems with putting the opposite opinion on a forum is multiple people reply. I hope we're all emphasising the mutual respect for each other in this conversation :)
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I agree it’s debatable, whether Hyperoptic is FTTP. My understanding, which may be wrong, is that there are multiple individual “premises” in a block of flats, ie each dwelling. Wikipedia suggests existence another acronym, FTTB (building), which would at least distinguish it from FTTP and FTTC.
The other thing is... the arstechnica article suggests the occupants of the flats, whilst having access to 1Gbps fibre, actually have to share it. If there are (say) 30 flats, and each one settles down to stream a 4K movie at the same time, they’re only getting 33Mbps each - barely adequate. If some flats contain multiple kids, streaming multiple movies, it gets worse, and maybe even inadequate.
That’s then another scenario whereby Mr & Mrs Bloggs living in these flats are subsequently offered 1Gbps true FTTP from Openreach, but turn it down as they already have 1Gbps fibre from Hyperoptic, unaware they might be missing the opportunity for a massive improvement.
But by any sensible definition it is a form of fibre broadband and a useful contribution to society, and imho, they should be allowed to market it as “fibre”, even if Mr & Mrs Bloggs fail to understand it all.
Likewise, I do understand the arguments against fake fibre too, and the resentment that FTTC is marketed as fibre. I am after all in a minority of 1 in these threads, and I have to face up to that. :D
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The other thing is... the arstechnica article suggests the occupants of the flats, whilst having access to 1Gbps fibre, actually have to share it. If there are (say) 30 flats, and each one settles down to stream a 4K movie at the same time, they’re only getting 33Mbps each - barely adequate. If some flats contain multiple kids, streaming multiple movies, it gets worse, and maybe even inadequate.
That’s then another scenario whereby Mr & Mrs Bloggs living in these flats are subsequently offered 1Gbps true FTTP from Openreach, but turn it down as they already have 1Gbps fibre from Hyperoptic, unaware they might be missing the opportunity for a massive improvement.
This doesn't make any sense to me. The flat occupants share backhaul but have a dedicated gigabit to that backhaul. The backhaul can be scaled as the operator sees fit much as with xDSL.
True FTTP from Openreach is shared 2.4Gb 32 ways - it's a shared media.
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I was going to post something, but decided not to because it was more or less what @sevenlayermuddle had already said.
I think the big problem with FTTP is there isn't enough advertising of the product.
I didn't even think there was any big problem with FTTP.
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This doesn't make any sense to me. The flat occupants share backhaul but have a dedicated gigabit to that backhaul. The backhaul can be scaled as the operator sees fit much as with xDSL.
True FTTP from Openreach is shared 2.4Gb 32 ways - it's a shared media.
Agreed, I see no technical reason to impose a 1Gbps bottleneck. The fibre can go faster, and so can the copper. Maybe the article is just wrong. Nevertheless, it does emphasise that whilst every network topology will have bottlenecks, the bottlenecks between FTTP and FTTB will be different. It might be the fibre bit, or it might be the copper bit, but whichever is lower in any context, becomes a limiting factor.
Thus getting close to my underlying dislike, of classing any particular offering as “full fibre” which, unlike FTTC/FTTB/FTTP, I don’t think has any particular technical definition. :-\
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The article is wrong.
FTTB has the same kind of bottleneck as point to point fibre up until 10Gb is hit.
There's no precise technical definition of much of this however Openreach FTTC is more accurately described as FTTN - Node. That'd be the international definition of what it is as there's no attempt to reach within a certain radius of the served premises.
With that in mind given we don't even have the two most frequently used products correctly advertised or described it's all down from there.
Full fibre has a definition and Hyperoptic misuse it themselves, which is pretty funny. Full fibre = FTTP = fibre to the premises occupied by the customer.
I wasn't that fussed by the advertising once I'd gotten over VM being allowed to misuse it back in the 000s however with the discussion of full fibre now I would appreciate at very least that term being reserved for FTTP. This would not be politically expedient though as Hyperoptic's coverage might be needed for targets.
Thought for the day: if Hyperoptic is 'full fibre' so is VDSL where the DSLAM is in the basement of a building, which does and has happened in the UK.
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I wasn’t aware that ‘full fibre’ has a definition I would certainly agree it must imply, at least, FTTP.
Interestingly though, I came across this document this morning, following a chain of links about Boris’s plans for full fibre. I think it might be the source of other recent media reports, as how badly the UK is doing, putting the UK right at the bottom of European fibre rankings.
However, the table on p18 differentiates between FTTH (same thing as FTTP?) and FTTB. Many of the countries supposedly ahead of the UK seem to be heavily reliant on FTTB for their placement. For FTTH, we’re not doing so badly, still bad, not as bad.
https://www.ftthcouncil.eu/documents/FTTH%20Council%20Europe%20-%20Panorama%20at%20September%202018.pdf
And there was me, thinking you could trust industry statistics and media reporting. :D
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On the VM situation. I don't really see why they have to latch on to the full fibre issue. They use cable and thats a different type of technology. But there is nothing to stop VM setting their own marketing standards and as long as they make it clear what technology they are using then I can't see a problem with it. I know full fibre will always come out on top. But cable can also keep up for many years yet.
Actually in new areas VM use fibre, I watched the fibre being blown in to the front of my house, then a media converter changes to coax so it can connected to the hub. The whole of Thanet is being done in this way, well the areas they are covering anyway. I consider this as FTTP, as I have a fibre on my property supplying my broadband.
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@Ronski, this is kind of my whole point. What does it matter if the service qualifies as ‘true FTTP’ or ‘full fibre’, as long as the customer is satisfied? Especially as in your case, a technically competent, discerning costumer. But even if you were a non techie, same would apply.
Harping back to Hyperoptic, whilst it does seem to be the case that their service to apartments is definitely not true full fibre, and accepting that FTTP might be even better, it is also a tremendous service, and I am envious of their customers. The service described in arstechnica is made possible because of the fibre element and again, imho, it would be quite tragic if ASA were persuaded that they should be disallowed from describing it as fibre, just because it is not FTTP.
Emphasise again then, Hyperoptic’s service is imho a tremendous fibre service, and I hope ASA allow them to carry on selling it as fibre, otherwise they will lose out unfairly. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and so by the same reasoning, FTTC is also most definitely a fibre service, even if a vastly inferior service to Hyperoptic, and so no reason not to call it ‘fibre’.
Just one thing though... I think Hyperoptic were among the complainants to ASA that FTTC should not be allowed to call itself fibre, because it is not full fibre. I wonder, have they ever heard the saying, “when in a glasshouse, don’t throw stones”? :D
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There's no way you can correctly call a VDSL service a fibre service, it's a partial fibre service, but so is ADSL! For some FTTC customers that fibre ends 300m, 600m or even 2km away or more leaving hundreds or thousands of meters of crappy old copper or even aluminium telephone line subject to all the problems you are aware of. For ADSL that partial fibre service ends at the exchange, VDSL it ends at the street cabinet not the customers building.
Now take a fibre and run it to the outside of a building, in my case with VM it is then converted to coax for the last few meters to the modem, a medium that's more than up to carrying a gigabit signal.
In hyper optics case a fibre is taken to the basement of the building and again it's converted to a medium that is perfectly capable of distributing a gigabit around the property.
In all cases the end users internal network is irrelevant.
You can't call an apple a pear and say that's OK just because you enjoyed eating it.
Many used to complain about cheap flights to to Barcelona, only to find they were at Salou, any one who thinks calling VDSL fibre is saying thats OK because the jet has taken you most the way, you just need to use a train or car for the rest.
Sunday morning rant over!
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Ronski, I was just trying to make the point that FTTC is exactly like FTTB in that they are both partial fibre. Wasn’t commenting on VM, other than to respond (agreeably I thought) to your own comments
Of course, FTTC is crap compared with FTTB, and customers should be made aware of that fact. But if FTTB can call itself fibre, even though it stops short of customer premises, how we justify saying that FTTC isn’t fibre, just because it stops short of customer premises? I’m all in favour of communicating the facts as to how great FTTB is, and crap FTTC is, but simply denying that it is fibre is a copout, because it is, just as FTTB is too.
My own preference would simply be to tell it like it is. Make sure FTTC products describe themselves as are only FTTC, allowing customers to easily recognise its inferiority. Personally I’d have no problems if ASA insisted on the words ‘crap fibre’ being included in adverts, but they can’t insist that the word ‘fibre’ is removed, unless same treatment is applied to FTTB.
For that matter, they should also make sure that FTTB products emphasise they are ‘only’ FTTB, allowing customers to research the possibility that a competing true FTTP service might be even better. Not sure where VM fits into that argument, but it must fit somewhere.
I don’t agree that ADSL could be called fibre, that would be daft. Leaving VM aside we are referring to the service we purchase from BT, which extends from our home to the telephone exchange. What happens in the core network, or even the international network, is entirely irrelevant to the definition of the service we are discussing. If the core network contains bits of ultra high speed ethernet, would we forbid FTTP from calling itself full fibre? Of course we wouldn’t.
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I wasn't going to comment in this thread again as its just flogging a dead horse.
But it feels relevant to bring up the conclusion of the last thread taking about this.
DSL is DSL. Doesn't matter where the DSLAM is, if the last part of the connection uses 2 unshielded copper wires and has a DSL modem at the end it is DSL. Every other country on the planet calls it what it is. They also call "hyrbid fibre coax" cable - DOCSIS. DSL is DSL, cable is cable. They have their own merits and short comings. No one calls fibre to the building or fibre to the premises cable or DSL because they are not.
I think this collective dumbing down of marketing started in the UK when anything that wasn't dial up was called "broadband" and it spiralled from there.
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7LM, FTTB is fibre, my point being that once its at the building it can be distributed via network cables, and the speed doesn't degrade.
By your own admission ADSL can't be described as fibre yet fibre is used until the exchange, the street side DSLAM is really no different to the exchange equipment with ADSL, after the street cabinet the broadband signal is distributed by phone lines that degrade the performance exactly the same as with ADSL.
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Johnson’s argument is a good one, a point well made. But by that argument, if we are to simply describe the technology of final delivery to premises, surely Hyperoptic’s FTTB would have to be described as ‘ethernet’ rather than fibre?
One problem that gives rise to is, there may other services available, that are delivered to premises via a final ethernet connection, that are actually just crappy old FTTC back to the exchange from the building’s comms cupboard. Or even crappier ADSL. They’d also be able to call themselves ethernet services, just like Hyperoptic, which seems grossly misleading to me. :(
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> ‘ethernet’ rather than fibre
This is a very good point. Back in the old days of early engineer-installed Openreach FFTC, surely that was what you got in terms of demarcation of responsibility- the OR modem was the thing the black box that just delivered ‘internet’ somehow. It just happened to be by using wet string (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42338067) in the middle and had a nice seriously unreliable and slow bottleneck upstream of your ethernet demarcation point.
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7LM I think you need to think about all the links in the chain, we'll not include anything after the EU modem as that's irrelevant.
Without taking things to the extreme (IE distance for each link and considering speeds up to 1Gbps), is there any link in the chain which degrades performance of the connection?
Weavers cabinet is FTTC enabled, but clearly his 'fibre' line isn't working as he can't even get VDSL, just proves my point it's not fibre broadband.
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One problem that gives rise to is, there may other services available, that are delivered to premises via a final ethernet connection, that are actually just crappy old FTTC back to the exchange from the building’s comms cupboard. Or even crappier ADSL. They’d also be able to call themselves ethernet services, just like Hyperoptic, which seems grossly misleading to me. :(
Can you provide any examples of that happening? A single DSL link to a building that is shared by all occupants via ethernet/wifi? Other than a nasty HMO where there are worse things to worry about than the internet I cant believe there are flats that would share such a connection and not have their own phone lines where they could order a similar uncontested service directly.
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7LM, FTTB is fibre, my point being that once its at the building it can be distributed via network cables, and the speed doesn't degrade.
Agreed, in purely technical terms, the signal doesn’t degrade (it might if UTP cables are over 100 metres, but that’s getting pedantic). But the the service might degrade. A shared ethernet network has additional elements - switches and hubs - that present additional bottlenecks. I don’t know whether Hyperoptic have individual UTPs from their fibre modem direct to every premise, more likely I’d expect a few switches, perhaps on every floor of a block of flats. It’s probably not that hard to shove 10Gbps through even the cheapest switch if the data is wrapped up in full size packets, but harder to use all the bandwidth with smaller packets.
Moreover, according to the Arstechica article, Hyperoptic’s ethernet is restricted to 1Gbps. If that is true, then the ethernet itself may be a bottleneck, compared to the fibre.
All things considered I’d be delighted, even ecstatic, if somebody were to offer me an FTTB service delivered by 1Gbps ethernet. But I’d still be a smidgen envious, if I discovered the flat next door had true FTTP.
Can you provide any examples of that happening? A single DSL link to a building that is shared by all occupants via ethernet/wifi? Other than a nasty HMO where there are worse things to worry about than the internet I cant believe there are flats that would share such a connection and not have their own phone lines where they could order a similar uncontested service directly.
No I can’t provide an example, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Consider also a less extreme version, whereby a dodgy home developer (is there such a thing?) advertises that flats in his new-build have broadband via FTTB with a 10Gbps ethernet connection. And indeed, when an occupier attaches his apparatus it to the wall socket, it would negotiate 10Gbps. But the underlying fibre might be only 1Gbps, as that’s the cheapest deal the dodgy developer could strike with a provider. Still, the developer has told no lies... He could even “justify” his deception by allowing neighbours to exchange data between one another at the full 10Gbps, even if that is hardly ever useful.
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Consider also a less extreme version, whereby a dodgy home developer (is there such a thing?) advertises that flats in his new-build have broadband via FTTB with a 10Gbps ethernet connection. And indeed, when an occupier attaches his apparatus it to the wall socket, it would negotiate 10Gbps. But the underlying fibre might be only 1Gbps, as that’s the cheapest deal the dodgy developer could strike with a provider. Still, the developer has told no lies... He could even “justify” his deception by allowing neighbours to exchange data between one another at the full 10Gbps, even if that is hardly ever useful.
You keep moving the goal posts man. First we were talking about a single FTTC or ADSL link and now its a shared gigabit one... seems pretty disingenuous. :shrug:
As far as I understand a law was passed in recent years that all new builds must have FTTP, there is a new build estate not far from me and every house has a fibre box on the outside.
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seems pretty disingenuous. :shrug:
Apols if that’s how it came across (which clearly, it did). :(
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Apols if that’s how it came across (which clearly, it did). :(
No worries, sure we are all arguing around the same point in the end.
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I think using the argument that things like FTTB have a tiny bit of copper in the building must mean its the same as DSL is clutching at straws.
The technical difference between FTTP/FTTB and DSL is huge. Even if a FTTP provider sells a 80/20 service, its still better, it wont need to switch to interleaving to maintain stability, it wont have a dynamic up to access/sync speed. Its superior full stop. It is a different technology full stop.
The ASA dug themselves a hole when they allowed the term fibre broadband to be used from day one, and they just dont want to be seen to take a U turn.
Its easy to think the UK is all that matters, and to ignore the standard elsewhere. But all it shows to me is how silly we have got here, so much stuff gets "dumbed down", and it leads to "misselling" as essentially consumers dont understand what they buying. Providers cannot educate consumers because the ASA wont let them.
Instead I noticed we shying behind the term "ultrafast broadband". So the government can make people feel who get ultrafast via cable instead of via FTTP are not using inferior tech, and like wise who get it via g.fast.
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How is the ASA not letting providers explain to their customers how FTTC works? They don't appear to have removed this explanation (https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/package-guides/fibre-optic-broadband#fibre-explained) from Plusnet's website.
I thought Deutsche Telekom were looking at using G.fast with FTTB.
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I thought Deutsche Telekom were looking at using G.fast with FTTB.
I wasn’t aware of that. But a quick google suggests that G.fast with FTTB is seen as a sensible option, in Europe and elsewhere. I can certainly understand the appeal.
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I have perhaps even got myself caught up in this confusion, I mean I see putting a dslam in a basement as rather silly, if you doing that then you may as well provide a proper fibre service.
But fair enough if someone is rolling out g.fast to the basement it is FTTB, so I should have said just FTTP/FTTH then.
But even so a FTTB variant of g.fast is a lot better than a FTTC variant of g.fast as the length of copper will be a tiny fraction, the performance would be much more predictable, and the fault diagnosis be more robust. Our g.fast in the UK is cabinet based so I see it as FTTC. If it was to the poles it would be FTTN, and to the basement then FTTB.
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DSLAMs in basements were a huge thing in Japan.
They are a thing in the United States, where existing coaxial cable is used to carry G.fast.
It makes sense any time there's existing cabling to units and a provider is unable to build their own.
G.fast over coax can happily deliver a gigabit >200m of cable length away. I would imagine with the advances that have happened since that'd be symmetrical with modern hardware.
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I can see the attraction I guess in large multi floor flat type buildings. Like the one that had that fire in london recently.
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Fibre to basement, pizza box DSLAM connected to existing junction box, job done.