Kitz Forum
Announcements => News Articles => Topic started by: gt94sss2 on October 09, 2019, 01:11:03 PM
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The big news today for existing BT Consumer customers if you have not already elected to self-upgrade to one of the VDSL2 (FTTC partial fibre) or FTTP (full fibre) products when available is that some 700,000 such customers will be upgraded from their ADSL/ADSL2+ services by June 2020 and at no extra charge, i.e. no increase in monthly fee or any setup cost. Also where FTTC/FTTP is available new customers will not be offered ADSL/ADSL2+ to buy, i.e. a stop sell will be put in place.
This change is one of a number of changes from BT aimed at positioning itself as treating customers both consumer and business fairly and also preparing the way for the changes expected in the next decade which will see a big shift to digital voice and an explosion of connected devices in the home.
BT 5G service to launch on Friday 11th October with BT Plus/Halo customers being the first to upgrade.
BT Plus is upgrading to BT Halo after the success that has seen 1 million customers sign up to a BT Plus package.
BT Halo will be available in November 2019 offering converged high definition voice, broadband, unlimited data at home and on the go, 5G access and unlimited voice.
900 Home Tech experts to help with digital technology in the home and workplace. BT Halo customers will get one free visit as part of their package.
BT brand back on the high street at over 600 stores, both support and sales.
Plan returning call centres to UK and Ireland from overseas will complete early; now January 2020 rather than December 2020. Map shown at press conference indicated Ireland means Northern Ireland.
Regional call routing when you ring support, so you will be connected to an agent in your region if one is available.
Skills for Tomorrow programme, which is a mixture of online and community training for all ages. A key aim being to provide digital skills training for 10 million school children.
New full fibre plans in November (we presume a price restructure and introduction of 500 Mbps and a Gigabit package).
From
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/8559-upgrades-for-700-000-bt-customers-and-bt-halo-converged-services-to-launch
More coverage at
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/10/bt-uk-to-launch-halo-unlimited-5g-and-fixed-broadband-plan.html
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Also where FTTC/FTTP is available new customers will not be offered ADSL/ADSL2+ to buy, i.e. a stop sell will be put in place.
Stop sell on ADSL has been in place nearly 3 weeks.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/09/isp-bt-quietly-culls-adsl-based-unlimited-broadband-packages.html
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Yes, I know.
I think the significance of today's announcement is that BT Retail is upgrading all the customers they can to fibre and the growing trend to making 5G tariffs unmetered.
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Indeed!
Big news imo.
I was just pointing out additional info to the way Andrew phrases it on his article
new customers will not be offered ADSL/ADSL2+ to buy, i.e. a stop sell will be put in place.
I'm surprised he says will be, it already is.
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This bit is of interest to people wondering about copper turn off?
"BT will stop selling standard broadband connections on the legacy BT copper network to 90% of the UK".
So circa 10% will probably keep legacy services I assume due to viability of rolling out long runs of fibre to small number of properties, probably locations like where weaver is.
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Hopefully in that case they'd use long range VDSL, no need for an exchange for that.
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This bit is of interest to people wondering about copper turn off?
Different parts of BT. This is by their consumer arm so they can only make decisions based on current fibre availability - and not future rollout plans
I would almost call it a customer retention tool for those who have not updated to faster services already, so they remain happy with BT due to getting a better customer experience.
Of more interest to me is what availablity at DSLAMs will look like after another 700k customers and any impact on crosstalk.
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It perhaps makes it more likely in ECI areas that a second hauwei cabinet will popup, with adsl customers taking up the remaining vdsl ports to fill up ECI cabinets.
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The upgrades in my area seem to be proceeding rapidly over the last week or so. The result has been 4 drops of about 3Mb/s each on my ECI line. I suspect they are all from properties on my road. Two of the properties concerned are known to me and both tried to resist the change as they did not see any need for it. Both barely use their connections as they were put there by their children to help keep in touch better. It all seems pointless to me and one more drop of the same size will get me below the current handback threashold- no doubt BT will simply revise that!.
I suspect that in other areas with a lot of minor users of data no one will feel better off and many will be worse off.
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It all seems rather silly unless this can be done for ALL LLU providers (which obviously this is not, as this is BT only), so that the band-plans can be changed and ADSL completely decommissioned from the exchange.
You'd think there would be push back from Openreach at BT doing this sort of thing.
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Quite the opposite.
OpenReach put on special offers encouraging ISP's to upgrade customers from ADSL to FTTC.
Many of their offers are aimed at the big ISP's making bulk purchases.
There's nothing stopping Talktalk and Sky doing what BT are doing.
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The upgrades in my area seem to be proceeding rapidly over the last week or so. The result has been 4 drops of about 3Mb/s each on my ECI line. I suspect they are all from properties on my road. Two of the properties concerned are known to me and both tried to resist the change as they did not see any need for it. Both barely use their connections as they were put there by their children to help keep in touch better. It all seems pointless to me and one more drop of the same size will get me below the current handback threashold- no doubt BT will simply revise that!.
I suspect that in other areas with a lot of minor users of data no one will feel better off and many will be worse off.
Sorry, I'm lost. Why would anyone resist a change that doesn't cost them anything and doesn't negatively impact them?
How will many be worse off as a result? If they aren't charging more it's all good. Are people 'resisting' the change simply because it's a change? :cool:
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To be fair there are some corner cases where due to location, ADSL from the exchange can be faster than VDSL from the cabinet, but I'm sure they are few and far between.
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Hi
Sorry, I'm lost. Why would anyone resist a change that doesn't cost them anything and doesn't negatively impact them?
How will many be worse off as a result? If they aren't charging more it's all good. Are people 'resisting' the change simply because it's a change? :cool:
If it ain't broke...
I think some will resist simply because it is a hassle they see no benefit in and find the technology difficult to understand as it is, so will not want to tamper with a working solution. For example VDSL will likely require a new modem/router then that results in needing devices set up to connect to the new Wi-Fi, and if the initial setup was done by someone else they will need their help again. I can think of at least two elderly neighbours falling into this category and any phone call or communication from their ISP saying they will upgrade them will be treated with the highest suspicion and resistance.
I agree there is no reason to resist the move to VDSL, but we are talking about people and that means it's never that cut and dried.
Regards
Phil
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Sorry, I'm lost. Why would anyone resist a change that doesn't cost them anything and doesn't negatively impact them?
How will many be worse off as a result? If they aren't charging more it's all good. Are people 'resisting' the change simply because it's a change? :cool:
There is certainly no drawback to someone getting the free upgrade so long as the pricing remains consistent with the old adsl service. The drawback is that those already on FTTC can see quite significant increases in cross-talk and hence speed drops as the migration proceeds. It really is not good for everyone. If the openreach aim is to remove their adsl kit from the exchange I can understand it, otherwise I can't see a benefit.
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Openreach have no ADSL kit in the exchange.
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There is certainly no drawback to someone getting the free upgrade so long as the pricing remains consistent with the old adsl service. The drawback is that those already on FTTC can see quite significant increases in cross-talk and hence speed drops as the migration proceeds. It really is not good for everyone. If the openreach aim is to remove their adsl kit from the exchange I can understand it, otherwise I can't see a benefit.
I wonder though, does a line in-sync but not being actively used, cause much crosstalk? Its obviously not neutral with rogue probes and keep-alive messages, but it shouldn't be a huge crosstalker surely?
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I hope it is not an BT/Openreach motive but thinking over motives --- the cross-talk on my line has slowly been reducing the error rates as well as the speed. When on 80/20 I had average of about 30-40 ES per hour with bad ses some days. At 72Mb/s down due to cross-talk the error rate was about 20ES per hour. at 68Mb/s downstream it was about 12 per hour and at 65Mb/s about 10 per hour. I can't say just what the recent speed drops have done as it is too soon. It does however look like the trend is continuing.
On my line this seems almost the same impact on errors as capping the speed! Maybe the cross-talk itself is not much of a source of ES but instead raises the effective snrm protection against the noise. i.e with enough cross-talk the noise is buried in the crosstalk. The thought has cheered me up just a little. If other see this maybe BT/Openreach judge the migration to FTTC as a good thing due to the increase in line stabilties!!
@Alex Atkin My main cross talk from next door seems the same idle or active. Sync seems all that needed.
p.s. I am never sure who owns which bit of kit when comes to BT/openreach. I will leave that to experts! I guess the non LLU adsl kit is BT wholesale.
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I agree with Les-70, even a line in sync with no user data transfer causes just as much crosstalk as a busy line. There's a lot of background activity even on an idle line.
@ Les-70 I sympathise with your crosstalk and error problems, I am astounded that my line which must be 400+ metres from the cabinet syncs at 76.989Mbps at 3dB snrm. I have just looked at the stats and from link time over 43 days ago the HG612 modem is reporting no errors apart from FECs. If there is a local area power cut the modem will resync at 80/20 with a 2dB margin again with no errors reported.
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Surely the bi-product of any potential mass migration from ADSL2, 2+ to VDSL2, FTTC must result in increased cross-talk within the cabinet to premises copper infrastructure circuits, many forum patrons can testify that this is already the case as their DSLAM's population has increased.
It's such a pity that BT decided not to roll out vectoring beyond a very limited basis to a very few users, a technology that is proven to considerably reduce cross-talk within the copper circuits.
The Irish telecom provider, Eircom, has very successfully deployed vectoring throughout it's exclusive Huawei estate since 2014.
Not sure if the UK ECI DSLAM's directly support vectoring (with suitable HW & SW upgrades as per Huawei cabinets) perhaps this was a factor in BT not proceeding with the vectoring roll out.
Would the scenario have perhaps produced a similar situation to the G.Inp (re-transmission) fiasco on ECI cabinets ?
My more sceptical side is more inclined to believe that BT decided to invest in G.Fast as this was a technology which would produce more chargeable returns whereas the cost of vectoring upgrades was something that could not be as easily recouped by charging the end users.
G.Fast by virtue of it's line length limitations was only ever going to be a viable option and of benefit to a very small percentage of BB customers, the abysmal take-up of the product certainly reflected this very obvious short coming as did the apparent change of direction by BT away from G.Fast roll out towards FTTP.
Very much stating the obvious I know, vectoring would have provided a benefit to virtually all consumers on FTTC, VDSL service wheras G.Fast was never going to achieve any benefits for the vast majority of users.
Without vectoring, which I don't think is ever likely to happen now, I can't see any way that cross-talk will not increase it's impact on all FTTC subscribers as the migration away from ADSL to VDSL increases.
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Openreach have no ADSL kit in the exchange.
Is the DSLAM considered property of BT Wholesale or am I missing something?
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If there is lots of adsl tones power cutback happening, then when that is disabled you get your lost sync speed back with more on top?
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If there is lots of adsl tones power cutback happening, then when that is disabled you get your lost sync speed back with more on top?
You'd think so, but I'd suspect you won't get the same (or more) back without an actual band plan change which would need no ADSL passing through that PCP at all. Even then, unless they outright block new ADSL orders then they can't really do that.
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When my next door neighbour moved in and they decided to get Sky FTTC my sync dropped from 66Mbps to 54Mbps. The previous neighbour was an old guy who I think had virgin media for the tv.
FTTC is a victim of its own success.
What would be required to install vectoring in to cabinets?
Am I right in thinking they installed vectoring in northern ireland?
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Am I right in thinking they installed vectoring in northern ireland?
No, NI being (still) part of the UK it is the same BT infrastructure.
We are lucky in that the FTTC hardware estate is I believe exclusively Huawei, have never seen an ECI DSLAM cabinet anywhere in NI.
What would be required to install vectoring in to cabinets?
In Huawei cabinets, hardware and software upgrades I believe.
Not sure if ECI cabinets are/require upgrading/are capable of vectoring support, I'am sure someone will advise.