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[Weaver]

Article at ThinkBroadband:
    http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7234-highlands-and-islands-announce-next-areas-to-benefit-from-faster-broadband.html
- about arrival of FTTC in Western Isles plus the odd place on the West Coast of the mainland of Scotland.

(I presume he's talking about FTTC, even though he keeps saying "fibre-based", seeing as he mentions VDSL2. FTTC is of course copper, not fibre at all, that would be FTTP/FTTH. But this could confuse newcomers.

Should know better than to get drawn into the slipshod marketing-speak that the government and various salesmen have got drawn into, where fibre has started to be misused to means "anything at all fast" so the likes of cable internet, and copper in FTTC and FTTDP/ FTTRN have been described as "fibre".)

[Black Sheep]

Article at ThinkBroadband:
    http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7234-highlands-and-islands-announce-next-areas-to-benefit-from-faster-broadband.html
- about arrival of FTTC in Western Isles plus the odd place on the West Coast of the mainland of Scotland.

(I presume he's talking about FTTC, even though he keeps saying "fibre-based", seeing as he mentions VDSL2. FTTC is of course copper, not fibre at all, that would be FTTP/FTTH. But this could confuse newcomers.

Should know better to get drawn into the slipshod marketing-speak that the government and various salesmen have got drawn into, where fibre has started to be misused to means "anything at all fast" so the likes of cable internet, and copper in FTTC and FTTDP/ FTTRN have been described as "fibre".)

In the interests of balance and fact ........ FTTC is a hybrid of Fibre and MPF (Copper/Ali cable). It is Fibre to the Cabinet, which means if it's located outside your house, that 99.9% of the circuits make-up is Fibre.
Of course, the location of the Cabinet will vary dramatically between different EU's, so it is totally impossible to market the product in any other way other than FTTC, or super-fast broadband.

They can't factor in each and every EU's premises and distance from their serving Cab, for each and every single location in the UK ...... that would be madness.

The way you've described it could confuse newcomers

[Weaver]

@BlackSheep -could confuse users, agreed. Mea culpa. (Autocorrected by iPad to "mea cuppa" repeatedly, which I quite liked, then I had to wrestle and defeat the thing, for I am mighty.)

My "it's copper" is perhaps a bit tooo short.

What a naive user perhaps wants to know is IMHO
* FTTC - performance is length-related, don't get max perf necessarily
* Is subject to interference, weather and so on
* crosstalk spoils perf, droops over time (barring g.vector)
* Lightning risk, hence the "it's copper" huge oversimplification (apol)

* FTTP - performance is (practically speaking) not length-related, just works
* highly reliable not subject to interference, nor weather etc
* no crosstalk
* no lightning risk, as no long metallic path

So the difference as we know really matters to the user. The govt and the marketing men don't seem to care or know the difference.

Much respect for BlackSheep's contribution, as always.

[Weaver]

@BlackSheep - the 99% point is indeed a good one.

I wonder what the length ratios are typically, and what the lightning risk is like then

[Weaver]

New developments: I got this tweet from some government[?] bod:-

--
@HIEdigital: Hi @CecilWard Work is due to start in Broadford in the early half of 2016. Please DM us your details so we can look into it for you. Thanks.
--

Wow. Didn't say what "work" might mean.

Upgrade to 21CN might be a start. Would save me quite a bit of money as it would halve my per-MB charges for office hours / peak time, which are doubled currently because it's 20CN. (No diff between 20CN-21CN for off-peak.

Presume that 21CN would give me ADSL2+ ? (and ADSL2) That would speed things up a bit.

[Weaver]

If they're talking about FTTC, then who knows what use that would be to me, an EO line currently, 4.6 miles long (est. by-road). Who knows where they would put some cabinet(s)? On that depends everything. Where do they put them if they have distant users?

Or what about a tin box "node" on a pole if they are doing FTTDP/FTTRN. ( Is that just a trial, or real yet? ) Would that be close?

[Weaver]

Could they start offering FTTP? What does that depend on?

If that's a possibility then that's what I should be going for, AA charges are a bargain given the high reliability you would get.

Sooo many questions and nothing to go on, no "availability checker".

I hope they will somehow let A & A know. If I can find out something, perhaps I can put A & A in touch with the relevant human who knows what and when. Perhaps I need to _do_ something.

[Weaver]

Am definitely getting ahead of myself. Hope drives you crazy.

[Black Sheep]

@BlackSheep -could confuse users, agreed. Mea culpa. (Autocorrected by iPad to "mea cuppa" repeatedly, which I quite liked, then I had to wrestle and defeat the thing, for I am mighty.)

My "it's copper" is perhaps a bit tooo short.

What a naive user perhaps wants to know is IMHO
* FTTC - performance is length-related, don't get max perf necessarily
* Is subject to interference, weather and so on
* crosstalk spoils perf, droops over time (barring g.vector)
* Lightning risk, hence the "it's copper" huge oversimplification (apol)

* FTTP - performance is (practically speaking) not length-related, just works
* highly reliable not subject to interference, nor weather etc
* no crosstalk
* no lightning risk, as no long metallic path

So the difference as we know really matters to the user. The govt and the marketing men don't seem to care or know the difference.

Much respect for BlackSheep's contribution, as always.

As I yours, Weaver.

I think one has to always bear in mind, that the majority of End Users really aren't that bothered with the circuits statistics and characteristics. I promise you hand on heart, most EU's won't even realise their circuits performance has dropped through cross-talk, or that a lightning strike may see the DLM over-act (non-G.INP Cabs).

They are of course expecting an 'Always on' service and that it does what is says on the tin, which is what happens with FTTC.

It's whether the information given at the point of sale is fully understood by the EU, and/or that it is given over in a concise manner by the sales advisor. 
However, all that information can not ever be covered in a short marketing advert, poster campaign hence the onus being put upon the EU to ask questions if necessary.

Yes, there's always going to be someone coming on here telling a tale of san elderly relative being miss-sold a product, but these are in the low percentages thanks to programmes like 'Watchdog' etc.
In short, it's impossible to market exactly what FTTC Broadband is all about to the average layman, without a certain amount of dialogue taking place.  

 

[Weaver]

@BlackSheep - apol, by "lightning risk" I meant _kit destroyed_, or worse, not DLM. A big thing to appreciate if you are thinking of long metallic path vs FTTP.

I have lost ~£3k worth of hardware over the years. A £2.5k server, a £700 router recently I forget how much else. When the weather is bad sometimes I used to leap out of bed and run to pull out the DSL lines from the NTE5s. I didn't always get there on time though.

An end to lightning risk is one of the big selling points for FTTP for me.

[Black Sheep]

A valid point indeed, especially for rural EU's like yourself. But, playing Dick Advocaat for a minute, BT as a company or the EU as a whole, probably won't make decisions based on 'Acts of God'. 

[Weaver]

Btw, the reason I put crosstalk in my list of things a growing boy should know is not a techie one. Users need to be warned that the performance they are quite will drop over time, unless the cab is full, and many inexperienced users here have come round moaning about their sync rate sliding southwards, they have been mis-sold on perf. and so on. So it is worth knowing, and can be explained in a concise, very non-geeky way.

[Weaver]

@BlackSheep lots of locals lose kit around here every winter. The weather is ridiculously bad here, force 10 gales are regular events, lines are very long, and people are only saved by the accidental fashion for home users using WLANs all the time, thus protecting their kit.

Last winter an outdoor wooden building that my wife had put up was destroyed by the Bernoulli effect I believe. It was literally pulled in half, the top half was wrenched upwards leaving the bottom half still securely bolted into the ground, but the low pressure pulled the planks apart, the top half then took off went flying horizontally and landed upright some ten metres away, with the other half still in situ.

[Ronski]

I hope she was all right  (sorry couldn't resist) Actually I now have an image of somebody in a shed on a loo, and the top half being ripped off, a bit like in the films.....

I'll get my coat.....

[Weaver]

@Ronski :-)

Janet had a barbecue and a kitchen set up in the (posh) shed

Lost umpteen ££ as all the contents were scattered and generally knackered, she gave up on it and didn't put up a replacement.

The weather is just ridiculous here sometimes, with rain flowing uphill up the road and spraying off upwards at you when you come to a crest after which there is a long downhill slope. I can't remember the wind speeds in Jan last winter, but I remember it was 130mph in Jan 2005. Several locals were killed, a man in a caravan was blown off a cliff, and an entire family, of three generations, was washed away by the sea in the Western Isles ill-advisedly trying to drive over a causeway between South Uist and Benbencula. Horrible.

I'm trying to think up some optical isolation setup for my router, and I'd like to get some proper specific insurance for networking equipment, servers and so-on, but haven't a clue where to start.