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[Weaver]

Is it safe to say that William's family were BT Retail customers all that time though?

BTW I think Kitz nailed it with her historical analysis. We need a BT Retail customer with a long memory though,mad far as the individual ISP artificially capped products are concerned.

I can't help as I have no history of any sort. I was a Demon 20CN customer when ADSL was introduced and I got automatically upgrade to ADSL Max automatically (with no idea it was going to happen, but delighted) in early 2006. Then nothing at all happened for nearly ten years, until December 2015. Following some exchange hardware upgrades in November, which increased speeds quite a bit, I was able to pay £11 per line to be upgraded to 21CN / ADSL 2+. And that's where I am today.

[William Grimsley]

Hello,

Thanks everyone for the input. Yes, I can confirm that we were with BT from November 2006 till December 2014 then moved to TalkTalk until we moved back to BT when fibre was enabled. A very interesting post by Kitz, there. It sounds right to me.

[gt94sss2]

I'm just wondering why there isn't much mention of ADSL2+ that Be offered between 2004 to 2014.

Be were the first to launch ADSL2+ in 2005 but in many ways it many ways it was actually Bulldog Broadband who revolutionised the residential market after their launch in 2004 - offering faster and cheaper connections than were available via BTw resellers at the time. They also launched ADSL2+ shortly after Be.

What I never understood is why it took BT until 2008 to start to rollout ADSL2+ on its network..

[aesmith]

Is it safe to say that William's family were BT Retail customers all that time though?

I don't think we need assume that, most if not all would apply if his family's ISP(s) used exclusively BT wholesale products.  For example we were with Demon during those changes, but limited to what BTW offered as there was no LLU in the exchange. 

[Weaver]

> What I never understood is why it took BT until 2008 to start to rollout ADSL2+ on its network..

And then it took another seven years after that to reach me.

[kitz]

What I never understood is why it took BT until 2008 to start to rollout ADSL2+ on its network..

Agreed they were late to the party with adsl2+ and even annex-m.  Just prior to this BTw were busy upgrading the core and backhauls.   
When adsl first rolled, it used MSiP for backhaul transit.  MSiP was built in the 1990's and never designed to handle the amount of traffic for broadband to all.    They had to build a total new network (21CN) to cope with the volume of users and bandwidth requirements.   

Many of the early DSLAMs such as this


were just not capable of adsl2+ and had to be replaced with MSANs.   So therefore it needed the investment and upgrade of a heck of a lot of equipment which cost millions.

On the other hand you had the 'innovative' ISPs such as Be and Easynet who built new networks in the early 00's using more modern equipment from scratch and werent using an ageing backhaul and installed NGN equipment right from the start.   I dont think NGN MSANs were common place when BT first started rolling out adsl.

So much of the delay could likely have been the need to upgrade to 21CN before they could offer adsl2+

[Weaver]

@Kitz - understood. It's the time after that, seven years, that is surprising. I just assumed it was tied in with politics.

[aesmith]

We're behind you, no sign of the 21st Century Network or even a planned date.  We're still on 19CN over here, with equipment suffering from the Y1K bug.

[Weaver]

@AESmith - commiserations.

[kitz]

 

[kitzuser87430]

no sign of the 21st Century Network or even a planned date.

Same here; exchange upgraded to ADSL in July 2007; since then nothing....maybe FTTP sometime this/next year.

[Bowdon]

I was reading wiki about ADSL2+ last night. Apparently most BT based ISP's these days cap it down and use it under the ADSL Max label.

I wish the ISP's would give people some prices for providing fibre or adsl technology to their house. It seems if nobody gives a price then there can't be any competition.

[WWWombat]

I think Kitz hits the issue... BT realised they needed to overhaul their core network in order to support the traffic levels they saw coming. They obviously decided on a converged IP based core, rather than a telco core "bodged" into supporting ATM, though it probably involved some internal battles.

An IP based core changes the way you would backhaul MSANs, possibly even changes the MSANs you buy, so you need to choose carefully.

I suspect BT would have been faster if they didn't attempt to upgrade the voice network simultaneously.

As for the gradual rollout of WBC...
BT obviously completed the biggest exchanges earlier. The ones with space.

BTW forum presentations, relatively recently, were describing the process to upgrade exchanges with little space. This entailed adding 1 21CN MSAN, then forced upgrading off a 20CN DSLAM, then removal of the DSLAM hardware to create space for the next MSAN. And repeat...

Having reached something like 3600 or 3800 exchanges, they've got to the next phase ... the exchanges with no spare space at all.

Last week's ISP forum had BTW describe a new process that they're trialling for these exchanges. This entails the removal of a 20CN DSLAM, addition of a 20CN MSAN, and migration of all users in one overnight slot. While keeping telephony running in the meantime.

That's for 1,900 exchanges.

I suspect these kinds of forced migrations become a hefty overhead on both BT and ISPs.

[NewtronStar]

My first modem was a 2400 baud in the mid eighty's in those days we used bps like we use Mbps to-day, the max rate I ever seen on the 2400 was 1500 bps or 1.5K 

[kitz]

BTW forum presentations, relatively recently, were describing the process to upgrade exchanges with little space. This entailed adding 1 21CN MSAN, then forced upgrading off a 20CN DSLAM, then removal of the DSLAM hardware to create space for the next MSAN. And repeat...

Having reached something like 3600 or 3800 exchanges, they've got to the next phase ... the exchanges with no spare space at all.

One of the things I noted when in my exchange last week was the lack of floor space since my last visit.    Everything was a lot more crowded and there is now hardly any free space.  Its not a large exchange but its certainly far from one of the smallest.   They have obviously been shuffling things around - the exchange has one heck of a lot more MSANs than I expected, and theyve moved the fibre backhaul trays which were originally near the back up to the front to make more space for all the LLU MSANs at the back.

I also think that they may have moved the PSTN equipment too.   I cant be certain as I dont have photo's which show the old layout, but Im sure last time I was in that they were laid out in an L shape at the very back.   Now there is just one wall of them but seemingly on higher racks.   May be my bad memory though as BS told me those things weigh a ton and aren't for shifting.    Whatever way, last time I was in there, there was quite a lot of free floor space....  now there's hardly any.