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[aesmith]

Can we now buy a copper line with no voice service component aka "naked DSL"? I thought that it was coming, having read something about it in RevK’s blog a long time ago.

The product is SOTAP "Single Order Transitional Access Product", announced I think over a year ago.  I don't know if it can now be ordered, or if any CPs are actually using it.  I guess there must be little interest in ADSL nowadays.
https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/copper/sotap

[adrianw]

fun fact, the voice you hear is RevK himself - not sure if you knew that

I did not. I will listen again when I am next down there.

[bbnovice]

Getting back to the original question.......

Yesterday BT offered me a regrade of my FTTP 100 service (normal speed 147/32) to their Full Fibre 900 service for £3 per month more than I am currently paying. Don't know why. But it seems churlish to refuse even if I don't use the full speed!   

[stevebrass]

Yes - the original question.

I would say at the moment - not so much as ISP's wish to sell us BUT we all know how the world moves on so I suspect in 5 years what is adequate today will be inadequate.

Me included.

[Reformed]

I have to admit I may end up on symmetrical 10G if Netomnia build here. My equipment at home is capable.

[j0hn]

I have to admit I may end up on symmetrical 10G if Netomnia build here. My equipment at home is capable.

They recently expanded in to Scotland and announced half a dozen places, including the main town next to me.
They won't give me any rollout info though. Not a single street or even their starting point.

I very much doubt they would come as far as my property. That would give me a 3rd FTTP provider to choose from.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Once the time comes that I have the option of Openreach and CityFibre, it would be mightly tempting to get both.  Though CityFibre seem to be moving even slower than Openreach so I'd be shocked if its not a year or two away at best whereas Openreach hopefully will get here this year.

[Weaver]

If you have Cityfibre, who’s your ISP? Cityfibre?

[j0hn]

If you have Cityfibre, who’s your ISP? Cityfibre?

Vodafone, Talktalk, Zen and others.

Cityfibre wholesale just like Openreach. They do sell direct to large businesses but the GPON residential network is kept separate.

[Weaver]

Thank god for that. That’s my fear, as you perhaps already know, that some carriers will create an ISP monopoly, or n-poly where n is small. If government or circumstances remove my ability to choose my beloved AA.

[HPsauce]

I think the main speed increase requirement is going to come from streaming services. As someone else said 4K seems to be the standard these days. But already we seen on the horizon formats like UHD being broadcast.

One thing I've noticed about the average joe public these days is they like buying massive tv sets, way over what they practically need, and it only stands to reason that they are going to need to be streaming 4K (8K in the future) or UHD films without any impact to any other user in the household using the Internet.

Though if you look at a guide to TV size and resolution you'll see this is almost all pointless, human perception is such that it's wasted information at sensible viewing distances.

I guess I'm probably old school as I still have non-fibre "wet string" broadband but it runs at about 18mbps which is fine for just the two of us and occasional visitors streaming at most HD.
The upload is a bit rubbish of course at under 1mbps but my son was "working from home" here the other day and managed videoconference calls more than adequately, and we've had lots of Zoom calls during lockdown that work fine.
The cabinet locations are such that if I paid (a whole lot more) for "fibre" (i.e. to the cabinet) I'd only get about 25mbps anyway, so why bother?

[Weaver]

My wife having just bought a massive TV, I concur and admit mea culpa or more like nostra culpa. One reason I want a huge TV is because my eyesight is shot, and also my glasses are all wrong and I need some new ones.

The one Janet just bought is so thin that the cats cannot sit on the top of it! Amazing OLED technology and others for displays these days. Remember the tiny little tellys on a short boom arm on a desk in StarTrek?

[SlimJ]

Getting back to the original question.......

Yesterday BT offered me a regrade of my FTTP 100 service (normal speed 147/32) to their Full Fibre 900 service for £3 per month more than I am currently paying. Don't know why. But it seems churlish to refuse even if I don't use the full speed!   

Interesting offer, so about £35?? Was that just for 3 months or for a new contract (18/24 months)?

Are you able to share more details? Should have my FTTP service going live in the coming days so looking for a decent deal!

[Alex Atkin UK]

Though if you look at a guide to TV size and resolution you'll see this is almost all pointless, human perception is such that it's wasted information at sensible viewing distances.

There's a lot of fud about that, all I can say is on a PHONE screen I can tell the difference between 720p, 1080p, 1440p YouTube videos with my glasses off.  I can't see all the detail, but its more comfortable to watch because the image is more seamless and clearer.

For decades they told us the eye can only see 16.7 million colours, then HDR came along and its a night/day difference, yet current TVs can't even display all the detail on a modern UHD Bluray.  The fact is there's a lot you might not immediately be able to tell in a blind test, but you can "feel" the difference.

My PC monitor looks fine, my OLED TV looks amazing on HDR content, my MacBook Pro blows them both away.  Nobody can tell me high resolution does not matter, because I can see it with my own eyes.  When it comes to gaming even more so, as you need that extra detail to hide aliasing from 3D rendering.  That's before you even get into frame-rate.

A lot of people misunderstand that higher resolution is not about being able to pick out every little detail in the image, its about the image being detailed enough so you CAN'T, making it seamless.

[bbnovice]

Interesting offer, so about £35?? Was that just for 3 months or for a new contract (18/24 months)?

Are you able to share more details? Should have my FTTP service going live in the coming days so looking for a decent deal!

The price I pay would not be helpful to you. For a number of reasons I have some premium BT services. A lot of of the work I do from home is time critical.

What I will say is that the regrade price they quoted me is now just under their published price for 900Mbs, so the premium services I have are now effectively being thrown in for very little. They also guarantee that the price would be lower than the price they would offer to a new customer (although I've no way of checking this). But I'm almost certainly spending more than you would pay for a vanilla 900Mbs service from BT or other ISP's. But as its a business expense I'm not overly worried.

BT contract is for 24 months (a downside) but I believe that all their contracts are now on this basis.