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[adrianw]

I'm pretty sure a 900Mb/s connection today is cheaper than a 1Mb/s ADSL (BT Openworld Stingray modem  ) 25 years ago, if you take inflation into account?

Back in the days of Courier HST modems working over telephone lines even the local calls added up to a tidy sum, rather more if you were using a distant interactive service like a FIDO board or CIX.
https://telephonesuk.org.uk/nostalgia-documents/call-charges/

I migrated quite soon to Demon and then Usenet (offline), but there was 8p per KB of international traffic through the UKC international gateway. Including the voluminous SMTP headers. In 1990 I was uucp: ...!ukc!stade!aw1

I do not have any telephone bills from back then, but my now ex wife used to shout at me a lot.

[craigski]

https://kitz.co.uk/adsl/history.htm

in 2000 512kb/s was £40 + VAT

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator

£40 in todays money is £68

bt.com 900Mb/s is currently £45+VAT

[adrianw]

Surmise proven correct!

[maxheadroom]

I think all post since my first here prove my original point for the average user 80/20 at the moment is plenty but when 4K TV streaming becomes the norm people are going to need more.

[Reformed]

99% of the time 150/30 would be fine.

[maxheadroom]

99% of the time 150/30 would be fine.

I have checked and it would only cost me £5 per month more so when i need it i will get it.


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[Chrysalis]

What is interesting I checked BT's website, and they offering VDSL without voice now, which lowers their price a lot since the big boys have been heavily profiting on voice services, I wonder if this is due to the push to deprecate legacy voice services.

[Reformed]

Yup. BT Wholesale use WLR. WLR is both expensive and being phased out. SOGEA and an optional VoIP service is way more cost efficient for the ISP.

Only people making money from WLR as call revenue dried up were Openreach and even then the cost of maintaining a legacy POTS platform eventually made it unviable.

Openreach gave 5 years notice of WLR stop-sell nationwide in December of 2018. As of September 2023 they'll stop taking orders for the product full stop, and they want it gone by 2025.

By the end of this year a couple of exchanges will have had WLR withdrawn entirely.

[j0hn]

BT have been selling VDSL broadband without voice for over 6 months.
It's often the same price but recently had been on offer for £5 a month less though I haven't looked at the prices for a few weeks.

For whatever reason they allow orders of VDSL and FTTP without voice but G.Fast doesn't show availability when you check packages without a phone.
There's no reason for that as SOGFast exists.

[Weaver]

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.

[Bowdon]

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.

The other part will be the downloading of games on the computers and consoles. Many games are massive and have a habit that you buy the game then they end up sending a day 1 patch which is another massive download. The low patiance level of people today means gamers will want the highest speed possible just to cut down the time of downloading a game or update. For them its more about time rather than speed.

[meritez]

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.

SOGEA is Naked DSL for FTTC/VDSL, I've not seen anyone offer Naked ADSL yet.

TalkTalk Business offer Data Only MPF LLU lines, but the voice side is still connected, just switched off at the local Telephone Exchange.

[adrianw]

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.

With A&A you can.
I took the copper pair for broadband option when I switched my remote (at Mother's home) VDSL line to A&A Home:1 in late 2017 as I had no wish to make or receive telephone calls on the line.
£10 a month. No outgoing or incoming calls.
If you plug in a phone you hear a voice saying words to the effect that this is an A&A non-voice line, presumably to avoid an OR engineer thinking it is a free pair, alternating with a quiet line test.
Just like the lower part of RevK's blog entry  Almost Naked.

See https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/copper-pair/ and the pricing details in https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/home1/ under INCLUDING COPPER PAIR TO SUPPORT BROADBAND SERVICE.
From the look of it this is available for ADSL too.
It looks as if the old Units tariff also supports this.

An interesting wrinkle. My home line was A&A VDSL and Pulse8 for telephony and line rental. A couple of months ago I switched to A&A VOIP retaining my number and including the copper pair option. The migration should now be complete. For the hell of it I plugged a corded phone in to the line expecting to get the announcement and quiet line test. Instead, I got a dial tone, can make a quiet line test with 17070 option 2, but cannot dial full landline or mobile numbers.

[j0hn]

SOGEA(VDSL2) and SOGFast (G.Fast) is a couple years old now.

AAISP used to have to bodge naked DSL by just disabling the PSTN side but Openreach introduced this as a product some time ago now.

The likes of BT's Digital Voice is naked DSL (SOGEA) with VOIP added on top.
It's pretty much the default with BT now.

Sky's VDSL2 is also all SOGEA now for new customers.

The ADSL variant (SOTAP) is available where fibre alternatives are not available.

[dee.jay]

With A&A you can.
I took the copper pair for broadband option when I switched my remote (at Mother's home) VDSL line to A&A Home:1 in late 2017 as I had no wish to make or receive telephone calls on the line.
£10 a month. No outgoing or incoming calls.
If you plug in a phone you hear a voice saying words to the effect that this is an A&A non-voice line, presumably to avoid an OR engineer thinking it is a free pair, alternating with a quiet line test.
Just like the lower part of RevK's blog entry  Almost Naked.

See https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/copper-pair/ and the pricing details in https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/home1/ under INCLUDING COPPER PAIR TO SUPPORT BROADBAND SERVICE.
From the look of it this is available for ADSL too.
It looks as if the old Units tariff also supports this.

An interesting wrinkle. My home line was A&A VDSL and Pulse8 for telephony and line rental. A couple of months ago I switched to A&A VOIP retaining my number and including the copper pair option. The migration should now be complete. For the hell of it I plugged a corded phone in to the line expecting to get the announcement and quiet line test. Instead, I got a dial tone, can make a quiet line test with 17070 option 2, but cannot dial full landline or mobile numbers.

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