Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Spoke to the guy doing it as I was wondering why he was in the garden with a reel of fibre optic. Finally after years of rather poor internet I will hopefully be able to get a nice connection.
How about everyone else? What are you working with and is full fibre something you're eager for or already have?
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11729567671.png
Current speed on FTTC. Hopefully won't take too long for the FTTP to come available to order.
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
No poles around here, underground on a newish (20 year old) estate. The cabinet is less than 100 yards as the crow flies so we're maxed out at 80/20. Fine for 2 people working from home, on calls, streaming, etc. Maybe things will change when little Jimbo gets older!
Slinging it on the poles seems like a sensible option though. I seem to have a black cat5 like cable coming in to my master socket with two of the 8 wires terminating like the normal pair. 'Future proofing' maybe? Shame the rest of the house just seems to have cat3 cables to the extensions (when wired took 10 meg of the speed!).
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
I have full fibre from Gigaclear, when they installed it had to be new and underground. Then along comes Trooli, this lot are able to access Openreach's ductwork and poles, obviously much quicker installs and hopefully cheaper to do.
I am currently on 300 up/down with Gigaclear for £39, Trooli are offering 300 down 100 up for £35, might hang on and see if they do any offers soon. My wife works at home so good internet has been essential. Location wise small rural village surrounded with smaller villages, they have used my village as the hub and connected all the smaller ones to fibre as well.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11731790554.png
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Much better upload speeds than what you get through openreachs FTTP. Impressive! I'd stay with Gigaclear if I were you, that upload speed is impressive.
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Stuck on FTTC at 35Mbps. No sign of anything else in next few years. I keep checking one.network/thinkbroadband/ispreview in the vague hope someone will come our way but with a town of 10000 we're just not profitable enough. Also its mostly 50 year old ducting (1970s) around here (rather than poles) which is usually pretty collapsed by now which may explain why Openreach haven't put us into any fibre first rollouts as it'll be a big digging job.
Pleased for you though - 14Mbps would be unusable with two of us WFH with 2 kids. Just be aware it might take 6 months before you can order - maybe more given what I've read on the sites forums I mentioned.
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
I have Openreach FTTP through BT. I'm on the top 900Mb/s service, but my Speedtest.net result is:
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11750146471.png
I had all sorts of problems with the installation. Basically, Openreach couldn't work out how to connect my house to the network, even though the pole is just outside my house. They made up some rubbish about needing to dig up the road & get traffic control permission etc etc, all of which was completely unnecessary...it took a couple of engineers a couple of hours to connect me up in the end, but I had to wait 8 months for that to happen! The silver lining though, is that BT agreed to give me £1,400 compensation for all the hassle I went through, which will pretty much pay for my Internet connection for the duration of the contract :)
One thing you should be aware of when going for Openreach FTTP is that they will switch you over to 'Digital Voice' VOIP, which will ultimately be the standard for all landline connections by 2025. It has the advantage of high audio quality voice calls for compatible phones, but compatibility is the issue. The BT Home Hub router has a single phone socket on the back of it for existing PSTN phones, but if you have other PSTN phones connected via extensions in your home, they won't work. BT will give you a cordless DECT phone which is compatible with Digital Voice, but I had a particular problem with DV compatibility. I'm physically disabled & use an 'environmental control system' to operate an adapted phone when I'm in bed. Of course it wasn't until I'd been switched over to DV that I realised the adapted phone wasn't compatible, so I've had to go back to BT to get them to switch my landline back to copper PSTN, but in the process, I lost my landline phone number as apparently once it's been transitioned to DV, it can't be reverted back. So...a bit of a learning experience really. But I do have effectively 'free' Internet access :)
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Xuse
Much better upload speeds than what you get through openreachs FTTP. Impressive! I'd stay with Gigaclear if I were you, that upload speed is impressive.
Yep, if you need fast uploads that's a great service - almost three times what I'm getting on the top tier BT FTTP offering...
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Forgot to reply to this, but I finally got Fibre at the start of the month.
https://i.imgur.com/f2JiuG9.png
It's good, but other than that specific site (only one with a Glasgow server) I've yet to find anything that can saturate the full speed. Probably should have just gotten the 500 package, but eh the higher upload is nice. Ping is significantly lower, no more spikes in games and little things like loading a youtube video or a video over plex is instant instead of buffering for a few seconds. Still I think 'that's too big to download' without realizing I have good internet now.
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
For reasons I don't understand, the speeds reported by the online version of speedtest.net are inaccurate for FTTP...it's recommended that you download the Speedtest app in order to get an accurate figure.
The other thing I've noticed is that my VPN is maxed out at 170Mb/s, so again, it might be that any speed above that is a bit superfluous...
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MrJim
For reasons I don't understand, the speeds reported by the online version of speedtest.net are inaccurate for FTTP...it's recommended that you download the Speedtest app in order to get an accurate figure.
Inaccurate to what degree?
I've done it both ways (fnar fnar) and gotten almost the same results... I might have been ½Mbps or so out, but that's usually as much variance as I see.
You can also get a few Meg variance depending on whether you use Ookla's site or your own service provider's 'custom' version of SpeedTest, as the latter goes directly to them rather than whatever servers Ookla selects for you.... But saying that, I'm still happily within my 900Mbps range.
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ttaskmaster
Inaccurate to what degree?
I've done it both ways (fnar fnar) and gotten almost the same results... I might have been ½Mbps or so out, but that's usually as much variance as I see.
You can also get a few Meg variance depending on whether you use Ookla's site or your own service provider's 'custom' version of SpeedTest, as the latter goes directly to them rather than whatever servers Ookla selects for you.... But saying that, I'm still happily within my 900Mbps range.
I'm on the BT 900mb/s service. Using the web version of speedtest.net I get 510 down, 111 up. On the Speedtest app I get 813 down, 109 up. So quite a big difference on the download speed, at least.. Oh, & on fast.com I get 920...
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MrJim
I'm on the BT 900mb/s service. Using the web version of speedtest.net I get 510 down, 111 up. On the Speedtest app I get 813 down, 109 up. So quite a big difference on the download speed, at least.. Oh, & on fast.com I get 920...
Are those all checking against the same server, and is it the first server in the line, ie direct to your ISP?
If not, then of course you'll get wildly differing results...
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
I'm looking to purchase FTTP but I cant justify the price increase.
I have an 80/20 line and paying £20 PM for it. BT want more than double that for FTTP!
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
It's so annoying seeing the upload speed still so restricted in the UK, even with FTTP. I've been living abroad for a while and it's 1000/1000 here. It opens up a lot more when you need it. Cloud storage just becomes another drive.
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Fttp finally available here and ordered. Going back to Zen
as my trusty old Fritzbox is 5 years old and still gets updates and fixes, the new model they supply should be even better and Zen support is always very good.
I don't mind spending an extra £5-£10 a month over the absolute cheapest provider in return for a superior and more configurable router and knowledgeable customer care.
Re: Seen them installing overhead fibre on the pole today
Yeah, go with Zen. BT are a pain to deal with, I had to go direct to openreach to sort a redundant wire they left behind. Thankfully they didn't charge me.