FTTC Fibre using backwards technology in the UK

[#1]

@Gandalf Yes, but we are talking about FTTC VDSL2 Profile 17a here. Gigabit fibre is a different story, and we can exclude FTTC 200 because (1) is not no offer, at least in my area and (2) there is no point mixing apple with pears for the sake of this conversation. Clearly if a telephone is shared too with  FTTC 200 VDSL Profile 30a, then you still would not achieve the maximum FTTC capacity as I would expect the phone to still take 20 Mbit/s off its maximum.

Unfortunately, if sharing the telephone becomes near negligible, or an acceptable loss for the lucky few who can get FTTC 200, the majority who cannot, are a lot more impacted and would benefit the most from a fully dedicated FTTC with an IP Phone.

[#2]

No problem, even if we disregard G.Fast, the maximum achievable speed on the good old regular FTTC can be over 100mbps.

[#3]

@ezplanet  if you look at your own information you will note that:

Line Mode:                               G.993.2 (VDSL2)
Profile:                                 17a

is ued on both lines. In the UK, BT has chosen to limit line s[eed to 80:20, Vodafone Italy a little more. 

Until Fibre to the premices is available in more places, the UK and other countries will make the most of the copper based lines that have already been installed, G Fast being the next industry standard which in the UK at least can deliver over 300/30 if you are very close to a cabinet

[#4]

@Mustrum Thank you. I understand that new technology will deliver greater speeds (to hose who can get the new technology). 80+ year old Mother in Milan already has 1 Gigabit Fibre too (with Infostrada)! But that does not help neither my business, nor anyone who chose not to live and work in a densely populated city.

In the meantime...why not move the phone to IP like they do in Italy and get the full copper bandwidth in the UK too?

That would help more than 50% of the population who does not live near a cabinet nor can get pure Gbit fibre.

That is the essence of my question!

[#5]

@ezplanet There are providers who do provide VoIP, unfortunately we aren't one of them. That's a bit of a moot point to the discussion though, because moving a phone number to a VoIP provider won't change the fact FTTC needs a copper line to work and only the quality/distance of the line has an effect on the FTTC speeds. 

[#6]

@ezplanet  simple answer is cost!

BT and the other telephone providers have invested a lot of money in telephone exchanges.

It will take someone new to the market to come along and offer a VOIP service to the masses - as Vodafone are dong trying to break into the Italian market.

Ultimatley the UK is unlikley to go down that route as the copper infrastructure is replaced with fibre or 5G or other new technology.

Many companies with any kind of mobile workforce already use VOIP services to minimise contact numbers for employees. Over 5 years ago I could be contacted where ever I was on a single no geographical number, via a Voip phone, a headset on my laptop or via my moile phone. Microsoft and Cisco amongst others provide such services, but the home user is more likley to go the mobile route.

[#7]

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@Gandalf wrote:

Download speed of 80mbps and upload speed of 20mbps as the highest FTTC product is 80/20 but I believe the maximum achievable is something like 100/40 however with G.Fast technology that still uses the copper line it's about 200/50.

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Openreach G.Fast will do 330/50. We've a line in the office achieving this. Worth noting that G.Fast uses seamless rate adaption i.e. the sync speed can change in response to conditions without the line retraining/dropping.

Regardless, the performance delta highlighted in @ezplanet's original post is mainly down to the difference in the length of the copper loop. The attenuation figures show as much.

Openreach could go beyond 80mbps with a phone line. There are other things to consider though, such as crosstalk on busy cabinets; the 80mbps cap isn't without consideration.

There are also other things to consider too, like interleaving, retransmission and vectoring, not to mention the fact that you're comparing performance between cabinets that are operating using DSLAMs from two completely different vendors.

[#8]

@ezplanet 

Consider switching to a SOGEA service for your FTTC when that becomes available. That'll have no telephone service on the line. It may already be available as a trial from some providers. It won't make any difference to the FTTC speed possible though, for reasons already stated.

[#9]

@Mustrum It is not just Vodafone, that is how FTTC works in the whole Italian market, every provider dedicate the whole copper wire to FTTC (the microfilters are removed) and the standard phone is plugged into the back of the modem/router supplied by the different ISPs. Or if one wants to use his own router, then an IP Phone can be used instead. Every provider in Italy supply the configuration parameters for the IP Phones too.

Vodafone is just piggy-backing on the existing telephone/FTTC/Giga infrastructure.

[#10]

You seem convinced that having no phone service on the FTTC line will improve the FTTC speeds, this is not the case. Why will you not accept the fact that a standard UK FTTC service (i.e not GFast) with or without a voice line will sync at a maximum of 80Mbps downstream and considerably lower at greater distances from the cabinet?

[#11]

@RealAleMadrid You seem to refuse to accept that, as I demonstrated in my previous message, the phone line takes away 20 Mbit/s from the maximum speed of 100 Mbit/s. You said it yourself, max FTTC in the UK is 80 Mbit/s, instead of 100 Mbit/s with profile 17a. But hey, we are in the new brexit era, where opinions count more than facts 🙂

[#12]

I'm fairly certain we've said that the maximum attainable if there wasn't a cap could be in excess of 100mbps.

[#13]

To summarize:

You guys say that sharing telephone with FTTC fibre has no or negligible impact

I say it has a minimum of 20 Mbit/s impact which is felt more, the greater the distance from the cabinet, since the bandwidth used by the phone is a constant.

But everyone remain of their 'opinion' and this discussion is NOT going to be escalated to improve the UK system anyway, so I am going to have to put up with a very poor 32 Mbit/s download and 7 upload 'FIBRE' when I know that technically there is a lot of space for improvement.

Hopeless

[#14]

Whatever!

Raging here is not going to make a ha'pth of difference to what is.  By all means take this to Ofcom the industry regulator who supposedly have the say in what is offered in the UK.  With very rare exceptions no one offers FTTC without the phone component.

Even if they could, putting VDSL into the same specturm as the voice spectrum would I suspect cause significant interefernce with voice in adjacent circuits.  One cannot be selfish in this space - you getting what you want could well deprive someone else of a clear voice service due to cross talk.

As you say, much like Brexit (remainers believe) opinions out-weight facts - so not too disimilar to the fact that for your line in Italy the consumer end point is much closer to the cabinet than is the case for the UK line - that will make more difference to delivered speed than any other factor.

[#15]

@ezplanet 

I am really sorry you are having to put up with 32/7Mbs, as I am on 22/2.5Mbs, less than the superfast speed of 24Mbs (UK) or 30 Mbs (EU) standards.

I am paying the same price as your slow service.

I am not in a rural area, but in a reasonably sized town, with no chance of any improvement or viable alternatives in the near future.

There are others worse off than me, with 3000m copper runs.