Both TalkTalk and Sky Have Now Fully Launched FTTP Services

[#1]

Plusnet have a perceived ‘Yorkshire’ image and people buy into that....

[#2]

My image is that it’s cheap. When you call the help desk, it’s all about money and nothing about trying to serve the customer. 

If that’s your impression of Yorkshire then I think that’s a bit unfair. 

[#3]

FTTP? But where's the market for 500 Mbits/sec services (at the retail level)? A few 'early adopter' types will pay the bragging charges, but the great masses?

[#4]

Yes, maybe they're trying to try and portray a more local UK image as some people don't like overseas call centres. I have only had to call CS twice, and I have been a customer since 2001-2002 I think. So I have been very lucky. 

I don't mind personally, for me it is more if they are helpful and me understanding some accents. I guess on the other end they have the same problem with my South East Laaandan cockney one 

I've had to call a few places around. Some have been good, and they have not been a problem. My bank whom I am not happy with, (as I am sure you can understand I don't want to go into a personal issue such as money on a public forum so hence I have decided I am going to move from them as soon as I can). I won't say what I think of them, as it will definitely break the swear filter there.

Back on topic a bit (sorry), I just hope BT aren't manipulating PlusNet to be the inferior provider so people move to them from PlusNet, as BT offer it. I suspect they are.

PlusNet lose business as FTTP becomes more common and worse case BT close PlusNet down. After all I guess most people would assume PlusNet are a separate entity as opposed to one which is currently being controlled and manipulated by them, which it is the latter of course.

Might sound like I am scaremongering, but I have seen it happen before and I wouldn't trust BT in the slightest.

[#5]

@barnyandpippa wrote:  My image is that it’s cheap. When you call the help desk, it’s all about money and nothing about trying to serve the customer.......

I've been with Plusnet since the 90s and have had many reasons to contact them, mostly because of my problematic telephone line about which they are not to blame.  I have nearly always found them to be helpful and keen to try and help as far as they were able.... and that's a lot more than I can say for my previous experiences with BT.....! 

[#6]

"FTTP? But where's the market for 500 Mbits/sec services (at the retail level)? A few 'early adopter' types will pay the bragging charges, but the great masses?"

@mechanic123 You clearly don't seem to understand that FTTP is not all about up to 900Mbps broadband (500Mbps is what TalkTalk is offering but BT are offering 900Mbps as their fastest services) but is BT;'s replacement for the copper phone line so people on new housing estates have only had the option to connect to an FTTP service for several years now.  That is why BT's slowest FTTP offering is 36Mbps to match their cheapest FTTC packages

Also even in some non new housing estate areas like mine (I am in an 1870s Victorian building in the deepest country side) we didn't have access to FTTC but only FTTP instead.  As a result we only have the option of ADSL2+ that varies in speed between 1Mbps to 2Mbps and up to 20 Mbps or so (that is download speed as the max upload on  ADSL2+ is always no better than 1 Mbps) or taking an FTTP service to get a speed any faster than only 1Mbps to 2Mbps in some cases with ADSL2+ 

Hence it is total and utter nonsense to think that FTTP is only some Rolls Royce type service only for the richest customers.  It is simply the latest method of delivering broadband that will become the norm across the country in time

I think BT have also confused the issue by only selling unlimited data on FTTP and varying price to the customer only by the broadband connection speed.  It would have been much more logical to give everyone the fastest speed the FTTP cable currently supports at their address and then charge people for how much data they are using as happens still with data on mobile or of course for water, gas or electricity.  For instance have you ever heard of anyone having to pay more because they happen to have a better water pressure at their address than another address and how can it be fair for a 7 person household hammering the FTTP service night and day to only pay the same for the service as a one person household who only uses the service a few hours per week????

[#7]

Interesting view but your analogy assumes that water pressure is the differentiator. If you wanted a 3 phase electricity supply you would pay more, even if you only ultimately consumed the same amount of energy. 

The problem with charging for usage is that it isn’t nearly as controllable as other types of consumption. I can decide how often I use my tumble dryer and I could choose its efficiency when I bought it. My Amazon Alexa consumes sometimes GBs of data in a day without me asking it anything. The problem with data usage is that it is generally controlled by the service vendor or just the result of sloppy coding. 

[#8]

I’ve been with Plusnet since 2003 and their technical help desk is ok but if ever there’s a problem with billing, you get through to Arkwright. 

[#9]

Open reach are (still) in the process of digging up the streets, and adding reels of cable, with little conection boxes  at the end to the phone poles, not sure how long the roll out+ commisioning will take, but people arent impressed with the disruption as "We already have fibre internet why do they need to dig up the roads for soething we already have"  That is also the basis for a few local social media grumbles, and a few complaints to the council over the un nessecery works that are causing disruption.

 One local councior is also in the "ive got fibre so what are they playing at" camp

[#10]

@pint  The internet technology you presumably currently have access to is up 76Mbps Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) where the final connection to your home is still the old copper wire and the fibre only runs to a nearby green cabinet.  Also often the maximum speed may only be 10Mbps or less with FTTC if you live along way from the nearest cabinet

The new technology your road is being dug up for is Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) that can currently deliver maximum speeds of up to 1000Mbps and where the phone cable in to your home is replaced with a new fibre optic cable.  This cable is good for much faster speeds still than 1000Mbps as and when Openreach and other providers further upgrade their own backbone networks.

So you have to understand that currently you don't have a fibre cable in to your home but only an old copper phone cable that connects to a box in the street the fibre is connected to and this copper cable greatly slows internet speeds down, especially the further away you are from the cabinet.  But with FTTP everyone gets the same full speed supported by the local exchange no matter how far away they are from the exchange.

Clearly despite all the hype about 5G it won't actually be able to cope with lots and lots of users in one place and also won't be in range of anyone not living on a main road with street lights and hence why BT is in fact desperate to update all its cables to modern fibre optic ones so that most people won't have to rely on a 5G network that won't be able to cope with many millions of connections when they are back at their home or office.................

The move to more and more home working is only going to greatly accelerate the push to replace all home copper phone cable connections with fibre optic ones...............

[#11]

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@Capvermell wrote:

"FTTP? But where's the market for 500 Mbits/sec services (at the retail level)? A few 'early adopter' types will pay the bragging charges, but the great masses?"

@mechanic123 You clearly don't seem to understand that FTTP is not all about up to 900Mbps broadband (500Mbps is what TalkTalk is offering but BT are offering 900Mbps as their fastest services) but is BT;'s replacement for the copper phone line so people on new housing estates have only had the option to connect to an FTTP service for several years now.  ...

Well that may be the case in dreamland but in our local new 'estates' there is no provision for high-speed recharge points for electric vehicles in the new houses, let alone facilities for 500 Mbits/sec Internet connections. Where is the market for these things, the developers might ask? There hasn't been a sensible response to that question yet on here. The marketing/sales info on these new houses is strong on local facilities like schools and shops, no mention of electric cars or fibre connections in these homes.

[#12]

Lack of high speed broadband does impact house prices:

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-6670861/The-REAL-cost-bad-broadband-Estate-agents-...

Developers are taking notice:

For example Persimmon have their own ISP supply high speed fibre to their new builds:

https://www.fibrenest.com/

[#13]

@RichardB Yes, a quick check with Persimmon on the status of their local developments here; the local rep tells me that houses now for sale don't have this FibreNest built-in,  but developments still in the plans and not yet started will have this built-in. So maybe I was a little too pessimistic about the need for these services for people in this area!

Remains to be seen, whether new buyers will be happy with the monthly charges!

[#14]

@mechanic123 Clearly Openreach need to come up with a 19 Mbps FTTP package that costs no more at wholesale level than an old copper ADSL2+ connection or ideally is a pound or so cheaper.

That will then ensure that far more of the nearly 4 million homes with an FTTP connection passing by their door connect to the service.

Currently where I live only 2 of the 17 apartments have connected to the FTTP cable that has been passing by our front doors and live since mid 2015 because of the considerably higher price for broadband than the cheapest ADSL2+ deals and BT's ridiculous insistence on a 2 year contract for upgrading to FTTP (the cable is already there and its only an hour or two's job to connect up each new apartment as all the cabling is open wall surface based) for even their own existing BT Retail customers hugely deters people from making the upgrade.

Of course ideally we could all have the full 1000Mbps speed the cable currently supports and then just pay for the data we use at some sensible price per Gb but that isn't how BT wants to sell home vs mobile (where you do have a chosen data cap) broadband services.  Making the data allowance totally unlimited makes these FTTP connections prohibitively expensive for single person households who don't use that much data and who are cross subsidising monster data munching and potentially home working or studying households of two adults and two or three teenagers.

[#15]

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@mechanic123 wrote:

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Well that may be the case in dreamland but in our local new 'estates' there is no provision for high-speed recharge points for electric vehicles in the new houses, let alone facilities for 500 Mbits/sec Internet connections. Where is the market for these things, the developers might ask? There hasn't been a sensible response to that question yet on here. The marketing/sales info on these new houses is strong on local facilities like schools and shops, no mention of electric cars or fibre connections in these homes.

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FTTP penetration on new build properties is > 85% and almost two thirds have access to Openreach FTTP. As it happens, Internet connectivity featured quite prominently in the marketing materials for the estate I recently moved to, where there is access to OR FTTP, Virgin and Hyperoptic. The house has two pre-installed ONT's in the utility cupboard and the Virgin ducting comes up to the door. There is no BT copper line plant anywhere on the estate.