The Future for ADSL?

[#1]

Ive had ADSL broadband for some time, and in that time its gone form 512kb "always on" via a green frog modem to 1mb, 2 then about 5mb, and now im getting 15-16mb however what next for plain old ADSL, is it the end of the road, will we be pushed onto a FTTC or newer connection, or will ADSL just be left to wither away with now future speed improvements?

[#2]

Moderator's note:

Moved to General Chat as it's a discussion rather than a broadband issue.

[#3]

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@pint wrote:

Ive had ADSL broadband for some time, and in that time its gone form 512kb "always on" via a green frog modem to 1mb, 2 then about 5mb, and now im getting 15-16mb however what next for plain old ADSL, is it the end of the road, will we be pushed onto a FTTC or newer connection, or will ADSL just be left to wither away with now future speed improvements?

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Amazed you are getting such speeds. The best speed I ever got was 2mb and often less than half of that.

If ASDL is now reaching such speeds perhaps I should stop using fibre and go back to ASDL thus saving me £5 a month.

[#4]

No way will we be forced onto FTTC, bt couldn't achieve that all over the country. Heck they're still struggling to get ADSL to 100% of the country.

ADSL will stick around for a lot longer. When we still had dial up there were ADSL, digital lines, fibre etc. Today we've lost dial up but have mobile connections. Point is there will be multiple connection types for years to suit different conditions and preferences. I don't think there will ever be a single connection type that works for everyone.

[#5]

@gleneagles You only get those kind of speeds if you're near the exchange and its not available on some exchanges. In my case where I used to get around 2 meg on ADSL the BT Wholesale checker gives me an estimate of 1 to 3.5 meg for the Up to 24 meg product.

If you want to check your line to see what you would get on ADSL 2+, enter your phone number into this website:

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_cid=ws_furls_adslchecker

Its the WBC ADSL 2+ line that will give you the estimated speed for the up to 24 meg ADSL product.

[#6]

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@gleneagles wrote:

Amazed you are getting such speeds. The best speed I ever got was 2mb and often less than half of that.

If ASDL is now reaching such speeds perhaps I should stop using fibre and go back to ASDL thus saving me £5 a month.

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surely you jest.
plenty of folk get in excess or 10Mbps on ADSL. i get an attainable rate of 19432 and sync at 17496.
i'm quite a distance away from the exchange, but the street cab is with spitting distance and the pole is in the back garden.

it's all down to the lottery of the local infrastructure.

[#7]

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@mikelahey wrote:

@gleneagles You only get those kind of speeds if you're near the exchange

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define "near", as i'm not "near" my exchange and sync at 17Mbps

[#8]

@pint Both ADSL and VDSL are reaching the point where you can't go any faster, the main issue is the copper pair infrastructure that was designed to carry low bandwidth analogue voice signals and not high speed data. 

The future is FTTP  but that would require significant investment on the part of Openreach.

[#9]

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@mikelahey wrote:

The future is FTTP  but that would require significant investment on the part of Openreach.

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and an end-user cost that customer simply wouldn't want to pay.
I'd guess that 80% of customers use the internet to share cat videos on youtube. you don't need FTTP for that.

[#10]

My last speed bump was right after BT/openreach ( or whatever they are) did some work, and replaced the cabling that runs between the pole and the green cabinet down the road. the green BT cabinets twin (fibre?)  has now sprouted a little side box

[#11]

@chenks76 The OP was asking about whether ADSL had a future and whether technology improvements are likely to increase speeds over ADSL. I count VDSL as an ADSL technology as its effectively a fudge, moving the DSLAM to the cabinet to get better speeds, shorter line = less attenuation and enables higher signalling rates.

In the future as people become more reliant on the connected world with more connected devices coming onto the market in the next few years, the bandwidth requirements of the average household are going to go up to the point that VDSL isn't fit for purpose any more, particularly the upstream rate. The future then lies with running fibre to the kerb or fibre to the premises, which would guarantee every household got full speeds, not just those lucky enough to be close to the cabinet.

End users shouldn't have to bear the costs, the same way they didn't with the FTTC roll out. The fact is the FTTC roll out was subsidised by the government. Why shouldn't FTTP be subsidised in the same way, BT make such a huge profit that it could probably fund it if it wanted to. The government want better connected communities therefore subsidise FTTP deployment instead of VDSL.

[#12]

Near is of course a relative term, but with ADSL products the further your line is from the exchange the worse the attenuation due to the impedance of the copper being proportional to its length.

@gleneagles line is similar to my line so I was offering a point of comparison to show that they wouldn't get anywhere near the 24 meg speed with ADSL2+. Like ADSL Max not everyone gets the higher speeds and it tends to be the lines that were syncing at 8 meg on ADSL Max that get the higher rates on ADSL2+, which tend to be the lines that are closer < 1 mile to the exchange.

As you point out there are probably exceptions, but if a line is only syncing at 2 meg on ADSL MAX its not going to get anywhere near that on ADSL 2+.

[#13]

i wasn't referring to infrastructure cost, i was refering to end-user subscription cost.
FTTC is more expensive than ADSL.
you think openreach/ISPs aren't going to charge more for FTTP?

rather than having to keep making lines faster, the technology into better compression should be the focus.
better compression to allow multiple 4K streams but using much lower bitrate, for example, is what we should be trying to achieve.

basically we should be using the Richard Hendricks algorithm.

[#14]

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@mikelahey wrote:

@gleneagles You only get those kind of speeds if you're near the exchange and its not available on some exchanges. In my case where I used to get around 2 meg on ADSL the BT Wholesale checker gives me an estimate of 1 to 3.5 meg for the Up to 24 meg product.

If you want to check your line to see what you would get on ADSL 2+, enter your phone number into this website:

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_cid=ws_furls_adslchecker

Its the WBC ADSL 2+ line that will give you the estimated speed for the up to 24 meg ADSL product.

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Just checked that out and it shows I would get something in the range of 0.5 to 2.5 meg, so that's a non starter.

Distance from the exchange to my location is less than a mile but the copper lines are not laid in a direct line so depending on circumstances 2 users living in different areas but with the same distance from the exchange may have considerable difference in speed assuming all other factors remain the same

[#15]

I predict external Mesh Networks are the future, making all others redundant.