On Wed, 03 Apr 2024 11:36:06 +0100, Graham J wrote:

> David wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> According to Zen there is only a 10 Mbps down package available to my
>> house.
>> I doubt this is FTTC unless the copper is especially flaky.
>> FTTC should offer at least 70 Mbps as far as I know.
>
>
> FTTC (i.e. VDSL) can give 80 MBits/sec if the distance to the green
> cabinet is up to 150 metres. But if the cabinet is more than about
> 1.5km the speed will be less than 15Mbits/sec - see the table in:
>
> <https://www.thinkbroadband.com/guides/fibre-fttc-ftth-broadband-guide>
>
> At which point ADSL outperforms it.

We are 0.2 miles from the local exchange according to Google Maps.

It's raining at the moment so I can't wander around and locate the nearest
green cabinet but I would be very surprised if it is further away than the
exchange.

BT claims that Fibre Essential (35-36 Mb) and Fibre 1 (36-50 Mb) are
available at my address.

I think I will phone Zen for the low down.
I have previously found that they are honest about the capabilities of the
local connections, unlike the usual suspects.

They said they wouldn't sell me the nominally faster package because they
couldn't achieve the faster speeds over the local lines.

Also, BT wants a 24 month contract and proper fibre could be available by
then.

Cheers

Dave R

--
AMD FX-6300 in GA-990X-Gaming SLI-CF running Windows 10 x64

David <wibble@btinternet.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Apr 2024 11:36:06 +0100, Graham J wrote:
>
>> David wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> According to Zen there is only a 10 Mbps down package available to my
>>> house.
>>> I doubt this is FTTC unless the copper is especially flaky.
>>> FTTC should offer at least 70 Mbps as far as I know.
>>
>>
>> FTTC (i.e. VDSL) can give 80 MBits/sec if the distance to the green
>> cabinet is up to 150 metres. But if the cabinet is more than about
>> 1.5km the speed will be less than 15Mbits/sec - see the table in:
>>
>> <https://www.thinkbroadband.com/guides/fibre-fttc-ftth-broadband-guide>
>>
>> At which point ADSL outperforms it.
>
> We are 0.2 miles from the local exchange according to Google Maps.
>
> It's raining at the moment so I can't wander around and locate the nearest
> green cabinet but I would be very surprised if it is further away than the
> exchange.
>
> BT claims that Fibre Essential (35-36 Mb) and Fibre 1 (36-50 Mb) are
> available at my address.

That's definitely fast enough. Even at the lower end.

> I think I will phone Zen for the low down.
> I have previously found that they are honest about the capabilities of the
> local connections, unlike the usual suspects.
>
> They said they wouldn't sell me the nominally faster package because they
> couldn't achieve the faster speeds over the local lines.
>
> Also, BT wants a 24 month contract and proper fibre could be available by
> then.

BT aren't the cheapest. Try plusnet as well.

> Cheers
>
>
>
> Dave R
>
>

As long as I can remember there have been people claiming that everyone
needed much more bandwidth than they already had. In the early days
when most were on dial-up, there was a vocal minority who wanted much
more, seemingly so they could download (illegally) movies and of course
they did not want to pay their ISP more, they wanted the rest of us to
subsidise them.

It has become political with some politicians telling people that they
cannot possibly exit with at least Gb/s bandwidth, encouraged by
companies wanting subsidies to connect everyone up at those speeds.

But I regularly speak to people who use very much less than that and
perhaps only once a week.

The mind boggles at what hackers etc will be able to do with connections
like that when many of users might not even have a firewall.