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On Fri, 21 Oct 2011, Dave Foxcroft wrote:
On 21/10/2011 20:04, Gordon Henderson wrote:On Fri, 21 Oct 2011, Dave Foxcroft wrote:Sowton is full of cables (or more accurately fibre) the industrial estate is where the Exeter headend is based! - that is where the fibre rings that span Exeter terminate and link up with the fibre rings around Plymouth (Plymouth HE) and Torbay.There's several carriers though - there isn't just one fibre network for all. I used fibre from SW Telecom some years back - had a router/server in the cabinet at the base of the big tower in Sowton. All good stuff and not a BT in sight... (Ran it down to Lands end)
SW Telecoms - They lease shed loads of fibre from Telewest -who are now virginmedia - I've spliced tons of it!! (well it was telewest then) and funnily diss'd some of it in error due to the terrible lack of proper documentation - it caused quite a stir - hehehehe
I was under the impression that they had their own fibre network in the SW and S. Wales, and were leasing it to the likes of TW, Kingston, etc. They were the ones who were western power initially and ran the fibre over (and under) the power lines, etc. ... Maybe I've got the name wrong.
We used them to get fibre from SWISP in Sowton to our own head-end in Sowton and from there we had 3 x 10Mb lines to Marldon, Lands End and Cambourne.. Our exit points at Lands End and Cambourne were electricity sub-stations with all the associated issues working there gives you...
Even in 2011 BT is miles behind - it is still reliant on stuff that's been in the ground for decades - it needs to rip it all out and start again instead of buggering about trying to bang a rather large square peg into a tiny round hole.So who pays for it? BT is a private company with shareholders. I don't see them putting their hands into their pockets... Do you want to pay the real cost of ripping up the streets? Isn't that why all the little cable franchises went bust/amalgamated in the ealy 90's?
Agreed 100% - They don't want to/won't/can't afford to do it but it NEEDS to be done - look a the 'modern' countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, China etc (ok China might be pushing it a bit) - they have non of the legacy junk - and no way to wring the last bit of profit of of it - at the expense of the end user - they had to invest heavily - much the same as the small cable companies in the UK in the 90's - BT dodged that- it could!!! and has been up until now - it is having to do it now because the UK is rapidly slipping backwards compared to most of the developed world. I agree someone has to pay - it probably going to be the taxpayer.
I don't agree about the need - I still maintain that a good un-contended network is far better than a fast network with lots of contention and low data caps. However, there are small pockets of people properly in ruralistan who could do with better connections though. 2Mb is enough to stream HD TV from the BBC iPlayer, and 2Mb with lower latency is more than good enough for games, etc.
When I had my outage recently, my line was capped to 2Mb for almost a month before I noticed.
So the issue for me is a better level of coverage than going for absolute high speeds, etc. What's the point of having 100Mb to your home if you can use up your monthly cap in half an hour?
As for broadband... I don't really care about the top-speed, what I want is reliability and low contention.... And I've recently been dabbling in leased lines for my customers. Oh what a joy. Oh what a price - but for a demanding company with "road warriors" and a busy VPN, having the upstream speed is so worth it. (and no data caps, and no congestion to the ISPs edge) If you shop about you can get good deals though. Fancy 100Mb/sec symetrical, no contention and no data cap? £800 a month was the best quote I got for Newton Abbot. Is that a lot for a company of (say) 20+ people? I don't think so. Compared to everything else, it's peanuts, but some companies insist of using shite ADSL from shite ISPs and not even bother with business grade. I know multi-million pount turn over companies that use a single residential quality ADSL connection with no backup. It's pathetic.
Is this because it's Newton Abbot?
It's because NA is where the company is based I was doing the network installation for.
What's it cost to lease dark fibre from Newton Abbot to Plymouth?
Dark? I don't want Dark. I want Lit. And when it's Lit, the owner pays tax, so the owner will simply bill the company they lease it to to cover that tax.
Stick your own kit either end? I might be barking up the wrong tree but I've seen lots of companies do just that.
Your barking. Why Plymouth? There aren't any ISPs with a POP in Plymouth. (That I trust or would use) Even if there were, they'd backhaul it to London, so you might as well backhaul to London in the first place.
It's much easier to let an ISP deal with it these days. If I wanted point to point NA to Plymouth then fine - I'd approach a telco directly, but I was after Internet connectivity - and that involves 2 distinct things - the company providing the backhaul and the company providing the Internet. Often the backhaul company is several companies - e.g. a local loop by BT to the exchange, then long-haul from exchange to the ISPs premises by another carrier, then sometimes another BT loop to the ISPs POP. Most of the time it's easier to just let the ISP deal with it all and get one bill.
Sowton is an odd cause - lots of businesses, but not many residential - probably why the exchange doesn't get much attention. It goes out to Pynes hill too with lots of nice offices but by the time it gets to the nice offices there, it's down to 2-3Mb/sec - and that's the range where ADS2+ stops helping you.
They should get cable.... loads of it there - oh and fibre (and swamp gas! but that's another story)
Cable from whom? Oh, TW. Another ISP I'd not trust my data to. Fibre to who? We're taking Internet connectivity here. No point having fibre if there's no-one to connect it to - the Internet isn't free you know - everyone pays for transit!
And there are other solutions than fibre - copper is still good. Want 10Mb symetrical in NA delivered over 4 pairs of copper? (It's called EFM - Ethernet First Mile) That's about £400 pcm. (and the speed we estimated was actually closer to 15Mb/sec, but that's not really the point - it's symetrical, zero contention and no caps)
The thing we call "Broadband" in this country is contended, oversubscribed (in places) and built on the back of wet string and chewing gum. The majority of the population are not willing to pay the real price, so the infrastructure creaks to breaking point (e.g. yesterday morning a single router in a BT exchange failed taking a good chunk out for a few hours - redundancy? You can't afford no steenking redundancy)
Try selling a 10Mb leased line to a company for £400 a month when they can get 20Mb for a tenth of that. On the surface it doesn't add up, but I'd rather have a 10Mb leased line than 100Mb "broadband" any day of the week if I could justify it.
Gordon
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