D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] Broadband - recent changes Exeter

 

On Sat, 22 Oct 2011, tom wrote:

On 21/10/11 21:01, James Kilty wrote:
On 21/10/11 19:01, Simon Waters wrote:
Noted that:

Exeter has FTTC in some areas.

Sowton offers C&W LLU. Sowton previously wasn't upgraded despite the
huge number of business customers because the uptake wasn't huge - I
presume that someone else has cables (Virgin?) around the industrial
estate - so Sowton customers with BT are still on 8Mbps maximum. After
some searching, and reading about corporate takeovers and failed deals,
it seems basically this means Demon Internet and a few other reseller
will sell you ADSL 2+ for the exchange.

Interesting. We have FTTC the nearest of which is in Townshend, less than a mile away. Plusnet say they could give me 6Mbps - I get 3Mbps at a good time with ADSL - well my router sometimes says this - I mostly get a steady 2Mbps download. The exchange (Leedstown) is not set up for ADSL2+ and if it was, I might get more than the FTTC would. So Demon cannot upgrade me as they don't do it from fibre. The exchange was one of the first in Cornwall with few users. I wonder if any have signed up to the faster rates, especially in the village of Leedstown, which is fairly compact and must have less than 100 houses.

You know that BT only guarantee a minimum speed of 2Mb/sec over their wholesale network, don't you? (Unless you're on elevated services when it's 3Mb) and that's only for 90% of the time IIRC. (They did away with the 50:1 and 20:1 thing about 5 years ago)

I laugh at my customers on FTTC in Cornwall when it goes slow for them. (Which fortunately isn't that often as the ISP is reasonably good and BT have improved their infrastructure somewhat in Cornwall)

I could do with a faster line as wife and daughter stream TV and films. They can't do it at the same time.

So go out and rent a DVD. Or get a 2nd line and load balance it. Renting DVDs is probably much much cheaper.

James
Sorry no sympathy for that - OK you can watch films on ADSL but then you can drive a lorry through a country village. Can they not download them the night before? If the TV is not live then they should be able to, if it is then...

Don't know about James, but my experience with family mamgers is that they're too dense to be able to do that. One relative on an Entanet connection (30MB/month cap) was regularly exceeding it and simply couldn't or wouldn't download stuff overnight. They're mac users if that makes any difference - I don't know if they provide the software to enable off-peak downloading (Enta is uncapped overnight).

The solution I employed for them was to give them a MAC (as in Migration Access Code) and pick another ISP with a bigger monthly cap. They went with plusnet - double the data, same price.

As for speed - someone somewhere has to pay for the fibre to the cabinet, power to the cabinet, and equipment in the cabinet. That's why BT won't do it across the board - it's simply not economically fesable - unless they get huge wodges of cash for impoverished places - e.g. Cornwall. Which makes me angry as here in Devon we have equally rural locations, but it seems the Cornish shout louder...

Right. I'm going to stop whinging now and enjoy my weekend!

Gordon

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq