BT Make Final Adjustments for Faster FTTC Broadband Vectoring Trial

"VDSL Vectoring is not unlike the noise cancellation technology that you often find in some headphones and works to cancel out crosstalk (interference) on the “last mile” run of copper cable (i.e. between your local street cabinet and home), which could result in a noticeable speed boost.
 
Some have speculated that Vectoring could push BT’s FTTC service beyond 100Mbps and, with the help of a few other tweaks, possibly as high as up to 200Mbps. But BT’s initial focus will not be on raising the headline rate and they instead envisage it being used to improve existing performance to more users; especially for those on longer lines where interference is a big problem.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/08/bt-make-final-adjustments-for-faster-fttc-broadband-vectoring-trial.html

BT Openreach Tweaks Unbundled LLU Phone Line Prices for UK ISPs

Good news for the bigger ISP's with MPF wanting to get their customer base off SMPF circuits.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/05/bt-openreach-tweaks-unbundled-llu-prices-for-uk-isps.html

VONGA is dead – long live FVA? – Openreach

An interesting read over at the CTO of Timco's blog:

http://www.trefor.net/2010/07/13/vonga-is-dead-long-live-fva-openreach/

It is a 2010 article so be warned to keep that in mind.

BT Openreach Confirm UK ISP Pricing for FTTP on Demand Pilot Phase 2

Although those prices are very off putting (£500 install and £1000 for a 500m run of fibre) we could see some ISP willing to subsidise this heavily with lengthy contracts. With FTTC giving 80Mbps down / 20Mbps up, people will start thinking hard about if the upgrade is worth it. 

It's a clever move by OpenReach to save money upgrading the network. I don't ever remember NTL / Telewest or their predecessors doing any thing similar on a residential; service. Hopefully it will leads to a focus on keeping the network running smoothly with better service to ISP's.

The Pilot will take place in the following exchange areas:

High Wycombe
Bristol South
St Agnes Cornwall
Edinburgh Waverley
Basingstoke
Watford
Cardiff Central
Manchester Central

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/01/bt-openreach-confirm-uk-isp-pricing-for-fttp-on-demand-pilot-phase-2.html

How to Identify Slow Speed as a Fault on FTTC Superfast Broadband Lines

ISP review:
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/12/when-slow-speeds-become-a-fault-on-bts-fttc-superfast-broadband.html

A great bit in there is that they know of one example where the customer was about 2000m from the green box (PCP) and getting 16 Mbps. If that's the distance to the PCP it makes you wonder what they would have got on ADSL2+ with the copper going all the way back to the exchange.  Probably barely anything if the downstream attenuation was above 70dB.

Ofcom Fines BT UK £95m for Overcharging on Wholesale Ethernet Services

From ISP review:
A two year legal battle between BT and several major ISPs has finally ended with Ofcom forcing the national UK telecoms operator to pay a fine of £94,823,000 after it was found to have overcharged the broadband providers for Backhaul Extension Services (BES) between 2004/6 and 2011.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/12/ofcom-fines-bt-uk-94m-for-overcharging-on-wholesale-ethernet-services.html

First official indications of Fibre on Demand pricing from Openreach

Thinkbroadband mentions wholesale prices for next year. Looks like the installation costs are going to be high which will deter a lot of people. Then again its understandable given the massive cost to rolling out infrastructure.

I can see fixed line providers looking to lock customers into lengthy contracts in order to cover any subsidising of the initial installation costs, which'll be look news for them given that 4G services are going to bring faster mobile data rates with lower latency causing increased competition..

Thinkbroadband: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5614-first-official-indications-of-fibre-on-demand-pricing-from-openreach.html

Special offer on FTTC Simultaneous Provides in New Year

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5478-special-offer-on-fttc-simultaneous-provides-in-new-year.html

OpenReach - Local Loop Unbundling Pricing - Full MPF

Charges incurred for SFI visits that OR deem chargeable.

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricing/loadProductPriceDetails.do?data=totid5BwFmkf9vLcBITRyZF9loRxWIbIKK6V7YWmlYAlMnGHsqdC0vzO163bJmh34D91D7M0q8u%2F%0AIlSgtIFAKw%3D%3D

ROUND 1 : ADSL Nation XTE-2005 Vs BT I Plate

Sync speeds on the Sky Sagem phase 3 router before the I Plate:

Sync speed with the I Plate installed:

Line stats:

Take note for the noise margins (SNR margin's) and the Downstream line attenuation. 

Picture of the I Plate installed with a microfilter attached to the faceplate and a Sky TV splitter on the phone side of the microfilter.  

So there we have it, a very slight increase on what was already a good ADSL2+ line to start with.I was advised that the DLM had increased the impulse noise protection (to 2 symbols) and delay to 16ms as there was small amounts of errors passing on the line during certain times of the day. High sync speeds are great but not if the data passing on the line is unreadable by your router.

As the I Plate has a RF3 filter in I am retesting to see how this effects the line over 4-10 days. I've noticed with Sky that my SNR margins are always kept relatively low which would suggest pushing the line for a high sync speed.

It would be nice to get the line down to 8ms on the delay (interleaving!) and INP down to 1 symbol but only if the line behaves. This would make the line even better for gaming, which is already pretty amazing on this connection compared to my old Talk Talk Business (formerly Freedom2Surf) line which I had a lot of love for. That was a long line with an attenuation of around 47dB so you needed the INP / interleaving on that line more so.

You hear a lot of gamers saying that fastpath is the best approach but it almost never is these days. For gaming, if you lose any data passing on the line, the game either has to guess what is happening or re-request the data from the server which is another round trip instead of a shorter 'save' time made by the INP / delay.

OpenReach's first rural Fibre only Exchange (FOX)

ISPreview.co.uk have a interesting article on OpenReach's FTTP including fibre Voice Accress services.

Link: here

The really interesting part is this paragraph:

"BT has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that the existing copper loop will be removed and replaced with FTTP serving 1,400 lines currently on the exchange, which incidentally is a Market 1 (BT only) area where only basic ‘up to’ 8Mbps ADSL services are currently available."

Sounds costly.