Tag Archives: BT

Sky Broadband – LLU competition works

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My local exchange in the UK has only ever had BT’s ADSLMax product. Basically that means ‘up-to’ 8Mbps download and a paltry 400Kbps upload speed (on the standard product). There were, until recently, no other options available from this exchange, and so we were stuck on BT’s ancient IPStream platform, with the upload speed ‘cap’ and banded IP profiles that only further reduce your download speeds (see my article here about the travesty of ADSLMax).

Even in 2016, there was still no rollout plan for BT to upgrade it to ADSL2+ and WBC. This is a small to medium sized exchange with 1200+ customers. It’s not exactly in the middle of nowhere – it serves a small village! The cynic in me would say BT are doing this deliberately, to ‘encourage’ people to upgrade to the new FTTC service (paid for by BDUK, nonetheless). But for people not yet served by FTTC or just not wanting to pay more, we were stuck with ADSLMax, a technology introduced 10 years ago in 2006.

Thankfully Sky broadband has just installed LLU infrastructure in the exchange – that’s full ADSL2+, and importantly it is at a substantially lower price than BT’s offering (thanks to Ofcom’s artificial price floor on Market 1 exchanges).

I was paying over £40 per month for ADSLMax with the ‘Pro’ add-on (uncaps upload speeds), now I’m paying just £17 per month for ADSL2+. Look at these Speedtest.net results, they are basically double the speed for half the price:

Plusnet (BT ADSLMax)

Plusnet (BT ADSLMax with ‘Pro’ add-on)

Sky LLU ADSL2+

Sky LLU ADSL2+

I’d also like to point out that the Sky test was done at 4:30pm (nearing a peak time), whereas the BT test was done at 12:50am, not a peak time. This probably explains the ping discrepancy.

Another really nice feature is that Sky are now rolling out native IPv6 to all of their consumer customers. This isn’t a trial, it’s a full rollout. ipv6-test.com result:

ipv6

Top marks to Sky, who are the first ‘major’ ISP to begin a full rollout of IPv6 to their customers. I know a number of small ISPs have been doing it for years, but none of the larger ones have done yet. BT is also (apparently) rolling it out ‘by the end of 2016’, so could 2016 be the year of IPv6 in the UK?

ADSLMax – The travesty of (the lack of) ADSL2+ coverage

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I’ll get right to the point.

According to SamKnows, there are 5564 ADSL enabled exchanges in the UK. Only 2762 of them are enabled with BT’s ADSL2+. This means that around half of all UK exchanges have no access to ADSL2+. They are stuck with ADSL1, a technology fast approaching obsolescence. Whilst population coverage of ADSL2+ is around the 90% mark I believe(?), customers living in rural areas already with the least choice and lowest speeds are getting further screwed due to the lack of investment.

Why does ADSL2+ matter? There are a few reasons, listed in this comparison table (note, speeds are BT’s caps, not theoretical maximum):

adslmax

Of course, many people (including BT of course) would argue “what’s the point” of deploying 100% national ADSL2+ coverage when they are already aiming for 90% VDSL coverage, followed by 95% soon after. The problem lies in the final 5%. 5% of the entire country will have no access to superfast broadband, and not only that but they will almost certainly be stuck with ADSL1.

The primary problem

The primary issue with the outdated ADSLMax product is the diabolically slow and ridiculous upload speed cap. Right now, BT could uncap all existing ADSLMax customers stuck on their ADSL1 only exchanges, probably with just a flick of a computer keyboard. Upload speeds could be increased from the paltry 400 kbps to around 800 kbps, a doubling (still very slow by modern standards, but at least something!) which would result in the internet feeling generally quicker. This is already possible with BT’s ‘premium’ ADSLMax product, but you have to pay an additionally monthly fee (for something which the remaining 90% of the country gets for free), and even more amusingly you can’t get this option with BT retail (Plusnet and A&A are some of the only ISP’s to offer it). All in all, a farcial situation.

In an actual example, loading a single webpage on ADSLMax regularly saturates my upload connection, since TCP requires sending as well as receiving. Even though my download bandwidth isn’t being fully utilised, pages load slowly since the upload bandwidth is being saturated and load requests can’t get through as quickly as they should. Now add in a few additional laptops, tablets and phones on the connection, and latency skyrockets.

A prime example of the upload crisis is having multiple iOS devices upload things to Photostream, as well as use iCloud Backup. I have had to manually create QoS rules in my router to limit the uploads of iOS devices, otherwise they literally crash the internet.

The cheap solution

It’s bad enough not having ADSL2+ available, never mind any form of fibre (and in case you wondered, my cabinet was skipped in the BDUK process, looks like I’m in the final 5%), but to add to further frustration, BT are actively slowing down rural connections that could otherwise make use of higher upload speeds. They don’t even need to upgrade to ADSL2+ equipment (they should’ve done that years ago…) instead, they need to scrap the premium service and give everyone the 800 kbps upload speeds. Whilst not all lines would make use of it, a great number of them would see some benefit. It would be an easy interim measure that could be done with literally no spending required. If it results in some peak-time upload congestion, I can live with that. At least most of the time I would get 2x the upload speed that I currently get.

Long term

The real question is, what of ADSLMax and IPStream? With 1000’s of exchanges still using it, what are BT’s plans for migration? In terms of competition, I assume BT have to continue to offer ADSL in fully FTTC areas since not all providers actually support FTTC yet. What happens when the (now ancient) ADSLMax equipment becomes EoL or just unobtainable? Maybe they still manufacture it now (lol…) but in 5 years time? 10 years? ADSL2+ seems the obvious solution for keeping ADSL around, but VDSL is (rightly) BT’s aim at the moment. The core issue is that VDSL is the not the ‘standard’ service, it is actually marketed as a premium offering. BT still offer plain ADSL from the exchange. In 10 years time will this still be ADSL1, or will ADSL be totally discontinued and FTTC the ‘standard’ broadband offering?

There are many questions and really not many answers. Sadly all the hype is around BDUK and the FTTC rollout, but for those of us still waiting, it just feels as if any existing ADSL infrastructure improvements have been all but abandoned.

Fastershire: Andoversford

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The Fastershire project is the government subsidised faster broadband rollout for Gloucestershire & Herefordshire.

I decided to do some investigating as to who might be able to receive the new superfast service in and around the Andoversford telephone exchange area. BT Openreach now make cabinet level data publicly accessible on their website, and cabinet information can also be obtained from their DSL checker website. With these 2 sources of information, it is relatively easy to construct this table:

cabs

[Disclaimer: Information provided from BT public sources, and could be incorrect!]

Of the 8 cabinets that I could identify (cabinets 2 and 8 either don’t exist or I just couldn’t find them), 4 of them are expected to get upgraded to Superfast. Of the 4 cabinets to be upgraded, 3 of them are in Andoversford itself. The only ‘rural’ cabinet is expected to be in Sevenhampton, which looking at the DSL checker is in dire need of faster broadband access.

Of course, it is extremely ambiguous as to what “Under Review” actually means. On BT’s website, it states that “We’re in your area but we’re still assessing whether or not we can upgrade your cabinet.”

Let me now provide my interpreted translation for that statement: “We have no idea when your cabinet is going to be upgraded. We’ve probably already written it off, but we say it’s still being reviewed in order to keep your hopes up and deter any other non-BT competition.”

There is of course the small chance that some of the Under Review cabs might get upgraded at some point in the future, or even another solution (FTTP?) might be offered. Additionally, ‘Under Review’ could also mean that the original PCP cab was not suitable to be upgraded and they have to do additional works/checks before they can plan to add a DSLAM to it.

It is somewhat of a shame that the most rural, in need areas of the Andoversford exchange are likely to miss out on Superfast access in this current round of funding. Unless ‘Under Review’ means something a lot more positive (which I suspect it doesn’t), properties just scraping 2Mbps are likely to remain at this speed at least for now.

An interesting find, however, is this image:

adsl2+

Yes, that does indeed say “on Exchange Andoversford” at the top there, and yes, it is stating that WBC ADSL2+ is available at this property. I have not found another single address in the Andoversford exchange area that is enabled for ADSL2+ (Up to 17Mbps compared to the older up to 8Mbps service). It is very odd – it could well be an anomaly in the address checker, or on the other hand, it could be a test property that has been enabled, pending the wider rollout of ADSL2+ to the whole exchange. The VDSL Superfast product, as far as I am aware, runs on 21CN (WBC), so it would make sense that the exchange itself is being upgraded too. However, not all VDSL cabs will link to their parent exchanges – sometimes the backhaul is known to route to alternative locations…

Edit: According to roadworks.org, BT are doing works on ‘PCP8’ in Shipton Oliffe. I wasn’t able to locate any properties connected to cabinet 8, so it could be that Shipton Oliffe properties are in fact going to receive FTTC very soon, not sure why the wholesale checker states PCP10 rather than 8 though… Also, this tallies with the fastershire website coverage map, which shows the area around the village as having fibre access by the end of 2014.