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On Fri, 21 Oct 2011, Dave Foxcroft wrote:
On 21/10/2011 19:01, Simon Waters 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.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
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)
FWIW .. for those that aren't aware virgin's cable is actually fibre based - making use of Roadside switches (RSS's)- effectively an 'exchange on the street' to provide the leap off from fibre to cable (amongst other things -Mux/DeMux etc) and CC's that distribute the cable side of things.Hence why they get much faster speeds!
Well... It's still a contended network... And Virgin has been fibre to the cabinet for years. (Were they ever cable from the head-ends? I'm sure it was fibre from Aztec West when I was there 10+ years ago) It's only cable from the cabinet along the street. Sadly some streets are more contended than others though - e.g. student accomodations...
Did you know that you need to pay a tax to our governemnt when you light up fibre that runs over (under) a public space? Of-course the tax is aimed at at OK level for the incumbent, but higher for others (AIUI). We have lots and lots of dark fibre, but none of it lit because no-one wants to pay the tax...
- so Sowton customers with BT are still on 8Mbps maximum. Afterx 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. Woodbury has CN21 RFS set for the end of November, although I'm still trying to pin down exactly what that means (I'm presuming it means there is probably some way to get ADSL 2+ here, but it isn't clear what it is). Perhaps time for some other folks to check if the offering in their area has improved?
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?
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.
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.
Ah well. Gordon
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