Max Heidcase ... I worked for them for 30 years and I’d recommend the apprenticeship. They get the pick of the cream jobs after completion,unlike us old engineers who were largely stuck where we we were.
Wow you know my grandad Howard 😀One of the top engineers he was a fault finder😉 Worked in the basement in London. Please get back to me if you know him and I will pass the message on. And the things I remember are The snooker room the canteen room & long stairs that went down & down Felt like they never ended,That’s where he worked . I remember seeing the BT Motherboard in the basements , I remember him saying no one ever gets to see this,wow Brings back memories now.
@@rmccombs66 For DSL/DOCSIS (cable): It's a technological limitations. A lot more frequencies are allocated to the download side rather than the upload side as it is the side that concerns 95% of the subscribers (I know, annoying for the like of us that upload large files frequently). For FTTH: It is a manufactured limitation by ISP because they believe people will host servers or commercial stuff on their symmetrical connections. It's an outdated fear and is retarded. In Canada on Bell FTTH, we get symmetrical connections up to 940mbps in download (meaning it is not symmetrical anymore on 1gbps and 1.5gbps download speed). The reason they stop being symmetrical is that the modem ONT (the optical emitter in the modem) isn't strong/good enough to go reliably beyond 940mbps, while the central office equivalent has no issue pushing much faster speed. The reason is simple, it would be cost prohibitive to put the kind of equipment capable of going over 940mbps in a residential ONT (the "modem") that is treated like a throw away equipment. Want 500/500mbps or 1gbps/940mbps and want to pay 100$ a month for it like me? Knock yourself out with it!
@@checksum00 *"....outdated fear..."* Absolutely isn't, you will change your view on that if you're unfortunate enough to have people move in on your node that kill it dead by streaming data up and down 24/7
I worked for them 30 years, from before the privatisation, great video. I’ll add to it a little bit. For the vast majority of people the fttc is perfectly adequate, if it doesn’t buffer then that’s good enough. We have thousands of estates where the cables are buried direct in ground, just below the tarmac, the joints outside each house where the house lead-in comes from are called tee-offs, even now in 2020 there could be hundreds of thousands of them that are simply twisted wires with a Vaseline sleeve and then taped up with self amalgamating tape. The cables are often soaked with water which gets in through all sorts of access points from leaky joints to cable damage from spade cuts, and the water capillaries down and fills up the joints. I spent years measuring these faults and getting them dug out, a tee off dig could cost £600 if no extra work was required. So a line bringing in just a few pounds a month in rental to Openreach could cost decades worth of rental just for a single repair to cables 40/50/ years old . The cost to benefit on ducting these estates makes it not viable. It would cost literally billions and billions to do, there’s wayleave issues, council permissions, and then each house wanting fibre would need the garden or drive dug up, just to get a faster ADSL.. BT exists solely to make profit for shareholders and this would be a disaster financially, renting out a fibre for literally pennies each to the service providers, which cost thousands to put in is madness. But they are putting fibre to the poles, so if you’re currently fed overhead then eventually you’ll get a fibre option, probably just as some wireless technology takes over and the whole solid infrastructure becomes obsolete. They are currently planning to get rid of all the thousands of exchanges and have just 6 for the whole country, because they can now get rid of the copper E sides and use VOIP for telephony. It’s changing faster than you can imagine. I was putting in 5meg circuits which got upgraded to say 19 then 37 on the 21CN network which was immediately obsolete as fttc came in. We did that many times, we installed line sharing systems called DACS. Tens of thousands of them to give speech service over full up cables, then as soon as ADSL came in we took them all out, cost millions and millions, the tech moves much faster than the outside infrastructure.in addition people obsess endlessly about the speed, even if there’s no issues with buffering, all playing games and video streaming together they’ll still complain they’re short on the speed, often just having measured it from an iPad wirelessly. Which is totally inaccurate for speed testing, you need a dedicated tester not even a speed test site and using a cable is accurate
I do hope Starlink (satellite) Kills off Openreach and the normal ISP's as they have gotten too used to being rude, arrogant, lazy and mostly ignorant to the paying customer. My service is FTTC and the speeds keep dropping and the service keeps dropping out. I have asked for when they plan to roll out FTTP and all they say is you are not in the plans. What a load of crap. Openreach is a joke of an organisation and since they have a monopoly they do not have to care. I hope starlink makes them care when they run them out of business in the next decade. As you say the outside infrastructure will never keep up with satellite.
They are ramping up fibre rollout in the UK at a tremendous rate we have gone from 3% coverage to 10% in little over 2 years and apparently the ISP's still aren't at full rollout Speed yet because they are developing new ways of installing plus they have a shortage of engineers
Yes my area is in the plans on bt full fiber finally looked up my old address just to see if it says it for everyone and it doesn't old address isent in plans yay now hope it won't take 5 years lol
Very informative video, I'll definitely be sharing. It is a joke how in the UK much of the country (especially rural areas) still struggle to get even 10Mbps connection. Thank you!
Brill vid. V informative and clear. Getting "Full Fibre" from BT next week, which I am hoping is proper FTTH. We'll see how that goes lol. Thanks for making the effort to do the vid - still useful 2 years down the line.
I live in the USA and I am the only residential in my town that has 100% fiber... It's actually called DARK FIBER and it is expensive as hell but totally worth it!
I have Gigafast Cityfibre here at 1 GBPS and couldn't be happier. The video was very informative though because I never realised how the older fibre worked.
I hate about the fact they install fibre to really uncommon places and not like well known towns. I've been waiting for my town to have fibre for so long!
Not a bad video - couple of points. Thatcher wanted Mercury Communications fibre network to compete with BT’s monopoly which subsequently involved BT selling its world beating fibre technology to NEC of Japan. The equipment was shipped from BT’s development labs in Ipswich and used by the Japanese. Interestingly enough average download speeds in Japan are not hugely faster than the UK currently and the competition of alternative networks in the UK could lead to lower pricing overall. Of course, speeds in the UK can go up to 3 Gbps and 10 Gbps which shows how fast the market has developed, although Openreach on their older GPON tech doesn’t offer symmetric speeds yet and is limited to 900 Mbps.
Great video - Fantastically presented and brilliantly researched. However, BT has offered FTTH for 5+ years. I know this because I had it installed when moving into my current home in 2014 and have now been 'soft' upgraded to their new 950/150mbps package with a simple unlock. No extra hardware needed. For reference, I'm in mid-Cornwall.
Thank you very much. I am aware that BT does have FTTH deployments going back to 2009 (and even earlier than that). My cousin has it:) I remember when I did research originally back in 2015 I knew that Cornwall was fortunate to get actual fibre broadband. BT did quietly drop their ambitious FTTH target and switched gears to FTTC/VDSL deployments. As I'm sure you'll appreciate for the sake of time I have kept some of these other bits out.
A friend of mine lives on a relatively small city in a relatively poor province in Brazil. He has 100Mbps symmetric with support for IPv6 connectivity.
There's G.Fast as well (330mbit DSL). Fortunately things are getting better and we've got dozens of proper fibre ISPs now. I should get it in 2021 if openreach and their contractors keep to their schedule.
Basically every service is using copper lines at some point - the big difference is how close to your home the fiber gets. FFTH / FTTP uses fiber literally from their central office to your house - and its at that point where the service transitions. Most other companies only use fiber to span long distances outside - and your service will transition somewhere ‘near’ your house. The further away you are from that transition, the slower your service will get. So even though your FFTP/FTTH providers network, and their SERVICE LINE to your house is 100% fiber optic - its still going to use coax inside your home.
I work for virgin media installing fibre to the premises now so we are catching up with the world slowly just put you straight about one thing tho coaxial cable is a lot faster than the openreach network and we are getting 350 meg to the home on a standard coaxial cable no other operator will offer you that apart from gigaclear which is only in certain areas
Sorry mate, you're wrong. Gfast is advertised as 330 down however I've seen with my own eyes numerous 500 down using new fibre to Gfast pod and twisted pair there after. It's using higher frequency that aren't effected by ADSL crosstalk.
Virgin does FTTH now too, but the fibre terminates at the customer's wall plate, and gets converted into RFoG and a coaxial cable so that it's compatible with older hardware and the whole VM ecosystem (DOCSIS 3.0/3.1). My entire town was just connected up with VM FTTH, with fibre blown from cabinets to termination points at the top of BT telegraph poles, then another length of fibre pushed to the customer's wall. Their new rollout (project lightning) is future proofed, but it seems kind of pointless while they're still using coaxial for the last metre to the modem, and using DOCSIS.
Yes True for year they do use HFC aka hybrid fibre coaxial they use fibre optic cables to the cabinet and from cabinet the last mile is HFC. You said RFoG aka Radio frequency over glass they bring the fibre optic cables even closer like outside your house stopping at the side of your house were it currently enters then it’s back to good old HFC. That’s what RFoG is.
here in the USA I just got fiber in January 2022.... My sister got hers on Candlemas Day 2022 in the Alabama countryside... Not too shab but about time...!
I feel very sad for you guys in the UK that you had the chance for a Fiber infrastructure but got cancelled. We do have 1000 Mbps Internet or at least 500 Mpbs offers in the top 10 cities of Bulgaria.
I’ve never personally had an issue with both FTTC and FTTP being called "Fibre". As that’s literally what the F stands for in either. As long as it’s easy to find out if the connection is FTTC or FTTP and your expected upload and download speeds (which it is) then you know exactly what you’re getting and there is no confusion
@@HtheKing With FTTC, the fibre runs from your town's telephone exchange to a nearby street cabinet, and then you get your standard copper phone line to your house from the cabinet. FTTP is true fibre all the way from your phone exchange to your house.
@@VanillaVictini Exactly. Look at it from this persepective - If you're still paying for line rental, then you'll most likely be getting your internet via a copper line from the street cabinet.
Thanks so informative. So now I know why I cannot get broadband any faster than 8Mbps in my new build home/estate- the cabinet is not and will not be enabled.
@@TheOpticalNetworker.... by way of an update... BT Openreach have not and will not upgrade their cabinet, however, there is another company (Glide) who basically serve industrial estates and University halls of residence. My cabinet is one that serves an industrial estate and a few houses of which mine is one. Glide have brought their own fibre to the industrial estate and have their own smaller cabinet next to the BT one. Fortunately for me Glide offer FTTC to my home so now I am buzzing along at 80/20. Only downside is the price which is an eye watering £60 GBP per month for broadand + £18 GBP for line rental. But I am not complaining too much as the service is fast and reliable 24/7
There was huge new flat/house building's in city of BATH,IN MY big building built 5 years ago on new Riverside estate ,I have NEW BT FIBER FROM FLAT TO exchange. I have now changed it to Hyperoptic that's due to fit new fiber cable of there own next month
A1 (former state owned telecom), the largest ISP in Austria advertises and advertised even their 8mbit connection as "glasfaser power"-> "fiberoptic power", although the fiber only goes to the exchange. I live in the second largest city in Austria and can book 20Mbit for 25€, but only 8 reach me, because my exchange is 900m away. You would assume that at least the cities have a good connection, but even Vienna has areas where only >10Mbit exist. Politics wanted to push the FTTH and FTTC deployment and formed a fund with 1billion € that came from the 5G frequency auction, but they limited it to rural areas. So you can have 1gbit in towns with 50 people, but have a very poor connection in cities. I mean, as an ISP, would you upgrade in cities for you own money, when you can do it in rural areas where you are heavily subsidized? Yes, we have more households connected via FTTH, but the average speed is higher in the UK, because the cable network is more widly adopted. And the same situation fiber vs copper happened in germany, because a dude in politics was friends with copper cable companies. So he pushed the 2 wire telephone wire, not fiber.
I'm not sure there was a conclusion? Now in April 2020 can I get FTTH(P)... I've had Virgin in the past but service was abysmal, I'm now with Origin {WHO?} absolute nightmare to deal with; never again, my contract can be canceled in May and I cant wait! But who should I try next? Don't need anything more than 'Fast' I've not even mentioned changing provider and the possibility of loosing service for a few days, weeks. It's a nightmare and needs legislation here in the UK. Any suggestions for ISP?
Real fibre is crazy fast to install once all the underground ducts are installed. It took two guys literally 5 minutes to set up their gear & blow the fibre through to my place - about 80 metres. And about 40 minutes to install the ETP and ONT & do the connections.
Suppose if a big Tier-1 broadband company have to launch a FTTH service in few states in which there are 100s of large and small cities and towns. They need a fiber Central office or called exchange office same like old copper telephone exchange office but with greater range upto 25km in radius. Right? But if a city is very large in area then do broadband company need to make multiple Central offices/fiber exchange offices in a city or town?
The nice thing about fibre is that it is very thin, fast (speed of light) and can transport signal over a way larger distance than Coax or copper can (before it needs to be fed into a signal booster or exchange).
all the cabs are linked via fibre back to the dslam (the exchange). it's only the customer end which has the copper cable. In the UK speeds of 330mbps are achievable over copper but only up to 500 metres. I think the usa are the same but you're a rich country so probably have better connectivity than most. You're not the leaders though. The best are fttp connections which in theory are limitless. The UK never invested in this tech in the 90's and still use the copper cable from the 60's!
For a big city it's enoungh just 1 central office becouse the signal is splited by spliters like 1x2,1x8,1x12or 1x16 and like that you can make multiple customers.
2 years on from this video and we still don't have fibre available unless we pay thousands for fttp on demand. Who knows when it will readily available
In the US they call it fiber so much, but back in the 1990's that in exchange for tax breaks that fiber be to the home would be available everywhere but it mostly has not happened. In small towns you usually have a choice between the phone company or the cable company.
I’ve got FTTC. FTTH for me would involve digging up a private car park about 100 metres in length, crossing a field and my little track, about 200 metres long for one house. I’m cool with my FTTC to be fair. I really don’t notice much difference between my old ADSL 30meg and 90meg. Comparing the UK with Singapore or Japan is totally different where many people live in modern properties and apartments. I’ve live in a 16th century house - similar to many others who aren’t in an urban sprawl. What about the South African slums, do they all get fibre broadband when there’s often not even sanitation or basic services?
Yes for you, not for most of the UK because much of BT's access network is aerially deployed. You don't get ADSL beyond 20mb/s. There is a massive expansion on FTTP networks in the UK and BT Openreach is moving forward with their "Fibre First" strategy. The issue isn't about speed it's about misleading (if not fraudulent) marketing. If you're happy with VDSL fine but don't call it fibre. Clearly you were not paying attention to the substance of the video and instead decided to go off on a tangent on what works for you as if that applies to everyone in the UK - which it does not. Just curious have you worked on fibre networks? Seeing as you know better than I do would please give me your telecoms experience? Your last statement is a red herring.
I'm stuck with 2.5mbps speeds, around 4 miles away from an fttp cabinet، bt do offer fibre up to 150mbps at my premises, but I'm worried about the increased installation costs after... Why
BT had very similar technology 25 years before Openreach rolled out FTTC and actually started to install VDSL2 cabinets in 2009. In London in 1985 the Westminster Cable TV system was rolled out, which was of a very similar design to FTTC cabinets. Where fibre optic cables were connected from the exchange to a streetside cabinet and then converted in the cabinet from an optical to electrical signal and then sent over copper cabling to peoples homes. Here is a 22 minute video all about it and they talk about the cabinets around the 11 minute mark. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--1AiM1S8MGk.html
Yeah hyperoptic and community fibre is working on getting the UK full Fibre! BT, talk talk, sky all use old cables. Thats why they go up to 76mpbs. But Virgin media goes up to 350mbps and hyperoptic goes up to 1000mbps download and upload which is FULL fibre.
The main part of the extra cost for fibre broadband is your provider paying BT to go into the exchange and hooking your line up to the fibre optics, then at the box in your street,right? So what if, after your first contract was up, you told your provider you wanted to go back to your old wired tarriff to save costs? It's unlikely they'd bother paying BT again to change your connection back to old technology so the fibre would probably be left in place, at copper wire costs? At the very least it should be a good bargaining tool when negotiating your next contract.
Vodafone in New Zealand got in trouble for calling their DOCSIS service FibreX, now they call it UltraFast HFC. They've upgraded it to DOCSIS 3.1 (and Distributed CMTS which is the equivalent of a DSLAM in the streets instead of the exchange) for speeds of up to gigabit down, and 100 upload.
You forget to mention kcom there there standard fibre offering it to the door and is for some including me the only company wee can get for a large area of hull meaning that bt is no available to us .
The german Telekom uses this same kind of advertising: Big banners on the cabinets promising "We're working with highspeed on your highspeed" or "Fiber optic is coming!" when it's actually just FTTC in reality. I am in the fortunate position to actually work for the company thats currently building a brand new FTTH network in my hometown(State funded project to meet EU regulations) and still the Telekom chimes in at the exact same time and avertises their crappy FTTC (they're currently building it/upgrading the existing network) all over the place.
At my old house we didnt even have FTTC, we were on an old copper connection so the max speed we could get was 2.3mbps, called BT time after time asking when we were being included in the rollout, they just said "soon", then it pissed me off even more when they were sending leaflets through mail saying we could get fiber optic, when I rang to check they said we couldn't and that it was sent by mistake, we kept getting them and I kept ringing asking if it was correct, every time it wasn't, so I got angry with the person on the other end of the phone, probably shouldn't have as it wasn't their fault, but when you primarily game on PC 2.3mbps isn't acceptable, waiting days just for a game to download in 2015 just wasn't acceptable. I was curious to see if my old house was connected so I checked the openreach website... it still isn't, its 2020 and people are still on 2mbps copper connections, it isn't acceptable
Yes and that's why I wanted to make this video. The whole broadband debate in the UK misses the fundamentals of what is being offered. Most people don't truly understand what I'm getting.
I'm in the same situation don't worry. I'm meant to get 17mbps but sometimes I get 3! And o upload speed. The maximum download speed in my area is 17 and I live in a very well developed town.the thing that frustrates me is the fact that they install fiber to the most pointless and remote places. They should install to busy towns first smh.
At least in London we are bringing optic fibre to numerous areas ( Camden,Twickenham,East London,Brent etc.) I’ve been working for Community Fibre for over 2 years and things will improve drastically in the next couple of years
I live in London, in one of the boroughs you mentioned. Although I do have access to fibre, all I get is 73mbps down and like 20 up. Surprising using Mobile data on Virgin Media, I get higher speed than what I got via Wifi. ( I use 5G ) If I do a speedtest everything buffers out and fixes up weirdly, but I get about 100+ Mbps Down and about 20-30mbps up. Though I did have to do a little DIY in my case to get that speed.
FTTP (FTTH) is getting there... the new estate i’m moving too all the homes on the estate and surrounding houses are all FTTP. Packages up to 900mbps with BT. The estate i’m currently living on now is Virgin media M600 (tho, being upgraded to 1Gig soon) however, there services are down pretty much every other day. Have no option to switch to say BT because they don’t even have FTTC here. we was getting 0.5 upload and 1mbps download with BT here🙃
Do you know if in the UK new houses must have FTTH installed or at least have ductwork to pull in fibers? In Austria the majority of new houses are still built with copper wires and no empty ducts to pull fiber. So if FTTH is finally installed you have to tear up your garden and walls. Politics don't do anything, so there is still no mandatory fiber installtion.
@@florichi nah, there isn’t a mandatory regulation or law here. They can just supply copper if they wanted to. as well as the duct work, developers can choose to or not but from what i’ve seen 9/10 they do install the duct work, because new builds don’t have any wires showing to and from the property. Developers usually understand that people want fibre and fibre is the future so they sign contracts with the reverent ISPs (ie, Openreach/ BT network, Virgin Media etc) to install the cables. I think the problem is there is way too many variables in the UK with new builds here, if you build a new build where there is no plans for FTTH, you’ll be stuck with copper or FTTC and it depends on the surrounding areas, if the surrounding area is already FTTH (like where I live) you’ll get it and be connected to the existing network if not, then you’ll have exactly whatever the surrounding area has. The last new build I lived on signed contracts with Virgin Media (a TV, phone and ISP here, they use their own network instead of using Openreach) but the catch is, Virgin Media doesn’t cover 100% of the country like Openreach/BT does (even if it is copper wires) so they technically say its FTTH when in reality you’re stuck in a monopoly with Virgin Media and all they do is keep raising prices, you couldn’t go anywhere else because all the other providers use Openreach network and are slow af when they’re not FTTC or FTTH. In the new build i’m living at now, the agreement was we would sign a contract with BT provider for 2 years as they were the ones who installed FTTH cables on the estate etc but after that we could choose any ISP (expect Virgin Media, as they use their own cable network and haven’t laid any of their cables here). It is honestly really surprising how many new builds in the UK don’t have FTTH, they usually opt for FTTC instead which is annoying. If its new you expect the newer technologies
I recall when BT infinity was rolling out in 2010 they said the cost to do FTTC was £5bn and FTTP/H was £15bn. Have to admit, it seems stupid they're going over past work to add further upgrades adding to the overall buildout cost than it would have been to just get it done then.
Same here, they installed fibre to the cabinet here in West Yorkshire in 2012, ten years later they are installing fttp, but only up to the telegraph poles, the rest is copper, all I can say is thank F#ck for Virgin media, 530 download, 36 up. BT really love to drag their feet.
I thought if you live in remote areas you have to get FTTH cause you don't have network available in remote areas but in towns and cities the connectivity is very good there .
My mobile phone network speed is faster than my fibre speed which is connected in my house. So basically mobile phone networks use antennas for you to receive faster internet speeds .so how comes when it's directly connected in house via broadband its slower yet it's WiFi . So from my house to the outside cabinet it's copper then from cabinet to another cabinet it's fibre attached .so if if they removed the copper from my house replaced it with fibre to cabinet i bet I would get super speeds .just a thought .
Jevon Frost theyre only in massive flat blocks in big cities. In Rural wales we had adsl up until 2013 or 2014 then it’s been 80 download maximum ever since. I dare say 5G will reach us before proper fibre ever does
Margaret thatcher wasn't prime minister in the 90s......she placed a ban on BT from offering TV and fibre in 1984. BT still had Cable TV franchises in the UK such as Westminster,Milton Keynes and Barbican Estate, BT sold the customer base off to NTL/Virgin Media and Virgin Media leased the franchises and network from BT, it offered analogue cable TV and in Westminster it was part upgraded to offer Cable Broadband. Virgin Media finally pulled out in these areas between 2012 and 2014
@@TheOpticalNetworker the ban was set to last until 2001, that's what was relevant about it, also by 2001, all the telecoms companies were collapsing because of the dot com bubble, BT had no money at the time which is why they demerged BT wireless, there international mobile network now known as O2, 2001 was a tough time for all Telecom companies
Bell (Canada) used to bafflingly advertise fiber (fibe tv, fibe 15/25/50/100 internet) despite obviously not being fully FTTH. They have since started using the term hybrid fiber network. Sneaky, sneaky.
There's also another type of problem with BT which everyone thinks they have copper from the cabinet to the house this is not true in most cases there is also aluminium wiring along the way and also if you tried to talk to any BT engineer or anyone on the phone about fibre to the house they dodge the question I was once told over the phone buy BT that I was not allowed to ask about it and they simply hung up but not to worry starlink is now what I'm waiting for
@@stephenjanes2031 depends on which network you're with. How fast is your connection? The isp's tend to suffer less these days with bandwidth issues but if you buy from a reseller they will have a bandwidth bucket and if it's over subscribed it will slow you down.
I tried to get a fiber to the home line run to my house. my neighbors on either side of me already have fibers off an aerial pole. Turns out there was no more capacity on either of the poles and they would have to run an underground line from the cabinet. They wanted to charge me $USD25,000 for a 14 meter run. I said no. I am using my cell phone at 40Mbps for most internet access.
The house is in an area with a lot of low income housing and I suspect its jsut not economically feasible to run new fiber in so they jack the price up so that an individual cant afford it. They have since said they have five coming in when the install for two new condos in about 5 years and may be able to peel off a fiber at that time.
![Why most of the UK doesn't [back then] have True Fibre Optic Broadband](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
