Internet supply question please:

[911hillclimber]

No problems to ask solution for, what a change!
My PC is running faster than a Road Runne since having a solid state hard drive fitted, it is working perfectly.

I live on a large housing estate, and the entire village and us have just been wired for Fibre to each house, a lot of digging...
The 'exchange' at the top of the estate has been dug up 6 times in the last 14 days to correct things, vans everywhere, now all gone.

Trying to get some real world experiences rather than readig marketing blurb here, what real advantage would being connected to the fibre system actually bring me (other than additional cost I'm sure)?

[SeanP]

Hi Graham

You probably wont notice any change unless you have umpteen devices connected to the internet all streaming or uploading/downloading data.

The fibre upgrade is all to do with the amount of data we are all pulling from the www. Copper networks have a finite amount of data that can be passed through it at any given time. Fibre optic cables can transfer more data over a greater distance. The bottle neck comes at the point where you convert the fibre to copper, (IE at the router in your house).

Sean

[911hillclimber]

Thank you Sean.
It all seems a bit pointless to me, but my house needs very little as we only use the PC / iPad for google and email, we don't do any social media, life is too short for that when you are 70!

[gridgway]

Just a matter of speed really with a bit of volume thrown in.

Do you know your internet speeds Graham? If not you can run this (even if not with BT) https://speedtest.btwholesale.com/details which will show you. Just for curiosity really.

If the speed of things that you do over the internet (download and upload) is fine for you, no need to upgrade. But interesting to see.

Graham

[911hillclimber]

Download speed..26.9 today, 7.30 pm.
Devices wizzzzing along faster than ever.

[gridgway]

So that's not too shabby at all. No need for fibre I'd say. I ran for the last few years at 22ish. I only got fibre because I could! Makes the internet a bit crisper in speed, but nothing I couldn't do without.

[911hillclimber]

And now 33.64.
All is well, I like it this way, fast enough and stable, so will leave WELL alone!
Thanks to all for the help and assurance.

[jwhillracer]

Compared to 1.56 in the wastelands of Somerset
JW

[gridgway]

Compared to 1.56 in the wastelands of Somerset
JW

Is that on a 19,200 baud modem?

[jwhillracer]

No, I think they were faster!
JW

[911GP]

Having gone through this with my parents I can share some thoughts on this topic.

Most “fibre” broadband is actually fibre to box near to your home and then copper wire thereafter. Copper is being phased out as the idea is to run full fibre to every property in the UK in the near future but in all likelihood this will take a lot longer as with all infrastructure projects. My parents were offered a good deal to switch to full fibre so they opted for this. It is a lot faster but since they live close to their telephone exchange they were getting very fast speeds previously anyway. Changing to full fibre had consequences too: a dongle is needed to be fitted to the master socket to convert the fibre telephone line to work with their existing handsets (no big deal). A bigger issue was that their alarm system had a telephone speech dialler which is not compatible with fibre so they had to upgrade their alarm system to be internet based instead. Had we known this at the time we wouldn’t have made the change to full fibre.

[gridgway]

Yes, it's all very interesting with quite a few nuances. With BT FTTP, they are phasing out the landline, so we don't have an analogue one any more. The landline is served via VoIP and a wireless handset to the router. I'd quite like to abandon the landline altogether and just have the broadband. But BT are not ready to give up that revenue! My FiL isn't ready for it either as he refuses to call my wife on her mobile. He thinks it's too expensive, but he has unli minutes on his mobile as well, hey ho!

So yes if you have anything that worked on the analogue line such as a house alarm or one of those safety alarms for people at risk, they will all need to be upgraded to new tech

[911hillclimber]

ZZOOM have sent us a letter, I can get 150 or 450 or 900 from £33 / month. (average speeds)

[gridgway]

Yes, it's the beautiful upsell! A bit like big data allowances on mobile phones or unlimited minutes.

I think the last upgrade I agreed to for a very small extra monthly fee took me to 500meg. Do I need it? No. I took it because it was there. The next step is 1000 - gig broadband. I think it'll be years and years before I need that and probably not until we inhabit a completely VR world!