Not much seems to have happened over the past few months with FTTC:

• BT Openreach continue to rollout of exchange/cabinet upgrades as per their schedule
• Plus.net are still in trail mode and you can not order a FTTC service straight from the customer support team (you can however still get on their trail once out are an account holder)
• Sky still don’t seem to have their trail up and running as yet; months behind their advised dates

BT Infinity did however create a site called Race to Infinity that allowed people to register their interest for their local exchange to be considered for an update to FTTC.  The first results of this having been announce just a week or so ago.  Whitchurch was one of 6 lucky places to be added to the release schedule.  The complete list of locations being:

• Whitchurch, Hampshire
• Baschurch, Shropshire
• Blewbury, Oxfordshire
• Caxton, Cambridgeshire
• Innerleithen, Scottish Borders
• Madingley, Cambridgeshire

Winning the race to infinity means that, subject to availability the winning exchanges will be enabled early in 2012.
 
Good news is that I can one add Whitchurch to my Rightmove search list for future house location.  Like so many advancements in Internet connection speed, I don’t think that I could face the a decrease in connection speed now that I am so used to 40Mb down and 10Mb up. 
 
I did try registering my Dad’s phone number as being interested in getting FTTC but being on a small exchange, it did not even meet the minimum number of connections requirement of 1000 residential subscribers.  Now chance of me getting them up and running on a HiDef videoconferencing solution yet then!

I have been more than happy with the FTTC service that I’ve had from Plusnet on trial for the past few months now; even with the 20Mbps download cap that they placed on the service to start with.

During my activation day, Dave (from Plusnet) rang me to check that everything was up and working correctly and informed me that at their network does not see any difference between ADSL2+ and FTTC based customers, Plusnet would need to implement new profiles allow user to take advantage of the additional speed.  In the mean time, FTTC trail customers would get a theoretical cap of around 20Mbps due to being IP profiled at 21000 in their network.

Over the last week, Plusnet have appoved a configuration change that removes this limit.  While it still does not show up correctly in the members web portal (it actually shows a drop in IP connection rate), FTTC users will be able to get their maximum capable speed (up to 40Mbps) and they are already prepared for FTTP customers to come online and get their up to 100Mbps connections.

It will be interesting to see where the actual contention points in the network not lay.  Is it your home, cabinet, exchange, BT backhaul, ISP, Internet or the webserver ???

For now, the new profile lift has as good as doubled my download rate through Plusnet, I’m now seeing the full IP profile speed to BT have shown me at since I took on the trial; 38717 Kbps

BT had previously committed to enabling 40% of the exchanges with fibre broadband by the end of 2012 and with the Conservative’s manifesto not looking like to directly use government funding to improve the UK’s broadband network it seemed that this is where the network would stop for a while.

However, BT have announced that they will be re-investing their recent profits to put an additional £1bn into their fibre network expansion.  This equates to an extra 20% coverage, totaling 60% by 2015.

Come the close of 2015, BT estimate that 66% of UK homes will have access to the fibre network; one quarter of those being directly connected via FTTH (Fibre-to-the-Home) with speeds of 100Mb/s, the remainder being on the 40Mb/s FTTC service.  Which is what I have.

The extra 20% coverage will be evenly distributed across England, Wales and Scotland but there was no news on whether areas like Basingstoke will be revisited to provide coverage to districts like Hatch Warren and Chineham that have been left in the dark right now.

This one slipped me by a little but Plusnet completed their backbone network capacity increase in the last week of April 2010 to activate the last two 155Mb network segments of their 622Mb central pipe (aka Plusnet 16).  Primarily with this pipe is for users of their up-to 8Mb ADSL services on the 20CN but Plusnet have allocated 200Mb of additional bandwidth across these 2 circuits for 21CN customers on the up-to 24Mb (ADSL2+) services.

Back when I moved onto the FTTC trial, I was informed that I would be restricted to a max download speed of 20Mb/s until additional bandwidth had been installed.  I am sorry to say that this upgrade does not remove the speed cap.  I posted a comment on the news thread to ask what is going on and for this reply from Bob Pullen:
@goatie999, it’s not a capacity limitation that’s preventing you getting optimal throughput. We need to write some extra code and make some network changes before we can lift the 21000kbps profile (basically we need to create some new profiles that we can then start applying to customers’ acccounts). Unfortunately our developers have had more pressing stuff to work on recently, but I’m hoping it won’t be too long before we get round to it.
Lets hope the developers get some time to complete their work soon.

So it is getting close to being 2 weeks since I had the FTTC connection enabled at my home, so what is it like to live with?

The first thing to update you on is that over the past week, I have noticed that the initial limits that I reported on Plusnet’s upload speeds seem to have been removed.  The last 2 speed tests have shown my upload speeds have doubled to around 8Mbps.

To backup this claim, I tested to speed by pulling a new test files from my home NAS to my office laptop (over our symmetrical 90Mbps, Internet circuit).  The following results confirmed the new speed, saving a 320MB file within 6 minutes, very impressive, I thought…

As I was in a speed test mindset, it was time to test the other direction.  While this was a little short of Plusnet’s advised IP Profile, full anticipated speed was achieved.

A little later that I thought but here is my story of a successful installation of the fibre broadband service in Basingstoke…

The afternoon quickly came by and I was ready and waiting at home shortly after noon for the 1pm to 6pm appointment slot.

As I wanted to get the data extension cable fitted as part of the installation, I quickly emptied the space under the stairs so that it could easily be routed to the cupboard at the end of the hall; where the rest of my network kit lives.

My network kit, left to right… BT VDSL Modem, Plusnet Wireless Router (using PPPoE), Synology DS209,
5 port 1Gb Netgear switch, 8 port 100Mb Netgear switch.
Bang on 1pm, the phone rang (it was the BT Engineer) and I was informed that he was at the local cabinet (PCP125) about to disconnect the line and would be with me in about 10 minutes.

Ding, dong went the bell.  Mick was at the door with a VDSL Modem (a re-boxed Huawei EchoLife HG612), new SSFP, VDSL testing hand-unit and the obligatory tool-bag.

Within 15 minutes we had talk through the work he needed to do, fitted the SSFP, terminated the data extension cable and tested that my phone number was working again.  Mick then had to wait for a call from the back-office team to say that their actions had been completed so he went back to the van to complete some paperwork whilst he waited.

With regards to the data extension cable, it is, in effect, just Cat5e.  So if anyone wants to run their own extension cabling in at some point there is nothing ‘special’ about the stuff BT provide.  I already have one run of Cat5e down the cavity wall to the BT master socket from the ‘comms cupboard’ to extend the phone line out.   When I get round to decorating the hall, I will run in another length of Cat5e just for the FTTC connection, until then, BT’s stuff will have to do.

About 30 minutes later, Mick was back at the door and ready to test the data service. With a few minutes of reconnecting his tester, he confirmed that I had virtually no signal loss on my line and syncing at the full 40Mbps down and 10Mbps up. He also confirmed that my cable length was about 0.6 Km.

The interesting bit here about the sync rate on his tester the first time it was connected (before the back office team completed their work) reported a downstream sync rate if 100Mbps! Meaning there must be some truth in the claims that FTTC should be capable of delivering that level of service sometime in the future.

At this point Mick was a little unsure what happen next, as this was the first install he had been to that was not a BT Infinity account. Fortunately, Plusnet had already told me what actions I needed to perform. So out came the preconfigured Speedtouch router from them that had been delivered a few weeks back. I connected it up as advised in the documentation and went upstairs to test the service. It worked first time!

Talking to Mick, I found out that BT currently assign 2 FTTC installs to each engineer each day. He expects the to change over the coming months as they all get more familiar with the work. Expecting the whole thing to be a self install at some point.

As it turned out the delay was caused by the fact I was the first customer to be connected to my local DSLAM (so nobody else order the service in my area, I want it all to myself! Maybe I should go and wrap a big chain around the PCP!?).

If Mick was correct I am about FTTC customer number 50 for Basingstoke. Plusnet confirming as trial user number 36 for them.

All told, BT took about 1.5 hours to complete the install. It would have been much quicker if not for the back office work needed.

Performing a speed test now showed that my upload speed was about 5Mbps but my download speed was unchanged (about 3.5Mbps). Remembering my change from ADSL to ADSL2+, I put this down to my IP Profile and went back to the office.

After completing a few tasks I thought it was time to get in touch with Dave at Plusnet and inform them that I was up and running, enquiring at the same time how long it would take for my IP Profile to update. As if his ears were burning, the phone rang, it was Dave!

He had called to say that BT had updated them to say they had finished the install, to check if I was happy and answer any questions. Before I could ask about the download speed restriction, he told me that he had just reset the profile and I should be up to their max available speeds. I remotely connected back to the house PC and was getting a much better download speed.

One thing to note about the Plusnet trial is that until they complete some backbone upgrades, the max download / upload sync rates are 21Mbps / 5Mbps respectively. Plusnet have this upgrade on their roadmap but no dates as yet.

So how is FTTC in the real world?  Browsing webpages etc doesn’t really show much difference (just how fast do you want webpages to show up anyhow?!), but when it comes to downloading content… now we have something!  Rapidshare content seemed a good place to test the actual download throughput over the connection, and it didn’t disappoint; downloading at 2.4MBps (or 19.2Mbps).  The other real world test… how well it works with VPN access to the office, after all we all have to work don’t we.  The package I have with Plusnet has some rate limiting on VPN traffic I have seen a nice increase in throughput (the upload increase being the most notable).

Comparing FTTC with other service providers in the area using the Top 10 Broadband site gave the following results.
Download Speed Test (18.1Mbps)

Upload Speed Test (4.6Mbps)

… basically it is only really Virgin that can offer similar speeds this far out from the Basingstoke exchange.

Overall I am VERY pleased with the FTTC connection, made especially so by having it on trial with Plusnet at the same price as my old ADSL2+ service; £11.99 a month.  Now I am just waiting for Plusnet to upgrade their backbone to see what the full 40/10Mbps connection is like.

One of my obsessions finally comes to light (hopefully) this afternoon.  The BT engineer is booked to be at my house sometime after 1pm this afternoon.  It does mean that I will have some downtime on this site while the switch-over happens but I am sure it will be worth it.

I will have a summary of the changes available for all to see as soon as I get back on-line and a chance to do the write-up.

If you read though the Think Broadband forums you will see a number of comments appearing from people that are starting to get their FTTC broadband connection and positively, seeing speeds very near the 40Mbps being advertised.

Be warned however!  You may start to see this sync speed drop by as much as half once more and more people take to FTTC !!!

I found the following quote on the Plusnet community forum from their employee that looks after new service trials.

Could this end in a readvertising campaign much like the, “up to 8Mb” days?
“… The speed estimates are conservative but they are based around 30% utilisation of the cabinet whereas at the moment most cabs probably won’t have more than 1 or 2% utilisation. The technology behind FTTC means that as more users take up the service on any given cab, the speed they see will decrease, and I mean sync speed here not throughput from contention. So  with 1 or 2 people on a cab you may get 30+Mbps but as it goes to 10 or 20% it will drop down to say 25Mbps then as you get to 30% will drop to the checker’s estimate (say 20Mbps)… “

I received a private message through on the Plusnet Community forum in the wee hours of the morning from a fellow Basingstoke’ite to confirm that his trial FTTC broadband service from Plusnet is now operational.  Apparently, he is approximately FTTC user number 37 for Plusnet, and the 8th on the Basingstoke exchange.

Interestingly, Plusnet have a little way to go before their back-end could support a full rate (40Mbps) FTTC connection but if when my connection goes live, I can also make the jump from an effective 3.5Mbps (on ADSL2+) to 20Mbps, I will be well happy!

Just have to wait the 2 weeks from today for my BT engineer visit 

It feels like I have been banging on about the delivery of FTTC broadband to a subset of the Basingstoke area now for so long it has almost become an obsession!  Well yesterday my obsession got one giant leap towards being a reality

I have been running my phone number through the BT Wholesale checker each day since BT removed all future dated connections in favor of showing users when the service is actually available to the and yesterday my number came up!

After a quick jump and status post onto the Plusnet community forum, it was confirmed that they too agreed that my line had been set to a ready for FTTC broadband status.  A ticket to the support desk was then raised on my behalf and after a short discussion about dates, the BT engineer visit to replace my NTE5 with a new SSFP had been booked and the required network router was being firmware updated and in the post.

Now I just have to twiddle my thumbs for a while and await Tuesday 6th April to arrive 

It will be interesting to see if I actually get the advised speed from the checker, 38.5Mbps; as Dave (Plusnet) commented, “…and looks like the cabinet is in your kitchen from the estimate …”  Looking at Google Maps, I make the straight line distance between my and the PCP to be about 1000 ft (305 m) but we shall have to wait an see.