General : Traffic Management Changes - April 2nd

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

And there's a good reason for that which is that the median average speed of an ADSL service is a lot less than half of the headline speed. So to further, and artificially, reduce speeds would be pointless and counter-productive; and not very good PR either

I said I'm on BT, I never said I'm on BT ADSL. I'm on BT FTTC, which for me is providing 101% of the headline speed - 77.0mbps to be precise.

They used to have STM even on 8mb ADSL but removed it because their network became so good they no longer needed it, proving your argument to be completely rubbish as usual.

---------- Post added at 23:53 ---------- Previous post was at 23:51 ----------

Originally Posted by carlwaring

Your own post clearly shows BT FTTC delivering 100% of the headline speed (which is now 38mbps, not 40mbps). Without any need for STM.

---------- Post added at 23:55 ---------- Previous post was at 23:53 ----------

Originally Posted by boroboi

Even Maggie Thatcher knows Qasi has Infinity :P

BT "Up to 76mbps" at peak time today:



Delivered with no usage limit, FUP or STM.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Your own post clearly shows BT FTTC delivering 100% of the headline speed (which is now 38mbps, not 40mbps). Without any need for STM.

Delivered with no usage limit, FUP or STM.

At the moment.

I've been unable to find details of how many are actually on Infinity, so maybe you could be kind enough to point me in the direction of them?

[qasdfdsaq]

STM/FUP on BT was very deliberately removed not so long ago so I expect it will remain so - not to mention every OFCOM broadband report so far has shown consistently improving speeds on FTTC.

As for numbers I'm not sure. Last year's financial results reported 144,000 subscribers and 5000 additions per week (which would put the total at about 400,000+ now). This year's financial results are due out soon so we'll see if expansion has kept up.

[Edit]
According to this report, BT and VM had equal numbers of >20mbps subscribers in February. BT had 400,000 Infinity customers, the same as VM had on their 30, 50, and 100mb tiers combined. BT are also adding customers five times faster on Infinity than all VM broadband packages at last count (Q42011), so I'd expect combined with the speed doubling, numbers will still be about even right now.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

BT had 400,000 Infinity customers, the same as VM had on their 30, 50, and 100mb tiers combined.

that is something they need to think of a clever way of boasting about then. If they have got as many customers as VM and are getting max speed on a jitter free network then they need to be shouting about it to let everyone know Infinity is the "best" network to be. And for once, it is something I would whole heartedly see them advertised as such because it is true and can substantiated, unlike most of the drivel VM come out with. It is something to be proud of; they may have taken a bit longer to get there but at least they havent rushed it and have done a proper job and now we can reap the benefits. Money talks and hopefully more and more people will move across.

[Ignitionnet]

Don't waste your time with him people. He's been a big fan of VM / Telewest for over half a decade now, and not likely to change any time soon.

---------- Post added at 08:58 ---------- Previous post was at 08:55 ----------

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

As for numbers I'm not sure. Last year's financial results reported 144,000 subscribers and 5000 additions per week (which would put the total at about 400,000+ now). This year's financial results are due out soon so we'll see if expansion has kept up.

I believe it's accelerated as the footprint has increased.

[carlwaring]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

You pasted the Infinity figure on the bottom line of the table.

Fair enough. My mistake.

Plus Qasi didn't need to specify Infinity; it was you who assumed ADSL and we all knew Qasi had Infinity.

You may have known but it's not in his profile.

---------- Post added at 09:20 ---------- Previous post was at 09:19 ----------

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Delivered with no usage limit, FUP or STM.

Yet. There wasn't any on a couple of VM's Tiers until recently.

---------- Post added at 09:21 ---------- Previous post was at 09:20 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Don't waste your time with him people. He's been a big fan of VM / Telewest for over half a decade now, and not likely to change any time soon.

Wrong. Over a decade. And so what? There are fans of Sky on here too; and BT.

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

Yet. There wasn't any on a couple of VM's Tiers until recently.

And the result in my area was sufficient congestion to drive my 50Mbps connection to sub 10Mbps at times, lead to me downgrading to 10Mbps when the predicted fix time was 3 months away, and further to me deciding to ditch VM for ever when I found Infinity should be available ~ June this year (about six months before the mid point of the range given for my areas VM speed doubling).

IMO the tiny local pipes used by cable and the costs involved in fattening them up make it yesterday's technology. It can deliver headline speeds but will simply be unable to keep up with the bandwidth demands of the increasing levels and quality of video streaming. 10 years from now unless VM can pull some sort of magical rabbit out of the hat I really can't see them still being in the broadband market. If they can't compete with Sky on broadcast they probably won't be in any market.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

Wrong. Over a decade. And so what? There are fans of Sky on here too; and BT.

Indeed, and indulging them in discussion on the object of their affections is no more constructive than indulging you in it, hence the suggestion to avoid wasting time with you. The same would go for the terminally biased of all persuasions.

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

The same would go for the terminally biased of all persuasions.

That'll be me then.

[Sephiroth]

Kwikkie

These "tiny local pipes" you mentioned - a technical musing follows. The downstream frequency plan allows for c. 70 channels 8 MHz wide, EuroDocsis. I don't know how many of these VM allow for broadband as distinct from TV. You can look at the stats people publish and get a pretty good idea that it's somewhere in the 200 to 500 MHz range - about 40 channels' worth or less (prolly around 36).

If all those downstream channels are used at 256QAM in a network segment (which could be at least 2 optical nodes) then there is 36 x 55 meg available (~ 2 Gig).

How many users are there on an optical node? The target is 500 but in some areas it could be 2,000 in others around 250. I'll stay with the 500; multiply by 2 for the shared capacity across 2 nodes. So there is 2 meg sort of uncontended available if everyone is online simultaneously.

This calculation is predicated on the upgrades putting out the 36 or so downstream channels per segment. I think before the upgrades, it was 8 or 16. Igni will know better (or even tear my whole proposition down!).

[kwikbreaks]

So there aren't currently 200+ modems sharing 200Mbps down? Nor can a single 100Mbps customer take over half of the upstream?

Those figures have been bandied about on here plenty of times and I assumed that they were correct - certainly I've never seen them disputed. In my own little local area I think there is only a single upstream channel available - certainly rebooting the modem till the cows come home never results in a change (or at least didn't way back before I gave up on VM and actually tried).

I'm sure that the DOCSIS 3 spec allows for enormous local bandwidths - what I question is whether VM care enough or have enough cash to actually make the theory reality.

Each FTTC street cab supports 128 or 256 customers and will have as an absolute minimum a 1Gb fibre backhaul. I've seen claims that each customer will get a minimum of 10Mbps (iirc) dedicated backhaul. I don't doubt that somebody who knows and cares more about this stuff than me will correct those guessed/poorly recalled/invented/whatever numbers I've mentioned. What I do know is that just about all I've seen concerning Infinity is praise and most stuff on the VM forums concerns congestion problems which VM never seem to adequately address.

As I admitted - I'm in the terminally biased category

[Sephiroth]

As I said, Kwikkie, I was musing based on my calculation of the macimum number of downstream channels allocated to broadband.

The total number of downstream channels in the currently allocated DOCSIS spectrum at 8 MHz bandwidth is around the 72 mark. So "enolrmous" isn't a word I'd use.

[Jumping]

I really dont understand "fan boys" (or girls if there is any here) mentality just because product a been bad for them its always bad and product b is the best regardless of anything. Competition is a VERY good thing cause it makes all parties improve their infrastructure which should mean better products for us the customers.

There are problems everywhere and if you aren't happy move with your feet/wallet take your customs to another provider.

Also the more people that move to Infinty from VM will mean that there should be more capacity spare on the VM network.

As for me at the moment im a very happy VM customer as its giving me much better speeds than my old adsl2 connection could in my old town. I don't have an option to get Infinity here as BT doesn't seem to have any plans to put it in place in the Motherwell/Wishaw area.

Just be glad we have the option of pretty good broadband these days, when I moved over from Sweden in 2001 i was used to 100mbit FD at my dorm and the uni it self had 2x622gbit pipes on the Sunet network it was happy days indeed then I moved to the UK and I had to get a 56k dialup connection that was very painful experience.

[carlwaring]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Indeed, and indulging them in discussion on the object of their affections is no more constructive than indulging you in it...

My posting history would suggest this is not the case. Go ahead. Try it.

---------- Post added at 13:12 ---------- Previous post was at 13:09 ----------

Originally Posted by Jumping

I really dont understand "fan boys" (or girls if there is any here) mentality because just because product a been bad for them its always bad and product b is the best regardless of anything.

I think there are also more than a couple of VM "anti-fan-boys" on here too who can't stand anyone saying anything good about the company.

[Chrysalis]

One thing not taken into account here is BT's network doesnt just house infinity customers as its a wholesale network, it also houses resellers such as plusnet, aaisp, idnet and more. so the numbers are probably under quoted here. The bit thats unique to BT retail is the peering/transit side of it.