BT Runs an 800Gbps Channel On Old Fiber

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BT Runs an 800Gbps Channel On Old Fiber

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 23, 2013 @07:04PM from the greased-lightning dept.

judgecorp writes "BT has demonstrated an 800Gbps 'superchannel' on a 410km fiber in its core network, which was not able to carry 10Gbps channels using older technology. The superchannel is an advanced dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) technique, created by combining multiple coherent optical signals into one channel, which had previously been shown in laboratory tests. BT ran the test on a fiber with optical characteristics (high polarization mode dispersion) that made it unsuitable for 10GBps using current techniques. That's a good result for BT, because it means its existing core fiber network can be upgraded to handle more data. It's also a good customer story for Ciena, which makes the optical switches used in the test."

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That's great and all by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2013-05-23 19:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

But when will they upgrade my 4Mbps down / 256Kbps up DSL connection that I pay through the nose per month for? Cuz really, I keep reading about those marvelous link speeds but in the past 10 years, I haven't seen much of that reach the average Joe Blow internet user like me...

--
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1. Re:That's great and all by AmiMoJo · 2013-05-23 19:21 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It's the last mile problem, and they haven't even started working on it really. New estates are being built with only FTTC and ADSL available instead of just taking the opportunity to run fibre right into each home.
  BT always does the absolute minimum possible to remain slightly competitive. That's all we can ever expect.
  
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2. Re:That's great and all by remus.cursaru · 2013-05-23 19:35 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry for you, Joe Blow, but you live in the wrong country: in Romania you get FTTB - Cat 5 in your house with 100Mbps for just unde 12$/month. Of course, you can allways go cheap and pay just unde 9$/month for 50Mbps. You may start weeping now.
3. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-23 19:58 · Score: 1
  
  But when will they upgrade my 4Mbps down / 256Kbps up DSL connection that I pay through the nose per month for? Cuz really, I keep reading about those marvelous link speeds but in the past 10 years, I haven't seen much of that reach the average Joe Blow internet user like me...
  Where abouts are you? Most people can get way more than that (I'm on 8Mbps down / 1MBps up; if I turned on Annex M I'd get more upstream, and if I could be bothered I could switch to FTTC (80Mbps down, 20 up) for only about a pound a month more...) Also, British internet prices aren't exactly "through the nose" - especially if your local loop is crap (if you're never going to get a decent throughput on the local loop you may as well go for a cheap ISP).
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
4. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-23 20:01 · Score: 2
  
  It's the last mile problem, and they haven't even started working on it really. New estates are being built with only FTTC and ADSL available instead of just taking the opportunity to run fibre right into each home.
  BT always does the absolute minimum possible to remain slightly competitive. That's all we can ever expect.
  They would never be able to run *only* fibre into the home, because they need to be able to provide power for POTS; so running fibre as well is an additional cost (this is also presumably why they still run POTS all the way back to the exchange instead of handling it at the cabinet). That said, there are a number of regions where you can get FTTP if you want.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
5. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-23 20:06 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry for you, Joe Blow, but you live in the wrong country: in Romania you get FTTB - Cat 5 in your house with 100Mbps for just unde 12$/month. Of course, you can allways go cheap and pay just unde 9$/month for 50Mbps. You may start weeping now.
  80Mbps vDSL is widely available in the UK.. prices below £10/month if you're willing to go with cheap crappy ISPs who are on record saying they have no interest in planning for the future (plusnet).
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
6. Re:That's great and all by RoboJ1M · 2013-05-23 20:08 · Score: 1
  
  I take it you don't have access to BT's FTTC?
7. Re:That's great and all by DNS-and-BIND · 2013-05-23 20:09 · Score: 1
  
  This is for backbone, not home use. Jeez. Even if you went to the internet company's office and tapped directly into their 10Gb connection, you won't get anywhere near that speed because the other side of the link isn't nearly that fast.
  
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8. Re:That's great and all by mrbester · 2013-05-23 20:12 · Score: 1
  
  The A does stand for asymmetric, but that ratio is way off. The only reason your upstream rate should be so low is if you're on rate adaptive, which wouldn't get you your downstream rate. The only thing I can think of is a misconfiguration on your line, and you should complain about it to Broadband Services on their specific number as the general helpline can't do anything about it.
  
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9. Re:That's great and all by JasterBobaMereel · 2013-05-23 20:13 · Score: 2
  
  Last Mile - Owned by BT and mostly very low quality copper
  BT will not invest because they have to give access to anyone at below rock bottom prices and might on the whims of the government get it taken away from them at any time
  No-one else will invest because they can just hive off BT, the only exception is Cable, which is almost all one company...and so they have no reason to invest further either ...
  
  --
  Puteulanus fenestra mortis
10. Re:That's great and all by mrbester · 2013-05-23 20:16 · Score: 1
  
  Heh, my fibre upgrade means I pay about £2 less a month with a six fold speed increase than before...
  
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11. Re:That's great and all by theid0 · 2013-05-23 20:19 · Score: 1
  
  If you were in the UK and your last mile only supported that speed, you might as well go with a cheap ISP.
  http://www.uswitch.com/broadband
  But Joe Blow internet user probably lives in an area covered by FTTC (i.e. BT Infinity) and could get 40 Mbps minimum.
12. Re:That's great and all by jawtheshark · 2013-05-23 20:22 · Score: 1
  
  Hmmm, here it's a 5€ increase for a six fold speed increase, but I found that acceptable.
  
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  Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
13. Re:That's great and all by jabuzz · 2013-05-23 20:57 · Score: 2
  
  Just to make it clear while new estates might be being built FTTC there are strict standards that a developer must conform to for BT (actually Openreach) to provide a service. Basically everything must be underground and ducted. It should be quite easy for Openreach to pull a real fibre into any house built in the last decade. The problem is that over 90% of all the housing stock in the UK pre-dates this.
  Documentation is here
  http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/network/developingournetwork/documentationandinformation/buildersguide/downloads/developers_guide.pdf
  In this context it makes economic sense to do FTTC at this point to a new estate. With FTTP on demand being rolled out shortly should you want/need it any you live in a recently built house then you are laughing as the install cost for the full fibre solution should be much lower due as they can just pull the fibre through the existing ducting.
  Having said all that for reasons I don't understand Openreach want separate ducting for copper and fibre but that is just plain crazy if you ask me.
14. Re:That's great and all by clickclickdrone · 2013-05-23 21:06 · Score: 1
  
  I live in a UK village which recently got upgraded to a 21C exchange and I'm getting 1.5 megabytes a second down now. Up/down speed doubled overnight for the same price. They're getting there.
  
  --
  I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
15. Re:That's great and all by Anonymous Coward · 2013-05-23 21:15 · Score: 1
  
  On a network that was handed to them for not 1 by the government of the day... Now it is all about profits etc... I hate them with a passion. I have actually voted with my feet and told them I will not be back until they provide fibre to my house... (I do know that I will never be back :) )
  It wasn't handed over to them as a gift, its because it costs a fortune to maintain and the government wanted rid, the simple fact it was handed over for nothing should highlight the huge burden of maintaining the thing rather than give you some odd sense of entitlement to have fibre run to your home?
  Im not saying BT are altruistic and they aren't out to make a profit but compared to the alternatives like virgin or the resellers basically profiteering by selling BTs service to end users they are certainly not the worst.
16. Re:That's great and all by auric_dude · 2013-05-23 21:17 · Score: 1
  
  Fast broadband speeds not guaranteed by living in city centre. Research shows slowest area in London includes Barbican, next door to the City of London, while fastest is Charlton in Greenwich via http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/27/fast-broadband-speeds-city-centre
17. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-05-23 21:29 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Fibre providers have an ONU (optical network unit) supplied by the mains power on the property. Unless there's some kind of requirement for power-free phones I don't know about there really is no reason to run expensive copper wires.
18. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-05-23 21:38 · Score: 1
  
  VDSL is sketchy though. And you left out their "line rental" charge which for some reason they leave out of their advertised price (14.50 GBP).
19. Re:That's great and all by Captain+Hook · 2013-05-23 21:49 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, they used to be a great ISP, now they are just a good enough but cheap ISP.
  
  Personally I think BT use them like a shield against small ISPs from getting too big, everytime a small company starts making inroads, Plusnet seem to have a better offer which they can afford because although they present that small ISP image they have BT's wallet to back them up.
  
  That leaves BT free to compete against the likes of Virgin and Sky on bundled features rather than price.
  
  --
  These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
20. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-23 21:51 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Fibre providers have an ONU (optical network unit) supplied by the mains power on the property. Unless there's some kind of requirement for power-free phones I don't know about there really is no reason to run expensive copper wires.
  Fairly sure there's a legal requirement for the telco to keep the phones working during a power outage. Certainly do-able with fibre, but would require a UPS and regular battery servicing - probably cheaper just to run copper.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
21. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-23 21:53 · Score: 1
  
  VDSL is sketchy though. And you left out their "line rental" charge which for some reason they leave out of their advertised price (14.50 GBP).
  Well yes, ok - you have to pay for a POTS line to go with it (which is annoying - if I didn't have to pay for POTS I wouldn't bother having it; my whole home phone system runs off an Asterisk server anyway). But that's the same for all the DSL based services in the UK.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
22. Re:That's great and all by _Shad0w_ · 2013-05-23 22:08 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, they're owned by BT Group.
  
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  Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
23. Re:That's great and all by jabuzz · 2013-05-23 22:08 · Score: 1
  
  Back here in the UK a battery backed power supply is provided. I would have thought it would be cheaper to run some copper from the exchange and provide a standard -48VDC to the building. You could even use the copper or copper coated steel as armour for your fibre.
24. Re:That's great and all by _Shad0w_ · 2013-05-23 22:09 · Score: 1
  
  Half of Cambridge doesn't even have access to BT's FTTC...
  
  --
  Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
25. Re:That's great and all by AmiMoJo · 2013-05-23 22:11 · Score: 2
  
  Okay, this is 2013. A decade ago by ex-girlfriend was enjoying 100/100Mb fibre into her Japanese house for about Â£23/month. Many other western European countries have had it for nearly as long.
  Britain is a backwater for broadband. Ours is expensive, slow, capped and limited. It's a bad, bad joke that we are still not installing fibre into brand new houses and that the only people who can even do it is the old monopoly BT. My ex got her broadband from the power company who laid the cable in power supply ducts.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
26. Re:That's great and all by johnw · 2013-05-23 22:31 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Having said all that for reasons I don't understand Openreach want separate ducting for copper and fibre but that is just plain crazy if you ask me.
  Obviously they are worried about cross-channel interference. That or the danger of high voltages on the fibre connections.
27. Re:That's great and all by Bengie · 2013-05-23 23:14 · Score: 2
  
  My ISP just installed a UPS along with the fiber ONT. They said about 12 hours of run-time.
28. Re:That's great and all by nhat11 · 2013-05-23 23:15 · Score: 1
  
  I won't use countries small Asian countries like JP or KR or EU countries like Britain as examples since they're only about the size of one of our large states here.
  As much as I would love fiber here, people have other priorities like buying food or paying for their cell especially in this economy.
29. Re:That's great and all by cyber-vandal · 2013-05-23 23:51 · Score: 1
  
  And yet they're currently doubling everyone's speed.
30. Re:That's great and all by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-05-24 00:01 · Score: 1
  
  regular battery servicing - probably cheaper just to run copper.
  Sounds like a good application for iron-nickel batteries. Inefficient to charge, but they last forever. The nano-versions are more efficient but not on the market yet, though the customer is paying for the charging power so it probably doesn't matter.
  
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  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
31. Re:That's great and all by CadentOrange · 2013-05-24 00:11 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, they used to be a great ISP, now they are just a good enough but cheap ISP. Personally I think BT use them like a shield against small ISPs from getting too big, everytime a small company starts making inroads, Plusnet seem to have a better offer which they can afford because although they present that small ISP image they have BT's wallet to back them up. That leaves BT free to compete against the likes of Virgin and Sky on bundled features rather than price.
  Such practices shouldn't be allowed, as they must surely count as being anti-competitive.
32. Re:That's great and all by FuzzNugget · 2013-05-24 00:23 · Score: 1
  
  s/BT/every ISP in the western world/g
33. Re:That's great and all by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2013-05-24 00:31 · Score: 1
  
  Ever since I first ran across iron-nickel batteries I have wondered why they weren't used for large scale stationary electrical storage. Granted they don't have the best energy density but they are really reliable and from the sounds of it cheap to produce and easy to refresh. I was looking into them as a method to store energy for when I get around to getting a cabin in the north woods as it is nice to have lights at night and I really don't want to have to deal with transporting a generator and fuel.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
34. Re:That's great and all by cardpuncher · 2013-05-24 02:04 · Score: 1
  
  Meanwhile, I noticed on my visit last week to the medieval Dutch city of Amersfoort that every house in the historic city centre had an orange fibre tail outside the front door awaiting connection...
35. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-24 02:11 · Score: 1
  
  Back here in the UK a battery backed power supply is provided. I would have thought it would be cheaper to run some copper from the exchange and provide a standard -48VDC to the building. You could even use the copper or copper coated steel as armour for your fibre.
  In the UK too... I'm not sure how feasible it would be to run the fibre optic kit off a -48vdc supply that's been carried by several kilometers of wire... the equipment isn't going to be extremely low power and the resistance of the cable will not be negligable...
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
36. Re:That's great and all by stdarg · 2013-05-24 02:36 · Score: 1
  
  Being widespread with low population density is a problem in the US. Too expensive to run fiber out to the suburban or rural houses.
  Also in the US, being small with high population density is a problem. Too expensive to run fiber in established cities. Imagine rewiring NYC!!
  Of course then you have projects like Google Fiber, or more locally for me, Greenlight NC, that ARE DOING IT. So it's all bullshit. It is possible, and not especially difficult or expensive, in both urban and suburban areas, in the US. We just like to tell ourselves it's not possible because we haven't done it yet.
37. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-24 03:18 · Score: 2
  
  Fairly sure there's a legal requirement for the telco to keep the phones working during a power outage.
  There shouldn't be these days. Nearly everyone has a cell phone.
  Which won't work when the base station is unpowered
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
38. Re:That's great and all by mjwalshe · 2013-05-24 03:27 · Score: 1
  
  Well as a share holder why should my company do this only to let Sky etc freeload off my investment FTC is really all that a home user needs anyway.
39. Re:That's great and all by mjwalshe · 2013-05-24 03:30 · Score: 1
  
  Why do consumers need FTP and Compared to the USA we are miles better - the messed up the deregulation and did not mandate LLU
40. Re:That's great and all by D1G1T · 2013-05-24 04:25 · Score: 1
  
  50Mbps DSL gear is readily available now. Still plenty of room on copper pipes; no need for fiber. I've found the best solution to lazy incumbent former-monopoly service providers is to not use them for that service. We get our cable tv from what used to be the big telco, and our internet and phone from what used to be the cable tv company.
41. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-24 08:33 · Score: 1
  
  Plusnet concern me because they have abolished all their IPv6 trials and rolled out CGNAT instead. Its certainly looking like they have no plans to roll out IPv6 at all.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
42. Re:That's great and all by MiG82au · 2013-05-24 10:50 · Score: 1
  
  Bollocks. Have you looked at distance you can get 50 Mbps at? Few people are close enough to the exchange.
43. Re:That's great and all by petermgreen · 2013-05-24 13:04 · Score: 1
  
  High speed DSL won't go far enough to get to the telephone exchange but it will go far enough to get to the cabinet in most urban settings at least.
  The plan in the UK seems to be to do a mixture with the existing ADSL system continuing to serve the lower tier broadband users. FTTC+VDSL for the middle tier broadband users and FTTH for the top tier broadband users.
  
  --
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44. Re:That's great and all by saleenS281 · 2013-05-24 13:08 · Score: 1
  
  No need for a UPS at all. A battery will suffice just fine. A car battery (which is WAYYY too big for that purpose), would keep a modem and phone alive for a couple weeks. I doubt they have any requirement beyond 24 hours.
45. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-05-26 07:32 · Score: 1
  
  Which is a reason not to go for the DSL. You have to compare the full price for the whole package. The cable providers always offer double or triple play and give you a telephone adapter to use you POTS phone.
46. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-05-26 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  Source? It also seems pretty silly because most people these days use cordless phones that need additional power anyway.
47. Re:That's great and all by remus.cursaru · 2013-05-26 17:42 · Score: 1
  
  and i've met britons that were complete morons, but this doesn't say anything about the general population or the country, doesn't it?
  Meanwhile, the fastest pricks on the internet are lavians and romanians (1st, respectively a very close 2nd place in Europe; 4th, respectively 5th in the world). Rst of the europe, suck it
48. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-26 19:08 · Score: 1
  
  Which is a reason not to go for the DSL. You have to compare the full price for the whole package. The cable providers always offer double or triple play and give you a telephone adapter to use you POTS phone.
  There's only one cable provider in the UK and the are extremely crap. There's a great many very good DSL providers to choose between.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
49. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-05-27 00:32 · Score: 1
  
  I was paying 25 GBP a month for a 30 Mb connection, which seemed quite reasonable compared to the DSL providers who had low usage caps, no speed guarantees, and wanted an extra 15 GBP on top of their advertised price.
50. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-27 04:09 · Score: 1
  
  I was paying 25 GBP a month for a 30 Mb connection, which seemed quite reasonable compared to the DSL providers who had low usage caps, no speed guarantees, and wanted an extra 15 GBP on top of their advertised price.
  No static IP, no chance of an IPv4 subnet, no IPv6 at all, terrible customer service.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
51. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-05-27 23:37 · Score: 1
  
  1,2 and3) fat chance of getting that with a consumer grade ISP. Which national ISPs do IPv6 anyway?
  4) Anecdote I know, but I was pretty pleased when I got a billing issue fixed in a couple of minutes on the online chat. And other statistics seem to disagree with you http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/12/sky-broadband-tops-ofcom-study-of-uk-isp-customer-satisfaction.html
52. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-05-28 00:36 · Score: 1
  
  1,2 and3) fat chance of getting that with a consumer grade ISP. Which national ISPs do IPv6 anyway?
  I've been using EntaNet for years - I get a free static IPv4 /29 subnet and a free native IPv6 /56 subnet. The monthly cost is quite reasonable.
  You'll get similar from A&A and Bogons, albeit at a fairly high price.. Static IPv4 IP addresses are pretty common - most of the not-dirt-cheap ISPs are happy to offer them, usually at no extra cost. Even Plusnet used to do free static IPv4 subnets (not sure if they still do).
  I think Claranet and a couple of others also do native IPv6 as standard.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
53. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-06-01 01:36 · Score: 1
  
  None of the companies you listed is a consumer-grade ISP. Your Entanet doesn't even advertise that they have residential services. The few "home" services I found from your recommended companies were also all much more expensive.
  And your static IP isn't really free if you're paying for a business-class service at a business-class price. FWIW I've never gotten the option of a "free" static IP with any of the ISPs I've been with. But then again I don't shop for business-grade broadband for my home anyway.
  How much do you pay for your service?
54. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-06-01 02:10 · Score: 1
  
  None of the companies you listed is a consumer-grade ISP. Your Entanet doesn't even advertise that they have residential services.
  Entanet doesn't sell directly - you have to go through one of their many resellers, who *do* offer residential connections. For example, I use UKFSN - oh look, right there on their website it says "family broadband". If you buy a "family broadband" connection from UKFSN you'll get an Entanet account which can do IPv6, static IPv4 subnets, etc.
  The front page of A&A advertises "Home::1 for the modern family" as a product. Again, you get IPv6, etc. with that.
  I'll admit that Bogons is more aimed at business, but in what way are the two ISPs I just mentioned, which both advertise internet connections "for the family" not "consumer grade"?
  
  The few "home" services I found from your recommended companies were also all much more expensive.
  Much more expensive than what? Yes, you can certainly get much much cheaper services with quality to match, but the ISPs I mentioned aren't in any way outrageously priced - UKFSN, for example, starts at under £15/month.
  Or are you saying that "consumer grade" equates to "cheap shit" and therefore if I point at any ISP that isn't right at the bottom of the barrel then that doesn't qualify?
  
  And your static IP isn't really free if you're paying for a business-class service at a business-class price.
  I had static IPs at no extra cost on the three non-business-class services I used before switching to a business account (when I started my business). The first one was Demon, second one was Plusnet, the third was a non-business UKFSN account. Of course, your tortalogical argument of "it isn't consumer grade if it isn't shit so there are no non-shit consumer grade accounts" argument somehow suggests that these consumer-grade accounts aren't actually consumer-grade.
  
  FWIW I've never gotten the option of a "free" static IP with any of the ISPs I've been with.
  Maybe you just didn't look?
  
  But then again I don't shop for business-grade broadband for my home anyway.
  How much do you pay for your service?
  As mentioned above, whilst my current internet connection is a low cost business class ADSL (£22/month + VAT), my previous 3 internet connections were just plain home-user accounts. I can't recall the prices off the top of my head, but I think it was around £20 inc VAT for UKFSN around the 2007-2008 era, £20-or-so for Plusnet around the 2002-2007 era and probably a similar price for Demon in the pre-2002 era. None of these are outrageous prices.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
55. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-06-01 22:54 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, they have a service that starts at £15/month, but you fail to mention that it's with 1 GB/month allowance. *One Gig!*. That *is* outrageous in today's age. That's about an hour of iPlayer! Not even one Netflix movie!
  So let's reiterate: For just short of £30/month (don't forget the "line rental") I get an outdated ADSL connection with a speed of anything southward of 24Mb/s and a usage policy which would seem draconian 10 years ago.
  Meanwhile at Virgin Media, £30/month will get you 60Mb/s maximum speed (and because they don't use copper wires you do actually get this speed on pretty much every connection) and a traffic usage policy that's more like 2GB/hour.
  I don't want to seem to be bashing Entanet. I'm sure they have very happy customers who specifically chose them. I'm also sure there is a class of customer who has low usage demands but requires IPv4 subnets. And to be fair they do seem to offer an "unlimited" service where you pay £30/month plus line rental (though not for their FTTC offers which again have fairly restrictive usage allowances). But the take-home message here is that for average consumers who are interested in watching youtube, movies, video chat, and maybe a little bit of naughty file sharing, *these are not great deals*.
  Now of course I can turn the tautology argument against you: All "non-shit" providers give you a premium service for "free". But your requirement for not being shit is that they give you this premium service for "free".
  Now, if every package they offer is much more expensive than otherwise comparable products from the big providers, the "free" service can't reasonably be considered free.
  Any reasonable person would conclude that you went for a specialist ISP and are paying a premium for a service you require (IP addresses).
  I often find it useful in this stage of the discussion to remind everyone where we started out in the first place:
  1) Person A complains about low quality DSL connection in UK.
  2) Person B praises cheap and fast consumer-grade FTTB in Romania
  3) You point out that "up to" 80Mbps DSL is widely available for less than £10,...
  4) ...but fail to mention that you need to add £14.50 as line rental and that 80Mbps is somewhat optimistic. So I pointed this out.
  Now we're here arguing about static IP subnets on premium-priced, "non-shit" broadband packages. I can't help but feel that you've been moving the goalposts a bit. I can't read Romanian but FWIW if they're anything like similar European ISPs they probably don't guarantee static IPs either, or offer it for a premium (usually around €5/month)
  What they do have is a connection that is both much cheaper and much faster than what you see in the UK, running on a high-quality modern infrastructure. I, along with most consumers, would value this more than static IPv4 addresses which I don't need (at least not for the moment).
56. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-06-01 23:22 · Score: 1
  
  So let's reiterate: For just short of £30/month (don't forget the "line rental") I get an outdated ADSL connection with a speed of anything southward of 24Mb/s
  Errm, I'm not sure how having a speed of under 24Mbps makes an ADSL connection "outdated" since that's the top speed of *any* ADSL connection...
  
  Meanwhile at Virgin Media, £30/month will get you 60Mb/s maximum speed (and because they don't use copper wires you do actually get this speed on pretty much every connection) and a traffic usage policy that's more like 2GB/hour.
  Firstly, despite Virgin's insistance that they offer "fibre optic broadband", they use copper cables just like everyone else (only they use coax instead of twisted pair, but its still copper).
  Secondly, some of us don't consider speed to be the primary factor when buying a service. I don't actually use my internet connection for anything that would benefit from 60Mb/s, whilst I do want decent support, reliability, etc.
  
  But the take-home message here is that for average consumers who are interested in watching youtube, movies, video chat, and maybe a little bit of naughty file sharing, *these are not great deals*.
  I think you overestimate what the "average consumer" does with their internet connection. For example, my fiancée does about 20GB per month - she doesn't have a TV (uses iplayer exclusively), a good chunk of that bandwidth is actually used by me working from her home when I visit and we use video chat quite a lot (often just leaving it going the whole day). My parents probably use way below 10GB/month. The vast vast majority of internet users don't do huge amounts of file sharing and buying a service that allows them to download terabytes a month (which they don't want to do) instead of buying a service thats reliable and has good customer support would be silly.
  In fact, personally I actively avoid services that are promoting high usage (by offering cheap "unlimited" accounts) because I know the economics of running an ISP doesn't allow you to do "cheap", "unlimited" and "reliable" at the same time as paying for staff who have a clue. I *want* my ISP to limit the heavy users so that I'm not subsidising them.
  
  Now, if every package they offer is much more expensive than otherwise comparable products from the big providers, the "free" service can't reasonably be considered free.
  Any reasonable person would conclude that you went for a specialist ISP and are paying a premium for a service you require (IP addresses).
  The prices I see for the ISPs you are claiming are "specialist" just don't seem that high to me. Yes they aren't absolutely the rock-bottom prices, but they're not outrageous.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
57. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-06-02 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  Errm, I'm not sure how having a speed of under 24Mbps makes an ADSL connection "outdated" since that's the top speed of *any* ADSL connection...
  ADSL *is* outdated. VDSL is more up-to date (yes, I know that ADSL2+ has a longer range). Now, they do offer VDSL as their "fibre broadband" package, but that just means they're deceptively using the fibre buzzword for twisted pair wires. You're right that coaxial cables use copper (though not technically wires), maybe I should have been more specific. Of course it's just as deceptive for Virgin media to advertise themselves as fibre.
  A modern infrastructure consists of a robust fibre backbone and a last-mile which doesn't bottleneck the service. In practice you usually get this from FTTH, FTTB as well as "coaxial cable to the home" like Virgin. I don't think it's unreasonable to call ADSL2+ outdated. It just sucks if that's all that's available.
  
  Secondly, some of us don't consider speed to be the primary factor when buying a service. I don't actually use my internet connection for anything that would benefit from 60Mb/s, whilst I do want decent support, reliability, etc.
  I realize that and for that reason there is a robust offering from business-grade ISPs to cater to your needs. I on the other hand love the fact that multi-GB downloads are done in a few minutes, updates are blazing fast, we can watch multiple video streams at once and listen to internet radio all day without ever having to worry about reaching a usage cap. (Even internet radio will only get about 9 hours for 1 gig of data)
  BTW, in my experience even paid services like iTunes won't push more than 30Mb/s frome their servers to a single client, so you're right that there is sometimes limited benefit. But it does mean you can support multiple users and the higher tiers usually have really nice upload speeds too.
  
  I think you overestimate what the "average consumer" does with their internet connection.
  Possibly. But before we get into consumer demographics and user behavior statistics I think it's best we just agree that there's a huge variance in the types of users.
  So far today I've used about 300MB, without really doing pretty much anything that's bandwidth intensive. Typical days might get around 2GB. And if I've done something heavy like download games like Diablo 3 (12GB), a beefy IDE (Usually multiple GB), updated a couple of Linux boxes, downloaded a movie, and my family have watched a couple of hours of streamed video, that's when I get 20+GB in a day without even noticing. As it is I used 53.97GB in the last 30 days.
  
  In fact, personally I actively avoid services that are promoting high usage (by offering cheap "unlimited" accounts) because I know the economics of running an ISP doesn't allow you to do "cheap", "unlimited" and "reliable" at the same time as paying for staff who have a clue. I *want* my ISP to limit the heavy users so that I'm not subsidising them.
  Technically no ISP can offer "unlimited" service anyway. What they can do is analyze usage patterns and customer's needs and desires in order to compete on price and certain desirable service qualities (bandwidth) in order to capture market share. At the moment it appears the big ISPs and that Romanian FTTB company are doing a better job at capturing my type of market than Entanet.
  Reliability is of course somewhat less tangible. I don't know of any statistics that would let me evaluate different companies performance. My experience has usually been between 0.5-1.5% downtime. I can see how this might be a dealbreaker for some businesses, but I can live with it. The link you posted certainly doesn't advertise guaranteed fault-correction, which is typically part of a business grade contract.
  
  The prices I see for the ISPs you are claiming are "specialist" just don't seem that high to me. Yes they aren't absolutely the rock-bottom prices, but they're not
58. Re:That's great and all by FireFury03 · 2013-06-02 05:07 · Score: 1
  
  Possibly. But before we get into consumer demographics and user behavior statistics I think it's best we just agree that there's a huge variance in the types of users.
  Which is why I was pointing out that your argument that "these aren't consumer grade ISPs because they don't allow blazingly fast connections that allow terabytes a month to be downloaded" is bogus - *most* people don't want to download that much, the people who do are in the minority.
  
  Reliability is of course somewhat less tangible. I don't know of any statistics that would let me evaluate different companies performance. My experience has usually been between 0.5-1.5% downtime. I can see how this might be a dealbreaker for some businesses, but I can live with it. The link you posted certainly doesn't advertise guaranteed fault-correction, which is typically part of a business grade contract.
  0.5-1.5% downtime sounds extremely bad to me - 1% downtime equates to 7 hours per month or 3.5 days a year. Conversely, I have had no downtime at all in the past 4 years (other than the occasional resync, which is on the order of a couple of seconds). If I was experiencing outages amounting to days per year then I would be changing ISP, whether or not that connection was used for business.
  
  "Uncompetetive" is what I'd label it. Whether or not you want to call it outrageous I'll leave up to you.
  And yet the ISPs in question seem to do pretty well, even from their home users, so it can't be that uncompetetive.
  I guess you can compare it to the supermarkets - you can go to Tesco and pick up a packet of "Value" meat for under half the price of the equivalent "Finest" meat; does that mean that the "Finest" brand is uncompetetive? Seemingly not - lots of people buy that (I have no statistics, but anecdontally I would suggest that more people probably buy the "Finest" brand meat than the "Value" equivalent). Same goes for drinks - you can buy a supermarket own-brand cola, or you can pay several times that price for Coca Cola; is coke uncompetetive? it seems not - they're still in business and doing pretty well by all accounts.
  Someone offering a product that is at a higher price than the competition doesn't make it "uncompetetive" unless the customers perceive the more expensive product to not be worth the extra money. A lot of people are willing to pay a small amount extra for what they perceive as a higher quality service (and from personal experience dealing with the useless customer support departments at Virgin, Talk Talk and a few of the other low-cost ISPs, I would say that the improved support you get by paying a bit extra is definitely worth the money).
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
59. Re:That's great and all by LordVader717 · 2013-06-03 04:12 · Score: 1
  
  You sound like you work for BT ;-). Even if "most" people don't download "that much" (Though you yourself concede that you fiancée, living on her own, uses a chunky 20GB a month), there is a growing proportion of people who *do*, and they want to be able to do that wherever they might live and have a peak bitrate to support these high-quality services. They are the one's who are driving the market, not the 50+ market segment who just want to "do email" or whatever.
  
  0.5-1.5% downtime sounds extremely bad to me - 1% downtime equates to 7 hours per month or 3.5 days a year. Conversely, I have had no downtime at all in the past 4 years (other than the occasional resync, which is on the order of a couple of seconds). If I was experiencing outages amounting to days per year then I would be changing ISP, whether or not that connection was used for business.
  It's an estimate as I haven't got any logs for that kind of time frame. But just by guessing I'd say a couple of days over the last 3 or so years sounds plausible. Same goes for my last provider (who, despite being *more* expensive had terrible support). But then I've also gone years without having a fault ever. That's the nature of random failures, they're just unpredictable. So for critical service you need to make sure you've got some backup or guarantee from your provider. Otherwise it could happen to you too.
  You comparison with super markets is a bit disingenuous for your cause. It's an industry focused on psychological marketing tricks and price inflation. What the hell's the deal with 2 for 1? Why can't I get the "real" price without buying 2 pounds of meat? There's certainly different qualities of products, but that doesn't mean that some of Tesco's "finest" stuff isn't just an overpriced rip-off.
  The reason they make money isn't because they're objectively competitive but because consumers aren't always entirely rational about their buying habits. They can be "told" what a great deal is and be led to believe something's better. Perfectly rational consumers wouldn't buy bottled water, or buy sugar water that's many times the price of almost identical sugar water.
  Your ISP may very well be more reliable, but to make it competitive in my eyes I would either need a lot more data or some kind of guarantee. You're just making blind assumptions about the service quality from a Romanian provider you don't know based mainly on the fact that you pay more.
  Take for instance an experience I had with Amazon. They have "free" shipping on most orders, but for an extra fiver or so you get "premium" shipping: They "guarantee" the order will be there in less than 3 days. The thing is most orders I've ever made have been there in 2 days anyway, so there didn't ever seem much point. But since I wanted the order before Christmas I said "what the hell" and paid up.
  Long story short it was lost in the post. I had to contact them multiple times to get a replacement sent, and again to get back the cost of "premium shipping" that I wouldn't have paid without it. It turns out that premium shipping is a load of bullshit. They send it with the same parcel service as everything else. There is no kind of priority or express mode that would justify the extra cost. And when, as in my case, it does go missing all you're entitled to is reimbursement for the premium shipping. It's all there in the fine print.
  What happened was that I had been duped into thinking that because I'm paying extra for something there *must* be some extra quality I'm getting, even if they're not being clear about what it is. They realized that I have a reasonable, but statistically unlikely anxiety about not getting my order fast enough, and they could make money from that. It's like the bullshit extended warranties you get from the electronics retailers which don't cover jack shit and are shorter than the legally mandatory warranty period.
  Anyway, my point is that without anything tangible like downtime statistics your presumed superiority of your ISP isn't necessarily rational. You might be pleased with your experience, but unless we turn the meaning of "competitive" upside down your ISP just doesn't cut it. By a long shot.
GBps != Gbps by luminate · 2013-05-23 19:13 · Score: 5, Informative

Might want to change the title...
1. Re:GBps != Gbps by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2013-05-23 23:32 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Wait, shouldn't it be UKbps?
  
  --
  (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Great news for folks in Provo, UT by symbolset · 2013-05-23 19:15 · Score: 1

800 Gbps fiber to the home, here we come!
Just kidding. But still... These high bandwidth innovations are going to have a stunning impact on some companies deeply invested in expensive transnational data transport. It's time to put away the notion of precious gigabits forever.

--
Help stamp out iliturcy.
1. Re:Great news for folks in Provo, UT by whois · 2013-05-23 20:27 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  For what it's worth, it's not providing any more bandwidth than the old technique, which had 80 channels at 10Gbps each. What it's doing is, instead of saying I have 80 channels, each of them needs to be clean in order to pass 10Gbps, it's saying I have these big channels which are noisy, but we have ways to mitigate that. Once all our mitigation is done you can expect 800Gbps (that may or may not be with error correction/other overhead factored in. Depends on the marketing department I suppose, but usually with fiber they give max achievable throughput)
  The advantage in running unchannelized is on each 10Gbps channel they were holding extra bandwidth in reserve for error correction/overhead. With this you get the whole thing and your error correction is done on the aggregate, with less probable overhead and such.
2. Re:Great news for folks in Provo, UT by symbolset · 2013-05-23 21:38 · Score: 1
  
  No. That is not what this is.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
3. Re:Great news for folks in Provo, UT by Bengie · 2013-05-23 23:23 · Score: 2
  
  You:
  
  For what it's worth, it's not providing any more bandwidth than the old technique, which had 80 channels at 10Gbps each.
  Post:
  
  which was not able to carry 10Gbps channels using older technology
4. Re:Great news for folks in Provo, UT by antdude · 2013-05-24 20:11 · Score: 1
  
  I am still waiting for fibers near my homes! Verizon FIOS doesn't want to bring them here. I still can't get DSL too! Argh! :(
  
  --
  Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Invest by Wowsers · 2013-05-23 20:32 · Score: 3, Informative

That's BT for you, instead of investing in the network, they flog the life out of the old crap they have to avoid investing in the network, and give more money to shareholders.

--
Take Nobody's Word For It.
1. Re:Invest by Snospar · 2013-05-23 21:49 · Score: 2
  
  This is BT investing in the network and it's a smart investment too. By upgrading the boxes on the end of the old fibre they've shown they can breath new life into it - something which was in doubt when the previous technology ran into problems. These boxes and associated optics are not cheap but it's much better to be spending money there than on a new programme to dig up the roads.
  
  --
  Moore's law is not a law. Theory, yes; Predictable trend, certainly; Law, no.
2. Re:Invest by LordVader717 · 2013-05-23 21:50 · Score: 1
  
  That can go the wrong way too though. In Germany the former state phone company decided to invest billions to get ISDN in every corner of the country, only to find that the speed was obsolete almost as soon as it came into service.
3. Re:Invest by LordVader717 · 2013-05-23 21:59 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, and as a "bonus" for this tremendous foresight DSL speeds are consistently 30% slower so that some people can still use their late 90s phones and fax machines. For a 25 mbps line that's a trade-off of 8mbps for a 64kbps phone and fax line which no-one uses.
4. Re:Invest by jareth-0205 · 2013-05-23 22:01 · Score: 1
  
  That's BT for you, instead of investing in the network, they flog the life out of the old crap they have to avoid investing in the network, and give more money to shareholders.
  That's an insane attitude, what better investment is there than making the existing infrastructure 100 times more efficient? Why would you dig up the roads for no reason?
5. Re:Invest by Bengie · 2013-05-23 23:27 · Score: 1
  
  FTTH is almost always cheaper, it just requires a bit more up-front, but it only takes a few years to pay it off.
  
  The only reason companies don't do FTTH is because it makes for a bad quarter report compared to less capital intensive upgrades of old-copper that allows the ISP to charge more and increase revenue.
6. Re:Invest by cyber-vandal · 2013-05-23 23:52 · Score: 1
  
  BT did that as well and then dragged their feet over implementing ADSL until eventually they were forced to do it.
7. Re:Invest by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-05-23 23:55 · Score: 1
  
  instead of investing in the network, they flog the life out of the old crap they have to avoid investing in the network
  Because the smart thing to do would be to rip up thousands of miles of fiber that can carry 800Gbps and replace it all with thousands of miles of fiber that can carry 800Gbps. :can't tell if kidding or IBEW:
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
8. Re:Invest by mjwalshe · 2013-05-24 03:34 · Score: 1
  
  You think its cheap to do that though our senior network guy a telecom gold back in the day (early 80's) said when we complained that the 10Mbs link between London bridge and staples corner said "Don't knock it I had I had oxford street dug up for that"
Re:Fibre by jabuzz · 2013-05-23 22:13 · Score: 1

Even assuming that Mr. Salmond manages to win his referendum (a highly unlikely scenario), BT will still own and operate all the telecoms infrastructure in Scotland that it does today.
BT is the reason UK has crap broadband by coder111 · 2013-05-23 22:14 · Score: 2

They are the only ones that can lay fiber and invest into last mile, and they stubbornly refuse to do that.

I hate them so much for it. UK is falling further and further behind the rest of the world, it's just ridiculous.

--Coder
1. Re:BT is the reason UK has crap broadband by dkf · 2013-05-24 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  Sure, apart from Virgin laying cable to every door. OH WAIT.
  They didn't lay cable to every door; Virgin have never sought to provide a universal service. But they did lay cable to mine, and my service is now good enough that the bottleneck is often elsewhere (e.g., at the web server end). Life is sometimes rather good...
  
  --
  "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Glass is glass.. by Annorax · 2013-05-23 22:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

No news here people. The fact that existing fiber optic cable can be reused with new terminating equipment to increase transmission speed is not anything new.
MCI was doing this throughout the 1990s.
The inherent properties of the fiber optic cable have always meant that their potential "max speed" was much higher than the current terminating equipment of the time.
This is as interesting as someone saying "Hey, I bought a new sports car and drove it faster on this old road today than I did on my motor scooter yesterday!"
1. Re:Glass is glass.. by Threni · 2013-05-24 00:35 · Score: 1
  
  Not to disagree with you, but I assumed that:
  "BT ran the test on a fiber with optical characteristics (high polarization mode dispersion) that made it unsuitable for 10GBps using current techniques"
  was an implication that glass is not just glass, and that you use this or that glass for this or that feature. Are you saying there's no fiber, no matter how old or which characteristics is has, which cannot run that this (or any future) speed?
2. Re:Glass is glass.. by jroc242 · 2013-05-24 00:44 · Score: 1
  
  We did the same thing with our dark fiber ring between our offices. We use Ciena cards for DWDM. It used to be 1G circuits, now we install 10G circuits. Soon we will be putting in some 40G cards which will give us 40G circuits, no digging in manholes.
3. Re:Glass is glass.. by Shatrat · 2013-05-24 01:47 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It's heartbreaking to see how little the average slashdotter actually knows about technology when they start talking about my field.
  First, optical amplifiers are not 're-encoders' which isn't a real term anyway, the closest thing to what you mean is a 'transponder' and those are only used at end-points. The two types of optical amplifiers are Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers and Raman effect amplifiers. They do not receive and retransmit, they literally add photons of the exact same wavelength and polarity as the original signal, with no interruption.
  This article is ultimately about how the new coherent DSP enabled 100G and beyond fiber optic gear is actually much more tolerant of noise, chromatic dispersion, and polarization mode dispersion than the previous 10G on-off keyed gear. That allows carriers to go back and use fiber types that we used years ago that are obsolete, such as Zero Dispersion Shifted fiber.
  Yes, technology always offers improvements, but this is not an incremental improvement. This is a huge leap forward.
  
  --
  09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
4. Re:Glass is glass.. by Shatrat · 2013-05-24 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  I'll admit I skipped the last couple of sentences in the post, mostly out of pain. Now I see you're in the academic world, which explains a lot. Sorry.
  
  --
  09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
5. Re:Glass is glass.. by Shatrat · 2013-05-24 07:17 · Score: 1
  
  The big deal here is that there are a lot of fiber types that we couldn't go beyond 2.5G on due to effects like four wave mixing, chromatic dispersion, polarization mode dispersion. Those fibers have been sitting idle, and now have value again due to the fundamental differences in how the 'coherent' optics are modulated. In many cases that's going to mean millions of dollars of construction can be avoided because existing fiber can be used again.
  
  --
  09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Now if I can get Verizon Fios... by Virtucon · 2013-05-24 00:17 · Score: 1

To give me that kind of speed, I'd be happy. ;-)

--
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
BT stands for... by snsh · 2013-05-24 02:52 · Score: 1

Am I the only slashdotter who sees "BT" and immediately thinks it's about bittorrent?
Download a copy of the Man of Steel screener in a single millisecond. Yay !!
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2013-05-24 02:54 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Stop crying by Highland+Deck+Box · 2013-05-24 04:07 · Score: 1

"Oh waaah I live up a country lane that's 10 miles away from the nearest house and I can't get fibre optic, woe is me" If you want good broadband move to a city. I live in Bristol and i'm pretty happy with my BT Infinity service, I get about 75 down/25 up unlimited for like £25 a month.