High Speed Broadband

Hi All,

just thought I would share this little story:

I am with PLUSNET and have a calls and fibre broadband package 'bundle' ( it workes out a little more expensive per month than my previous Post Office package, but is 'faster' and includes all my calls ). To be fair I have not noticed much of a change on fibre, but with the calls it is 'OK'.

However Moneysaving expert, the Martin Lewis website has confirmed that PLUSNET are increasing their prices form September 2nd, and in my case it would be considerably more expensive; and on contacting PLUSNET ( a complex and time wasting excercise on the phone ) they have confirmed this.

So, I said 'fine, just to let you know I shall be leaving you shortly and going with another, cheaper provider'.......Silence, and then....'Oh we can offer you a better deal...same service at a reduced price for 24 months!!!!.    Funny that aint it ??...Just goes to show you need to phone these companies and threaten to WALK!!!.

I have now got a 24 month contract ( which is fine by me ) at a reduced cost, and even with the price hike will be paying less per month than I do now. I know its been said before you do need to shop around...these companies are DESPERATE to retain your custom, so haggle and if you are not happy just walk away.

Technician

Brilliant advice Technician.

I always tell the ROB-users to shop around and to never settle with a deal that is not what was expected.

As far as Broadband is concerned:

What is happening now is that the competing companies are allowed to put their own gear into the BT exchanges and then to offer it at a better rate than BT.

This is called "local unbundling" where if there is an optical-fibre network into a cabinet up to within a mile from your home or your place of work they can all compete to provide this as a "Fibre broadband" service. ( This is sent to your home via the standard telephone wires, but SKY are at the moment offering this last distance done by the use of co-axial cable like the one that brings your satellite signal down to your receiver )

There are actually two speeds that they can offer, which are the slower one for home use and the faster one for business use, but the faster speed is much more expensive than the domestic speed is.

With the domestic one they promise "up-to" around 32 mbps, but depending on how far you are from the fibre optic-carrying cabinet these speeds can vary considerably. At the moment I am only getting around 8mbps, but that is better than I was getting with straight ADSL.

I looked into this broadband delivery to our homes and found that Virgin Media are promising a guaranteed 100 mbps, ( with a possible 1 GBPS ) to our homes if we get their DOCSIS 3 cables installed from the Fibre Optic cabinet nearby.

All of the broadband providers that have taken advantage of the Local Loop Unbundling, ( LLU ), regulation change can get fibre optic to the "cabinet" in the street, but all of them, except Virgin Media - at the moment - can only use the ordinary phone lines, ( already installed everywhere ), to carry the broadband signals from the cabinet to your home or place of work.

The loss of bandwidth/signal strength and stability from ordinary copper phone wires  means that if that wire is anything like half a mile to a mile from the optical fibre cabinet to your home the signal loss is severe, and the eventual MBPS delivered is usually very slow.

This DOCSIS 3 co-axial cable can be seen on the television advert for Virgin Media where the "sofa bear" points out it's advantages.

Oh I love those "sofa bear" adverts as I know a person who is exactly like that.

What I wonder, reading your very technical story: is, if Virgin Media are going to rip up the streets again to put in the "Docsis" cables that you talk about, why are they not just going the whole hog and putting in local fibre-optic cables instead ?

That is actually a very good question Angie.

I guess that it is easier to terminate a coaxial cable in the home or workplace than it is to terminate a fibre-optic cable.

To support this argument we have to consider that all television and satellite cables, ( coaxial cables ), that come from antenna are already easily terminated using what is known in the trade as "F" connectors.

The satellite coaxial cables are a bit better than the ordinary terrestrial TV cables are as they are carrying a very high frequency signal which is capable of leaking sideways out of the run of cable. They do this as they have two types of shielding while the ordinary coaxial cables have only one.

The Docsis 3 cables are very like satellite cables in that they have a lot of signal shielding around them too.

I know this as I used to be in the game.