Kent gets 100Mb/s FTTH

Author: Gareth Halfacree
Published: 11th January 2008
Comments (34) Stumble
Kent gets 100Mb/s FTTH

Sadly we don't have a picture of a fibre cable, but you get the general idea.

Openreach, the it's-a-separate-company-honest technical arm of dominant UK telco BT, has announced that it is to begin trials of fibre-to-the-home broadband connectivity in August of this year. Don't get too excited, though: the trial is only for a limited geographical area.

The company plans to run fibre-optic cabling to 10,000 new homes being built at Ebbsfleet in Kent in order to offer lucky home buyers 100Mb/s Internet connectivity. The top-end packages are expected to wholesale for £52 per month, meaning retail prices are likely to top out at £70 per month for a 100Mb/s downstream and 2Mb/s upstream connection.

There's no news yet of any suppliers actually offering such a package, and it's rather more likely that the property management companies would buy the top-end guaranteed bandwidth package and then sell shared access to tenants. Openreach has also announced several other speed points, including 30Mb/s, 10Mb/s, and the rather unimpressive 500Kb/s and 135Kb/s packages.

For those who think uncontended fibre would be a good way to escape from the often false 'up-to' claims of ADSL offerings, there's bad news. The only packages with 'assured' bandwidth are those up to and including 10Mb/s – everything else comes with the proviso 'speeds up to'.

Something else missing from the documentation provided by Openreach is any mention of data transfer caps – 100Mb/s is all well and good, but it's pretty useless if you get kicked off after you hit 5GB like with some of the ADSL packages offered by parent company BT.

Still, faster broadband is always welcome – especially in the form of noise and interference-free fibre-optics.

Fancy buying a house in Kent just to get quicker downloads, or does ADSL2+ serve your needs nicely? Let us know via the forums.
Quote CanadianViking 11th January 2008, 07:15
Very nice, but sounds a little expensive to be practical at the moment.
Quote DougEdey 11th January 2008, 08:19
The whole fact it's run by a BT company tells you that they probably won't let you get 100Mb/s unless your house happens to be inside the exchange because they'll probably not use the best cabling for it. Also, the 2Mb/s upstream is very very poor, it's have enough for me with 20Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up.
Quote p3n 11th January 2008, 09:08
You do realise you cant have 'bad' fibre connections? It either transmits light or it doesnt Oo There is a range issue but its not like copper...
As for the upstream, they dont want home users starting up their own datacenters in thier house...
Quote metarinka 11th January 2008, 09:37
the real question is when will we see something like this in the US of A? we are starting do fall behind the rest of the world. Even now in a large sized city the best you can get is cable modems which top out at 6MB/s and that's definately an "up to" speed
Quote trati629 11th January 2008, 10:34
£50+ is a vast amount for 100Mb/s compaired to the rest of the world. Also they can give a bit better then 2Mb/s upstream
Quote Glider 11th January 2008, 10:38
Quote:
Originally Posted by p3n
You do realise you cant have 'bad' fibre connections? It either transmits light or it doesnt Oo There is a range issue but its not like copper...
I'm working with fibres on my Master thesis, signal quality is a factor, even on fibres...
Quote:
Originally Posted by p3n
As for the upstream, they dont want home users starting up their own datacenters in thier house...
Why not? It's my bandwith, I do with it as I want IMHO
Quote Delphium 11th January 2008, 10:39
Alright for some :(
Quote Rich_13 11th January 2008, 10:54
Good news for the consumer if it goes well :-)
Obviously its going to be expensive at this initial stage...
Quote steveo_mcg 11th January 2008, 11:01
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glider

Why not? It's my bandwith, I do with it as I want IMHO

Yeah but thats not the way BT thinks.
Quote LeMaltor 11th January 2008, 11:09
2 up rofl
Quote Joeymac 11th January 2008, 14:56
2Mbits up...! WTF
That's pathetic. I hate this country. I'm moving to Sweden. I hope all at BT, who make these types of decisions, die a horrible excrement based death. They are flat out halting technical and creative progress. That's what the nazi's did.

100mbit up and down with.. no caps.. no packet shaping and port blocking... and no "peak time" based slow downs .. no "fair use" bollocks.... for £30 a month or less...
That is what is required of BT (for at least 50% of the population) in order to keep the UK competitive over the next five years. Will that happen?? Like **** it will.
Quote fwalm 11th January 2008, 15:35
[QUOTE]and the rather unimpressive 500Kb/s and 135Kb/s packages.[QUOTE]

Love this part since I'm currently getting about 135Kb/s with my BT option 3 for £25, so if I was to get any improvement I would be happy, but typical BT ripping you off by the looks of that. Plus they would more than likely cap them users severley.
Quote naokaji 11th January 2008, 15:41
they should hook up the complete country to fiber...

i mean something like a 100/20 Mbit down / up connection would be really nice to have....
Quote jezmck 11th January 2008, 16:29
100:2?!
As a web developer, and a file sharer*, that's just nuts.
*- legal open source files only of course.
Quote Kipman725 11th January 2008, 17:07
"100Mb/s downstream and 2Mb/s upstream connection." that woulden't work you would satruate upload bandwidth even just downloading a file. I suspect a typo somewhere as you can get 24:4 already which would be faster.
Quote Glider 11th January 2008, 17:08
Up and down are on separate fibres, so independant...
Quote samkiller42 11th January 2008, 17:08
Trouble with Ebbsfleet, is the new Eurostar Terminal is there, so you going to have trains racing through at 7am till around 11pm on a daily basis, and the M25 is also close, so the noise from that 24/7. But thats possibly why they are able to provide this system, because Ebbsfleet international is there. £52 a month, kinda makes my £40 a month BT bill seem small, and thats for a upto 8mb (1mb actual) and 448k up connection, oh well.

Sam
Quote nitrous9200 12th January 2008, 02:03
Quote:
Originally Posted by metarinka
the real question is when will we see something like this in the US of A? we are starting do fall behind the rest of the world. Even now in a large sized city the best you can get is cable modems which top out at 6MB/s and that's definately an "up to" speed

Except for FiOS. I'm on a 20Mbps/5Mbps connection right now and I love it, since unlike cable I get the bandwidth any time of the day. Only problem is that it's not available everywhere, but it is in most big cities and in a total of 16 states, I think.
Quote Mr T 12th January 2008, 11:48
2mb upstream on a 100mb line is pathetic to be honest.
Quote Glider 12th January 2008, 11:57
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr T
2mb upstream on a 100mb line is pathetic to be honest.
But it still beats 99% of the packages offered here in Belgium... We get upload speeds varying from 128kbps to 1mbps...
Quote r4tch3t 13th January 2008, 03:22
Sheesh and I thought I was getting ripped off on internet, 10Mbit down 1 up for $70 (or 28 quid) in New Zealand, you know the little country near the bottom of the planet?
Then again I only get 20GB a month. Wouldn't mind a 100Mbit connection though, as long as theres no caps.
Quote crazybob 13th January 2008, 04:43
Why's everyone so upset about the 2mb/s upstream? Are you all running data centers and hosting websites with Slashdot-level traffic from your basements? I'm lucky to get a quarter that and have never found a situation where I'm limited by my upstream bandwidth.

And if you can complain about that price, I need to switch countries. At that price/speed ratio, I would get 20 mb/s for what I'm paying now for 8 mb/s. I'm also a big fan of the guaranteed speeds on the lower packages - I think 'up to' speed advertising is completely evil.
Quote Amon 13th January 2008, 04:54
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glider
Up and down are on separate fibres, so independant...
Indeed. Not sure if many people here understand how fibre optics work in the communications industry.
Quote AngelOfRage 13th January 2008, 07:44
I'm pretty content with my Sky package currently. It's listed as "upto 8meg", fastest i hit on speed test websites is around 7mb down and 600kb down. I've not hit a cap yet and thats even with hammering 4od and BBC iPLayer as well as Internet Radio on most of the time.
For the price (£24 a month and that includes Sky TV) it's not to bad.

Although faster downloads would always be welcome, they have to be matched by resonable prices and no monthly caps.
Quote tranc3 13th January 2008, 08:34
The us doesn't care about it's internet users, witch is why im still on dial up, there lucky and they don't realize how lucky. mabey America will hear about this as a howl and make a change. were still working on gettin 1.5mbs to houses... how are we gonna handle 100?
Quote CommanderAce 13th January 2008, 12:53
"Why's everyone so upset about the 2mb/s upstream? Are you all running data centers and hosting websites with Slashdot-level traffic from your basements?"

Slingbox?
Quote completemadness 13th January 2008, 16:48
Quote:
Originally Posted by CommanderAce
"Why's everyone so upset about the 2mb/s upstream? Are you all running data centers and hosting websites with Slashdot-level traffic from your basements?"

Slingbox?
Why shouldnt we be able to? If you have 100mbit down, why not like 10 up?

Hell even if i had 10 down i wouldnt care, but the current upload speeds are a bit sucky
Quote Goos!e 14th January 2008, 03:25
I dont see the problem with the 2mb up... only that it ain't "reasonable?" or whatever ya call it...
On the other hand... wtf do you need more than 2mb Upstream for? I can think only of 1 thing and that ain't quite leagal in most European countries (if not in all of em by now). I have ADSL2+ 16.000 @ 14.500 ~ 15.500 Down with like 1.100 Up somewhat around 35 euros and that does me just freakin fine... there are 5 comps connected and there are actually like no problems.. only with the provider (but thats a different story) and for people wanting to host Webserver and so on.. get a feckin Business Plan from yer local Provider!
Thats obviously the main reason they don't hand out Symetric DSL lines just like that...

for sending mails... filesharing (illegal or not)... Gaming the current available lines are just fine....

But..!!! I wouldn't complain if the Fibre crap would be available and prolly would jump on the train...(at a reasonable price that is)

To the poor sods livin in the US of A : <politicalparanoia>bet the RIAA have their fingers in! </politicalparanoia>
Wouldn't suprise me tho....

Im more concerned about the needed Hardware...dunno bout other countries, here in germany you usually get a crappy router/modem from yer provider and either you're happy with it... or you gotta buy yer own... and with crappy i mean C R A P P Y

So where can you like get a Fibreoptic NIC ? Or is this like with DSL? ya need 10.000 boxed to split the data etc? I have never heard of a fibre Modem.. so i take it will be a NIC but those are like.. geez unpayable? The cheapest i've seen was like 200 Euros
Quote Firehed 14th January 2008, 04:22
Quote:
Originally Posted by trati629
£50+ is a vast amount for 100Mb/s compaired to the rest of the world. Also they can give a bit better then 2Mb/s upstream
Well that same ~$100/mo will get you a 10/1Mbit connection stateside unless you happen to be somewhere that offers FIOS (nowhere, apparently).

But wtf, 100/2?!? Are they going out of their way to make something so potentially awesome suck, or is this their approach for Bit-torrent throttling (and therefore making something so potentially awesome suck)?

Of course, there are more legit uses for the upstream bandwidth too. I'm constantly remoting into my home machines from the road, and VNC is somewhat less than fun to use at that speed. If I make sure it's the only network activity at the time it's usable, but generally pretty crap.
Quote Edvuld 14th January 2008, 05:41
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joeymac
2Mbits up...! WTF
That's pathetic. I hate this country. I'm moving to Sweden. I hope all at BT, who make these types of decisions, die a horrible excrement based death. They are flat out halting technical and creative progress. That's what the nazi's did.

100mbit up and down with.. no caps.. no packet shaping and port blocking... and no "peak time" based slow downs .. no "fair use" bollocks.... for £30 a month or less...
That is what is required of BT (for at least 50% of the population) in order to keep the UK competitive over the next five years. Will that happen?? Like **** it will.

I quite recently moved away from my parents house to my own apartment, and now I have "Up to 100Mbit" down and 10Mbit up. I've reaced speeds of 5MB/s down and 1.7MB/s up, so I guess it's about 40/10Mbit. I only pay 20£/month though, so I must say I'm really happy with that deal. I could easily host my own page and FTP. All ports are open, and there's no caps or limits afaik ;)
Quote Hamish 14th January 2008, 11:09
Quote:
Originally Posted by Goos!e
I dont see the problem with the 2mb up... only that it ain't "reasonable?" or whatever ya call it...
On the other hand... wtf do you need more than 2mb Upstream for? I can think only of 1 thing and that ain't quite leagal in most European countries (if not in all of em by now).

for sending mails... filesharing (illegal or not)... Gaming the current available lines are just fine....

i work from home quite a bit VPN'd into the office, theres about 1.5mbit up on either end
its not enough, its ok for accesssing intranet and editing code on the office servers but working with word documents and the like? sucks :\
subversion is bloody slow over that link too :p
Quote Goos!e 14th January 2008, 14:19
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hamish


i work from home quite a bit VPN'd into the office, theres about 1.5mbit up on either end
its not enough, its ok for accesssing intranet and editing code on the office servers but working with word documents and the like? sucks :\
subversion is bloody slow over that link too :p

the point there being: not Private

I see it more like: If ya need it for work.. its business if not.. its for private use.. and c'mon.. lets be real.. No one needs more than there is atm (for real private use!).

but yeah ffs... i would love a OC192.. or whatever is better just for the sake of it...

i totally agree that the 2mbit upstram is hilarious @ 100 down.

I'd just like to see where all this is going with 100mb down available and so on.. coz i think its quite idiotic to just have certain areas covered with "High-Speed" connections while others still are on blimmin dial-up.

Here (germany) they don't even have like 70% DSL coverage. sure the great citys like Berlin,Munich,Cologne and some smaller ones like Dortmund etc. but even there... if you are livin in a "suburb?" the problems begin.. either not available... or its a joke what ya get... like 384/64kbs.
Quote Hamish 15th January 2008, 11:16
2mbit is possibly not even enough for overheads with 100mbit down though
right now im copying some stuff over to my fileserver on 100mbit ethernet im looking at 11MB/s up and ~220k/s down
thats pushing it for 2mbit :\
Quote completemadness 15th January 2008, 14:50
Very true there, as your download increases, your upload demands also increase
Anyway, why shouldn't home users be able to run a webserver, teamspeak server, or game server?

Hell, maybe you would like to be able to keep your documents at home and access them on the move
Or even VNC into your home computer

Although quite a few home users might not need high uploads, some do, and by the time your talking about a 100mbit Internet connection, we are starting to talk about people who really use their Internet
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