A little inside information by an Employee.

[RXP]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Well that sounds like its to do with the last mile but when I mentioned this on adslguide I got told its just ATM been shut down on the core network so phonecalls going over voip etc. but the last mile will remain the same. So 21cn will have very few initial benefits to the average customer and is mainly about cutting bts operating costs.

Well since competition in the consumer sector is so fierce, hopefully those savings will be forced onto the consumer.

And the last mile isn't gonna be upgraded but they're moving the DSLAM's closer to people's homes and it wont be located at an exchange (right?). And since ADSL2+ is faster over shorter distances the idea is to have ADSL2+ operating at near maximal speed. Dunno how that will translate into practice but I also know there's plenty of R&D to develop copper technology (some Israeli funded programme).

[Chrysalis]

by moving the dslam closer I assume you mean fibre to the cabinet and the answer is no I think, some people leaked this was going to happen but then yarwell and some others in the know pointed out bt 21cn docs dont mention any kind of fibre rollout on the last mile, last mile been between exchange and property.

I actually hope the savings are 'not' passed onto the consumer my reasoning is recently adsl has got too competitive on the retail level and its been dominated now by bargian price 8mbit which is severly shaped/capped and very limiting to use. I am hoping that the cost savings are used to improve the service instead.

I dont know about the copper r&d but I suspect BT wont be that bothered that adsl2+ will perform very poor for some people, their own publish stats show only 25% of lines now can manage the full 8mbit on adsl1 so this 25% is probably the only people who are going to see around 16mbit on adsl2+ and the other 75% will be less.

[T.F.S.B.I.G.W.S.]

Originally Posted by T.F.S.B.I.G.W.S.

The 6 day deadline has passed and NTL have failed to solve this problem. I have contacted them and been told that they have a huge back-log but I should not worry as they will phone me.
Any chance of some Inside Information

Thanks a bunch to NTL (and the Inside Info Employee). At this rate it looks like Christmas will come and go before the On Demand is sorted! The 6 day deadline passed on November 24! I have phoned NTL countless times and each time been promised that the engineer will return my call.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by themelon

Not really.

Can you imagine how much road digging they would have to do? To lay Fibre to the Home and at what cost, they have to apply for local authority permission for widespread digging now. Its going to require a lot more than just installing a new line from a junction box on the pole, it will need to go all the way to the exchange.

Ntl (or predecessors) have racked up huge debts laying cable to less than half the UK; imagine the costs of relaying cable to every home in the UK? it aint gonna be cheap and BT aint gonna do it anytime soon.

They will let us use a substandard service at high prices for amy years to come, until it is an absolute necessity to replace it.

Why would BT need to dig up roads? The last time I looked, BT had thousands of telegraph poles everywhere, including in every street in the country. Sling the fibre cables over them, much easier. Not that bt, ntl or anyone else will bother with fibre now....

Just install wimax transceivers at the bt exchanges and connected to their network, will do the job just fine. Customers who are currently too far away from the exchange will then get about 10mb. Which is plenty enough for a few vod streams with mpeg4 compression. I gather ntl have similar plans at least for offnet anyway.

[Chrysalis]

you think wimax would achieve 10mbit at multiple km with variable line of sight and interference?

[Horizon]

...good points, but define mulitple?

I don't think wimax will do what its meant to do on the packet, i.e. up to 50KM. But, in regards to BT using wimax, it could manage the last "mile". Mile meaning the similar kind of area that a BT exchange now covers. For ntl and their offnet strategy. Rather than ntl using BT's ancient wires, they could install Wimax dishes in their cabled-up areas and connect them to their fibre network. But the wimax services wouldn't be for the cabled areas, but to beam services to the neighbouring smaller towns or villages.

I take your points onboard, though. My home router can't even manage a few metres....And if wimax really did work well, there's nothing stopping mobile phone companies or anyone else installing wimax and destroying ntl/bt in a single swipe.

[popper]

Originally Posted by Neptune

...good points, but define mulitple?

I don't think wimax will do what its meant to do on the packet, i.e. up to 50KM. But, in regards to BT using wimax, it could manage the last "mile". Mile meaning the similar kind of area that a BT exchange now covers. For ntl and their offnet strategy. Rather than ntl using BT's ancient wires, they could install Wimax dishes in their cabled-up areas and connect them to their fibre network. But the wimax services wouldn't be for the cabled areas, but to beam services to the neighbouring smaller towns or villages.

I take your points onboard, though. My home router can't even manage a few metres....And if wimax really did work well, there's nothing stopping mobile phone companies or anyone else installing wimax and destroying ntl/bt in a single swipe.

and thats were the selling off of the analoge tv and the new land grab for the regulated private wireless bands will come in.

perhaps now that Virgin Media seems to given up on ITV (for the moment) they might instead try and go for some private WiMax spectrum outright rather than rent space from whoever gets the new space (some players in the EU pehaps ?).

or they might try and go the cheap and cheerful route, for the usable public space and as you say, get wiped out, complain to OFT or whoever and get BT/Sky or whoever told off and dont do it again, LOL.

with NTL its not hard to guess which, unless richard is keeping a good eye on the boardroom and plays a card or two....

would anyone know the max commercial power rating for line of sight WiMax if there is even such a limit like the consumer power rate limits for wifi ?.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Neptune

...good points, but define mulitple?

I don't think wimax will do what its meant to do on the packet, i.e. up to 50KM. But, in regards to BT using wimax, it could manage the last "mile". Mile meaning the similar kind of area that a BT exchange now covers. For ntl and their offnet strategy. Rather than ntl using BT's ancient wires, they could install Wimax dishes in their cabled-up areas and connect them to their fibre network. But the wimax services wouldn't be for the cabled areas, but to beam services to the neighbouring smaller towns or villages.

I take your points onboard, though. My home router can't even manage a few metres....And if wimax really did work well, there's nothing stopping mobile phone companies or anyone else installing wimax and destroying ntl/bt in a single swipe.

So lets get this straigt, we have a new suggestion here that BT should use wireless for the last mile?

Would that be the same sort of wireless that they trialed a few years ago in Pontypridd based on the mesh system?

Or would it be the same sort of wireless that ntl trialed ie:WHAM in their trial in South Wales and later London. (London is the only one widely known because, well its erm London innit mate)

Or perhaps it could be the same wireless that we saw 10GHz and 40GHz franchise licences up for tender and issued a few years ago!

Both BT and ntl dropped the idea after the trials because of the implementation costs. In BT's case they decided to soldier on hoping new ADSL technology would give them an acceptable speed for the majority of the country. In ntl's case, well they just dont have any money and the shareholders are more interested in cutting costs that investing to gain new customers.

[Horizon]

My understanding of even newer technologies like ADSL2/VDSL2 etc is these technologies still have the same problems as exists now. If you sit on top of a bt exchange you will get super speeds. But, if like me, you're more than a mile away from an exchange, then the speeds will deteriorate. Whatever BT do with their exchanges, it's the ancient copper wires that go into people homes.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that BT (or ntl for offnet) should go down the wimax route, but what other options are there? If BT don't install fibre-to-the-home or much closer to the home like the US telcos are currently doing to compete with the cablecos in the States. I just don't see any other way that BT can deliver "cable" like services on the last mile of their copper loops.

Ntl, in the areas which are cabled, are in a very competitive position now. Yes, Sky can beam down a 10000 shopping channels if they wished, but where's the return path - bt's copper wires. One of the reasons why Murdoch is keen to ditch his satellite operations in the U.S is because he knows its the return path that is the key. Whether its internet, VOD or anything else you need a good return path.

Originally Posted by popper

and thats were the selling off of the analoge tv and the new land grab for the regulated private wireless bands will come in.

perhaps now that Virgin Media seems to given up on ITV (for the moment) they might instead try and go for some private WiMax spectrum outright rather than rent space from whoever gets the new space (some players in the EU pehaps ?).

I think there will be a "land grab" for the spectrum and if the current operators like bt or ntl don't snatch the spectrum, someone else will.

There could be interesting times ahead if we had a choice of a bt phone/tv/internet service, cable service, Sky service and a few wimax "cable" tv operators too.

[Chrysalis]

You think wimax is superior to fibre to the cabinet?

I am curious of the problems that come with wireless, I see it performing badly on lans so it would amaze me if it offered good latency and high speeds over long distances.

I am not sure if BT even care that long poor lines perform badly as long as that 25% of lines that are good perform well they can promote fast speeds.

Last sunday it seems my copper pair got swapped without warning to an inferior one making my line very bad again like it was last june, I probably now have another 3 month battle to get it swapped again.

---------- Post added at 13:59 ---------- Previous post was at 13:57 ----------

Limitations

A commonly held misconception is that WiMAX will deliver 70 Mbit/s, over 70 miles (112.6 kilometers). Each of these is true individually, given ideal circumstances, but they are not simultaneously true. In practice this means that in Line of sight environments you could deliver symmetrical speeds of 10Mbps at 10Km but in Urban Environments it is more likely that 30% of installtions may be Non Line of sight and therefore Users may only receive 10Mbps over 2Km. WiMAX has some similarities to DSL in this respect, where one can either have high bandwidth or long reach, but not both simultaneously. The other feature to consider with WiMAX is that available bandwidth is shared between users in a given radio sector, so if there are many active users in a single sector, each will get reduced bandwidth. However, unlike SDSL where contention is very noticeable at a 5:1 ratio if you are sharing your connection with a large media firm for example WiMax does not have this problem. Typically each cell has a 100Mbps backhaul so there is is no contention here. On the radio side in practice many users will have a range of 2,4,6,8 or 10Mbps services and the bandwidth can be shared. If the network becomes busy the business model is more like GSM or UMTS than DSL in that it is easy to predict the capacity requirements as you sign more customers and additional radio cards can be added on the same sector to increase the capacity.

[Druchii]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

You think wimax is superior to fibre to the cabinet?

I am curious of the problems that come with wireless, I see it performing badly on lans so it would amaze me if it offered good latency and high speeds over long distances.

I am not sure if BT even care that long poor lines perform badly as long as that 25% of lines that are good perform well they can promote fast speeds.

Last sunday it seems my copper pair got swapped without warning to an inferior one making my line very bad again like it was last june, I probably now have another 3 month battle to get it swapped again.

---------- Post added at 13:59 ---------- Previous post was at 13:57 ----------

So, the long and short of it is they need to trial things as usual

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

You think wimax is superior to fibre to the cabinet?

I am curious of the problems that come with wireless, I see it performing badly on lans so it would amaze me if it offered good latency and high speeds over long distances.

I am not sure if BT even care that long poor lines perform badly as long as that 25% of lines that are good perform well they can promote fast speeds.

Last sunday it seems my copper pair got swapped without warning to an inferior one making my line very bad again like it was last june, I probably now have another 3 month battle to get it swapped again.

---------- Post added at 13:59 ---------- Previous post was at 13:57 ----------

Of course wimax despite its use of a spread spectrum technology is still wide open for jamming. (It just requires to either spread the jamming signal, or make the jamming signal a high enough level to make the wimax receiver go into AGC) Just as hackers enjoy hacking in to systems, and virus writers enjoy spreading viruses, it would leave another option open for those who want to jam the service.

That also holds for the HFC network where it is fairly easy with a limited amount of knowledge to screw the system up, or at least make things go down to a crawling speed.

wimax however doesn't need any physical connection to jam customers services, I undertsand jamming of microwave services to the home has been a problem in some countries in the past.

ADSL has to be the most secure service available, at least until fibre to the home is available.

[Virgin Mary]

A bit off topic, but I am curious to know, why don't they use the rails to transmit/wifi/"lan overpower lines" instead of the expensive Wimax on the trains?

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Lobster Ring

A bit off topic, but I am curious to know, why don't they use the rails to transmit/wifi/"lan overpower lines" instead of the expensive Wimax on the trains?

I doubt if the bandwidth would be available, I know they used to run comms over the rails but I'm not really that clued up on it. Many years ago I knew a guy working on comms for BR, I think the technology then was a LF or HF signal. I also remember seeing some of this old equipment available at a radio rally aroundb that time. (thats how the discussion started)

It was a long time ago so perhaps I am confused and they were for use on overhead electrics. Any for of communication down the rails will be a problem, you have to consider loosing connections at points, and corrosion if not on a continuous welded section of track.

Also remember that the signal levels would need to be very high if using LF/HF in the same manner as ADSL, because the railway lines are not twisted pair With twisted pair the crossing of the wires cancels out any unbalanced signal. ie: interference picked up on the line by using the push-push effect. (I'm sure you could Google for an explanation)

BT's lines were designed for audio signals, getting good balance at HF frequencies (that ADSL uses) is not an easy task. The old Rediffusion HF cable TV systems used balanced twisted pairs desugned for the job, but they still had problems with balance and interference.
The use of digital technology these days goes some way to mask the inherent problem of using twisted pairs for broadband communications. Twisted pair in itself is not a bad thing, it has a higher velocity ratio than coax, and has less loss/km. The real problem is maintaining good balance at all the joints, the use of chock block type connections ruins the balance.
Whilst a network can be efficiently maintained for audio or low speed data (voice) using it for broadband is far different. ADSL technology masks the problems with error correction, so its very much like trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Using the railway lines would only offer one ADSL line shared between all the users on that track, even if it did work satisfactory.

[gadge]

Originally Posted by Escapee

I doubt if the bandwidth would be available, I know they used to run comms over the rails but I'm not really that clued up on it. Many years ago I knew a guy working on comms for BR, I think the technology then was a LF or HF signal. I also remember seeing some of this old equipment available at a radio rally aroundb that time. (thats how the discussion started)

It was a long time ago so perhaps I am confused and they were for use on overhead electrics. Any for of communication down the rails will be a problem, you have to consider loosing connections at points, and corrosion if not on a continuous welded section of track.

Also remember that the signal levels would need to be very high if using LF/HF in the same manner as ADSL, because the railway lines are not twisted pair With twisted pair the crossing of the wires cancels out any unbalanced signal. ie: interference picked up on the line by using the push-push effect. (I'm sure you could Google for an explanation)

BT's lines were designed for audio signals, getting good balance at HF frequencies (that ADSL uses) is not an easy task. The old Rediffusion HF cable TV systems used balanced twisted pairs desugned for the job, but they still had problems with balance and interference.
The use of digital technology these days goes some way to mask the inherent problem of using twisted pairs for broadband communications. Twisted pair in itself is not a bad thing, it has a higher velocity ratio than coax, and has less loss/km. The real problem is maintaining good balance at all the joints, the use of chock block type connections ruins the balance.
Whilst a network can be efficiently maintained for audio or low speed data (voice) using it for broadband is far different. ADSL technology masks the problems with error correction, so its very much like trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Using the railway lines would only offer one ADSL line shared between all the users on that track, even if it did work satisfactory.

sorry to but in bit of topic is it true tvdrive has been delayed? seems to be a bit up in the air at the moment.