4 ms·

There's a push in the UK over the last few years to get broadband out to the small villages, who've been stuck on pathetically slow due to their distance from t

by goldcd 6y ago

There's a push in the UK over the last few years to get broadband out to the small villages, who've been stuck on pathetically slow due to their distance from telephone exchanges. How it's being pushed out is a hodge-podge of technologies, Microwave, FTTx, Wi-fi repeaters - and mixtures of those and more. My guess is that it was the latter that was being interfered with in this case. As to why it took so long to diagnose, well telcos being useless is pretty common (although 18 months is quite impressive). Maybe they were just blaming the backhaul, but once that was fixed, was obvious problem was on the last-mile (and may have been different providers)

Nextgrid 6y ago
> a hodge-podge of technologies, Microwave, FTTx, Wi-fi repeaters - and mixtures of those and more Most of which is being falsely advertised as fibre and peppered with bullshit marketing terms like "superfast" or "ultrafast" which means consumers have a very hard time comparing the different offers and understanding what they're actually getting.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  What do you expect every out of the way place has its own challenges.
- jayflux 6y ago
  > Most of which is being falsely advertised as fibre Last I checked If part of the journey is fibre (to the cabinet etc), they can legally advertise as fibre. They can’t advertise a service as fibre if non of the journey uses fibre. These days the advertisements need to make performance claims, so they can’t just say “it’s fibre” they need to say what speed you’ll get.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    In this case wouldn't pretty much any technology qualify as eventually there would be fibre back at the datacenter, even in case of 56k dial-up? Regardless of whether it's legal it is still a scummy thing to do and a major failure from the regulators. Calling crap like cable or DSL as "fibre" not only muddies the waters (DSL performance highly depends on wire quality, so one "fibre" might be 10x faster than your "fibre" despite them both being "fibre") and makes it super hard for people to know what they're actually getting. When it comes to speeds, how is that determined considering DSL speeds are unknown until you actually try it (and by that time you're already in a contract)? Is it just a meaningless "up to <theoretical maximum>" figure?
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Most egregious example I've seen of this is Eir (formerly Eircom), the main Irish telco. They used to advertise some of their _ADSL_ as fibre! By this they meant the exchange had fibre backhaul; back in the day many exchanges had microwave backhaul, in some cases as low as 8Mbit/sec for a whole town.
gertrunde 6y ago
One of the more curious ones is FTTrN (Fibre to the Remote Node) - which is essentially a miniature VDSL DSLAM at the top of a telegraph pole. Well, that's how it started out - but it seems they're using it as a local node to run FTTP as well now - the only issue being that they want to run the fibre in the ground from the pole to the property, rather than taking the existing aerial route. (And that carries associated excess construction costs). It has been popping up in quite a few villages in East Yorkshire due to being paid for by the county rural broadband fund.

by goldcd 6y ago

Nextgrid 6y ago

> a hodge-podge of technologies, Microwave, FTTx, Wi-fi repeaters - and mixtures of those and more Most of which is being falsely advertised as fibre and peppered with bullshit marketing terms like "superfast" or "ultrafast" which means consumers have a very hard time comparing the different offers and understanding what they're actually getting.

C1sc0cat 6y ago
What do you expect every out of the way place has its own challenges.
jayflux 6y ago
> Most of which is being falsely advertised as fibre Last I checked If part of the journey is fibre (to the cabinet etc), they can legally advertise as fibre. They can’t advertise a service as fibre if non of the journey uses fibre. These days the advertisements need to make performance claims, so they can’t just say “it’s fibre” they need to say what speed you’ll get.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  In this case wouldn't pretty much any technology qualify as eventually there would be fibre back at the datacenter, even in case of 56k dial-up? Regardless of whether it's legal it is still a scummy thing to do and a major failure from the regulators. Calling crap like cable or DSL as "fibre" not only muddies the waters (DSL performance highly depends on wire quality, so one "fibre" might be 10x faster than your "fibre" despite them both being "fibre") and makes it super hard for people to know what they're actually getting. When it comes to speeds, how is that determined considering DSL speeds are unknown until you actually try it (and by that time you're already in a contract)? Is it just a meaningless "up to <theoretical maximum>" figure?
rsynnott 6y ago
Most egregious example I've seen of this is Eir (formerly Eircom), the main Irish telco. They used to advertise some of their _ADSL_ as fibre! By this they meant the exchange had fibre backhaul; back in the day many exchanges had microwave backhaul, in some cases as low as 8Mbit/sec for a whole town.

gertrunde 6y ago

One of the more curious ones is FTTrN (Fibre to the Remote Node) - which is essentially a miniature VDSL DSLAM at the top of a telegraph pole. Well, that's how it started out - but it seems they're using it as a local node to run FTTP as well now - the only issue being that they want to run the fibre in the ground from the pole to the property, rather than taking the existing aerial route. (And that carries associated excess construction costs). It has been popping up in quite a few villages in East Yorkshire due to being paid for by the county rural broadband fund.