12 months to faster broadband!

[grumpy]

Hi,
Just been having a look at the exchange rollout for the new faster broadband exchanges (21CN) and Kinver is down for March 2011, so only 12 months and we should have ADSL2+ which is up to a max. of 24Mb instead of the existing max. of 8Mb we currently have.

Pretty sure not many people in the village need such speeds, but I'm not complaining (for a change!)

grumps (not so grumpy today)

[conker]

I'm pretty ill informed about all this; would like to know more but other things just get in the way!

My question is; How will this affect me? I pay for 'up to' 2Mb but I'm so far out of the village that when I do the 'iplayer test' I only get about 700kb consequently even live radio drops out - don't ask about pictures! I never know whether its worth upgrading to 8Mb (for which I think there is no extra charge but was said to cause some difficulties earlier in the process)

Will this proposed increase mean my line goes up a bit or not?

[grumpy]

Hi conker,
If you're only getting 700kb at the moment I doubt an upgrade to the exchange will give you any increases.

Broadband works via a high frequency signal on the existing copper line from the exchange. Like any electrical signal it gets weaker and more prone to interference the longer the cable is (due to resistance in the cable, etc.)

The 24Mb speeds, same as the existing 8Mb speeds, are pretty much restricted to people within a certain distance from the exchange (going to line length, not line of sight)

As you have already been informed, moving from a 'fixed' bandwidth, to a higher bandwidth will probably cause more problems, as once you move over the 2Mb BT move you from fixed speed ADSL to rate adaptive, where the exchange varies the speed depending upon conditions, so you might find your 700kb, goes down ever further once the exchange starts to play with the speeds, which could be good news (might allow you to listen to streaming music) but then could also reduce your line speed down to virtually zero so everything drops to a crawl.

grumps

[conker]

Thanks grumps.

B****r!!!

[Admin]

I'm not entirely convinced about this new 21C stuff anyway. We got it at our Wolverhampton Offices and the net effect was bugger-all. There are so many variables to getting broadband, the exchange is just one of them. It seems almost pointless to upgrade Kinver, the wires around here are so clunky I doubt many would benefit from it.

As for the 'distance from the equipment' stuff, that's a scatter-gun approach at best. My next door neighbour gets 1meg max because he's so far from the exchange, my other neighbour gets about 2meg tops for the same reason and I believe someone else on this board in our street has been told it's 1meg max. Me, I get 6.5meg regularly. Random, totally random.

[grumpy]

Admin,
The distance is only one aspect, it also depends which route the cable takes to get to you, you're neighbours cables could be routed differently to you, there is also the quality of the cable, age, etc. all of these have an effect on the speed. You could also find your neighbours are on really old ADSL packages which are on the old ADSL, not the newer rate adaptive rADSL packages.

On the distance thing don't think in straight lines as not all the cables are in a straight line, eg. 2 people in Potters Cross have phone lines, depending upon when they had the lines installed, and the spare capacity available at the time, one phone line could go straight up the High Street and up Enville Road to Potters Cross, the next door neighbours could go High Street, Stone Lane, Meddins Lane to get to Potters Cross.

grumps