telco_telco 15/08/2014 16:34 Page 1
The final mile
Steve Gold looks at ways of speeding
up Internet connectivity
'm always amused by
colleagues who are wowed
when their offices and
homes install FTTC (Fibre to the
Cabinet) Internet connectivity to
replace the old ADSL 2+ service.
Typically, this moves them from
an asymmetric 16 Mbps
downstream plus 1 Mbps
upstream situation to a 75/15
Mbps connection.
In the UK, this means opting for
either BT's FTTC own-brand or
wholesale-provided service - or, if you
live in a Virgin Media cable area, the
co-axial equivalent facility, with the
advantage, if you are prepared to pay
for it, of a symmetric service of 100
Mbps or faster with the cableco.
But there are limitations to these
services. In both instances, the
connections are bandwidth shaped
(aka throttled) at peak times, and
there is also a contention ratio to deal
with. Both these limitations mean
that, at certain times, your high-speed
fibre/coaxial-enabled speedy service slows
to a crawl on certain sites plus services.
This fact was driven home at my office
recently when I migrated one of my ADSL
2+ lines to a specialist ISP, having become
tired of using consumer grade Internet
services for several months. I also moved
the other line to a business ISP, mainly
because the package allows me to make 500
minutes of calls to mobile users from my
landline.
Unfortunately, like around 2% of
premises in the UK, both my office PSTN
lines are directly connected to the local
exchange, so FTTC is not possible, as there
is no cabinet to link the fibre to.
So I'm using ADSL 2+ services, with
around a 20Mbps/1Mbps connection, which
is still very usable. When using the specialist
ISP, however, several things became
apparent. There really is no bandwidth
shaping, and minimal contention at peak
times. Put simply this translated to a near
tripling of my effective upload speeds to
Dropbox and my commercial mail service
providers. The effect is breathtaking.
Your mileage, as they say, may differ, but
it is clear to me now what mainstream ISPs
I
26 EUROMEDIA
are doing to their business and consumer
Internet connections, and I have to say you
really do get what you pay for when it comes
to FTTC and ADSL2+ broadband services.
So what can direct-connected phone line
users across the UK and Europe - like
myself - do to speed up their Internet
connectivity?
The good news is that BT, the main
incumbent telco in the UK, will start
trialling a new fibre-based technology in
London's Tech City this coming October.
Known as FTTRn - Fibre to the Remote
node - the service involves taking fibre optic
cables from the local telephone exchange
and connecting them to a small box on the
street. From there, the normal PSTN copper
wires carry the signal a relatively short
distance to a person’s home.
Steve Gold
From his base in
Sheffield, England,
Steve has been a
telecommunications
journalist for 26 years,
21 of them full-time.
E-mail him at
[email protected]
According to BT, FTTRn is capable
of delivering Internet speeds of up to
80Mbps, which is comparable to the
speeds offered by BT’s standard FTTC
service. BT says it will ask Tech City
UK, an organisation set up three years
ago by Prime Minister David Cameron
to support London’s tech start-up
community, to submit a list of 100
companies that could benefit from the
new technology.
Labour MP Meg Hillier, who
represents Hackney South and
Shoreditch, the local area in which the
Tech City science park is located,
attended a roundtable in early August
of this year to discuss the problem with
start-ups and ISPs. Ahead of the event,
she said: “As I have said to the Prime
Minister in the past month, broadband
is a national embarrassment and action
is urgently needed. In Tech City, the
much trumpeted European hub of
technology, businesses are moving out
because they simply cannot access
high-speed broadband.”
BT, for its part