fibre optic push....apart from being too expensive (especially these days)..

[#1]

re: latest email i received (copy below)

...why does my 'speed' depend on my 'phone line'  if it is fibre optic and does not use copper........ sorry to sound a bit thick on this?

thanks for any feedback;  best wishes y'all
BB




Hello.
Great news! Plusnet Fibre is available in your area!
====================================================
If you fancy living life in the fast lane, then why not get a headstart this year with fibre optic broadband from Plusnet. You could have faster broadband at your fingertips from just £16.49* a month, and if you also take one of our Home Phone products when you sign up to Plusnet Fibre, we'll install everything for you absolutely free - saving you £25.**
Instead of using the old copper connections to your exchange, our Fibre products use new fibre optic lines. This means that you could have speeds of up to 40Mb, and on average, our Plusnet Fibre customers enjoy speeds 5x faster than our copper products.^ As always, your speed is dependent on your phone line, location, home wiring and time of day, but we'll let you know how fast you can expect your fibre connection to be with a personalised estimate before you upgrade.
Upgrade to Plusnet Fibre to do a whole lot more with your Internet in 2012:

* Have the whole household online at once - on the PC, laptop and on game consoles
* Have faster upload speeds than ever before - perfect for uploading photos and videos
* Catch up on your favourite programs on HD iPlayer, rekindle friendships on Facebook and annihilate mortal enemies when gaming online, all without slowing down
When your upgrade is complete, you'll still have one monthly online bill, and one UK based customer support team on hand 24/7 if you need us.

Call us now to upgrade:

0808 100 1875

All the best,
Nick Rawlings
Commercial & Marketing Director,Plusnet

[#2]

It's fibre from the exchange to your cabinet but then copper from the cabinet to your home so speed will depend on how far you are from the cabinet.

[#3]

The original message from Plusnet should have made that clear.
People who know all about the difference between FTTC and FTTH will know why 'Plusnet Fibre' speed (in almost all cases, except for those on the FTTH trial) depends on the state of the phone line and the distance from the cabinet, but not everyone knows this and - strictly speaking - the message is promising something that's not being delivered.
Graham

[#4]

We don't want to saturate our e-mails with too much information which is why we didn't mention that.
With regards to the speed depending on your line, distance/line length is still a factor when it comes to fibre, so the same logic as to your speeds depending on your proximity to the exchange still applies.

[#5]

Distance to the exchange doesn't matter on fibre, it's distance to the cabinet that's crucial!

[#6]

I know about distance having a greater effect on copper but I've been led to believe that distance will have a much lesser and slight effect on fibre over distance.

[#7]

On true total fibre FTTH there should be no distance related speed effects.
On FTTC fibre to the cabinet, only the distance from your cabinet to your home matters.
However.....the fall off in speed as the distance increases from the cabinet (ie Mbps drop per extra meter of run) is far greater than the speed drop off under conventional adsl from the exchange.
So wheras two houses a hundred yards of so away from each other will/should have broadly the same current broadband speed, under FTTC they won't.
I recall seeing somewhere that after around 2.5Km+ from the cabinet your FTTC speeds will have detiorated to such an extent to be not worth it.
Unlike conventional ADSL where there some well publicised graphs of expected sync speed vs distance up to 6Km or so away, I do not believe there are any yet published for FTTC - other than those in the scientifc lab tests.

[#8]

zhoned produce some nice charts with 8a 17a & 30a ect  
http://www.zhone.com/solutions/docs/zti-wp-vdsl2.pdf

[#9]

Yes, indeed
The first graph on page 3 clearly shows the rapid drop off in speed with distance for FTTC(VDSL2) compared to ADSL2
These are from a USA source as the loop lengths are all in kilofeet rather than m or Km.
5000 ft is 1.52Km
The AWG letter on the x axis refers to the American Wire Guage size (ie diameter of the copper wire feeding your broadband
26AWG is 0.4mm diameter wire.

[#10]

Quote from: _Adam_Walker_

I know about distance having a greater effect on copper but I've been led to believe that distance will have a much lesser and slight effect on fibre over distance.

Good old copper vs fibre   There will always be some attenuation or degradation to signal whether that is electrical in the case of copper or optical in the case of Fibre but the losses for Fibre, especially over the relatively short distances from an exchange to local cabinet would be minimal. It's these optical links that are used to send our data across the world so any loss would be hardly noticeable compared to the nasty metallic losses experienced on copper and the connections of course. Could always upgrade to gold but dare say FTTH would be more cost effective! 

[#11]

Quote from: Force9Original

zhoned produce some nice charts with 8a 17a & 30a ect

The Zhone graphs seem to have been produced for "ideal" behaviour, without taking into account crosstalk from other subscribers.
I prefer the graphs near the end of this Ericsson paper on vectoring. It gives more realistic figures for lines with crosstalk as well as giving us a glimpse of how much better this vectoring idea gives back!

[#12]

As usual, an extremely interesting post from WWWWombat.
I one for one am grateful for the time you take to find and post this info.