BT/Openreach - a private monopoly in action

[Onoff]

5 minutes ago, willbish said:

A guy poked his head over the site hoarding today offering FTTP. This sounded interesting..

He's from a small company who have brought fibre to homes in other near by villages and is now recruiting in my area. 

Apparently just 13 more sign ups and it's a goer, well 12 now! 

Having already been around the BT/Openreach circle twice (New housing development - unable to place order - bronze matching address service Aaaaaaah ?) this is a welcome development.

There is no upfront fee, but an 18 month contract which you start paying only when you start using. It's not cheap at £47.50 a month but guaranteed 200mbs up and down at all times. 

The company is Truespeed, there may well be something similar happening in your area and a welcome alternative to the BT/ Openreach monopoly that I could tell was going to cause me a load of headache for a crappy copper drop wire!

 

 

Some worrying comments about them in FB:

 

(Not that I'm on or ever will be in FB just to note).

 

https://m.facebook.com/TrueSpeedInternetService/reviews?locale2=en_GB

 

+

 

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/01/truespeed-attempt-best-bt-200mbps-guaranteed-broadband-speed.html

[willbish]

@Onoff

 

Not sure your negative results are accurate, 

 

The FB link is to an American company which looks totally unconnected with True Speed UK

 

Second link finishes "Otherwise TrueSpeed appear to be doing an excellent job and we look forward to seeing their network expand.”

 

The writers only gripe that the guaranteed speeds are not compensated if they happen to drop below the stated figure. Seems pretty reasonable to me

Edited May 3, 2018 by willbish
Typo

[Onoff]

7 hours ago, willbish said:

@Onoff

 

Not sure your negative results are accurate, 

 

The FB link is to an American company which looks totally unconnected with True Speed UK

 

Second link finishes "Otherwise TrueSpeed appear to be doing an excellent job and we look forward to seeing their network expand.”

 

The writers only gripe that the guaranteed speeds are not compensated if they happen to drop below the stated figure. Seems pretty reasonable to me

 

Fair enough!

 

I'd still be cautious of being an early adopter of stuff. I had Cable & Wireless cable years ago and the phone would frequently be out of service. Failed one day in an emergency situation and I went back to BT.

 

Imo the guy who looked over the fence will have just been a salesman, on commission just interested in drumming up business.

[willbish]

@Onoff

Appreciate your scepticism, I guess time will tell. 

From what I can see the company already has a proven record with several villages already connected. 

The guy who popped his head over the fence, head of community engagement ? Everyone loves a flashy job title!

[Jeremy Harris]

Guess what?  My complaint seemed to work.  I've no idea at all what they did; they didn't do any work to the cabling close to the house, that's for sure, but we're now getting a fairly solid 24 Mb/s, rather than the 4 to 5 Mb/s we used to get.  I can now upload at around 10 Mb/s too, which is a heck of a difference when posting photos.

[richi]

Pretty damn good for a 1500m D-side, @JSHarris. Especially that uplink.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, richi said:

Pretty damn good for a 1500m D-side, @JSHarris. Especially that uplink.

 

That's exactly my thoughts, and I'm wondering if they've re-routed the trunk cable.  This wouldn't have been that hard to do, as at the point where the return leg of the long loop comes back into the village it was only one pole away from the outbound leg.  I did see OpenReach vans in the village a week or two ago, and I know that I wasn't the only one complaining about the low speed, so perhaps we're now on a much shorter copper loop than before.  We're about 400m from the fibre cabinet, so potentially I think the copper length may have been reduced to a bit over 400m if they have re-routed the cable.

 

There's still an ongoing enquiry as to whether we can have FTTP, and what the cost would be.  Right now there are five households on the same copper run that are interested in FTTP,  and I noticed a week or so ago that they've added another add-on cabinet the the fibre cabinet in the village.  Our hope is that FTTP will be both available and affordable, we just have to wait and see.  One thing in our favour is that there is a small industrial estate about a mile of so outside the village, on the line of the cable from the cabinet that now seems to run past us.  That may well help our case for getting a fibre strung along with the existing overhead copper, and hopefully reduce the cost for anyone who wants FTTP.