How fast & costly is your internet connection?

[py_megapixel]

I'm still on ADSL (PlusNet) - haven't switched to fibre. But the only cases I've found the connection too slow are either downloading extremely large files (operating systems, for example) or when multiple people in the house are all trying to stream a film at once - so what's the point?

Not sure what we pay as I'm not in charge of paying the bill (though I know it's a lot cheaper than fibre would be!), but the speed is I believe about 15mbps.

 

[Darandio]

I'm with Virgin Media (M200 at £50.24 as I only get broadband from them) and the problem for me is that it's either Virgin Media or it's Openreach over copper from the exchange. So I can have either M200 (I think we can get up to M500 here if I wanted to pay for it actually) or, at best, 2mbps from someone using Openreach infrastructure. Which was just about tolerable before I switched to Virgin Media in around 2017 but would be impossible to go back to now (even before the pandemic meant we were doing more stuff online!). Funnily enough when the engineer installed it he said it was quite a common set up in my area to just get VM for the broadband because people were getting fed up with Openreach not upgrading to us to FTTC (and seem to have no plans to do so seeing as they still haven't after many years of rolling out FTTC widely!).

But that does mean that I always feel in a somewhat weak bargaining position as I can't really threaten to leave them as I would very much be cutting my nose off to spite my face. Still though I don't appear to be getting rinsed as looking on the VM website my package is advertised at £50pm after the initial 18 month contracts introductory offer at £34pm.

We're on an identical package, same price and broadband only. No alternative and despite all the horror stories I keep reading about Virgin i've never had a problem with them. Never had a major outage other than 2-3 hour periods a couple of times in 14 years.

 

[75A]

We're on an identical package, same price and broadband only. No alternative and despite all the horror stories I keep reading about Virgin i've never had a problem with them. Never had a major outage other than 2-3 hour periods a couple of times in 14 years.

Just renewed, we now pay £56.62 a month to Virgin for 200mpm, Sky Sports & BT Sport, more than happy with the service.

 

[eMeS]

Are any of you getting your data via a 1982 version BT Master socket? (That's before specific provision was made for extension cables and proper termination.)

That's what I've got (and it's currently inaccessible behind a stack of heavy HiFi equipment), and the genius who installed it, ran the extension lead to my bedroom phone from a "fitter-made" junction box buried in my cavity wall - i.e. not from my BT Master Socket. So, if there is any web content on the copper wires, it's radiated away on the external-to-house wires to my bedroom extension.

(Currently, I use a "3" dongle, but it's getting less reliable and I suspect slower than it was.)

 

[Silver Cobra]

I'm currently on TalkTalk's Fibre 150 plan, paying £28 per month for an average speed of 115-120Mbps. More than enough for what I use at home (mainly watching Twitch streams and playing games online through Steam/Xbox).

 

[Energy]

I'm still on ADSL (PlusNet) - haven't switched to fibre. But the only cases I've found the connection too slow are either downloading extremely large files (operating systems, for example) or when multiple people in the house are all trying to stream a film at once - so what's the point?

Not sure what we pay as I'm not in charge of paying the bill (though I know it's a lot cheaper than fibre would be!), but the speed is I believe about 15mbps.

FTTC (35 or 72 ish mbps) is about the same price as ADSL now with BT pricing ADSL and 35mbps FTTC exactly the same. Its difficult to order now as most will not sell you it unless you can't get FTTC.

Are Virgin Media FTTH?

In some areas, yes. They are where Virgin Media have built in the last couple years and use a technology called RFoG.

One of those was that it couldn’t use its network to supply television services.

Wonder if this is why BT TV send live TV over freeview...

We're on an identical package, same price and broadband only. No alternative and despite all the horror stories I keep reading about Virgin i've never had a problem with them. Never had a major outage other than 2-3 hour periods a couple of times in 14 years.

I'm with VM and have had no problems. Remember that few people say online if they get great service but most say if they get bad service. Most ISPs have horror stories.

 

[JamesT]

FTTC (35 or 72 ish mbps) is about the same price as ADSL now with BT pricing ADSL and 35mbps FTTC exactly the same. Its difficult to order now as most will not sell you it unless you can't get FTTC.

BT were aiming to turn off the legacy phone network and ADSL in 2025, though the pandemic may have pushed that back. Soon Openreach will stop activating new ADSL connections and there will be a general push to migrate to a newer technology. Though some ISPs might still sell a VDSL connection that's throttled back to ADSL speeds to provide a cheaper tier.

Wonder if this is why BT TV send live TV over freeview...

The restrictions on BT operating in the TV market were removed quite some time ago. But they were in place in the late 80s/early 90s when there was this opportunity to jump directly from dialup to full-fibre. The BT Sport package I had when I was a Plusnet customer was definitely streamed rather Freeview.

 

[py_megapixel]

BT were aiming to turn off the legacy phone network and ADSL in 2025, though the pandemic may have pushed that back. Soon Openreach will stop activating new ADSL connections and there will be a general push to migrate to a newer technology. Though some ISPs might still sell a VDSL connection that's throttled back to ADSL speeds to provide a cheaper tier.

I hadn't previously been aware of that.

I do have a couple of older relatives who insist on not using mobile phones - if the telephone network is switched off will they still have access to something which behaves like a "landline" (even if it's using a different underlying set of protocols?)

 

[RuralRambler]

I get close to 300mbps with virgin cable broadband which I had installed a year ago. Before then we went through a succession of other providers via the BT/Openreach network, but it was hopeless with whoever we went with, whether BT, Sky, TalkTalk (can't remember the others). The good thing about BT was that you could do the fault check/fault report online which meant I didn't have to suffer the call centres of Sky etc to report faults and with BT, faults seem to be repaired quicker. Our problem is it's a 70's housing estate with underground BT copper wires. Every BT/Openreach engineer has said the same - the wiring is knackered, but they have no plans to replace it as it means digging up the streets and driveways. Before we got Virgin, we would be reporting a fault every month or so when we either lost the landline/broadband completely, or there was crackling on the line, or we had constant broadband connection drops. The best speed we ever got was about 2mbps. We waited at first because BT were promising FTTC which we waited for, but it barely improved things. The problems are between the cabinet at the houses. It was a big relief when Virgin came onto the estate to dig up the roads and install their cabling. I didn't even wait for the end of the existing BT broadband contract - I signed up for Virgin and accepted paying for two broadband contracts for a short period of time just to get rid of the BT/Openreach broadband. I've never had a single dropped or slow connection in the year we've had Virgin. Cost was £39 for first year and it's now gone up to £59. But we have no choice. It's pay that or suffer a poor BT/Openreach wiring infrastructure.

 

[JamesT]

I hadn't previously been aware of that.

I do have a couple of older relatives who insist on not using mobile phones - if the telephone network is switched off will they still have access to something which behaves like a "landline" (even if it's using a different underlying set of protocols?)

I would expect providers to start offering VOIP as a replacement for analogue phonelines. You can already get broadband routers with phone ports that allow you to plug in an analogue phone to use with a VOIP service. The change they're going to have to make is have this all wrapped up as a service, so it's all preconfigured so you receive your router, plug the phone in and it all works with the correct number.

 

[Dai Corner]

Post Office Broadband.

£23 a month for a 35-50 Mb/s service minus a negotiated £50 bill credit making it about £19 a month average over the 12 month contract. No calls included as I make all chargeable ones on my mobile.

The negotiation came after they tried to put up the price to £37.

Virgin Media offered 100 Mb/s for £28 a month but why pay nearly ten quid a month for additional bandwidth I don't need? I can stream three different HD videos at the same with no buffering as it is.

I would expect providers to start offering VOIP as a replacement for analogue phonelines. You can already get broadband routers with phone ports that allow you to plug in an analogue phone to use with a VOIP service. The change they're going to have to make is have this all wrapped up as a service, so it's all preconfigured so you receive your router, plug the phone in and it all works with the correct number.

Will they have a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) built in so they still work during a power cut? Or will I have to source and install one for my mother who is nervous of being without a phone?

 

[WelshBluebird]

BT were aiming to turn off the legacy phone network and ADSL in 2025, though the pandemic may have pushed that back. Soon Openreach will stop activating new ADSL connections and there will be a general push to migrate to a newer technology. Though some ISPs might still sell a VDSL connection that's throttled back to ADSL speeds to provide a cheaper tier.

How on earth are they going to do that when there's still a load of people who can't get anything better than ADSL?

 

[Geezertronic]

Post Office Broadband.

Post Office Broadband are exiting the broadband market and are in the process of selling their broadband market share to Shell Energy, you should have had a notification by post/email. Not sure what that means to customers, I presume no change apart from a re-brand

Post Office - Helping You Get Life's Important Things Done

Find great deals on travel insurance, travel money, car insurance, savings accounts, financial services and more here at Post Office.

www.postoffice.co.uk

 

[JamesT]

Will they have a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) built in so they still work during a power cut? Or will I have to source and install one for my mother who is nervous of being without a phone?

I'd be surprised if there was a UPS built-in. But the type that look like a very fat multi-gang socket can be found relatively inexpensively. I assume that the stuff in the roadside cabinet has some sort of power protection, otherwise a UPS in your house won't help much for a power cut in the area.

How on earth are they going to do that when there's still a load of people who can't get anything better than ADSL?

They're going to have to finish rolling out FTTC or better to the rest of the country. But there are many exchanges sitting in prime spaces in towns and cities. If BT can push out the majority of the kit required to roadside cabinets, that's a lot of valuable space that can be made available.

 

[Dai Corner]

Post Office Broadband are exiting the broadband market and are in the process of selling their broadband market share to Shell Energy, you should have had a notification by post/email. Not sure what that means to customers, I presume no change apart from a re-brand

Post Office - Helping You Get Life's Important Things Done

Find great deals on travel insurance, travel money, car insurance, savings accounts, financial services and more here at Post Office.

www.postoffice.co.uk

Indeed. It was after that notification that I had another one saying my monthly charge would be going up to £37 from April and I rang PO Broadband and negotiated my current deal. The lady I spoke to denied any knowledge of the sale to Shell Energy!

I'd be surprised if there was a UPS built-in. But the type that look like a very fat multi-gang socket can be found relatively inexpensively. I assume that the stuff in the roadside cabinet has some sort of power protection, otherwise a UPS in your house won't help much for a power cut in the area.

I'd assumed there would be no active equipment in the cabinets and there'd be one length of fibre from each premises right back to the exchange, but I may be completely wrong!

 

[StKeverne1497]

Ours is more expensive because it's our only Virgin Media service, our TV package is from a different provider (for now).

We could do with faster internet for when my eldest daughter starts secondary school in September, so I'll give Virgin Media a ring at some point and see what deals they can do for a combined M200 broadband and television package.

Late to the party (and I haven't finished reading the thread yet), but curious why you think your current 100Mbps connection will be inadequate with a child starting secondary.

We managed through home schooling last year with three children online (one MS Teams, two Google Classroom, all secondary), occasionally an adult working from home (VPN), online piano (Zoom), harp (Zoom), ballet (Google), church (Google), Signal calls to family, Teams calls with friends, all while also being able to keep up with news websites, occasional social media and running our own mail server on the end of an ADSL2 line (sync about 8Mbps/1Mbps, throughput around 7/1). We made two concessions. Firstly, there was no TV streaming during "working hours" (but we have a radio, an aerial for the TV and I am a demon with get_iplayer), secondly I fitted a 4G modem stick to our router as a backup and peak-balancer with a very cheap connection package, but looking at the logs this only came on very occasionally and I didn't see as much as 1GB used per month by this route.

It's the uplink speed that's the bottleneck for that sort of use, and fortunately the schools were happy to have cameras off most of the time.

People are being sold the idea that they "need" faster internet, but in reality most people would get by quite well with 10Mbps down, though something a little faster than 1Mbps up would definitely help in these days of video calls.

The caveats I'd note are:

• 4k streaming TV needs around 25Mbps (according to Netflix) (so 100Mbps could support up to 4 simultaneous streams). Note that HD streaming rarely needs more than 5Mbps
• gaming does require a fair bit (we don't do online gaming), but is far more sensitive to latency, jitter and packet loss than raw speed so a solid 10Mbps with no contention and a good ISP might actually be better for some types of games than 36Mbps or more with a poor ISP. Also, wired is always better than wireless (that is, the network in your house)
• from my own perspective, I do some downloading of large files, so faster is always better, but the alternative is patience - or leaving the thing to download overnight

The upshot is that our home internet costs (above the cost of running a landline, which we'd not be without) a grand total of about £15 per month (ADSL + 4G, varies a little according to actual use of the 4G) and I'm struggling to justify more-than-doubling that to upgrade to a 40/10 FTTC service, especially now that the children are back in school.

M.

 

[JamesT]

I'd assumed there would be no active equipment in the cabinets and there'd be one length of fibre from each premises right back to the exchange, but I may be completely wrong!

That's probably the case where it is indeed fibre to the home.
But that's currently a minority of installations, most people are on fibre to the cabinet (aka VDSL or BT Infinity) where it's twisted pair copper to the cabinet which contains a DSLAM which takes multiple connections and multiplexes them onto fibre. That's active equipment that needs powering.

Maybe at some point there will be a push to fibre every home. But that will take years as you're going to need an engineer to visit every house to pull the fibre. If BT are going to turn off their legacy network, getting cabinets out there for FTTC seems the only way they'll get it done by 2025.

 

[eMeS]

Late yesterday evening, 20 June, my internet connection was dire - frequent drop-outs, "re-connecting in 45secs" messages etc.. Probably the worst I've experienced. Eventually I tried a reboot, and no connection was offered, so time for bed. I fully expected that this morning, I'd have to feed it some money, but everything was back to normal.

I'm glad I still have a proper phone for calling 111 / 999 etc.

 

[StKeverne1497]

[...]

I'd assumed there would be no active equipment in the cabinets and there'd be one length of fibre from each premises right back to the exchange, but I may be completely wrong!

With Fibre to the Cabinet your existing exchange line isn't changed at all - you have copper back to the cabinet and from there back to the exchange. This means that if there's a power cut your landline phone continues to work using the exchange batteries / generator just as it has always done.

With ADSL, the "digital" signal is added at the exchange, and travels up the same bit of copper, suffering losses on the way because those cables were never meant to carry more than a couple of kHz of speech. With FTTC, the digital equipment is taken out of the exchange and placed in a new cabinet next to the existing one (in most cases) and new fibre is run back from that new cabinet to connect to "the internet" at the exchange. The digital signal is added at the cabinet, has less far to travel to get to your house and so the signal suffers fewer losses. This is a problem if you have a "direct exchange line" - where there is no cabinet between you and the exchange, meaning some people have had poor ADSL due to long wires back to the exchange and cannot get FTTC at all due to no en-route cabinet.

Where FTTC cabinets are installed, most (possibly all?) have local batteries, and speaking to an Openreach engineer a couple of years ago, these are hot-swappable so in theory if there is an extended power cut which just affects a few local cabinets, engineers could do the rounds replacing the batteries in order to keep your internet running. But it's worth reiterating that the landline runs from the central battery; even if the internet dies, the phoneline shouldn't. Then again, do you have a UPS on your own kit in the house? If there's a power cut, does your modem stop working and your WiFi go off? Do you have only cordless phones and is their base station on a battery backup?

Fibre direct to the home is better again for the data and you are right, in general I believe the whole thing is "passive" though you don't actually get one length of fibre from your house to the exchange, instead the fibre from the exchange is fed through a passive splitter and the outputs of that feed several houses.

Unlike Copper, you can't carry power up a bit of fibre so you need to have a local battery in the house as a power cut will take out both the internet and the telephone. Up until last year, all Openreach fibre terminations came with a small battery pack - consisting of rechargeable AA batteries - which was intended to keep the internet connection and any directly-attached telephone running for about an hour in the event of a power cut. Apparently this is no longer the case. It was always a bit of a problem because the batteries became the subscriber's responsibility, and as anyone who uses them knows, NiMH batteries don't last for ever, so it's entirely possible that people with older installations think they are battery-backed, but in reality have batteries at the ends of their lives.

Whether this is a problem in reality is another discussion. The advantage of using 999 via a landline is that the operator can see exactly where you are calling from, something that isn't possible with a mobile call or (I believe) with VoIP. But at least if you have a mobile - and it's charged - you do have an alternative communication method (assuming your MNO's mast hasn't also suffered a power cut!). Certainly beats running down to the end of the street and using the (now removed) phonebox.

M.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

I have BT fibre to the home (900mbps) and it does have a battery pack in the casing- but some of my neighbours have the same package and don’t have the back up supply. When they queried it, the backup power supply was only provided until their stocks ran out; and a decision was made that future installs would be without it. As a result they have the same case, but with a void where the power pack sits.

 

[ainsworth74]

Do you have only cordless phones and is their base station on a battery backup?

Nah we just have an ancient corded phone that lives in the cupboard under the stairs and is pulled out and plugged once every few years when there's a power cut

 

[westv]

I've noticed that my ISP has suddenly decided to change the pricing on my contract to be an annual increase of CPI + 3.95%. Can they do this on existing contracts?

 

[JamesT]

I've noticed that my ISP has suddenly decided to change the pricing on my contract to be an annual increase of CPI + 3.95%. Can they do this on existing contracts?

If you're mid-contract and they pull a change like that, then Ofcom's rules https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/price-rises-fixed-contracts allow you to withdraw from your contract with no penalty.
Though increasingly ISPs are adding clauses to their new contracts that include rises with inflation, so you'd be agreeing to such a rise from the start.

 

[lkpridgeon]

£45/month + £12 line rental (ex VAT) for Business class broadband with iNet Telecoms with no commitment (month rolling). 16 Static IP's, 60Mbps down, 20Mbps up and a Service Level agreement.

Can't fault them they're support has been excellent (UK based and actually know what they're on about) and they call me when they've messaged/called me when they're noticing connection issues their end. So worth the extra money.

 

[py_megapixel]

£45/month + £12 line rental (ex VAT) for Business class broadband with iNet Telecoms with no commitment (month rolling). 16 Static IP's, 60Mbps down, 20Mbps up and a Service Level agreement.

Is this a home scenario? If so what use do you have for access to 16 static IPs?

 

[lkpridgeon]

Is this a home scenario? If so what use do you have for access to 16 static IPs?

Yes it was purchased for home use in mind as when I originally took it up my business had it's own office that I went to. However it has since moved to the upstairs of my house.

1x For the open wifi network (I don't give any house visitors business or personal access to the main network)
1x VPN
1x Home Media Server
3x vLAN (soon to have a 4th)
1 of the vLANS I'm working on having every device in it assigned a public IP as they're all wired (8 devices)

The separate IP for guest wifi is a must in case someone pirates something and I get sent a notice! VPN and Home media server ones mean I don't need to worry about ports. And the 1 for each vLAN is purely because I can.

Barring the one for the VPN the rest are purely for personal home use/fun.

At one point I automatically assigned every device a subdomain and had a reverse proxy setup for routing purposes just for fun.

 

[Energy]

I have BT fibre to the home (900mbps) and it does have a battery pack in the casing- but some of my neighbours have the same package and don’t have the back up supply. When they queried it, the backup power supply was only provided until their stocks ran out; and a decision was made that future installs would be without it. As a result they have the same case, but with a void where the power pack sits.

I'd be surprised if there was a UPS built-in.

Until fairly recent Openreach provided a battery backup to each home, although this was only for the landline and I believe it doesn't let you use the internet (ignoring the internet for the built in VOIP adapter). Ofcom changed the rules so they aren't required to provide one. You can still request them, if you tell them that your household is vulnerable in some way then either Openreach or your ISP will provide you one but they do not come provided by default anymore.

Fibre direct to the home is better again for the data and you are right, in general I believe the whole thing is "passive" though you don't actually get one length of fibre from your house to the exchange, instead the fibre from the exchange is fed through a passive splitter and the outputs of that feed several houses.

Correct. Not all fibre systems are passive, Active Optical Networks are a thing but are more expensive and having to power cabinets isn't ideal so are much more rare and I don't think any are in the UK (pedantic note, BT don't use cabinets (bar remote OLTs which are very rare) for FTTP, all big splitters are underground and the CBTs (fancy splitter) are either ontop of a pole or underground). All networks are a little different though, a few Virgin RFoG cabinets have powered equipment (only the massive ones) and some networks in the rest of the world have direct fibre lines to the exchange (like in Utah).

or (I believe) with VoIP.

Nope, it appears like a standard landline number, the backend of landlines has been VOIP for ages.

most (possibly all?)

I assume that the stuff in the roadside cabinet has some sort of power protection, otherwise a UPS in your house won't help much for a power cut in the area.

If it has powered equipment it has battery backups. You can also plug in a diesel generator to the Openreach ones.

Maybe at some point there will be a push to fibre every home. But that will take years as you're going to need an engineer to visit every house to pull the fibre. If BT are going to turn off their legacy network, getting cabinets out there for FTTC seems the only way they'll get it done by 2025.

BT are currently trying to get most homes FTTP, the ones which aren't will use SOGEA which is still VOIP.

They're going to have to finish rolling out FTTC or better to the rest of the country. But there are many exchanges sitting in prime spaces in towns and cities. If BT can push out the majority of the kit required to roadside cabinets, that's a lot of valuable space that can be made available.

Most exchanges are now largely empty space, FTTC and FTTP have fairly similar equipment in the exchanges.

How on earth are they going to do that when there's still a load of people who can't get anything better than ADSL?

2025 is still a few years away, FTTC is getting rolled out to some areas although the focus is FTTP. With Openreach deploying it more (and government and local authority subsidies in rural areas) the price has come down and it makes more sense in some areas due to not requiring active (powered) equipment. FTTP can also be quite far from the exchange.

BT were aiming to turn off the legacy phone network and ADSL in 2025, though the pandemic may have pushed that back. Soon Openreach will stop activating new ADSL connections and there will be a general push to migrate to a newer technology. Though some ISPs might still sell a VDSL connection that's throttled back to ADSL speeds to provide a cheaper tier.

I haven't heard of the ADSL turn off to be honest, any FTTP/FTTC areas will probably have ADSL decommissioned by then but I'm not aware of anything more. VDSL throttled is rather pointless, the extra 25mbps costs the ISP barely anything.

 

[507021]

Late to the party (and I haven't finished reading the thread yet), but curious why you think your current 100Mbps connection will be inadequate with a child starting secondary.

We managed through home schooling last year with three children online (one MS Teams, two Google Classroom, all secondary), occasionally an adult working from home (VPN), online piano (Zoom), harp (Zoom), ballet (Google), church (Google), Signal calls to family, Teams calls with friends, all while also being able to keep up with news websites, occasional social media and running our own mail server on the end of an ADSL2 line (sync about 8Mbps/1Mbps, throughput around 7/1). We made two concessions. Firstly, there was no TV streaming during "working hours" (but we have a radio, an aerial for the TV and I am a demon with get_iplayer), secondly I fitted a 4G modem stick to our router as a backup and peak-balancer with a very cheap connection package, but looking at the logs this only came on very occasionally and I didn't see as much as 1GB used per month by this route.

It's the uplink speed that's the bottleneck for that sort of use, and fortunately the schools were happy to have cameras off most of the time.

People are being sold the idea that they "need" faster internet, but in reality most people would get by quite well with 10Mbps down, though something a little faster than 1Mbps up would definitely help in these days of video calls.

The caveats I'd note are:

• 4k streaming TV needs around 25Mbps (according to Netflix) (so 100Mbps could support up to 4 simultaneous streams). Note that HD streaming rarely needs more than 5Mbps
• gaming does require a fair bit (we don't do online gaming), but is far more sensitive to latency, jitter and packet loss than raw speed so a solid 10Mbps with no contention and a good ISP might actually be better for some types of games than 36Mbps or more with a poor ISP. Also, wired is always better than wireless (that is, the network in your house)
• from my own perspective, I do some downloading of large files, so faster is always better, but the alternative is patience - or leaving the thing to download overnight

The upshot is that our home internet costs (above the cost of running a landline, which we'd not be without) a grand total of about £15 per month (ADSL + 4G, varies a little according to actual use of the 4G) and I'm struggling to justify more-than-doubling that to upgrade to a 40/10 FTTC service, especially now that the children are back in school.

M.

We have a very large family so it's not uncommon for there to be five or six devices of various types connected at the same time. My partner also works from home and we do a lot of streaming on Spotify and Netflix, often on more than one device at once. My PlayStation 4 sees very little use simply because I don't have a great amount of time to use it, so whenever I do use it there are often large update files which can take quite a lot of hours to download.

There are times, such as early evenings and weekends, where our internet feels slow, so I'm guessing we're at the limit of what 100Mbps can provide.

 

[JamesT]

I haven't heard of the ADSL turn off to be honest, any FTTP/FTTC areas will probably have ADSL decommissioned by then but I'm not aware of anything more. VDSL throttled is rather pointless, the extra 25mbps costs the ISP barely anything.

I can’t find a nice Openreach document that explicitly says it, but https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/product-withdrawal/stop-sells-updates talks of the analogue network and products that rely on it. Various sites talk of ADSL being such a product. If the copper line from the exchange isn’t available, there’s nothing for the ADSL to run on.

I’m sure the ISP cost difference is minimal. But in terms of marketing, the differentiation could be important. There’s a large number of people that haven’t shifted from ADSL, presumably because they don’t want to pay more. A throttled VDSL might be important to gain market share from those who begrudge paying a few more pounds per month. Then of course there’s the upselling opportunities with merely a confit change.

 

[Energy]

I can’t find a nice Openreach document that explicitly says it, but https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/product-withdrawal/stop-sells-updates talks of the analogue network and products that rely on it. Various sites talk of ADSL being such a product. If the copper line from the exchange isn’t available, there’s nothing for the ADSL to run on.

Most (95+%) of the UK is FTTC or FTTP anyway, the ones listed in the trial are FTTP areas. By 2025 they will have to upgrade the remaining 5% or keep the ADSL running. Currently Openreach have a target of at least 10mbps for each house, this will also get rid of a lot of ADSL lines.

I’m sure the ISP cost difference is minimal. But in terms of marketing, the differentiation could be important. There’s a large number of people that haven’t shifted from ADSL, presumably because they don’t want to pay more. A throttled VDSL might be important to gain market share from those who begrudge paying a few more pounds per month. Then of course there’s the upselling opportunities with merely a confit change.

Pricing isn't really a concern, ISPs price ADSL and FTTC the same, those who can get FTTC and stick with ADSL are people who haven't been bothered to upgrade and will be paying costly out of contract charges so switching to FTTC will be cheaper for them.