Advice, please

Steve Thackery wrote:

See my post of yesterday. There is no problem running fibre from exchanges
to homes with only passive joints. PONs (see previous post) were first
trialled by BT back in the mid-'90s.

The issue isn't loss, it's the cost of providing a fibre tail to every
domestic end-point. Hence the compromise of providing fibre to the
cabinet, and pushing DSL over the remaining (and hence considerably
shorter) copper tails.

BT have just equipped our town for FTTC. All been rather controversial because
only about 50% of the street cabinets have had the FTTC upgrade, and, you've
guessed it, those are generally the same streets that Virgin (ex NTL, ex
Telecential) already serve with their 'cable'.

There are thousands of homes (half the town's population) that have BT local
loop line lengths exceeding 5km, some homes are at 9km, but of course not one
of them will be served by BT's FTTC, and not one of them are served by Virgin.
(Far too expensive)

My street cab, has had an FTTC upgrade, however I'm about as far as you can
get from one, as the crow flies it's about 1km away. My line did briefly
appear as being FTTC served on BT's ADSL checker, I was shown as having a line
that could provide 9 Mb/s (max if you live next door to an FTTC cab is 40
Mb/s), but that's now dropped off the checker, so I can't order the service.
I was told if your predicted speed is less than 12 Mb/s then that's what
happens. My present ADSL speed (using ADSL2+) is 3 Mb/s. Call me old fashioned
but isn't 9 Mb/s three times faster than 3 Mb/s and therefore a worthwhile
improvement ? Oh, and Virgin don't cover my street. It's all quite enough to
make you want to go and live in South Korea !

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...

BT have just equipped our town for FTTC. All been rather controversial
because only about 50% of the street cabinets have had the FTTC upgrade,
and, you've guessed it, those are generally the same streets that Virgin
(ex NTL, ex Telecential) already serve with their 'cable'.

This is the crazy part about it. The cable companies naturally cabled up
only those areas they identified as having the best revenue/investment
ratio. I'm sure that was a decision their shareholders supported.

BT, on the other hand, has a Universal Service Obligation (USO) on
telephony, so has had to run copper everywhere (ignoring some rare
exceptions in remote parts of Scotland).

However, BT has no USO in its licence for broadband, and so it will - and
must, as far as the shareholders are concerned - maximise its
revenue/investment ratio. Which obviously leads them to target those very
same geographical areas already identified by the cable companies. From the
end users' point of view, it looks absurd.

Maybe this situation will improve in due course as the government
legislates, or alters BT's licence.

I was told if your predicted speed is less than 12 Mb/s then that's what
happens.

Your example of running at 3 - 9Mb/s is a great illustration of how this
policy has some silly side effects. I do wonder if all this is anticipating
some sort of new rule coming along to get rid of the "up to..." broadband
speed claims, and replace them with an "at least....." claim, which would
make more sense to customers. (The "up to..." makes perfect sense to
techies like us, of course, who understand about ADSL).

Maybe they want to pitch a new broadband product with an "at least....."
clause, the "at least" being set at 12Mb/s (and with a premium price, of
course). Thus you would drop out of that.

Mind you, I must emphasise that the above two paragraphs are pure
speculation - I'm no longer in the loop, so to speak.

SteveT

On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:07:55 +0100, "Steve Thackery"
wrote:


"Petert" wrote in message
.. .

It's not really! - BT did provide a partially overhead route for an
admittedly trunk route in West Wales in the 1980's, but I agree with
you that overhead fibre to the home is a long way off.

Tree damage is, and has been, a perennial problem for any kind of overhead
cable route, whether fibre or cable. Ditto damage from high vehicles.

Anyway, I only mention it out of interest - of course BT has a lot of
experience with overhead routes, but many people on this newsgroup might not
be aware of such things.

I just had a flashback then to the days when telephone poles carried
huge numbers of separate cables, each mounted on ceramic insulators.

And sang in the wind.

In message , Albert Ross
writes
On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:07:55 +0100, "Steve Thackery"
wrote:


"Petert" wrote in message
. ..

It's not really! - BT did provide a partially overhead route for an
admittedly trunk route in West Wales in the 1980's, but I agree with
you that overhead fibre to the home is a long way off.

Tree damage is, and has been, a perennial problem for any kind of overhead
cable route, whether fibre or cable. Ditto damage from high vehicles.

Anyway, I only mention it out of interest - of course BT has a lot of
experience with overhead routes, but many people on this newsgroup might not
be aware of such things.

I just had a flashback then to the days when telephone poles carried
huge numbers of separate cables, each mounted on ceramic insulators.

And sang in the wind.

Sometimes with corks on the wires, so that the birds could see them. [I
think.]
--
Ian

I just had a flashback then to the days when telephone poles carried
huge numbers of separate cables, each mounted on ceramic insulators.

And sang in the wind.

Sometimes with corks on the wires, so that the birds could see them. [I
think.]

And open wires - with our without corks - would get into a terrible tangle
sometimes and it could take ages to untangle them. We used to loop a rope
between the wires at one end, climb down the pole, and then walk along the
line of route with the two ends of the rope, pulling it and "jiggling" it,
unwrapping the wires as we proceeded. Always exciting on a busy road.

I remember once we must have spent half an hour farting about trying to
untangle them without success. So in time-honoured Post Office fashion we
retired to the local tea shop to "think" about it. Whilst we were sitting
there, we heard the unmistakeable "twang p'doinnngggg" sound of the wires
untangling themselves entirely without assistance from us.

This confirmed our view that we should spend more time in the tea shop
"thinking", in future.

SteveT

On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 18:37:31 +0100, Steve Thackery wrote:

And open wires - with our without corks - would get into a terrible
tangle sometimes and it could take ages to untangle them.

Did you drive around in one of these classic mini-vans?

http://www.lightstraw.co.UK/ate/tec/pot/morris7.html

On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:50:22 +0200, J G Miller wrote:

Did you drive around in one of these classic mini-vans?

That's not a mini van that's a Morris Minor van. The mini van, my first
new car bought in 1961, was a van based on the Mini.

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
Twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, overlooking Lochs Long and Goil in Argyll, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.co.uk/weather

"J G Miller" wrote in message ...

Did you drive around in one of these classic mini-vans?

http://www.lightstraw.co.UK/ate/tec/pot/morris7.html

Do you mind! I'm not that old!!

Seriously, I joined the PO in 1973 aged 16, and our fleet in the Matlock
area did indeed include one of those Morris Minor vans. However, they were
in PO yellow by then. The green ones had long gone.

Most of the vans were those little Bedford things, which were really just a
van version of the Vauxhall Viva. They had seriously detuned engines but
the best gearbox I've ever used.

One day my Viva van broke down. The mechanic came out, and after some time
he'd removed the rocker box and carburettor (I've no idea why). He then
asked me to turn the engine over with the key while he watched something.

The petrol pipe to the carburettor was metal, and rose upwards from the pump
and had a right angle bend at the top, so it pointed roughly towards the
carburettor (which, as you recall, had been removed).

I did as asked, and as the engine turned petrol started squirting out of the
fuel pipe all over the engine, and in particular filled up the now-exposed
upper part of the cylinder head (you know, with the valves and rockers in
it). And then some went into into the inlet manifold and the engine
promptly "spat back". The spit-back ignited all the petrol and immediately
the engine was engulfed in flames.

The mechanic shouted "****IN' HELL IT'S UP!!" and legged it out of the car
park!

And here is something I won't forget. I got the BCF fire extinguisher from
inside the van, and as I'd never used one before I took a rough "aiming"
shot to see where the liquid/gas went. And just like that the entire fire
was extinguished. I hadn't even used it "in anger", merely that brief
second or two to see how it worked.

BCF was a totally brilliant extinguisher for vehicle fires (is it banned
now?).

Anyway, the mechanic crept back and we looked at the damage (which was
surprisingly light). But I was fascinated to see the mixture of petrol and
oil in the top of the cylinder head boiling - like a frying pan.

Of course the van disappeared back to the main workshop at Derby, and I got
a replacement.

SteveT

"Alan White" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:50:22 +0200, J G Miller wrote:

Did you drive around in one of these classic mini-vans?

That's not a mini van that's a Morris Minor van. The mini van, my first
new car bought in 1961, was a van based on the Mini.



IIRC there was no purchase tax on a van, putting in side windows, along with
rear seats was also popular, however I vaguely remember that you then had to
pay some kind of conversion tax?

On Apr 24, 9:04*pm, "Ivan" wrote:
"Alan White" wrote in message

...

On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:50:22 +0200, J G Miller wrote:

Did you drive around in one of these classic mini-vans?

That's not a mini van that's a Morris Minor van. The mini van, my first
new car bought in 1961, was a van based on the Mini.

IIRC there was no purchase tax on a van, putting in side windows, along with
rear seats was also popular, however I vaguely remember that you then had to
pay some kind of conversion tax?

Yes, I fitted an aerial at a Customs and Excise office and a week
later I got a letter from them because they'd seen the windows. At
first they demanded 8% of the (brand new) van's value, but when my
accountant looked at it he was able to get the demand reduced to £76
on the grounds that the van was second hand (or something!).

Bill