Fibre Optic Broadband

[Victor]

I am with BT and shortly upgrading to BT Infinity broadband. If this super fast broadband uses fibre optics, will my existing phone line(normal cables) need to be upgraded (I forgot to ask the question when BT rang me).

[P J]

I am with BT and shortly upgrading to BT Infinity broadband. If this super fast broadband uses fibre optics, will my existing phone line(normal cables) need to be upgraded (I forgot to ask the question when BT rang me).

You'll be fine Victor.

[Dizzy]

Victor....Do you mean your phone line for ringing people on with your phone or the phone line which your internet connection comes through (which obviously is the same phone line at the moment)

[Victor]

Obviously, the one line is for the telephone and the internet. What I don't understand is the fible optic element. The line to my home is standard wires so what part of the communication network is fibre optics?

[P J]

all comms can be carried over fibres Victor, voice and data. Don't worry it will all be sorted for you.

[Dizzy]

I've got no idea but I understand you now ....

 

We are with Virgin and they use fibre optic cable too.

 

Their cable comes in from the road, under the garden, through a hole in the wall that they drilled and into their little box which then splits between the TV and the seperate modem for broadband. We then have a cable running from the modem under the carpet to our computer in the other room as we are hard wired as its a better and more stable connection and faster that way.

 

Only our virgin phone line uses the old BT phone line.

 

Probably not much help to you there sorry unless you want to switch to virgin

[Dizzy]

sorry I didn't see PJ's ealier post and having just looked yes it can come down your phone line just as he said Sorry both

 

You'll get a free wireless hub too Victor apparently

[fugtifino]

Only our virgin phone line uses the old BT phone line.

 

You sure, Diz? Just sounds odd, ours doesn't.

[Bazj]

You will be getting nice shiny new fibre optic cables run into the existing ducts alongside the roads and outside your houses.....(probably not in Bloody Westbrook or Callands though!!)

 

The old copper infrastructure belongs to BT but they have to let the other companies; Virgin, Talk Talk etc. use that infrastructure to provide domestic and business land lines. They often do this cheaper than BT because that was the way the competition laws dictated when the markets were opened to all.

 

If you swap your phone or standard broadband from BT to another company, that other company does not pull a new wire all the way from a different exchange to your house; what happens is that in every exchange, Virgin, Talk Talk etc. have their own set of equipment. If you swap, a BT engineer goes to your local exchange and disconnects your number or cable from BT equipment. He then hands the cable over to the Virgin engineer who connects it to his equipment. Job done and that is why you can usually keep your same number!

 

If you then change again, the same process happens again. It is all done at the exchange so the actual noise and talky stuff all goes down the "BT" cable into your house. They may swap your internal phone socket so it doesn't say "BT" on it anymore but that is about all!

[Dizzy]

Only our virgin phone line uses the old BT phone line.

 

You sure, Diz? Just sounds odd, ours doesn't.

 

What does yours use then?

 

I meant ours still physically uses the same phone wire that comes from the telegraph pole to the back of our house but they did change/tweak the main BT phone socket in the house like Baz said.

 

Anyway however it works it doesn't come through the same cable as our tv or broadband which comes in from the front. It is handy really as on the odd occasion that the phone line has goes down our tv and internet have still worked.

[Peter T]

Are you with BT or Virgin or "both"?

My Virgin comes via cable and gives me phone,TV and Broadband.

[Dizzy]

I'm only with Virgin (and have been through the days of Cable and Wireless and NTL)

 

Ah now there's a thought.. maybe they do the phone connections differently now

 

So where does your virgin phone plug in Peter ?

[Dizzy]

Sorry Victor... I seem to have hijacked your original question

 

Here's how BT will do your's

 

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=29023

[fugtifino]

What does yours use then?

 

The cable to the phone comes from the same junction box as the broadband cable.

[Peter T]

I'm only with Virgin (and have been through the days of Cable and Wireless and NTL)

 

Ah now there's a thought.. maybe they do the phone connections differently now

 

So where does your virgin phone plug in Peter ?

 

Lol. I had to go and have a look.

 

Cable comes through the wall and splits into two boxes. One for the phone line cable. The other one has splitter that goes to the TV box and and one to the broadband.

BT used to come through the back of the house.

[inky pete]

BT Infinity only uses fibre optic as far as the distribution box (the green metal box at the end of the road).

 

From there on it uses the existing copper wiring into individual homes.

[Dizzy]

Wouldn't that then slow the super fast signal down ?

[Evil Sid]

yep and the further from the box you are the more it slows down which is why all the adverts say "up to" before stated amount.

[inky pete]

It does in theory, compared to what a pure fibre optic could deliver - but even when Virgin dig up all the roads to lay their own fibre they still use copper for the final connection to the house. Then, of course, the cable from your broadband router to your computer is copper too.

 

I've just swapped from normal broadband (which was giving me around 5 Meg on an "up to 8 Meg" package) to BT Infinity "up to 30 Meg" which seems to be giving me around 18-20 Meg pretty consistently (to be fair, they did say I could expect around 22 Meg based on my distant from the exchange etc.)

[Lt Kije]

I use virgin at work, 50meg no copper wire anywhere.

[Dizzy]

I'm geting just short of 10 meg through my virgin fibre optic cable and I pay for 10 meg. From the box it does go down an ethernet cable to my pc as I've hardwired it (which I resume has copper wires in it). It's fast enough for me although upload speed is only 1 meg so thats annoying at times when I use photobucket for my pics unless I reduce them in size

 

Think we are being ripped of though as we are forking out nealy ?90 a month for virgin services and we had to buy our own router

 

Anyway having read the other posts and now identified that virgins phone lines are now obviously connected via their cable boxes rather than via what we have (ie the old BT line) at least I have an excuse to say to my other half when he moans that I've been on the phone too long .... I'll just explain about the types of cabling and say it's because ours is old and coming through a BT wire and therefore very slow (He will fall for it as he doesn't understand anything computer or internet based)

 

Anyway Victor... why on earth do you want super fast broadband anyway as you are quite slow yourself aren't you

[inky pete]

I use virgin at work, 50meg no copper wire anywhere.

 

You've invented fibre optic ethernet and a laser powered computer have you?

 

[inky pete]

upload speed is only 1 meg so thats annoying at times when I use photobucket for my pics

 

Upload speed on my Infinity is about 7 Meg - it does make a hell of a difference when uploading photos or doing off-site backups to a digital vault.

 

I think it comes in at about ?38 a month for unlimited data, including the BT line rental and pretty much unlimited calls.

[Dizzy]

off site backups.... digital vaults... 7 meg uploads. I'm blummin' jealous now

[Victor]

Thanks for all the info, folks.