Broadband downgrade - advice please

We have a 4MB line speed, which is the best we can get using the decrepit copper wire infrastructure running to the house. When it behaves, it’s qiute capable of running either BBC iPlayer TV or 16/44 Tidal, but it cannot manage both at the same time. 

Netflix require about 25Mbps (minimum) for 4K streaming, same for Amazon Prime and around 15Mbps for YouTube 4K.  High Def: iPlayer requires around 2.8Mbps; Amazon Prime around 3.5Mbps and Netflix’s 5Mbps.

So no to 4K, and you may struggle with High Def feeds.

Tidal should be okay but will depend more on latency.

djh1697 posted:

Advice please..... I am thinking about cancelling my superfast broadband, switching to standard BT broadband, and getting a discounted mobile phone? However, how does Tidal streaming work? what about movie streaming? I only wish i could trail it to see what it is like. I have 4k Netflix movies, will standard broadband be ok? BT estimate the speed will be 3Mb, I am getting around 30Mb (Talk Talk)  at the moment. Money is tight

BT have not provided a date for faster fibre in this area. 

You refer to super fast, but what minimum connection speed do you actually get in practice? And what realistically are the speeds of tad alternatives at your home? (IME speeds are often not as fast as claimed.)

Louise has summed it up for the requirements of the different services.    30Mb/s is not superfast,  is that TalkTalk speak ???  .   If that's what you are actually getting  (you need to run a speed check & confirm please) ,  I guess some of that is over fibre as ADSL is limited to 27Mb/s in theory, 17Mb/s in real life.      You say Openreach (BT) have not provided a fibre availability date,  what do they actually say?      Remember it means your local area getting FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) & the supply to your house remains over copper.   

My main home only has old copper and I get around 3mbps - it's constantly buffering whenever I watch YouTube or stream Netflix. At 5mbps which a friend gets, it's fine for streaming most things - he has no family so he's not sharing it amongst family members.

It could be the fact that the Governments figures are misleading people as they term anything above 10Mbps as fast Broadband and above 24Mbps as Superfast the local TV specialist to myself won't recommend any 4K streaming unless you have a minimum of a 30Mbps stable connection.

djh1697 posted:

Advice please..... I am thinking about cancelling my superfast broadband, switching to standard BT broadband, and getting a discounted mobile phone? However, how does Tidal streaming work? what about movie streaming? I only wish i could trail it to see what it is like. I have 4k Netflix movies, will standard broadband be ok? BT estimate the speed will be 3Mb, I am getting around 30Mb (Talk Talk)  at the moment. Money is tight

BT have not provided a date for faster fibre in this area. 

Hi, if you are using Superfast Broadband then you are using already fibre to the cabinet or premise... (VDSL) and if not you will be using broadband connected back to the exchange (ADSL). Although the latter can provide up to around 18 Mbps down link you will be typically be lower.  The fact you say you are on 30 Mbps at the moment, you are almost certainly using BT fibre to the cabinet VDSL infrastructure now from your ISP reseller, TalkTalk... therefore it sounds like your neighbourhood is already fibre enabled.

if you downgrade to ADSL from VDSL, then you link speed will be determined by the distance to your telephone exchange... this could be up to 18 Mbps but typically a lot slower.

So regarding Tidal... assuming you are not hammering your current connections, Tidal will be happy on ADSL, and if no one is using the link, then you could be comfortable with 3Mbps link speed. Netflix HD is different however... although I think use adaptive compression like Amazon and so assuming no one else using the link you could be ok down to  4 Mbps, but the slower  the link the compression artefacts become noticeable... 

The real high capacity links are for high quality low latency UHD video such asIPTV like BT Sport ... here 30 Mbps I would say is the minimum, but for highly compressed non real-time processed video like Netflix and Amazon you should be fine at HD from 4 to 6 Mbps (assuming no other users). Again if you regularly plan to stream real-time  UHD IPTV , then you should consider using a managed link from the likes of BT directly, as they will shape and police the link bandwidth to provide the UHD bandwidth (assuming you have the min bandwidth) irrespective of other traffic on the link, however for Netflix or Amazon this can’t be done as the video is sent across the public internet, but although you might need to manually manage usage of your link, 30 Mbps again would be the effective real world minimum for Netflix UHD.

You will find it expensive to leave Talk Talk, especially if you have a Talk Talk line (phone number) and you will have to pay for a new BT number!

Pcd posted:

It could be the fact that the Governments figures are misleading people as they term anything above 10Mbps as fast Broadband and above 24Mbps as Superfast the local TV specialist to myself won't recommend any 4K streaming unless you have a minimum of a 30Mbps stable connection.

Misleading is probably more accurate than the actual line speeds,  the minister for digital was on TV this morning talking it all up again about HMGov (bless'em) making gigabit speeds available on railway services.  I thought that was done already,  my little local Chiltern Railways have had it for a while to say nothing of the bus services (over 4G phone service) .  OK any advancement is to be applauded,  but some of the bill paying public, such as some on this thread, don't get 2% of 1Gb.     

The real world is ADSL via copper wire all the way gets download speeds of up to 17Mb,   this can however be as low as 2Mb.   'Superfast'  in UK terms is predominantly fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) over the Openreach network & is either 38Mb or 76Mb,   the difference is a paid for extra, its not a service limit.   Some providers go to 200Mb & up to 1Gb.     Getting those speeds over FTTC is dependant on how far your home is from the cabinet,  I pay for 76Mb & get 75Mb at aprx 250m distance,  a friend who I believe is on the same cabinet & aprx 1km away gets around 30Mb,  that said he gets a service that is good for all his services needs, Netflix etc.  

And going back to the OP,  if you are getting 30Mb/s,  you must be on FTTC at some point,  ADSL doesn't go that high.  Maybe its TT or BT not offering the 'fibre' service because they have controls/limits on distance & are avoiding potential line speed disputes 

Mike-B posted:

 

 

  the minister for digital was on TV this morning talking it all up again about HMGov (bless'em) making gigabit speeds available on railway services.  I thought that was done already,  my little local Chiltern Railways have had it for a while to say nothing of the bus services (over 4G phone service) .  OK any advancement is to be applauded,  but some of the bill paying public, such as some on this thread, don't get 2% of 1Gb.     

You may be luckier with Chiltern Railways, but South West Trains as was, now renamed South Western Railways, have had wifi on their trains for two or three years, but during the peak commuter couple of hours each end of the day you will be lucky to get any response from the on-train server allowing you to connect, let alone actually see any data incoming from the internet. So there is a long way to go there....

best

David

Tidal - download all you need offline best way to listen, unless you are the shiny things brigade ; ) and iPhone or Pad your limited.

Netflix I used to run it fine with 5 to 10MB and that was 4K Breaking Bad series. As someone else mentioned trying to stream, surf at once will be a struggle.

Before doing anything google broadband saving sites and best of all call and say your cancelling, you usually get a good deal instant, otherwise a bit more patience is required.

Cashback sites again Google all help.

If you decide to change providers, eg TT to BT, be prepared to be without services for at least a few days, however ‘quick and easy’ the transition is promised to be. As mentioned above, the first challenge will be to part ways with TT, especially if you are not out of contract. Checking the B.B. comparison sites is a good idea but beware a ‘frying pan into the fire’ deal. 

KR, J

if You can only get 3mb, I’d personally stay higher speed.  We get between 3 and 4 on a good day and that is fine for Tidal, if that is the only thing you are doing,  3mb is ok for one ‘HD’ service at a high.  I haven’t tried 4K.  We are desperate for fibre, so at the moment I personally can’t see why anyone would want a lower speed 

Thank you for your advice, i am getting a 38Mb connection with my talktalk line. No one can offer me anything as fast in this area, not even Virgin. However, I rang talktalk, spoke to there 'cancellations' team, i am on a 18 month deal at £25/month, so i have saved £7.50. If I move, i can take it with me too. My tidal is now just premium rather than HiFi, so i am saving £10 a month from that. I've killed my Sky subscription in favour of a NowTV deal, I got 12 months movies for just £55 in a black friday deal. So things might be tight, but i am saving money without making too many compromises. Times are hard at the moment, hopefully the new year will get better. 

djh1697 posted:

Advice please..... I am thinking about cancelling my superfast broadband, switching to standard BT broadband, and getting a discounted mobile phone? However, how does Tidal streaming work? what about movie streaming? I only wish i could trail it to see what it is like. I have 4k Netflix movies, will standard broadband be ok? BT estimate the speed will be 3Mb, I am getting around 30Mb (Talk Talk)  at the moment. Money is tight

BT have not provided a date for faster fibre in this area. 

I lived for many years with 1 Mbps broadband (before that dial-up!), and can remember an SD movie using the original AppleTV taking 12 hours or more to buffer in order to play.

Upgrading to ADSL when available gave me 4-5 Mbps which was great for Netflix in HD and allowed near instant playback of fixed data rate SD Apple material on AppleTV but still might have needed some/many minutes buffering for 1080p.

Audio streaming from the internet is clearly less bandwidth hungry than HD video, but as other have suggested you are likely to be on FTTC already if TalkTalk have you on a 30 Mbps+ service.

Quite frankly, internet speed - if already acceptable - is one area you will probably regret downgrading for a likely modest cost saving.  Also be aware that the speed decrease going from FTTC to ADSL may be quite severe.

There are plenty of online speed checkers for your phone number - most providers have one - check to see the service you can get in your area, and if out of contract with Talk Talk look to change for a cheaper option, but I'd be really wary of going back to ADSL from FTTC unless I absolutely had to. 

I currently get pretty much 76 Mbps down/20 Mbps up from a BT line (different FTTC provider), but I certainly know when I'm getting less in terms of download speeds when there is contention.

Appreciate money is tight, so a downgrade may be necessary for you as fast broadband is not essential in the grand scheme of things currently, but if you're used to HD streaming (not to mention Netflix 4k) you may sorely miss it if you end up with a slower connection, but sometimes we have more important priorities.  Best wishes for 2018, I hope the financial situation improves.

djh1697 posted:

Thank you for your advice, i am getting a 38Mb connection with my talktalk line. No one can offer me anything as fast in this area, not even Virgin. However, I rang talktalk, spoke to there 'cancellations' team, i am on a 18 month deal at £25/month, so i have saved £7.50. If I move, i can take it with me too. My tidal is now just premium rather than HiFi, so i am saving £10 a month from that. I've killed my Sky subscription in favour of a NowTV deal, I got 12 months movies for just £55 in a black friday deal. So things might be tight, but i am saving money without making too many compromises. Times are hard at the moment, hopefully the new year will get better. 

Sounds as though you've already re-negotiated and that should save you £135 over 18 months if they've made you enter a new contract at £7.50 a month cheaper - well done.  If they're giving good service/speeds and are the most competitive sounds like a good deal.

djh1697 posted:

Thank you for your advice, i am getting a 38Mb connection with my talktalk line. No one can offer me anything as fast in this area, not even Virgin. However, I rang talktalk, spoke to there 'cancellations' team, i am on a 18 month deal at £25/month, so i have saved £7.50. If I move, i can take it with me too. My tidal is now just premium rather than HiFi, so i am saving £10 a month from that. I've killed my Sky subscription in favour of a NowTV deal, I got 12 months movies for just £55 in a black friday deal. So things might be tight, but i am saving money without making too many compromises. Times are hard at the moment, hopefully the new year will get better. 

Sounds like you got a saving using your existing VDSL service ... well done. To be honest the VDSL services from the BT FTTC infrastructure from most resellers at the access level (VDSL sync speed) is pretty similar... where things can differ is the backhaul contention including how much capacity the ISP pays BT from the cab and the ISP’s own backhaul network when off the BT network... unfortunately unless you have quite advanced tools you can’t easily measure this ... you would just experience more network throttling/congestion  at busy periods and you might not know it was related to your ISP... it certainly has no direct bearing on the access sync speed.... in my humble opinion I think Ofcom have this wrong for consumer where the emphasis seems mainly on the local sync speed, which is a physical limit on the BT side of the network not the ISP performance. as always you tend to pay for what you get...

BTW the one to look out for coming to some urban and suburban areas is G.FAST, this is  one of the newer VDSL protocols and allows typically between 150Mbps to 1Gbps over your TP (twisted pair) access, but is extremely distance sensitive... it uses an access point smaller and closer to you than your cabinet  and can be in inspection holes or drop wire posts...

I think Ofcom do understand your point Simon. But the stuff that gets picked up by the news outlets is mostly written/edited by those who don't. And the mindless widespread pursuit of FTTH as the nirvana ignores the point too. Ofcom is trying to judge the right balance between technical rigour and political/public information imperatives.

An interesting point that never gets any public news exposure is that if someone is on Virgin Media's cable network than although that is indeed strictly fibre to the cabinet, the coax link to the home is good for up to 5Gbps, so fibre-Ing that last bit would be pointless.

best

David

David, I’m sure some in Ofcom are aware of the points, but a couple of years back I was professionally having to navigate the Ofcom requirements through busy hour periods and overall throughput for broadband access ... and in my humble opinion it wasn’t really fit for purpose.. but I’ll leave that there...

Now to your point on Coax and 5GHz... that really is pushing what Coax can do and the losses would be very high  even over a moderately short run... usually at those frequencies one uses wave guides, fibre, or transverters (which would be no good for data access). Do you know what virgin use? Is it wide diameter LDF?

David being a fellow Virgin customer with Superhub2, I was wondering if the latency problems of your Superhub 3 got sorted? Had a quick search on the internet, looks to have all gone quiet, appreciate your thoughts.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Do you know what virgin use? Is it wide diameter LDF?

Probably what is cheapest but does the job...

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Do you know what virgin use? Is it wide diameter LDF?

Inside my neighbours house they used Welco WF100 satellite grade coax.   No idea what is used from cabinet to house.   He gets nowhere near 5Gb/s,   last time we talked I think he said it was 200Mbs,  he is just happy they finally fixed the dropouts.

I was talking to an amateur radio friend of mine, He told me that they hate mains Ethernet because it squirts alsorts of frequencies through the mains.

Mike-B posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Do you know what virgin use? Is it wide diameter LDF?

Inside my neighbours house they used Welco WF100 satellite grade coax.   No idea what is used from cabinet to house.   He gets nowhere near 5Gb/s,   last time we talked I think he said it was 200Mbs,  he is just happy they finally fixed the dropouts.

Hi Mike yes Satellite grade Coax would be hopeless for those frequencies stated for anything more than a few metres.... the only cable types I am aware of suitable for 5GHz (which is not the same as data rate of course) are the relatively large diameter (.5”) and rather stiff LDF Heliax type cable constructs, but they are definitely not cheap... and are about 6dB loss per 30 metres at 5GHz.

djh1697 posted:

I was talking to an amateur radio friend of mine, He told me that they hate mains Ethernet because it squirts alsorts of frequencies through the mains.

Yes, a rather different topic (although GFast and VDSL can leak from the TPs and be equally susceptible to nearby legal RF transmissions, but should adapt to local conditions to coexist)

Powerline adapters allow you to plug Ethernet (they don’t actually provide true Ethernet via the mains)  into the adapters and then they work by forming a proprietary RF bridge across your mains wiring with many hundreds/thousands of RF carriers which are then modulated and encoded ... and of course this is exactly how radio works, so your domestic wiring and devices get turned into a wide band near field antenna system.... not good, and in my opinion, not good for the health of your house occupants say especially from a radiating bed side reading lamp or alarm clock radio, but this health impact is contentious as testing is still underway and there are many variables...

As far as protected primary and secondary user radio bands (such as broadcast, military, amateur etc) these are, or should be notched out for many of the valid powerline adapters...but intermodulation distortion bleeds into the gaps