'Litany of failures' on road to 1Gbps, MPs warn

[Java Jive]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55573804

"'Litany of failures' on road to 1Gbps, MPs warn

Rural homes and businesses could be "locked out" of 1Gbps broadband for
years, an inquiry by an influential committee of MPs has concluded.

The government had failed to properly fund plans to push ultra-fast
broadband to the hardest-to-reach areas, it said.

But the government said: "We do not agree with this report, which
contains a number of inaccuracies."

The findings come as another UK lockdown means people are reliant on
broadband to work and learn from home."

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

[Chris]

Java Jive <ja...@evij.com.invalid> wrote:
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55573804
>
> "'Litany of failures' on road to 1Gbps, MPs warn
>
> Rural homes and businesses could be "locked out" of 1Gbps broadband for
> years, an inquiry by an influential committee of MPs has concluded.
>
> The government had failed to properly fund plans to push ultra-fast
> broadband to the hardest-to-reach areas, it said.
>
> But the government said: "We do not agree with this report, which
> contains a number of inaccuracies."
>
> The findings come as another UK lockdown means people are reliant on
> broadband to work and learn from home."
>

Not a surprise. Over promising and under delivering again.

It would be much better to focus on getting everyone , and I mean *every*
house, 20-30Mbps rather than the frankly pointless gigabit.

[Malcolm Loades]

Hear, hear

Malcolm

[Roderick Stewart]

On Fri, 8 Jan 2021 15:35:02 +0000, Malcolm Loades <dev...@loades.net>
wrote:

>> Not a surprise. Over promising and under delivering again.
>>
>> It would be much better to focus on getting everyone , and I mean *every*
>> house, 20-30Mbps rather than the frankly pointless gigabit.
>>
>
>Hear, hear

And hear hear here also. My modem/router has a neat diagnostic section
that includes a graph of actual usage over the previous 24 hours, and
I can clearly see the effects of my previous evening's TV viewing.
Even when I've been watching a 4K movie, it rarely tops about 18Mb/s,
and at other times is hardly anywhere near that. My max downstream
speed of between 25 and 30 is comfortably in excess of that, so if it
were more, I doubt if I'd notice the difference.

Rod.

[Chris]

We've get teens in the house who are avid YT and Netflix users, plus three
of us were WFH for significant periods of last year. Other then getting a
powerline for one of the bedrooms the broadband easily managed. We're on a
basic 30-35Mbps fibre connection. The only limitation at times was the
10Mbps upload.

I could upgrade to a 70/20 service but it's not really worth it.

[Tweed]

Gigabit is a poorly used proxy for doing broadband properly. We need to get
everyone converted to fibre to the home for the sake of long term
reliability, ie getting rid of the local copper loop. Sending DSL over
phone lines is what gives rise to all the problems. Once you have fibre you
might as well have gigabit as the incremental cost to provide this is
small.

[Graham J]

Tweed wrote:

[snip]

>
> Gigabit is a poorly used proxy for doing broadband properly. We need to get
> everyone converted to fibre to the home for the sake of long term
> reliability, ie getting rid of the local copper loop. Sending DSL over
> phone lines is what gives rise to all the problems. Once you have fibre you
> might as well have gigabit as the incremental cost to provide this is
> small.

Then VoIP becomes a sensible option also.


--
Graham J

[MikeS]

On 08/01/2021 11:24, Java Jive wrote:
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55573804
>
> "'Litany of failures' on road to 1Gbps, MPs warn
>
> Rural homes and businesses could be "locked out" of 1Gbps broadband for
> years, an inquiry by an influential committee of MPs has concluded.
>
> The government had failed to properly fund plans to push ultra-fast
> broadband to the hardest-to-reach areas, it said.
>
> But the government said: "We do not agree with this report, which
> contains a number of inaccuracies."
>
> The findings come as another UK lockdown means people are reliant on
> broadband to work and learn from home."
>

"We do not agree with this report, which contains a number of
inaccuracies."

Classic Sir Humphrey (Yes Minister) get out. Could refer to anything,
such as "we found spelling mistakes on pages ..."

[notya...@gmail.com]

Hear Hear too.

1Gbps by fibre may be desirable for a medium size enterprise with a few dozen PC's connected, but for all but the largest households a 50Mbps connection is a perfectly adequate speed.

Obviously with ADSL the uplink is slower (typically ~10Mbps), which sometimes inserts some small delay when using cloud based storage.

The other issue is that many people choose to live in remote locations. The don't expect a bus every five minutes, a shop a short walk away or often even mains gas or sewerage, but for some reason they expect the rest of us to subsidise their high speed / gigabit internet connection.

[Roderick Stewart]

On Sat, 9 Jan 2021 15:29:22 -0000 (UTC), Tweed
<usenet...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Gigabit is a poorly used proxy for doing broadband properly. We need to get
>everyone converted to fibre to the home for the sake of long term
>reliability, ie getting rid of the local copper loop.

Everyone? Why? My local copper loop gives me an internet service that
is more than I need and with the exception of one line fault (quickly
resolved) in more than twenty years, it has been perfectly reliable.
If it's in somebody else's interests that I should change, then
they're welcome to pay for it, but it certainly isn't in mine.

Rod.

[Trolleybus]

On Sat, 9 Jan 2021 18:02:20 +0000, Graham J <nob...@nowhere.co.uk>
wrote:

It becomes the only option very soon. BT/OR intends to get rid of POTS
by 2025.

<https://www.openreach.com/news-and-opinion/articles/goodbye-old-telephone-network--hello-new-opportunities->

Note that they intend to stop selling PSTN products in 2023.

[Trolleybus]

On Sat, 9 Jan 2021 15:29:22 -0000 (UTC), Tweed
<usenet...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is spot on, and the rush hasn't really been to get everyone up to
1Gb, but to get everyone on 'Superfast' which, at one time, was
anything above 30Gbps. The goalposts have now moved, rightly, but I
don't know what the currently-accepted minimum speed is but I would
think below a gigabit.

We certainly need a national broadband infrastructure, designed and
built as such, not a data overlay on an analogue technology dating
back a century.

The village I live in has Gigaclear offering 1Gbps if you're willing
to pay for it, but lower, cheaper, speeds if required. This has been
taken up enthusiastically, justifying Gigaclear's investment in
'commercial infill' of their participation in the rural broadband
initiative. It helped Gigaclear that Openreach has done little about
the flaky aluminium that some houses in the village have had to put up
with.

I'm still using copper because I have the speeds I need (70/20) and I
like Zen. We only ever stream one thing at a time. I do download
things like Linux distros but they don't take very long at all.

As an ISP Gigaclear are an unknown to me. I suspect they'll be bought
out by one of the big players soon, and I shun the likes of Vodafone,
Virgin, Sky and BT (retail) because of their customer service. But if
Zen don't offer me FTTP quite soon I will bail.

[notya...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, 9 January 2021 at 15:29:24 UTC, Tweed wrote:
> Chris <ithi...@gmail.com> wrote:

SNIP

> >
> > I could upgrade to a 70/20 service but it's not really worth it.

The more people realise this the less gigabit ethernet will sell.

> >
> >
> Gigabit is a poorly used proxy for doing broadband properly. We need to get
> everyone converted to fibre to the home for the sake of long term
> reliability, ie getting rid of the local copper loop. Sending DSL over
> phone lines is what gives rise to all the problems.

Not so. My physical phone lines have been in for over forty years. True these are the less reliable aluminium wires, but even so faults have been relatively rare, with the most common cause being engineer disturbance when working on other lines. A few "underground" [water] faults, one nearby lightning strike in the 90's and a couple of 'dig ups', which even fibre can't avoid.

Obviously all new provision should be fibre, but wholesale replacement of POTS copper wiring before it is life expired (probably a century) would be a waste of resources.

> Once you have fibre might as well have gigabit as the incremental

> cost to provide this is small.

True.

[Tweed]

It will be a problem for you to when the exchange equipment becomes life
expired and the in ground copper becomes old and knackered. The former is
what is already driving Open Reach’s sudden conversion to full fibre.

[Roderick Stewart]

On Sun, 10 Jan 2021 13:11:06 -0000 (UTC), Tweed

I think I'll be "life expired" myself long before that happens. In any
case, I understand that FTTH is already available where I live if I
were interested in paying for it. As it would make no difference at
all to anything I use it for, I don't see any point in paying more for
effectively nothing.

Rod.

[Chris]

Why if you only stream one thing at a time and download the odd linux
distribution?

[Chris]

Getting fibre to the home is the issue and what I think is unnecessary.
Yes, in an ideal world and if we were starting from scratch that'd be the
aim. However, there is a network that already works for most people let's
not waste more resources on the already catered for. Let's get fibre to all
the rural and hard to reach areas first.

[Tweed]

One doesn’t stop the other. In fact, if resources have to be diverted to
patching up the urban copper network they won’t be available for fibre
deployment to rural areas. Even in our relatively modern estate, 1980s,
with underground copper cabling, the OR technicians are starting to hunt
for alternate pairs once a line fails.

[Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd]

> I think I'll be "life expired" myself long before that happens.

Telephone exchanges start closing down (Salisbury) in December 2022, with all
5,000 odd closed by December 2025.

So all telephone service will be VoIP (or mobile) over FTTP or FTTC, ASDL will
have gone as well. There will be a cheap 500K/500K FTTP service for VoIP use
only, costing about the same as a landline today for those that don't need
broadband.

Angus

[Roderick Stewart]

And we'll all have electric flying cars.....

Have they even switched off medium wave radio yet? Who uses that now?

Rod.

[Graham J]

Trolleybus wrote:

[snip]

>>
>> Then VoIP becomes a sensible option also.
>
> It becomes the only option very soon. BT/OR intends to get rid of POTS
> by 2025.
>
> <https://www.openreach.com/news-and-opinion/articles/goodbye-old-telephone-network--hello-new-opportunities->
>
> Note that they intend to stop selling PSTN products in 2023.

Not according to the Openreach engineers I talk to when they're fixing
old copper lines round here. They anticipate 2035 or 2040 before PSTN
is discontinued.


--
Graham J

[Theo]

Graham J <nob...@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:

> Trolleybus wrote:
>
> > Note that they intend to stop selling PSTN products in 2023.
>
> Not according to the Openreach engineers I talk to when they're fixing
> old copper lines round here. They anticipate 2035 or 2040 before PSTN
> is discontinued.

They'll still have copper lines, but it won't be the PSTN.
That means ADSL/VDSL but no circuit-switched analogue voice.
If you want landline service your ISP will provide it via VOIP to a port on
your router.

Look up 'SOGEA'.

Theo

[Theo]

Tweed <usenet...@gmail.com> wrote:
> One doesn’t stop the other. In fact, if resources have to be diverted to
> patching up the urban copper network they won’t be available for fibre
> deployment to rural areas. Even in our relatively modern estate, 1980s,
> with underground copper cabling, the OR technicians are starting to hunt
> for alternate pairs once a line fails.

OR's contractors spend 3 days with about 10 people digging up the road
outside my house. That was, presumably, to replace some copper. Our VDSL
had a 5 minute outage, and the connection stayed around 70Mbps (ie not
really any change).

That's a lot of effort for a copper network that's supposedly working fine
and not needing maintenance.

Theo

[Trolleybus]

On Sun, 10 Jan 2021 21:34:34 -0000 (UTC), Chris <ithi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I think for no good reason other than I've always worked in tech and
am used to be ahead of the curve. I'm no longer that but I don't want
to be the only old git in the village still using an acoustic coupler.

I am tempted to upgrade to 300Mbps with Zen but copper seems such a
technological dead end.

[Trolleybus]

On Sun, 10 Jan 2021 21:39:34 -0000 (UTC), Chris <ithi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

That's how we got gigbit, yet we don't qualify for the rural schemes
because OR already offer up to 300Mbps in our village.

But I suspect that many of those going to GigaClear are unaware that
the limiting factor on their broadband speed was never availability
but the tariff they were on.

[Adrian Caspersz]

On 10/01/2021 12:32, Trolleybus wrote:

>
> It becomes the only option very soon. BT/OR intends to get rid of POTS
> by 2025.
>
> <https://www.openreach.com/news-and-opinion/articles/goodbye-old-telephone-network--hello-new-opportunities->
>
> Note that they intend to stop selling PSTN products in 2023.
>

Will a new network have features that prohibits fake caller ID,
Preferably has a certificate exchange between parties before a
conversation takes place?

--
Adrian C

[Theo]

Adrian Caspersz <em...@here.invalid> wrote:
> Will a new network have features that prohibits fake caller ID,
> Preferably has a certificate exchange between parties before a
> conversation takes place?

The new network doesn't do voice, it's all ethernet.

Running VOIP over the top of that is between you and your ISP. I presume
that will be standard SIP between your router and your ISP's SIP server (it
is for Sky on SOGEA), and then what goes onwards from there is up to them.

Theo

[Vir Campestris]

On 10/01/2021 21:39, Chris wrote:
> Getting fibre to the home is the issue and what I think is unnecessary.
> Yes, in an ideal world and if we were starting from scratch that'd be the
> aim. However, there is a network that already works for most people let's
> not waste more resources on the already catered for. Let's get fibre to all
> the rural and hard to reach areas first.

Fibre to the home _is_ the answer to the rural and heard-to-reach areas.

BT finally upgraded us past ADSL. In the core of the village they put in
an FTTC cabinet. Those of us a bit further out got fibre.

And the speed issue - I've got 70/20. I don't really need anything
faster, despite me now spending my working day running GUI editors on a
remote workstation, and downloading the built binaries to the test
devices I have in front of me.

I'm still tempted by gigabit. I don't _need_ it.

Andy

[notya...@gmail.com]

In the UK respectable VOIP providers [like Voipfone] won't let you use CLI for a number you do not subscribe to. OTOH there is nothing to prevent anyone obtaining Voip for a bent provider in another country and having any old CLI they like.

[bert]

In article <rtifn1$6ob$1...@dont-email.me>, Vir Campestris
<vir.cam...@invalid.invalid> writes

How about LOS. I read somewhere Musk is getting involved.
--
bert

[Brian Gregory]

My main worry about this is that it's likely to make it even harder to
avoid using the cheap buggy inflexible routers provided by ISPs.

--
Brian Gregory (in England).

[Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd]

> My main worry about this is that it's likely to make it even
> harder to avoid using the cheap buggy inflexible routers provided
> by ISPs.

I've never used an ISP router/wifi. My Virgin Media cable router runs in modem
mode, and for ADSL/VDSL I've mostly used external modems, Vigor or Openreach.
Routers have been Netgear, Sonicwall, Vigor and currently Netgate pfSense.

Openreach currently supplies the optical termination unit for FTTP with an
ethernet socket for any router, you are not stuck with anything the ISP offers,
but for many people it is easier.

Angus

[Brian Gregory]

I mean if my phone has to plug in to an ISP provided router that does
some kind of VOIP will I be able to replace it with something else.

[Bob Eager]

On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 10:24:02 +0000, Brian Gregory wrote:

> I mean if my phone has to plug in to an ISP provided router that does
> some kind of VOIP will I be able to replace it with something else.

Presumably it will include an internal ATA, you'll use a standard BT plug.

[Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd]

> I mean if my phone has to plug in to an ISP provided router that
> does some kind of VOIP will I be able to replace it with
> something else.

Setting up VoIP accounts is not always trivial, I never managed to set-up a
Draytel account for my Vigor Draytek router, so used my Sipgate account. Start
talking about codecs and such things will confuse most people. Now I'm using
pfSense, I have an external Flexor ATA and Snom phone.

So yes, unless routers come preconfigured for a particular VoIP service, life
will be difficult for support.

But current evidence is that people migrating from landline to VoIP served by
the same operator (BT and Sky) are being charged to same obscene telephone call
charges, typically 10 times more than dedicated VoIP operators.

No wonder landline call volumes are reducing massively to be replaced by Skype,
Whatsapp and other free apps.

The only real benefit of VoIP will be more anonymity than a mobile app
(Facebook and data sharing).

Angus

[Graham J]

Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd wrote:

>> I mean if my phone has to plug in to an ISP provided router that
>> does some kind of VOIP will I be able to replace it with
>> something else.
>
> Setting up VoIP accounts is not always trivial, I never managed to set-up a
> Draytel account for my Vigor Draytek router, so used my Sipgate account. Start
> talking about codecs and such things will confuse most people. Now I'm using
> pfSense, I have an external Flexor ATA and Snom phone.

By contrast I used VoipFone, their IP phones come pre-configured for
your account and can be used with any router. See:
<https://www.voipfone.co.uk/>

But, the reliability of the internet connection is vitally important,
unlike for ordinary internet use where the occaisonal re-sync will
probably not be noticed. ADSL or FTTC may well be unuseable, but
hopefully FTTP will be sufficiently reliable.


--
Graham J

[Theo]

Brian Gregory <void-invalid...@email.invalid> wrote:
> I mean if my phone has to plug in to an ISP provided router that does
> some kind of VOIP will I be able to replace it with something else.

Yes and no.

I have Sky FTTC over SOGEA, which means that Openreach doesn't provide voice
service. Instead the Sky router has a phone socket and an internal ATA.

Using your own router for broadband is possible but finnicky on Sky, which
does its own thing compared with most ISPs (DHCP option 61). It should work
if your router supports that (although I haven't got it to work on OpenWRT,
I'm sure it is possible).

The VOIP is SIP, but they don't publish the login credentials. As far as I
can ascertain they are obtained by the router using TR069. Unfortunately
there are no good open source TR069 clients and I haven't succeeded in
getting anything to extract the credentials from the Sky TR069 server.

*However*, once you no longer have a PSTN landline, there's no reason why
your broadband provider should also provide your voice calls. So the
solution is to port your number to a separate VOIP provider and use whatever
ATA setup you want.

Voice is then just another over-the-top service like email, chat, etc - you
wouldn't want to rely on your ISP as your email provider, so why rely on
them for voice?

Theo

[Theo]

Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd <an...@magsys.co.uk> wrote:
> But current evidence is that people migrating from landline to VoIP served by
> the same operator (BT and Sky) are being charged to same obscene telephone call
> charges, typically 10 times more than dedicated VoIP operators.

That's true, but I understand packages ('unlimited UK calls for £4.99') are
popular. They seem less common on VOIP operators who seem to run more on a
PAYG basis.

Many will win going PAYG, but some people make a lot of calls...

> No wonder landline call volumes are reducing massively to be replaced by Skype,
> Whatsapp and other free apps.
>
> The only real benefit of VoIP will be more anonymity than a mobile app
> (Facebook and data sharing).

The telephone network is still important for B2C and B2B communication.
Good luck trying to Facetime your bank.

(also, much of the infrastructure for handling volume traffic doesn't exist
for those platforms. There's no 'call centre' or queueing system on
WhatsApp or Skype, and they probably don't meet compliance for the financial
industry, etc etc)

Theo

[Vir Campestris]

On 13/01/2021 15:33, bert wrote:
> How about LOS. I read somewhere Musk is getting involved.

As in line of sight? It works sometimes.

Often not during heavy rain, and certainly not for wooded areas.

Andy

[Andy Burns]

Vir Campestris wrote:

> bert wrote:
>
>> How about LOS. I read somewhere Musk is getting involved.
>
> As in line of sight? It works sometimes.

Low Orbit Satellite

> Often not during heavy rain, and certainly not for wooded areas.

Even with under 1,000 of his proposed 42,000 satellites in orbit,
they're already providing [test] coverage in N. America, and soon the UK.

[notya...@gmail.com]

Loads of options - Siemens Gigaset, native VOIP in many mobiles (over Wi-Fi), softphone in most mobiles and tablets...

[notya...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, 14 January 2021 at 14:35:21 UTC, Theo wrote:
> Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd <an...@magsys.co.uk> wrote:
> > But current evidence is that people migrating from landline to VoIP served by
> > the same operator (BT and Sky) are being charged to same obscene telephone call
> > charges, typically 10 times more than dedicated VoIP operators.
> That's true, but I understand packages ('unlimited UK calls for £4.99') are
> popular. They seem less common on VOIP operators who seem to run more on a
> PAYG basis.

Most will pay less on PAYG - £5 gets you nearly seven hours of PAYG time to landlines on Voipfone. There is a bit of a discount for bundles of minutes for a month, but what you don't use you lose. There is an unlimited (land and mobile) for £20 + VAT, but Three do it cheaper.

[Brian Gregory]

On 14/01/2021 12:27, Graham J wrote:
> By contrast I used VoipFone, their IP phones come pre-configured for
> your account and can be used with any router.  See:
> <https://www.voipfone.co.uk/>

Surely you need a router with excellent QoS or you will find VOIP
unusable if you happen to be doing a big upload or download at the same
time?

[Graham J]

A big upload is potentially a problem because it reduces the available
bandwidth for ACK packets. A router with bandwidth management such as
the Draytek mentioned by the OP would be ideal.

My guess is that when the ISP provides a router for both data and voice
they will pre-configure it with enough bandwidth reserved to the voice
channel.


--
Graham J

[Theo]

notya...@gmail.com <notya...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Most will pay less on PAYG - £5 gets you nearly seven hours of PAYG time
> to landlines on Voipfone. There is a bit of a discount for bundles of
> minutes for a month, but what you don't use you lose. There is an
> unlimited (land and mobile) for £20 + VAT, but Three do it cheaper.

It's not clear that's a sustainable standalone business model for consumer
VOIP. Much of the VOIP market is provided either by people who do business
telecoms and their average customer spend is a *lot* higher, or by those who
target technical users who can debug their own ATA/SIP/STUN/etc issues.

I don't think you could expand that to the whole consumer market, because
providing support to grandma (etc) is going to cost.

There might be a market for a Vonage-style operator where you pay a monthly
'line rental' which is enough to keep the lights on, and then calls are just
charged at marginal cost (+markup).

However I can't help but feel this is like launching a new sailing ship in
the jet age. At what point is everyone just using their mobile? (perhaps
wifi calling over their broadband). Domestic landline telecoms won't die,
but it seems to be turning into a niche product.

Theo

[Brian Gregory]

On 14/01/2021 21:09, Graham J wrote:
> Brian Gregory wrote:
>> On 14/01/2021 12:27, Graham J wrote:
>>> By contrast I used VoipFone, their IP phones come pre-configured for
>>> your account and can be used with any router.  See:
>>> <https://www.voipfone.co.uk/>
>>
>> Surely you need a router with excellent QoS or you will find VOIP
>> unusable if you happen to be doing a big upload or download at the
>> same time?
>
> A big upload is potentially a problem because it reduces the available
> bandwidth for ACK packets.  A router with bandwidth management such as
> the Draytek mentioned by the OP would be ideal.

There's actual VOIP going in both directions once a call is in progress.
One wants to avoid any packet congestion anywhere between you and your
ISP while using VOIP.

ISPs typically don't do this particularly well by default because to do
it well you typically need to reduce your bandwidth in both directions
by at least around 5% compared with what you get without any QoS and the
figure of how fast you can download is an important part of what sells
an internet connection to a customer.

By FTTC with Zen is 10 up / 40 down.
The modem syncs at exactly that.

Without QoS I can easily exceed the advertised 9.5 up / 38 down.

However if I enable QoS and adjust for low packet loss and reasonably
stable ping times during fast uploads and downloads I have to limit
myself to about 9.4 up / 33 down.

> My guess is that when the ISP provides a router for both data and voice
> they will pre-configure it with enough bandwidth reserved to the voice
> channel.

I wonder if some may use weird arrangements where the router/ATA starts
up QoS only when VOIP packets are sensed.

[Brian Gregory]

Oops:
s/By FTTC with Zen/My FTTC with Zen/

[notya...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, 14 January 2021 at 21:17:11 UTC, Theo wrote:
> notya...@gmail.com <notya...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Most will pay less on PAYG - £5 gets you nearly seven hours of PAYG time
> > to landlines on Voipfone. There is a bit of a discount for bundles of
> > minutes for a month, but what you don't use you lose. There is an
> > unlimited (land and mobile) for £20 + VAT, but Three do it cheaper.
> It's not clear that's a sustainable standalone business model for consumer
> VOIP. Much of the VOIP market is provided either by people who do business
> telecoms and their average customer spend is a *lot* higher, or by those who
> target technical users who can debug their own ATA/SIP/STUN/etc issues.

The only significant problem I have had is forgetting the passwords.

>
> I don't think you could expand that to the whole consumer market, because
> providing support to grandma (etc) is going to cost.

With remote / pre configuration - not a lot.

>
> There might be a market for a Vonage-style operator where you pay a monthly
> 'line rental' which is enough to keep the lights on, and then calls are just
> charged at marginal cost (+markup).

Ah yes charging for illusionary "trunks" - Voipfone don't.

>
> However I can't help but feel this is like launching a new sailing ship in
> the jet age. At what point is everyone just using their mobile? (perhaps
> wifi calling over their broadband). Domestic landline telecoms won't die,
> but it seems to be turning into a niche product.
>
> Theo

Some of the expansion of mobile telephony has been at the expense of landline telephony (e.g. consumers in deprived areas ditching their land line), but mostly it has just been that most of the expansion has been in mobile.

[notya...@gmail.com]

Even in the uplink direction there is usually enough for a 4k video feed (and how many consumers stream that). Otherwise the band width is well adequate for 4k downlink streaming and an awful lot of Voip calls with their very modest bandwidth requirements.

[Tweed]

>> However I can't help but feel this is like launching a new sailing ship in
>> the jet age. At what point is everyone just using their mobile? (perhaps
>> wifi calling over their broadband). Domestic landline telecoms won't die,
>> but it seems to be turning into a niche product.
>>
>> Theo
>
> Some of the expansion of mobile telephony has been at the expense of
> landline telephony (e.g. consumers in deprived areas ditching their land
> line), but mostly it has just been that most of the expansion has been in mobile.
>

All my voice traffic has moved to my mobile because my mobile contract has
unlimited free minutes. Landline was just kept because of inertia. My
offspring, recent graduates, exclusively use mobile. They have landlines to
carry home broadband, but don’t even know its number.

[Vir Campestris]

I've not come across that. I suspect there would be problems if it was
heavily used, also with latency - but I could be wrong.

Andy

[Andy Burns]

Vir Campestris wrote:

> Andy Burns wrote:
>
>> Even with under 1,000 of his proposed 42,000 satellites in orbit,
>> they're already providing [test] coverage in N. America, and soon the UK.
>
> I've not come across that.

You missed a treat going out and watching the early batches of
satellites whizzing overhead about this time last year, they've made the
newer ones less visible.

> I suspect there would be problems if it was
> heavily used, also with latency - but I could be wrong.

Speed and latency seems to be about VDSL levels at moment, for long
distances (e.g. london to new york, it will offer shorter RTT than fibre
(as it will be travelling in vacuum rather than glass)

[Recliner]

From
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink>

In October 2020, SpaceX launched a paid-for beta service in the U.S. called
"Better Than Nothing Beta", charging US$499 for a user terminal, with an
expected service of "50 Mbps to 150 Mbps and latency from 20 ms to 40 ms
over the next several months".[13] From January 2021, the paid-for beta
service was extended to other continents, starting in the United
Kingdom.[147]

And from
<https://www.businessinsider.com/starlink-beta-uk-elon-musk-spacex-satellite-broadband-2021-1>

Philip Hall, in rural Devon, southwest England, told Insider on Friday that
he received the router and terminal to connect to the satellites on New
Year's Eve.

Hall had been getting download speeds of only 0.5 megabits per second with
BT internet, he said. Now with Starlink, he's averaging 85 Mbps. "Within
the hour we ran a Zoom quiz with grandchildren — it was wonderful," he
said.

SpaceX said in an email to subscribers on October 26 that users
participating in the beta test could expect speeds of 50 to 150 Mbps. Some
US users have said they're getting download speeds of more than 210 Mbps.

Musk's goal for Starlink is to deliver superfast broadband internet around
the world by enveloping the Earth with up to 42,000 satellites. SpaceX has
so far launched at least 830 working Starlink satellites into orbit.

[Brian Gregory]

On 15/01/2021 20:58, notya...@gmail.com wrote:
> Even in the uplink direction there is usually enough for a 4k video feed (and how many consumers stream that). Otherwise the band width is well adequate for 4k downlink streaming and an awful lot of Voip calls with their very modest bandwidth requirements.
>

Plenty stream 4K. I know two families with 4K TV and 4K netflix
subscriptions.

I never said VOIP wouldn't work along side streaming. I said downloading
or uploading, that is things that max out the connection.

[Brian Gregory]

They send signals round the earth by having the satellites talk to each
other?

Latency (ping times) work out at a minimum of just over 7ms for Starlink
which orbit at 550km altitude. So yes, similar to a good VDSL2 connection.

[Graham J]

It's evident by their abysmal quality that most people that broadcasters
ring up for comment/info are using a mobile.

Why is mobile quality so awful? It really does appear to be a case of
launching new sailing ship in the jet age.


--
Graham J

[Tweed]

Mobile to mobile calls in many circumstances can use what is loosely called
“high definition” audio - this I presume is using a higher bit rate codec.
Perhaps calls that terminate on the PSTN, ie a broadcaster, are always
forced to a standardised lowest common denominator codec?

[Andy Burns]

Brian Gregory wrote:

> Andy Burns wrote:
>
>> Speed and latency seems to be about VDSL levels at moment, for long
>> distances (e.g. london to new york, it will offer shorter RTT than
>> fibre (as it will be travelling in vacuum rather than glass)
>
> They send signals round the earth by having the satellites talk to each
> other?

yes frickin' lasers

actually I don't think they have enough in orbit to allow that yet apart
from tests, so for the moment it's just up and down from ground stations.

[Graham J]

Tweed wrote:

[snip]

>>
>> It's evident by their abysmal quality that most people that broadcasters
>> ring up for comment/info are using a mobile.
>>
>> Why is mobile quality so awful? It really does appear to be a case of
>> launching new sailing ship in the jet age.
>>
>>
>
> Mobile to mobile calls in many circumstances can use what is loosely called
> “high definition” audio - this I presume is using a higher bit rate codec.
> Perhaps calls that terminate on the PSTN, ie a broadcaster, are always
> forced to a standardised lowest common denominator codec?

I looked up “high definition” audio but it appears to cover a wider
frequency response, offering 50 Hz to 7 kHz or even up to 22 kHz, rather
than the 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz of conventional landline phones.

But the effect I hear on radio or TV of interviews over mobile phone is
of distortion, breaks in the sound, and strange additional noises; all
of which reduce intelligibility.

By contrast an interview over landline phone is clear and intelligible
desite the obviously limited frequency response and occasional low
levels of noise.

I understand the difficulties that news broadcasters in particular have
in communicating with reporters or members of the public at accident or
disaster locations; and in these cases their statements could surely be
re-voiced by studio staff in the interests of intelligibility. But
where the interviewee is in their office or home surely the broadcasters
should insist on using a landline connection?


--
Graham J

[Tweed]

But perhaps that’s just confirmation bias? Perhaps you don’t notice the
reports that come via a mobile phone that are not distorted?

[notya...@gmail.com]

Yes but longer distances and more hops than a fibre on the geodesic.

There may be some issues with congestion with an incomplete constellation, but compared with geostationary satellites (~0.5s) the latency is minimal.

[notya...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, 16 January 2021 at 03:43:58 UTC, Brian Gregory wrote:
> On 15/01/2021 20:58, notya...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Even in the uplink direction there is usually enough for a 4k video feed (and how many consumers stream that). Otherwise the band width is well adequate for 4k downlink streaming and an awful lot of Voip calls with their very modest bandwidth requirements.
> >
> Plenty stream 4K. I know two families with 4K TV and 4K netflix
> subscriptions.

We've got a 4k TV and two PC's with 4k monitors. Happily streams 4k on two and does other things.

>
> I never said VOIP wouldn't work along side streaming. I said downloading
> or uploading, that is things that max out the connection.

And how often do people do this? I think most of the major clouds (except BT) have features to limit bandwidth on synchronisation, sometimes enabled as automatic by default.

[notya...@gmail.com]

ITU No.7 uses 64kps audio, which gives a low audio bandwidth up to about 3kHz. This is acceptable for most voice purposes. S/N ratio on the analogue segment of landlines is usually pretty dire.

This was improved somewhat by adaptive PCM, which reduced the required bandwidth per channel to 32kbps.

The original GSM codec was only 16kbps, but used an encoding scheme optimised for speech transmission, to achieve very similar results. Some networks implement[ed] voice activated transmit. The enhanced channels use greater bandwidth. Voip can use 64kbps, but quite often is run at higher rates (e.g. 128kpbs).

Even this is a drop in the bucket compare to the bandwidth of typical broadband connections even ten years ago.

[Brian Gregory]

What exactly are you trying to argue? You're not making any sense.

You just admited that there is a need to limit the bandwidth.

Anyway how would Google backup and sync or Dropbox know what it needs to
limit itself to for my particular Internet connection?

Plus If I click a link in my browser to download a big file, where
exactly do I get a chance to limit the download speed?

[notya...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, 16 January 2021 at 21:48:47 UTC, Brian Gregory wrote:
> On 16/01/2021 17:29, notya...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, 16 January 2021 at 03:43:58 UTC, Brian Gregory wrote:
> >> On 15/01/2021 20:58, notya...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>> Even in the uplink direction there is usually enough for a 4k video feed (and how many consumers stream that). Otherwise the band width is well adequate for 4k downlink streaming and an awful lot of Voip calls with their very modest bandwidth requirements.
> >>>
> >> Plenty stream 4K. I know two families with 4K TV and 4K netflix
> >> subscriptions.
> >
> > We've got a 4k TV and two PC's with 4k monitors. Happily streams 4k on two and does other things.
> >
> >>
> >> I never said VOIP wouldn't work along side streaming. I said downloading
> >> or uploading, that is things that max out the connection.
> >
> > And how often do people do this? I think most of the major clouds (except BT) have features to limit bandwidth on synchronisation, sometimes enabled as automatic by default.
> What exactly are you trying to argue? You're not making any sense.
>
> You just admited that there is a need to limit the bandwidth.

No I said that there were [optional] features to limit bandwidth in the major clouds. When I first had Dropbox [and 8Mbps DSL] I did use this (then the default). I have not used it, nor needed to, for years despite the bulk of my telephony being VOIP.

>
> Anyway how would Google backup and sync or Dropbox know what it needs to
> limit itself to for my particular Internet connection?

It is in the settings, I checked before I typed that. You can decide a limit or set it to automatic.

>
> Plus If I click a link in my browser to download a big file, where
> exactly do I get a chance to limit the download speed?

You don't, but then you won't be watchin 4k video in the same window will you?. However by far the main file transfer mechanism is synchronisation with clouds and this is an activity carried on in the background. In any event in DSL the downlink is faster, file synchronisation or someone else browsing or streaming on the same link don't even interfere with 4k video streaming (>10Mbps and very sensitive to dropped frames) let alone VOIP (~100kbps and fairly tolerant to dropped frames).

> --
> Brian Gregory (in England).

Anyway, long story short, you don't really NEED 1Gbps for domestic use. Maybe for a large busy office, but for a typical household 40Mbps+ is more than adequate.

[Tweed]

It depends on your patience! At one domestic location I have 200Mbit/sec
Virgin Media. At another I have 80 Mbit/sec FTTC (it syncs at that as the
cabinet is very close) via AAISP. I do notice the speed difference,
especially when downloading OS patches.

[Brian Gregory]

On 18/01/2021 12:21, notya...@gmail.com wrote:
>variuos rubbish snipped...

> You don't, but then you won't be watchin 4k video in the same window will you?. However by far the main file transfer mechanism is synchronisation with clouds and this is an activity carried on in the background. In any event in DSL the downlink is faster, file synchronisation or someone else browsing or streaming on the same link don't even interfere with 4k video streaming (>10Mbps and very sensitive to dropped frames) let alone VOIP (~100kbps and fairly tolerant to dropped frames).
>

>snip..

>
> Anyway, long story short, you don't really NEED 1Gbps for domestic use. Maybe for a large busy office, but for a typical household 40Mbps+ is more than adequate.
>

NOBODY SAID THAT YOU DO.

Not many people live stream 4K video I can assure you.

Streaming 4K from Netflix/Youtube type services is NOT AT ALL sensitive
to dropped packets (you said frames but you either meant packets or you
are an idiot) because it uses TCP or other protocols that allow it to
buffer some time ahead and to request retransmission if any packets are
lost.

VOIP for telephony purposes on the other hand does not buffer ahead or
request retransmission of dropped packets.

[notya...@gmail.com]

On Monday, 18 January 2021 at 13:39:20 UTC, Brian Gregory wrote:
> On 18/01/2021 12:21, notya...@gmail.com wrote:
> >variuos rubbish snipped...
> > You don't, but then you won't be watchin 4k video in the same window will you?. However by far the main file transfer mechanism is synchronisation with clouds and this is an activity carried on in the background. In any event in DSL the downlink is faster, file synchronisation or someone else browsing or streaming on the same link don't even interfere with 4k video streaming (>10Mbps and very sensitive to dropped frames) let alone VOIP (~100kbps and fairly tolerant to dropped frames).
> >
> >snip..
> >
> > Anyway, long story short, you don't really NEED 1Gbps for domestic use. Maybe for a large busy office, but for a typical household 40Mbps+ is more than adequate.
> >
> NOBODY SAID THAT YOU DO.

May I remind you of the title of this thread: -
"'Litany of failures' on road to 1Gbps, MPs warn"
although to be fair I don't no which MP's

>
> Not many people live stream 4K video I can assure you.

I used to watch Tehachapi train stuff for a while - no problem in 4k, and what about Zoom meetings? OTOH Times Square at 4k was a little jerky just now, but probably NC.

>
> Streaming 4K from Netflix/Youtube type services is NOT AT ALL sensitive
> to dropped packets (you said frames but you either meant packets or you
> are an idiot)

Frames and packets are very similar in concept, but the latter are at a higher level in the protocol stack and sometimes corrected end to end, whereas frames are retransmitted at link level. A frame usually contains a single packet, but may contain more. Both can contain data and / or control information.

Lectures on the OSI stack are chargeable.

> because it uses TCP or other protocols that allow it to
> buffer some time ahead and to request retransmission if any packets are
> lost.

OTOH they do buffer ahead, as does music from better CD players etc., so that glitches can be corrected on the fly - so point accepted.

>
> VOIP for telephony purposes on the other hand does not buffer ahead or
> request retransmission of dropped packets.

Voip uses SIP, and I do not have detailed knowledge of that protocol and what retransmission facilities it has [if any].

On long (e.g. satellite) links even the nearly half century old ITU / CCITT no. 7 uses/d preventive cyclic retransmission to reduce the effect of drop outs.

[Brian Gregory]

You know I was trying to convince you that QoS is needed for VOIP.

You know I never said 1Gb internet makes any sense at all.

FFS, you even admit you have zero knowledge of SIP.

Did you ever try and use VOIP on a connection without QoS while a
Windows 10 PC was downloading a feature update??

If not shut up and go away.