Copper feel, fibre it ain't: Ads regulator could face court for playing hard and fast with definitions

"I was about to agree with the complaint until I read the ASA conclusion. Do consumers care how their internet services are delivered?"

The fact that ISPs use the word fibre in their advertising and it is generating this much interest among the ASA and ISPs suggests that consumers do care. Whether they *should* care is clearly a different question.

However a full fibre network when working properly should be able to work at full speed regardless of distance (within reason). A part copper network has a lot more vagaries to what speed it can work at, including the length of the copper, the internal wiring, the copper type, the number of extra connections, electrical interference.

Therefore with full fibre to the premises and a fibre router then any speed less than the service you have paid for* (minus overheads) is either down to faulty equipment or contention somewhere - either of which can be easily rectified.

(*) to the point of that router - not including your internal WiFi or end user devices.

With copper you start getting into SNR, speed profiles, learning routines etc.

> You could have full fibre with crap throughput for example.

You could; but at least the problems would be definitely due to your service provider's network, and not due to crosstalk or rain in the joints or the phases of the moon.

The fault rate for fibre is much lower, and it's easier to raise a fault when there is one, since basically it either works or it doesn't. Furthermore it works the same for all subscribers.

All the copper technologies are fundamentally adaptive: they try to make the best use of a substrate which varies both in length and quality from subscriber to subscriber, and which even varies in quality over time. And therefore it can be hard to get the service provider to accept that the line is not functioning as well as it should.

Do consumers care how their internet services are delivered?

No they don't, and I can guarantee that the majority won't even know the difference between FTTC and FTTP, so if the adverts switch from "Fibre" to "Fibre To The Cabinet" their eyes will glaze over until the advert finishes and they go "ohh, Fibre, is it better than what we have? What do we have anyhow?".

What they do care about is the actual difference (even if they don't understand it) and the difference is......

Up To

Do consumers care how their internet services are delivered?

No they don't, but they do care about the 'label'. So just as with 'HD' TV's consumers recognised 'HD' as meaning more pixels, higher definition etc. so they asked for and brought 'HD' TV's. the only issue was that the industry misused the term "HDready" to include any tv capable of receiving an HD input signal and downscaling it...

I think to some extent the same applies to 'Fibre' broadband. Consumers have been told it is faster, more reilable etc etc. and so ask for it. So ISPs will offer 'fibre' so that they can tick the consumers box.

Interestingly, if we going to be picky, I wonder if CityFibre's "full-fibre network" truely has a fibre only end-to-end data path; I suspect there are some copper-based routers, switches etc. in their network...

Re: Bah, ASA.

They don't know what the word theft means either, at least they didn't when I complained about the FACT advertising on a DVD I bought.

Re: Bah, ASA.

May I add "broadband" to the list of words?

But it's not just semantic irrelevance. It has relevance for quality of service, variance of quality of service, and the extent of future potential.

When genuine fibre could go up to many Gbps; selling 'fake fibre' which never can but leaving the buyer with the false impression it could, is giving an unfair advantage to the 'fake fibre' pushers.

I have been expecting this issue to blow up ever since the ASA allowed non-fibre to be called fibre. It isn't.

By the same token you wouldn't care if your car was diesel, petrol or electric as long as it gets you from A to B. And yet consumers do care because diesel is more reliable, electric cleaner and petrol more fun. In the same way that fibre tends to be more reliable, have lower packet loss and have lower latency.

.... and part of "getting the speed you pay for" is the fact that FTTC is a HYBRID line and the speed is impacted by the copper 'twixt cabinet and your NT point. That speed drop / increased latency affects precisely what consumers expect - a fast reliable service, I wont even start about the poor suckers who are tied to the sweated BT notwork by ally cable.

Leaving aside that you seem blind to the *UPTO* part of your service description, there is almost always a loss involved over the Copper stretch unless you happen to live on top of your PCP, and thats just in the cable which is probably years old and past its prime with a huge number of dodgy joints and water ingress etc, and thats without losses caused by crosstalk. The only way to get the "headline" speed (or in your terms - "The speed I pay for") is to have Fibre to the Premises, that is fibre right up to the point where your modem plugs in, and that is exactly what FTTC ISNT and as such shouldnt be sold as such.

Attitudes like that are the reason that the industry gets away with mis-describing an overpriced hybrid service, and why we see the clueless continually blathering on about "not getting the speed they pay for" when in fact the only way to achieve that goal is a proper FTTP service, which BT Openwound seem determined to make as many as possible fund by over the top build costs for FTTPod.

How can people on a tech site like this seem not to understand those simple facts?

Agree

Using the Ads regulator logic, all the internet is "fibre", as there is some in the network, somewhere, even if it is in the core. So a 56K modem using POTS qould qualify as "fibre".

VM <> FIBRE

Of course, as you dont have fibre, but docsis over coaxial copper cable. Very different from fibre.

vested interest

or enlightened self interest?

Nothing wrong with those who have a vested interest pushing for clarity if it benefits them. Nobody else will. In this case they have a fair point.

Although there is a distinction between FTTC and FTTP, so the FTTP guys should start pushing that difference. Get someone advertising it as "I need a P" or something!

Re: Not all wires are Copper

"A lot of the time if we see an Openreach van in the road working on someone else's fault we are braced for the inevitable connection problems that will cause us."

I wonder if you can arrange for 'certain criminal gangs' to helpfully steal the aluminium cable?

Re: Plain english says the review should succeed.

"Motorway" is a good way to look at the 10Gbps fibre backbone.

"Dual-Carriageway/Trunk A-Road" is a good way to look at the fibre network.

"B-Road/Unclassified/Dirt Track" is a way to look at the copper network.

"The Ikea Car Park" is a way to look at contention.

Looking at places like Silverstone or Glastonbury, you can instantly see that it's getting out of the car park on to the A43 or A361 that slows and defines your journey, not the M4, M5 or M1 upon which you spend most of your journey. Merge left, merge right, merge, merge, merge onto Purley Way Croydon is the Ikea traffic experience, not time on the A23 or M25. The average person knows the difference and that maximising the motorway or dual-carriageway driving, and minimising the time spent on local roads will improve speeds. Once demanding users understand that copper is like a trip to Ikea, they will want Full-Fibre.

Re: Alternative naming?

New, exclusive Cloud Fibre?

Re: Alternative naming?

> Anyone remember Narrow band?

Yes. That was dial-up.

New FibreAllTheWay. Try it today."

And they'll try it, and for most of them the only difference they'll see is the 2x monthly charge. Not a useful USP...