Tech

The other day I was trawling through my usual daily news feeds and came across this:- https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/8277-another-seven-gfast-exchange-areas-spotted-with-live-pods 

For a little background, openreach give a description of what Gfast is here:- https://www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/fibre-broadband/ultrafast-broadband/ultrafast-fibre-g.fast

There was mention of the street cabinets that are served off the Churchtown exchange (where I live). In recent weeks I have noticed many cabinets being fitted with an extension, but hadn’t really figured what they were for. The extension is fitted to the main cabinet, not the associated cabinet that supports the broadband connections.

So I now need to do some rapid research since I’m not really familiar with the technology. It claims a huge increase in speed, but it’s *very* dependent on how far from the cabinet you are. And the further away you get, the less the benefit. Almost to the point that beyond a certain distance, the benefits aren’t really that great. I suspect I may fall into this category.

Anyway, my current provider, Zen, who I’ve no desire to move away from, apparently support it, so it’s time to give them a call to see what the options / benefits are.

What I do find surprising is that I’ve registered my interest for faster broadband on many official sites on the basis I’d get advanced warning when the time came. And I’ve received nothing. Only now by chance do I read I can get it.

As I find out more, I’ll add to this post.

Mark.

Update 3rd January 2019. Well, Zen have been in touch, and the information I’ve been given is not what I was expecting. It looks like I could indeed benefit from an increase on download speed, possibly up from 60MB/s to 120MB/s. But the downside is that my upload speed would drop from 20MB/s to 5MB’s. For me that’s not acceptable. Given the amount of data we need to push into ‘the cloud’ these days, I”d bee looking to increase the speed, not drop it. So, it’s a no from me…..