ADSL Max confusion

Hi,
I'm bit confused about ADSL Max. I was aware of LLU and had resigned
myself to the fact that my little rural exchange would be last in the
line for this service. I've now found out that the exchange has been
enabled for ADSL Max. I thought the whole point of LLU was to enable 8
meg connections. Now ADSL Max is available, what is the benefit of LLU?

The service I get from my ISP (Garner Digital) has always provided for
a free upgrade to 8Mbps (or as fast as possible), but I'd always
assumed that this refered to LLU. Now my exchange has ADSL Max, how
simple is it to upgrade? There's no mention of ADSL Max on the ISP
website and I'm still waiting for a reply from them.

Just ask your ISP to get it done. They have to order it from BT and it costs
them a fiver maximum.

--
Peter Crosland

On 12 Apr 2006 "Simon" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I'm bit confused about ADSL Max. I was aware of LLU and had resigned
>myself to the fact that my little rural exchange would be last in the
>line for this service. I've now found out that the exchange has been
>enabled for ADSL Max. I thought the whole point of LLU was to enable 8
>meg connections. Now ADSL Max is available, what is the benefit of LLU?

LLU allows alternative firms ( Bulldog, Easynet/UK Online, Be, Tiscali,
and probably some more, check on www.samknows.com ) to provide your line
with a data connection onto their ADSL kit, which means that if LLU was
in place, then people who had switched might have had access to higher
speeds for much longer (a friend of mine has had Bulldog for a couple
of years I think... last spring/summer he switched to 8000 - though
he's getting about 7200 kbps) whereas users of other ISPs, on BTW
products (IPstream/DataStream), have been limited to 2000 kbps.

>The service I get from my ISP (Garner Digital) has always provided for
>a free upgrade to 8Mbps (or as fast as possible), but I'd always
>assumed that this refered to LLU. Now my exchange has ADSL Max, how
>simple is it to upgrade? There's no mention of ADSL Max on the ISP
>website and I'm still waiting for a reply from them.

They (along with other ISPs) have to place orders to regrade your line
from whatever speed it is now to the new IPStream Max product. With a
few million lines (from the biggest ISPs down to the smallest) it will
take a number of months to do everyone. You'll probably find yours is
earlier than some ISPs with 100,000 customers, as inevitably there has
to be someone at the "end of the queue" for each of those bigger ISPs.

In article <(E-Mail Removed). com>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> Hi,
> I'm bit confused about ADSL Max. I was aware of LLU and had resigned
> myself to the fact that my little rural exchange would be last in the
> line for this service. I've now found out that the exchange has been
> enabled for ADSL Max. I thought the whole point of LLU was to enable 8
> meg connections. Now ADSL Max is available, what is the benefit of LLU?

No. The advantage of LLU is that it (pretty much) removes BT from the
equation, by allowing other operators to install their equipment in BT
exchanges and take over the running of the local wire to your house.


>
> The service I get from my ISP (Garner Digital) has always provided for
> a free upgrade to 8Mbps (or as fast as possible), but I'd always
> assumed that this refered to LLU. Now my exchange has ADSL Max, how
> simple is it to upgrade? There's no mention of ADSL Max on the ISP
> website and I'm still waiting for a reply from them.
>
>

Quite easy, but you need to be connected pretty much 24/7 for 10 days,
to allow for your line to be tested for it's most stable rate.

--
Alan LeHun

On 12 Apr 2006, I wrote:

>LLU allows alternative firms ... to provide your line with a data
>connection onto their ADSL kit,

Forgot to add - that takes it away from the BT Centrals onto their own
networks (perhaps via fibre rented from BT, depends on the area anyway)
and because it goes via their own networks, prices for shifting data is
no longer fixed by BT, so the ISP can offer higher levels of traffic if
they want, and/or lower prices. EG UK Online has a fee of 9.99 for the
lowest speed connection, and while you can find several ISPs with their
own services priced from 11 to 15 quid, they offer small quota of data,
as BT cost is around 8 quid (plus VAT, I think) and then data is on top
of that, so the ISPs cannot afford to offer 50 GB for 15 quid, usually,
if they are making use of BT for the link from your exchange... LLU can
really come into its own, there. Also see www.adslguide.org Peter.

"Simon" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> Hi,
> I'm bit confused about ADSL Max. I was aware of LLU and had resigned
> myself to the fact that my little rural exchange would be last in the
> line for this service. I've now found out that the exchange has been
> enabled for ADSL Max. I thought the whole point of LLU was to enable 8
> meg connections. Now ADSL Max is available, what is the benefit of LLU?

If the LLU is vanilla ADSL and the only issue is speed, then probably
nothing.

> The service I get from my ISP (Garner Digital) has always provided for
> a free upgrade to 8Mbps (or as fast as possible), but I'd always
> assumed that this refered to LLU. Now my exchange has ADSL Max, how
> simple is it to upgrade? There's no mention of ADSL Max on the ISP

Not even this? http://www.garnerdigital.com/broadband/home.html

> website and I'm still waiting for a reply from them.

I am on a similar small ISP and my regrade to MaxDSL went through seamlessly
exactly a week ago. Not that the speed gets anywhere near peak other than
in the very early morning.
--
Malcolm

Peter Crosland wrote:
> Just ask your ISP to get it done. They have to order it from BT and it costs
> them a fiver maximum.
>

AIUI, that depends on what sort of order it is Peter. A modify order
(which can be completed in a day) costs more than a regrade (normally
takes a few days - a week). BT will not have a bulk regrade tool until
later this month and are restictive regarding the number of modify
orders they will accept from ISPs at the moment.

Regards,

--
|Bob Pullen Broadband Solutions for
|Training & Project Liaison Home & Business @
|PlusNet plc www.plus.net
+ ----- PlusNet - The smarter way to broadband ------

On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:00:57 +0100, "Malcolm Knight"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Not even this? http://www.garnerdigital.com/broadband/home.html

It doesn't look likely that they are using Max yet, as my exchange
isn't unbundled, but is Max'd and their line checker shows a max speed
of 2Mb for my line (which is currently running at 7Mb on Max).
--
Andy Norman
http://www.gigajam.com/
Learn to Play Guitar, Bass, Keyboard and Drums.
It’s easy with our Lessons and Software!

>> Just ask your ISP to get it done. They have to order it from BT and it
>> costs them a fiver maximum.
>>
>
> AIUI, that depends on what sort of order it is Peter. A modify order
> (which can be completed in a day) costs more than a regrade (normally
> takes a few days - a week). BT will not have a bulk regrade tool until
> later this month and are restictive regarding the number of modify orders
> they will accept from ISPs at the moment.


Fair comment Bob but how does a regrade differ from modify? Is this BT speak
for we can charge more?

Peter Crosland

Hi Alan,

"Alan LeHun" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> In article <(E-Mail Removed). com>,
> (E-Mail Removed) says...
>> Hi,
>> I'm bit confused about ADSL Max. I was aware of LLU and had resigned
>> myself to the fact that my little rural exchange would be last in the
>> line for this service. I've now found out that the exchange has been
>> enabled for ADSL Max. I thought the whole point of LLU was to enable
>> 8
>> meg connections. Now ADSL Max is available, what is the benefit of
>> LLU?

This bit I have no problems with
>
> No. The advantage of LLU is that it (pretty much) removes BT from the
> equation, by allowing other operators to install their equipment in BT
> exchanges

but this bit
>
> and take over the running of the local wire to your house.
>
requires, I believe, that you emulate Fagin, in "Oliver" i.e. "I think
I'd better think it out again".

You seem to be suggesting that each LLU operator has operatives who are
going to go into BT line boxes to sort out problems with the local wire
to a subscriber's house. If they found a problem with the existing line
pair how would they resolve it? They don't 'own', or necessarily 'run'
any other wires in the line box. Are you suggesting a free-for-all where
they just nick a pair that doesn't seem to be active at the time of
their looking?

I would suggest that this is why Openreach was set up; to preserve the
integrity of the network. The LLU operator leases the lines from
Openreach and it is Openreach who maintain those lines.

regards,

Mike Hardy