NTL -> Magnet

jimmycrackcorm

Hi

Thanks to poster who noted that Magnet were digging lines in Lucan. In fact they are putting adsl2 in at the end of the month. So I am thinking of changing from NTL to them as they have tv/BB/Phone.

I've been very happy with NTL so I'm wondering if anyone else has magnet and how has it performed.


Also I'm curious if NTL are actually going to give any faster speeds as the Magnet is 4mb/512kb. Otherwise I doubt if anyone would move from NTL to another BB provider.

It's so nice to have such a wide choice of providers in Lucan including IBB even if only to be in a position to not have to take them.

paulm17781

The Magnet tv is all over phone lines (unless you are FTTH) so changing channel will be very slow. You will also only be able to watch one tv at a time and have to change phone number (to get all unbundled services).

jimmycrackcorm

paulm17781 wrote:

The Magnet tv is all over phone lines (unless you are FTTH) so changing channel will be very slow. You will also only be able to watch one tv at a time and have to change phone number (to get all unbundled services).

Changing channels slow - is this a fact or a guess? I'd guess myself that only a single mpeg bitstream is coming down the line but chosen from the selection available at the exchange, hence all would be required is a routing choice.

Like NTL's extra digibox for €5 p/m Magnet do an additional box for €6 so watching more than one channel is ok unless analogue is good enough.

Your phone number can be ported but .

Mobile calls look expensive on Magnet though otherwise there doesn't seem to be much between them:

Service NTL Magnet
==================================================
TV 68 basic 30 50 basic
BB MAX 3mb/300kbs 45 4MB/512
BlueFAce Voip Ire/UK Unlimited 15
Extra Digital tv point 5 6

MonthlyTotal 96 89

connection 25 includes extra 159
(some say they get the digital TV point
pack free fr 12 months)

So, connection aside, there is not a lot between them but higher broadband speeds are good. Question is what will NTL do?

bk

Rumour has it that NTL will be increasing speeds to 8meg soon. It seems like a reasonable rumour.

NTL has a far larger and better line up of channels, Magnet doesn't have the Discovery network and MTV network channels or even Sky One and Sky News!!!!

Changing channel will be slow, this is a well known problem with IPTV based services. When you change a channel on NTL, it just switches frequency on the decode box next to your TV. With IPTV it needs to send "Change channel" signal to the server, therfore greater latency.

Extra boxes, I would be very surprised if the extra box was available on the ADSL service, I'd say they are only avialable in FTTH areas. The reason? Well one Standard Definition MPEG2 stream uses about 4mbit/s, so there just isn't enough bandwidth for multiple streams.

They might be able to squeeze 2 streams in, but forget it if you want more then two. NTL scales better, I've got three digi boxes and two analog points in my house, also don't forget you get the basic 17 channels free for extra TV's and VCR's.

NTL's network will scale better in the long term, cable is easily capable of speeds greater then 100mbit/s speeds, and it doesn't need to share the bandwidth with TV streams, DSL technology will never scale to these speeds.

Finally if you threaten to leave NTL, I'm sure that they will give you the analogue TV service free for 12 months, this would save you €20 per month making NTL + Blueface cheaper then Magnet.

However if you do move to Magnet, let us know how it goes, there haven't been any reportshere on boards yet about how Magnet performs, so it would be interesting to see.

jimmycrackcorm

bk wrote:

Rumour has it that NTL will be increasing speeds to 8meg soon. It seems like a reasonable rumour.

Still speculation though.

NTL has a far larger and better line up of channels, Magnet doesn't have the Discovery network and MTV network channels or even Sky One and Sky News!!!!

Good point - I'd badly miss Sky One for voyager and the simpsons. Strange they have sky movies but not sky one

Changing channel will be slow, this is a well known problem with IPTV based services. When you change a channel on NTL, it just switches frequency on the decode box next to your TV. With IPTV it needs to send "Change channel" signal to the server, therfore greater latency.

The downside is that a lot of NTL channels are encoded with a low resolution and are very blocky. How big is the latency though - would it not be milliseconds. At the moment my TV goes blank between channel changes as it auto-adjusts the screen ratio.

Extra boxes, I would be very surprised if the extra box was available on the ADSL service, I'd say they are only avialable in FTTH areas. The reason? Well one Standard Definition MPEG2 stream uses about 4mbit/s, so there just isn't enough bandwidth for multiple streams.They might be able to squeeze 2 streams in, but forget it if you want more then two. NTL scales better, I've got three digi boxes and two analog points in my house, also don't forget you get the basic 17 channels free for extra TV's and VCR's.

This is ADSL2+ so up to 24Mb/s is available.

NTL's network will scale better in the long term, cable is easily capable of speeds greater then 100mbit/s speeds, and it doesn't need to share the bandwidth with TV streams, DSL technology will never scale to these speeds.

But it does and not only that but all your neighbours share the cable bandwidth to the cable head which is fibre from then on. The ADSL2+ gives you the dedicated bandwidth to the exchange which is then connected to the fibre backhaul.

Finally if you threaten to leave NTL, I'm sure that they will give you the analogue TV service free for 12 months, this would save you €20 per month making NTL + Blueface cheaper then Magnet.

Interesting that - I'll ask but I doubt if the support biddys can do anything seeing as they are the last to know about anything. The Broadband is most important to me and the soaps to herself . If there are definite plans to upgrade the speeds then I'll hold on.

However if you do move to Magnet, let us know how it goes, there haven't been any reportshere on boards yet about how Magnet performs, so it would be interesting to see.

I could sell my house too and move into a guineapig cage

philologos

would that poster be me
I've cancelled with BT and am waiting for them to install down where I am

philologos

paulm17781 wrote:

and have to change phone number (to get all unbundled services).

no you dont buddy. They are installing and using my existing number for it.

bk

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

This is ADSL2+ so up to 24Mb/s is available.

In your dreams

A recent report done in the UK found that only 5% of people would get 18Mb/s.

ADSL2+ is very much distance dependent.
At 2km from the exchange you will get 16Mb/s
At 3km from the exchange you will get 8Mb/s
At 5km from the exchange you will get 2Mb/s

According to the report only 5% of end users have local loops of 1200 metres or less, 45% have 3km or less, and 85% are within 5km.

http://www.point-topic.com/content/dslanalysis/ukpdslanaLocalloop051031.htm
http://www.internode.on.net/adsl2/graph/index.htm

So well over 50% of people are going to be getting 8Mb/s or less on ADSL2+ and that is before you even consider the terrible state of Eircoms network.

Remember the 4Mb/s TV stream has to fit in this bandwidth, so when your TV is on, you will only be getting 4Mb/s on your BB for internet. If you run two TV streams then you won't have any bandwidth left for your BB!!! and you definitely won't be able to run more then two TV's.

Cable doesn't surfer from this, it doesn't use the BB bandwith to carry TV, so if NTL give you 8Mb/s, that is exactly what you will get.

Maybe they are using the newer MPEG4 encoding standard, which would let them fit a SD stream in 2 - 3Mb/s, however you will never be able to do High Definition TV in the future, even with MPEG4, HD still uses about 10Mb/s!!!

The maths just doesn't add up, IPTV over DSL just doesn't scale as well as cable. Verizon, the largest telephone company in the US realised this and have decided to go with Fibre To The Home instead of ADSL2+, to allow them carry HD TV and high speed BB. They are currently installing over 2 million homes a year with FTTH.

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

But it does and not only that but all your neighbours share the cable bandwidth to the cable head which is fibre from then on. The ADSL2+ gives you the dedicated bandwidth to the exchange which is then connected to the fibre backhaul.

Contention is contention, weither the contention is at the local loop or at the exchange. The reality is that NTL has a max contention of 17:1 which is lower then any residential DSL product on the market.

Cable networks are typically of a much higher quality then telephone. The cable last mile uses shielded coax, while telephone uses unsielded twisted pair. That means that cable can carry up to about 850MHz (typical in Europe, NTL seems to be about 550MHz) of radio frequency, while telphone cable can only carry about 1MHz!!!!

The Coax cable then runs into a local node with a fibre backhaul, these local nodes are typically much closer to your home then your telephone exchange.

With the new DOCSIS 3 cable BB standard people should be able to get speeds of 50 - 60Mb/s even after the contention is taking into account (it is 200Mb/s uncontented). DSL will never reach these speeds, not even with Fibre To The Curb and VDSL.

Now I'm not saying NTL will immediately offer these speeds, they probably won't go much above what DSL can offer, in order to keep costs down, but they will always be able to stay ahead of DSL.

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

I could sell my house too and move into a guineapig cage

I've always wanted to have a pet

philologos

Magnet use gold quality phone cabling instead of copper or so they said on the phone when we were ordering it

Blaster99

The fundamental problem with cable, in particular as deployed in Ireland, is that the cable loops are long. You (and NTL) can talk all day long about maximum speeds, but if you have a thousand customers on a loop, you will get crap speeds. The thing that's saving you (and NTL) now is that the retail speeds are low and uptake is low. Most cable companies tend to not offer over 10Mbps by the way.

Cable and wireless potentially are definitely kings when it comes to triple play, no question about it. Whether people will bother with triple play as more and more TV is FTA on satellite is another question.

bk

Jakkass wrote:

Magnet use gold quality phone cabling instead of copper or so they said on the phone when we were ordering it

That is the biggest load of bull**** I've ever heard, my respect for them has just plumented, their sales staff isd already lieing to you. Magnet don't lay their own telephone cable (except in FTTH areas), they just rent your standard, crappy, unshielded twisted pair telephone line from Eircom.

Anyway Jakkass, let us know how it goes, I'd be interested to finally here a real user of it.

- What upload/download speed do you get? (use http://www.irishisptest.com)
- Does your BB speed get effected when watching TV?
- What is the channel lineup like?
- What is the picture and sound quality like? Any encoding artifacts?
- What is it like switching channels?
- What are the pings to boards.ie, games5.jolt.co.uk, google.com
- Does watching TV effect pings.
- How many extra independent TV boxes can you get?
- What is the make and model of your modem and TV decoder box (trying to figure out if they use MPEG2 or 4).

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

The fundamental problem with cable, in particular as deployed in Ireland, is that the cable loops are long. You (and NTL) can talk all day long about maximum speeds, but if you have a thousand customers on a loop, you will get crap speeds. The thing that's saving you (and NTL) now is that the retail speeds are low and uptake is low. Most cable companies tend to not offer over 10Mbps by the way.

You are absolutely right, however reconfiguring the network and putting less people on a loop as demand increases is relatively easy compared to moving exchanges, as cable uses relatively small nodes that simply convert the electric signal to light on the fibre. You will still need to dig roads to do this, but it is less of a job then DSL.

BTW the DOCSIS 2 standard currently used only uses one channel (8MHz out of 550MHz!!) for download speed, so if you can get 10Mb/s on that, you will be able to get at least 40Mb/s with DOCSIS 3, even if you are still sharing the long loop. This is because DOCSIS 3 works by channel bonding, you could bond 4 channels to give you 40Mb/s (10Mb/s for each channel) this will not be effected by loop lenghts or the number of people on a loop. You will need to get a new modem and the headend CMTS will need to be upgraded, but the rollout is relatively much simpler then rolling out ADSL2+, where you have to upgrade all the DSLAMS in all the exchanges.

You will understand why I'm so enthusiastic about cable BB when you get it yourself, I've used both DSL and cable BB and IMO the cable BB is far more stable and faster then DSL. It just works so well. Since getting it, I've read up a lot about cable BB, and it is very impressive technology, much more impressive then DSL which I also know far too much about. I apologise if I come across too much like a fanboy, I also like not having to use Eircom ever again, I've already given them far too much of my well earned money.

Blaster99

You don't have to move an exchange if demand increases, so I'm not really sure I understand the relevance of the comparison.

Yes, cable BB would be great but so long as clowns like NTL are in charge of it, I'm sure I'll have to wait. I'm not sure I would go for it in any event but if it were significantly faster than that would be good. Eircom will obviously respond if that were to happen so I doubt it makes much of a difference.

Are they even connected to INEX?

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

You don't have to move an exchange if demand increases, so I'm not really sure I understand the relevance of the comparison.

What I meant is that in order to have any change to even match cable DOCSIS 3 speeds (> 40Mb/s), Eircom would need to run fibre to the curb and put VDSL DSLAMS in in a mini curb side "exchange".

Blaster99 wrote:

Yes, cable BB would be great but so long as clowns like NTL are in charge of it, I'm sure I'll have to wait. I'm not sure I would go for it in any event but if it were significantly faster than that would be good. Eircom will obviously respond if that were to happen so I doubt it makes much of a difference.

I've found NTL engineers to be some of the best. Sure it may take a while to reach you, these things always do, DSL had a big head start on them, DSL has been rolling out for the last 5 years, NTL only restarted this year.

It is significantly faster, I've had both 2m/128k DSL and 3m/300k NTL and I had both for about two weeks and I did a detailed comparison. Cable came out better in almost all ways.

- Cable had lower pings.
- Obviously NTL is faster, however NTL gives you almost 100% of the advertised speed, while I was only getting about 75 - 80% of the DSL speed (1.7m download out of 2m and 103k out of 128k upload).
- Over the last 6 months since getting it, cable has proven to be far more stable with no downtime at all. I would often get downtime with DSL.

And for all of this I'm paying €10 per month less then Eircom 2m/128k for a much faster product, so no, Eircom haven't responded. So moving to NTL is a no brainer.

Blaster99 wrote:

Are they even connected to INEX?

They currently chair INEX

When I carried out my above test comparing DSL and cable, I noticed that traffic destined for Ireland (such as boards.ie) was routed through the UK, therefore causing high pings. I complained about this here on boards and within one day NTL engineers corrected it and now all Irish traffic is routed through INEX Now in my book that is the most impressive example of customer support that I've ever heard of.

TimTim

Blaster99 wrote:

Are they even connected to INEX?

Yes they do, but the amount of peering agreements they have it quite small.

EDIT: Never mind, too late to the party this time....

chorus techy

paulm17781 wrote:

so changing channel will be very slow.

With the amount of time it takes to change channels on an NTL box with the rubbish software, I don't think you'd notice any difference between NTL and Magnet

crol

bk wrote:

Contention is contention, weither the contention is at the local loop or at the exchange. The reality is that NTL has a max contention of 17:1 which is lower then any residential DSL product on the market.

smart telecoms dsl products are un-contended.

philologos

id like to see proof of that

crol

what proof would you like to see?

as stated in their faq

Q. What is the contention ratio on the Smart broadband product?

A. Smart Broadband is not designed around the concept of contention. Smart Telecom owns and operates its own high-capacity fibre-optic network. As any link in the Smart network approaches capacity, it will be automatically be upgraded. Smart Broadband users will continue to enjoy the unrestricted high-speed Internet access.

philologos

ah im pleasantly surprised that magnet also has no contention
http://www.enn.ie/send.html?code=9649923

ENN.ie wrote:

ENN: What's so different about your service?



Ardagh: Basically you're looking at the fastest and the best broadband service
out there at the moment. And contention is not an issue with our ADSL service;
we're putting television over the pipe so you can't have the signal coming and
going, it has to be consistent. So that's a plus. Also it's 30 percent cheaper
than anything else out there at the moment. If you compare it to having unlimited
talk time from Eircom, broadband and cable television, you're looking at saving
EUR500 a year. And you've only one bill, one person to call if there's a problem,
and only one device.

but ill keep you all posted when it arrives, btw Magnet has plans to increase to 10Mbit in the near future (its on their site )

Freddie59

Jakkass wrote:

Magnet use gold quality phone cabling instead of copper or so they said on the phone when we were ordering it

Pardon me if wrong - but if Magnet are piggy-backing onto existing Eircom lines then I don't see 'gold quality phone cabling' being deployed. Honestly -sales reps!!:eek: :rolleyes:

Freddie59

Blaster99 wrote:

The fundamental problem with cable, in particular as deployed in Ireland, is that the cable loops are long. You (and NTL) can talk all day long about maximum speeds, but if you have a thousand customers on a loop, you will get crap speeds. The thing that's saving you (and NTL) now is that the retail speeds are low and uptake is low. Most cable companies tend to not offer over 10Mbps by the way.

Cable and wireless potentially are definitely kings when it comes to triple play, no question about it. Whether people will bother with triple play as more and more TV is FTA on satellite is another question.

What do you call a low uptake? Have you access to the figures? Do you know what Eircom's uptake is, for example? Regards FTA TV, the landscape is changing rapidly, with convergence and triple play becoming vital issue.

A survey of European households shows that 87% (yes - eighty-seven percent) would prefer to take all three services from one supplier.:)

dub45

Freddie59 wrote:

What do you call a low uptake? Have you access to the figures? Do you know what Eircom's uptake is, for example? Regards FTA TV, the landscape is changing rapidly, with convergence and triple play becoming vital issue.

A survey of European households shows that 87% (yes - eighty-seven percent) would prefer to take all three services from one supplier.:)

I think you are being optimistic there - the vast majority of people would not have a clue what triple play means I would bet. Lots of people have not got a clue about broadband never mind triple play.

And who carried out the survey? Lots of people seem more concerned with getting one bill rather than the best value or service even.

Freddie59

chorus techy wrote:

With the amount of time it takes to change channels on an NTL box with the rubbish software, I don't think you'd notice any difference between NTL and Magnet

You've talked some $hite on this forum before, but that takes the biscuit!!!:D

Freddie59

dub45 wrote:

I think you are being optimistic there - the vast majority of people would not have a clue what triple play means I would bet. Lots of people have not got a clue about broadband never mind triple play.

And who carried out the survey? Lots of people seem more concerned with getting one bill rather than the best value or service even.

They might not at the minute - how many people knew what broadband was even two years ago? The survey was carried out by the EU (can't find the link at the minute). I don't understand your last point - that's exactly what was quoted in the survey - but people wanted good quality also.:)

Freddie59

crol wrote:

what proof would you like to see?

as stated in their faq

Q. What is the contention ratio on the Smart broadband product?

A. Smart Broadband is not designed around the concept of contention. Smart Telecom owns and operates its own high-capacity fibre-optic network. As any link in the Smart network approaches capacity, it will be automatically be upgraded. Smart Broadband users will continue to enjoy the unrestricted high-speed Internet access.

So their fibre goes all the way to the home? Or are they operating their own nationwide fibre network?:eek:

bk

Ok, there is no such thing as an uncontend line. The internet is full of contention, you have contention at the local loop, at the exchange level, at the backhaul to the ISP, in the ISP's routers and internal network, in the internet backbone, in the actual server you are accessing.

Contention is a fundamental reality of all ISP's and all ISP's have to carefully manage it.

I've seen the costings of the LLU process, there is no way it is uncontended, unless you were paying at least a couple hundred euro per month. Now these companies might manage their contention in such a way that the end user never experiences contention, that is certainly true of NTL and some of the other better DSL providers, but there is definitely contention.

crol

Freddie59 wrote:

So their fibre goes all the way to the home? Or are they operating their own nationwide fibre network?:eek:

their fibre goes as far as each dslam each of which lives in an eircom exchange where your copper pair ends.

contention is only relevant in a congested network.

smart operate an uncongested network and will upgrade any component of that network which approaches capacity.

Blaster99

bk wrote:

Ok, there is no such thing as an uncontend line. The internet is full of contention, you have contention at the local loop, at the exchange level, at the backhaul to the ISP, in the ISP's routers and internal network, in the internet backbone, in the actual server you are accessing.

Uncontended access means uncontended within the ISP's network up until the transit entry point. This is what a leased line is. This is what Smart's ADSL is. This is what cable broadband isn't and can never be.

Freddie59

Blaster99 wrote:

Uncontended access means uncontended within the ISP's network up until the transit entry point. This is what a leased line is. This is what Smart's ADSL is. This is what cable broadband isn't and can never be.

You might be right - but look at the attached file and see what the 'terrible' 3Meg NTL service actually performs like.:D

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

Uncontended access means uncontended within the ISP's network up until the transit entry point. This is what a leased line is. This is what Smart's ADSL is. This is what cable broadband isn't and can never be.

The last statement is sort of an irrelevant. If you get 100% of the speed 100% of the time, then what does it matter if it is contended. I'll remind you that Smart is virtually throttled (as is NTL) after all you could get up to 8Mb/s on the Smart network as has been pointed out by Smart employes during testing, but they decide to throttle it to 2m for all their customers.

Simply put Cable is a superior technology to DSL and I'm not the only one who thinks this, Verizon, the largest telephone company in the US (and therefore the world) and also the company with the largest number of DSL customers in the world, has decided to skip ADSL2+ and VDSL all together and instead decided to go with the very expensive option of Fibre To The Home, because it is the only way to deliver the breadth of services and speeds to it's customers that are available on cable.

BTW, it is worth noting that even Verizons FTTH service from 2006 will actually be 2.6gigbit shared, so even that has contention, yet it will still be able to deliver speeds of around 100Mb/s to customers!

Take a look at this great article for an overview of the future BB tachnologies:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/65298

Heres the interesting bit about cable:

"DOCSIS 3.0 is real, mostly agreed, and the key vendors have the details and are making equipment for 2006. It's a shared 160/120 or higher, easily expandable to a shared gigabit. Real speeds to users will often be 20-50 megabits. It was developed to compete with higher speed DSL in Asia. Early in 2005, the U.S. cable companies realized Verizon was serious about fiber, and pushed CableLabs and suppliers (Cisco, Motorola, Arris, Broadcom) to get DOCSIS 3.0 ready for the U.S. ASAP, and 2006 is realistic with some pricey gear.

What we don't know is whether the Verizon will scare the cable companies into actually doing the upgrades. It's not terribly expensive. CableLabs chose the Arris/Motorola/Broadcom 160/120 proposal over Cisco 1 gigabit alternative because it can be done with software in the CMTS and a new modem, relatively cheaply. It doesn't require running new fiber or anything terribly expesive. But it's more capital spending than the cablecos planned. "

BTW shared 160/120 is more like shared 200Mb/s in Europe. It is interesting to note that it can be done relatively cheaply, but that doesn't mean the cablecos will be willing to invest, however they are more likely to be willing in Ireland IMO, because unlike in the US where they are the leaders in the BB market, here they are coming from way behind and need something badly to catchup.

It is also worth nothing that the article mentions that the quality of the cable experience has a lot to do with how the network is managed and designed. At the moment the NTL network is pretty bad and it will need a lot of work to improve it, but that is happening now.

BBTW It is also interesting to note that Verizon isn't in fact using IPTV over their FTTH network, they are actually transmitting all channels over the fiber to every customer, similiar to how standard digital cable and satellite works.