Fibre Optic

[truebrit]

Have just had engineer from Moviestar round to get permission from us to attach the necessary wires to our property. Said would probably be available in June. My question is what are the benefits of fibre optic? Is it going to cost more money? Will I still be able to get it though my internet provider or will i have to change. Technicalities in easy to understand language please.

[Miro]

If Movistar are installing fibre optic cables, you will be able to get fibre optic from Movistar. Each provider is installing their own cables.
If you already have ADSL with Movistar, it's possible that you will be able to get fibre at no extra cost - depends on your existing contract. Look at their website to see the current offers for new customers.
If you are already getting a decent download speed (like 10 mb/s) I doubt that in practice you'll notice much difference by upgrading to fibre optic. I had ADSL (Movistar) and got a consistent 8.5 mb/s. I switched to Orange fibre (the only ones who have installed it here so far) and get anything between 50 and 300 mb/s, depending on which server I connect on speedtest.net, but can't say I notice any worthwhile difference. It is, however, cheaper than my Movistar ADSl was, so if you want a choice, it may be better to wait until other providers install in your area too.

[northandsouth]

We have movistar fibre. It's been available in 30 and 300mb for over a year now. It is far far better than the old ADSL copper wire. What people round here noticed was that once movistar had started installing fibre throughout the municipality the ADSL service began to falter dramatically. A ploy? Maybe.
Fusion pack 30mb unlimited with phone line and unlimited calls plus TV and mobile with 2gb and 200 mins 50 euros including iva no charge for install.
Same as above with 300 was 68 euros but they keep offering deals so worth checking out
Here they are installing within a day if it's available to your property. Some are up and running within a few hours of application.

[firsttango]

Had it now for three days and getting clean consistent 300mbps speeds, I personally have noticed a massive difference in every area from streaming, uploading and general web browsing is all infinitely quicker. Compared to the old copper wire ADSL 10 mbps...well there really is no comparison.

[truebrit]

Im not with moviestar and am getting 18/20 download. Are you saving that I would have to move to Moviestar? What would the charge be? Is it going to improve television because that is what I mainly use it for.? The charge of 50euros you quoted was that per month?

[northandsouth]

Television is a breeze whatever IPTV system you use we have never had a buffer issue and you can alter DNS on the router too. Yes it's €50 per month all inclusive for 30mb no installation cost. Best to ask movistar direct for their rates as I say they are doing deals all the time.

[Miro]

If you only want internet (and no mobile included), they currently have an offer on 300mb/s fibre at €26.90 per month for 12 months, but you have to add on line rental at €17.40! So €44.30 per month: https://www.movistar.es/particulares/in ... ra-optica/

Yes, you would have to "move" to Movistar since you said it was Movistar who have installed fibre otpic in your property - unless, that is, your current provider has installed fibre already? If you want to change, check that you don't have a cancellation penalty with your current provider first.
When you ask if it will improve your television, are you currently experiencing problems? It either buffers, or doesn't. If you are currently getting around 18mb/s download speeds, I'm not convinced that you'll notice any difference anyway. I notice that the ads from the UK for BT, Sky, Kevin Bacon etc. all claim to be "super quick" but the small print usually says expected speeds of around 20-30mb/s, none of them seem to offer anything like 300, which makes me think it's not necessary for most users. Uploading? I don't really upload much. Web browsing? I really haven't noticed any significant difference. Downloading movies? Perhaps a little quicker, but it's really dependent on the upload speeds of the source anyway, and I'm not usually in a hurry! Perhaps I've got a bad service or experience from Orange, but if it wasn't cheaper than my previous Movistar ADSL service, I wouldn't bother recommending it to a friend. I just don't see any real benefit. I actually suspect that fibre offers more advantages to the supplier than the consumer, with lower maintenance costs, and great sales pitches to lure more punters in! Perhaps I'm just a grumpy old cynic?

[El Cid]

Yes, I would agree that an upgrade from 18mb/s is only going to show a marginal increase in perceived speed. If you want to stream 4K content from Netflix and Amazon, then yes, you need 25mb/s or more. The other reason for having a fast connection is if there is a load of users accessing at the same time. I note that the latest Vodaphone UK ad spells this out quite clearly. With a family with two TVs and assorted devices, 300mb/s would be useful, but I suspect few forum members are in this position.

Sid

[firsttango]

I think it really depends on what the individual user requires from the internet. It also would depend how clean your 18mbps download is ie is your channel congested at certain times of the day. How you have the router set up to take advantage of both 2.4 (which does suffer hugely from interference) and 5ghz channel which is far faster, cleaner many more channels etc. Also depends hugely on the capabilities of the wifi card in your devices. What used to take me an hour to upload to my cloud now takes less than 2 minutes. Being able to download a film from iTunes etc in minutes instead of hours is a major bonus.
No buffering at all on the NOWTV box whatsoever. As Cid says 300+ mbps truly comes into its own when you have several devices pulling large bandwidth at once.

[Miro]

None of my mobile devices nor my hifi (nor, I think I'm correct in saying, the NowTV box) are compatible with the 5ghz signal, so I wouldn't know about that. Either my apartment is a Faraday cage or the Orange supplied router is cr4p, but the wifi signal is so poor that my hifi & NowTV are now hardwired in to the network, so channel congestion/availability is irrelevant. Only my mobile & tablet use the wifi. Perhaps Movistar's is superior. God knows what you upload - the most data I ever upload anywhere is the occasional video of my cat to my YouTube channel, which isn't exactly urgent! Films that used to take half an hour on 10mb/s ADSL now maybe take 5-10 minutes. As you say, all depends on individual requirements. Perhaps you'd appreciate Orange's "symmetric" fibre; my upload speeds are similar to d/l - sometimes over 300mb/s.

[firsttango]

The old White Nowbox is not dual band however all the newer 2nd Gen Black boxes most certainly are. Judging by your comments of your experience with Orange I very much doubt I'd appreciate anything they can offer, especially a locked router.

http://help.nowtv.com/article/NOW-TV-Box-Tech-Spec

[Miro]

You're quite right, I just checked and the black NowTV box does in fact pick up the 5Ghz signal from the Orange router - which is of course academic, since I can't change the DNS settings in the damned thing, and my secondary router with my smart DNS settings does not transmit on 5Ghz
I will very likely switch back to Movistar when my year contract with Orange is up - IF they've got round to installing fibre here by then. I'll probably opt for the cheaper 30mb/s service though.

[Usinspain2578]

I live on a urbanisation that is split in two parts separating the two parts is a piece of land not owned by our urbanisation, the other side has fibre optic they say is very good but they are saying that Movistar cannot get it to me when I say me I mean everybody's homes around me, until they get permission from the people who own this piece of land to allow them to lay the cables across to us,constantly keep asking in the office same old answer Movistar trying to get permission from land owner this has been going on for over twelve months.

Is there any way I can find out myself where Movistar are up to in supplying us with fibre optic
Thank you

[Miro]

Do you mean other than by asking Movistar themselves? Simple answer - no. And even if you by some freak chance manage to get to speak to someone at Movistar with half a brain, you probably still won't be any the wiser. I have asked Movistar several times when they expect to supply fibre to our building, and nobody can tell me. I've had answers ranging between "before Christmas" to 7 years. They have installed fibre in buildings nearby, and their engineers are regularly seen working down manholes around the area, but nobody knows a damn thing. They requested & received written consent from our president (me!) months ago to come into the building to install fibre. Meanwhile, more and more people are presumably signing up with Orange & Jazztel, who seem to have got a jump on Movistar around here.

[northandsouth]

Which shows how lucky we are in this part of the province with movistar fibre available pretty much everywhere in town, outlying areas and even in semi campo areas via overhead lines. They install pdq too.

[El Cid]

Are you saying that they are installing fibre in the Campo using the overhead lines?

Sid

[Lyric]

What constitutes "Semi Campo"

[northandsouth]

Are you saying that they are installing fibre in the Campo using the overhead lines?

Sid

Yes here they are I'm in a friends house now the f.o. lines are over head, installation again very quick.

Semi campo is my terminology for country areas within say 2 or 3 km of the town.
Unfortunately the " real campo" is not so well covered here but movistar say they are still putting lines in.

[northandsouth]

http://s1077.photobucket.com/user/adria ... %20Uploads

This is a typical overhead movistar fibre junction box and house link semi campo.
Sorry about photo quality the big yellow ball in the sky wouldn't play nice.

[El Cid]

That looks interesting. We are, as you call it, semi campo about 2km out of town. The best we can get is 2.5mb which is why I recently changed to a 45mb WiFi system. That said, if they start stringing fibre optic cables up the road I might be tempted back to Movistar!

Sid