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A glimmer of hope - If you live long enough !


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For those currently bereft of any form of DSL there is some hope on the distant horizon with Reach-Extended ADSL (READSL) but I wouldn't hazzard a guess as to when this might be rolled out.

The diagram below gives an indication of what you might expect.

EDIT: Disregard this,

"For the data rate on the left you can divide by 100 to read Mb, i.e. 800kbps = 8mb (no pedants picking me up on this rough conversion please !)"

Brain/Eye coordination not working today, I was forgetting that the chart starts @ 18kft !

From other articles I have read, with READSL, lines up to 22.5kft (4.26m or 6.8km) or with up to 78Db attenuation, will still be able to operate @ 192kb. Not screamingly fast still 6x that of dialup.

[IMG]http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p123/biskitboyo/READSL.jpg[/IMG]

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Not sure what you mean by when READSL will be rolled out - we've had it here since we moved in (Hautes-Pyrénées, 18 months ago).  We can only get it with Orange and pay 24.90 a month.  They don't seem to promote it - you can find it on their website if you look hard enough but we went to the local FT shop and asked about it (ADSL/ Haut débit étendu).  We're about 7 km from the exchange.  It works (touch wood!) very well indeed and is MUCH MUCH better than dial up.

Lou

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Perhaps I should have said "rolled out nationally".

It's probably a bit like when DSL first started, all the big cities got done first then it percolated down to towns, villages and hamlets etc. so I'm guessing that you're 7km away from a sizeable population center perhaps. I wonder what speed you are actually getting ?

Unfortunately my French isn't good enough to read all the blurb so if it is already more available than I though then I apologise. Nevertheless I'm sure many will have never even heard of it and will be pleased to know it exists and does indeed hold out a "glimmer of hope" [;-)]

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Hi Ernie

My understanding of ReADSL is that it is a technology that allows ADSL (at reduced speeds ) to telephone lines which are much further away from the exchange than normal ADSL distances. (Does that make sense?)

It has been out for a few years. I thought it was just Orange who supplied Adsl under this system ?...

Anyway, it is easy  to find out the maximum speed the various ISPs will supply by entering ones tel no. on the company website.  This should give a good idea of the service speed offered. It doesn't matter whether it is ADSL, ReADSL or ADSL+ or ADSL max. I am not really sure of all the differences anyway!

Warning: There is never a guarantee that a company will be able to supply the speed given in the sign up process - there are always caveats about it being dependant on the technical capacity of the line, blah blah. So take it all with a pinch of salt.

As a side issue, I have read some unpleasant things with some ISPs slowing connections considerably on purpose if the client is unwilling to resubscribe in advance for another year. Then suddenly speeding up the connection if they do. Very dodgy indeed. Unfortunately there is absolutely nothing the customer can do about it...

regards

Danny

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Hi Danny,

You're right on the purpose of READSL and without going into too much detail the theory behind it is that by reducing the frequency at which the service is running you can extend the range. It's why the telephone works over many 10's or 100's of km because it's only carrying very low frequency voice traffic.

The losses on a telephone line increase logarithmically with distance so if you can run at a lower frequency then you'll get further.

ADSL+ and ADSL2+ are run much higher frequencies than plain old ADSL, the object being to extract as much speed as possible out of short high quality lines, hence the 24mb our city cousins enjoy. READSL is in effect the exact opposite.

If you haven't seen them already there are a couple of graph's on Degrouptest which illustrate the relative performance of the different flavours over a given distance. If READSL were imposed on the second graph it would start off at maybe 2mb but continue in a much flatter line well past the others until at the 80dB end it would be fading down to not much more than a good dialup.

http://www.degrouptest.com/faq.php#1.7

Because READSL requires specialised hardware in the exchange I'm not sure it's a simple as putting your number in on a particular web page. Frankly I don't see FT installing this gear in every exchange as a matter of course without advertising it, do you ?

It's not as though they don't have a database of every subscriber, whether they are signed up for the Internet and what their lines are capable of ! 

It's conceivable then I suppose that, if you know about the technology and ask for it, FT may install it on an "on demand" basis which may have been what happened in Lou's case. I'd love to hear more about it from him/her.

My PM to you was prompted by a combination of Lou's revelation that he/she had it and the information on the VNUNET link that it was on offer only from FT and Free, although I do appreciate the article was penned a year ago.

As for deliberately slowing you down if you don't re-subscribe that would be outrageous, besides which, surely it would be a completely self defeating stunt making you even more determined to change ISP ?

 

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Broadband through mains power lines was tried out in the UK a few years ago by I think North West Electricity round the Lancashire area.

From what I can remember it worked OK but suffered interference from the AC freqeuncy.

I guess that as broadband through the telephone lines became available it was dropped without sorting it out properly.

Shame really as just about every household has a power line in.

Brian

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I think it was Norweb who pioneered this technology in the UK about 20 years ago and even up to 2004 there was a lot of interest in it. Although still potentially useful for niche applications I very much doubt it will ever make it to market for Joe Public.

http://www.itweek.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2045894/power-line-telecoms-mains

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2754203.stm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/13/hotel_broadband/

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[quote user="ErnieY"]

Because READSL requires specialised hardware in the exchange I'm not sure it's a simple as putting your number in on a particular web page. Frankly I don't see FT installing this gear in every exchange as a matter of course without advertising it, do you ?

It's not as though they don't have a database of every subscriber, whether they are signed up for the Internet and what their lines are capable of ! 

It's conceivable then I suppose that, if you know about the technology and ask for it, FT may install it on an "on demand" basis which may have been what happened in Lou's case. I'd love to hear more about it from him/her.

 

[/quote]

Hi Ernie

From your description of the various kinds of ADSL, it seems to me that the hardware is either there on the exchange/line or not. When I put my number in on degrouptest or others, it tells me what flavours of ADSL are available and how fast they might be. On the results page, if you go to the 'fiche détailée' it lists what systems are available. For me, ADSL and ReADSL are available. I would imagine this means that any of the ISPs will offer whatever level of service they can (by whatever ADSL method/system). I don't really know...

Perhaps you could give the teleconnect people a ring if you get connected and they could let you know how they work ( in English!) That might shed some more light

regards

Danny

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[quote user="ErnieY"]

I think it was Norweb who pioneered this technology in the UK about 20 years ago and even up to 2004 there was a lot of interest in it. Although still potentially useful for niche applications I very much doubt it will ever make it to market for Joe Public.

http://www.itweek.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2045894/power-line-telecoms-mains

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2754203.stm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/13/hotel_broadband/

[/quote]

Ernie

Thanks for that.

I read through the first article and that was enough to convince me that, in its present form, internet over power lines wont be a feasable option anytime soon.

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I've subsequently found this on the FT/Orange site so you may well be right Danny.

https://orange.degrouptest.com/offres/512k-etendu-pro.html

I see from this that it runs at a maximum of 512kb but does guarantee 400kb to the end user which is still fantastic compared to any dialup, and of course you benefit from keeping the line free for standard phone calls.

I think I perhaps got a distorted view due to the fact that I hadn't previously heard of it and that some of the material I was reading was up to 2 years out of date, none of which was aided by my pitiful French reading skills [:$]

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Have a look at www.ariase.com which (like degrouptest) tells you whether you can get ADSL etc on your phone number.  You can also do speed tests on your existing connection - on our READSL we are getting the max 512!  There's also a forum with info and advice, including a section on READSL

NB you don't need a livebox to get it either, we have a Linksys modem/router - you just need to double-check your modem is compatible with READSL, not all of them are

Lou (a "her" by the way Ernie!)

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I read in a local paper (Mayenne area) when the new Numerique TV started up last summer, that there was one multiplex reserved for internet use. They did give a name for the new service, but too old to remember that far back.

Certainly there is a vacant multiplex on our Transmitter. I imagine it would work like the satellite system.

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[quote user="Lou"]Have a look at www.ariase.com [/quote]OK I apologise up front, but when I saw this site name it brought the smutty schoolboy out in me (I KNOW I'm not the only one [;-)]) and also reminded me of some other sites with even more unfortunate names [:D]

http://blog.dreamhosters.com/2006/07/26/top-10-worst-domain-names/

http://blog.dreamhosters.com/2007/01/26/20-more-unfortunate-domain-names/

 

 

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