Hybrid xDSL/LTE

murphaph · 11-10-2015 4:15pm #1

Just a ramble really, feel free to comment or whatever...I must admit I am only learning about this technology now, as our future house will have a whopping 10Mbps/1Mbps ADSL connection, because we are "too close" to the exchange and cabinets less than 550m from an exchange (here in Germany) may not be vectored. There is a small regional company here that is installing vectored VDSL cabinets all around town, but ours will not be upgraded because nobody is allowed to use vectoring so close to the exchange here, and they have no intention of using a non-vectored alternative.....

So.....we have to make the best of the situation until the issue of cabinets close to exchanges is resolved (in fairness to Telekom, they have said if they can dump the competitors gear out of their exchanges, they'll install vectored cabinets around all 8,000 exchanges in the country by 2018, bringing vectoring to an additional 5.9M houses, including us....but that is a bit away yet and the German comreg hasn't given them permission, though apparently it looks likely.

Telekom (and as far as I can see only Telekom, none of the resellers) however DOES offer a product called Hybrid. It uses a special modem (only the Telekom supplied one will work, no aftermarket products can do the business yet) which has 2 channels: the regular ADSL one and an LTE one. The system shoves all your packets into the ADSL channel unless it is at capacity, at which point the LTE gets used (in both directions). The data is reconstituted on the Telekom side and sent on as if it came from the same source.

According to their availability checker and their LTE signal strength maps, we'd get up to 100Mbps/40Mbps if we took the most expensive option (that would be €40 + €10 for the modem/router, or they'll sell it to you for €250). The LTE data is incredibly unrestricted in volume (normal LTE plans here all have the usual limits). I suppose Telekom expects the vast majority of people taking this product will actually only resort to LTE data in little bursts and the lion's share of packets will go down the wire.

We'll almost certainly take this product as I couldn't really face 10/1 after several years of 50/10 (skyping with 1Mbps upstream is painful). In theory our mast, which is also where the exchange is, should not be overloaded as everyone "slightly further from the exchange" can avail of vectored VDSL (or indeed cable in some parts of town) so would have no use for this product. It would only really benefit the people connected to the cabinets that are 550m or less from the exchange, and most people will just be happy with their existing 10Mbps ADSL.

ED E · 11-10-2015 7:00pm

Interesting to here about our supreme overlords on the continent.

Pain that you cant get a "real" connection but its nice that they're offering a bonded link(albeit over two mediums) for reasonable money. Normally products like that are thought of as business grade and priced accordingly. If their LTE has decent spectrum (20Mhz bands) I don't see why it would have any issues, especially as they can close off the logical link within one or two hops.

If you get it maybe grab a Samknows box so we can peruse some pretty graphs.

murphaph · 11-10-2015 8:53pm

Yeah a "real" connection is also agonisingly close. I managed to get a hold of the Telekom wiring diagrams for our street (you can find all sorts of stuff online if you look hard enough!) and you can clearly see that our multi-core cable runs left towards the cabinet nearer the exchange. Just THREE DOORS down, theirs runs right to a different cabinet, which has a nice vectored DSLAM beside it. It's confirmed when doing the availability check-number 12, 13 or 14 can't get it, number 15 can! 14 and 15 are the two sides of a semi-detached. You can see how each side is fed from a different cabinet...like a watershed!

Our cabinet is also only marginally inside this 550m limit. On Google maps it's 545m from cabinet to centre of exchange building. If it was a dozen metres further away it would already have its own DSLAM. So near, but yet so far. At least the LTE mast is only 650m and we have good line of sight to it, so should get the full 100Mbps, though they also offer 50/10 (exactly what we have in our current apartment) for €45 (including the usual calls to landlines in Germany, which we never use).

I hope this LTE hybrid thing will only be a "temporary" solution for 2 or 3 years and then our cabinet can get a DSLAM of its own. FTTH is still a pipe dream here at this stage, though we've laid conduit under the driveway to allow for it ;-) The modem, despite costing an absolute fortune (€10 a month to rent, €250 to buy if ordered with the 12 month contract or €400 without subsidy) does not support basic functionality like guest WLAN or guest LAN (the latter is something I'd really want, but beggars can't be choosers)

bk · 12-10-2015 1:22pm

murphaph wrote: »

I hope this LTE hybrid thing will only be a "temporary" solution for 2 or 3 years and then our cabinet can get a DSLAM of its own.

Jeez, just goes to show how good things have gotten here in Ireland!!!

You are hoping to get a decent VDSL connection in 2 to 3 years in Germany, while here in Ireland we are hoping most rural homes to be on FTTH in 3 years!

A bonded link between ADSl and 4g is an interesting concept, though in reality it is a nasty hack.

As you say, I expect they are hoping people will mostly using the ADSL connection and only briefly bursting onto 4G for limited time. Only concern really would be capping and potentially latecny during switch over.

Niemoj · 12-10-2015 6:11pm

What an interesting technology which (in theory anyway) sounds great.

Please let us know how ya get on!

Hybrid xDSL/LTE

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