topic Re: Annex M in Archive

Annex M

Simon87 — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:11:30 GMT

Hi,

I have a site with BT Business Total Broadband and annex m is enabled at the exchange.

Do BT offer annex m on business total broadband and if so how do I go about getting this set up?

I have spoken to the call centre who said that BT do not offer annex m.

Thanks in advance

Simon

Re: Annex M

markp — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:24:10 GMT

Hi Simon87,

If you wish to order an annex M service, this needs to be done through your nearest BT local business partner.. If you go to BT local business and input the postcode of the location, you will find out who your nearest partner is.

Hope this is of help.

Regards

Markp

Re: Annex M

owngoal — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 18:23:19 GMT

Our exchange has recently been upgraded and BT Wholesale show that Annex M is available but when I contacted my BT Local Business to ask about pricing then order it they didn't know what I was talking about. Can anybody help? Our business is web based and we are very close to the exchange so an Annex M upload speed of 2.5MB would be brilliant.

Re: Annex M

MHC — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:55:58 GMT

@owngoal wrote:
Hi

Our exchange has recently been upgraded and BT Wholesale show that Annex M is available but when I contacted my BT Local Business to ask about pricing then order it they didn't know what I was talking about. Can anybody help? Our business is web based and we are very close to the exchange so an Annex M upload speed of 2.5MB would be brilliant.

You will be out of luck.

The Annex M spec only allows a maximum of 3.3Mbps and BT cap it below that. So, the maximum amount of dat you would be able to upload per second will be in the order of 250 to 300 kB

Re: Annex M

owngoal — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 06:46:25 GMT

Hi MHC

Thanks for your comment. I think in my original post I've used the wrong measurement i.e. said MB instead of Mbps. Currently we get:

Downstream: 21.93 Mbps
Upstream: 1.137 Mbps
Modulation: G.992.5 Annex A
Latency type: Fast
Noise margin (Down/Up): 4.3 dB / 6.8 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up): 3.6 dB / 1.5 dB

And I understand with Annex M we would sacrifice some download speed but would increase our upload speed to something in the region of 2.5 Mbps; is this not correct?

If it is correct any idea how I can order it and how much it costs? I've phoned my BT Local Business (as advised by a MOD in another post) and they didn't know what I was talking about.

Re: Annex M

DaveA — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:11:19 GMT

Hi,

BT isn't offering any mainstream business or residential products that use Annex M at the moment, although I've heard that some BTLBs are, but not necessarily all of them.

If BT Business does bring something major in that uses it, it will probably be advertised through http://myoffice.bt.com in the Products and Services area.

Dave

Re: Annex M

owngoal — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:02:40 GMT

Thanks for the note Dave

It's a shame that BT aren't offering it directly.

As we are quite close to the exchange and have a few home workers that connect to the server in the office it could be really beneficial (not to mention the appeal of a guaranteed upstream throughput of 85% of the upstream sync rate between the hours of 8am and 5pm Monday to Friday).

But I guess as the benefits are greatly impacted by distance from the exchange (marginal to non-existent if over 1km I think?) then it's not worth the hassle they might get from disappointed customers. I could also delay some customers from upgrading to more expensive products).

However I did speak to someone technical in my local BTLB today and they've said they have in the past ordered it directly from BT wholesale so to anyone out there it could be worth persevering with your local BTLB. I'll post an update here when I hear back from them.

Duncan.

Re: Annex M

DaveA — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:49:00 GMT

Hi Duncan,

Annex M does seem like a niche product, as normal ADSL2+ is enough for most purposes and fibre knocks the bejesus out of it for upload speed anyway.

If you do get anywhere though then letting us know would be much appreciated. 🙂

Dave

Re: Annex M

owngoal — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 07:48:23 GMT

Hi Dave,

Just heard back that they can't do it. And unfortunately our exchange is a fairly small one and is quite rural, so I can't see Fibre getting here anytime soon (if it all).

If anybody at BT can look again at offering an Annex M upgrade product then please do - we want to use IP Telephony to enable more home working and moving from 1MB upload to 2.5MB would make a difference. As more companies look to enable flexible working arrangements and use technology to lower costs, e.g. by homeworking, then a product offering higher upload speeds where fibre is unavailable will only grow in popularity.

I appreciate where fibre is an option then Annex M looks pointless but there seem to be a lot of other companies that offer the Annex M service so maybe BT have underestimated the demand for it and it's not such a niche product after all? I mean, if the cowboys at Talk Talk are offering it, you must be missing something?!

Our account is worth about £700 a month to BT, big money for us, and it seems silly to lose this by not offering a BT Wholesale product that costs £7 per month and is built in to Wholesales' line assesment tool and order process.

Although I'm not really threatening to leave as we're tied in for another eighteen months (!) and the customer service I receive directly from BT, particularly relating to your online services e.g. hosted email, support manager, web hosting, etc is excellent - BT provides the technology backbone of our business.

Do let me know if anything changes regarding Annex M or if anybody finds a workaround to get this upgrade.

Cheers,

Duncan

Re: Annex M

DaveA — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:21:06 GMT

Hi Duncan.

Yeah that's a bit rubbish to be honest. I suspect that the BTLBs are doing it as a way to guage demand for it, but unless there's a huge uptake I doubt it will go to a mainstream product.

As I say the focus is fibre, and if an exchange would need an upgrade for Annex M then they'd be as well putting fibre in it. At least that's probably the way they would think about it.

If something comes up in relation to M, however, I will make sure I get it posted up here.

Dave

Re: Annex M

owngoal — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:44:48 GMT

Hi Dave,

Just wanted to reply to your comment on upgrading exchanges as I don't think it is correct - there is no relation between the decision to upgrade exchanges and BT Retail not offering Annex M. BT wholesale upgrade exchanges and offer Annex M on 21CN exchanges (including my exchange), and many broadband retailers including talk talk offer Annex M broadband products, just not BT retail.

Cheers,

Duncan.

Re: Annex M

owngoal — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:42:34 GMT

Just wanted to add an update to this thread:

I exchanged emails with <name removed by MOD>, General Manager SME Marketing at BT Business, and the reason BT Business/Retail do not offer this product is problems with predicting the upload speed on any given line at the point of sale. <name removed by MOD> said the last time they reviewed this product the BT Wholesale Line Checker results for Annex M were not reliable enough therefore they would not offer it. However she did say "Should the predictability be [improved], we will reconsider launching the product".

BT Wholesale are pushing this product to all ISP's as a replacement for SDSL, particulaly where Fibre is not an option, so it seems the ball is in their court to convince BT Business/Retail that the predictability is good, and that the product is worth offering.

It's worth noting that Plus Net (a wholly owned BT subsidiary) offers Annex M where available on all it's business broadband products for an extra £10 per month.

As there are many providers who offer Annex M service I don't believe BT Business' argument of reliabile line speed prediction problems, more likely that they don't offer the option of Annex M as it's not mainstream enough to make sufficient revenue. When my broadband is out of term, I will be switching to Plus Net.