Fibre is on the tip of everyone’s tongues and is a highly desirable mode of internet consumption. But often we don’t fully understand the concept of what a package entails or the processes behind supplying internet. These questions should shed some light on to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and how it works for you.

FTTH is designed to benefit lower usage and rewards you for lower consumption while allowing you to share internet across many platforms and with others. As a general rule, using several devices at the same time needs more speed, as does gaming and streaming. Below are some more need-to-knows about Fibre. And for more about line speed as well as how much data you need, click here.

What are symmetrical and asymmetrical bandwidths?

Symmetrical and asymmetrical bandwidths refer to the difference of similarity in upload and download potential. With symmetrical bandwidth, your upload and download speeds and capacity will be identical, whereas with asymmetrical there will be a change.

A customer on symmetrical bandwidth will experience the same line speed (for example, 10Mbps download and 10Mbps upload) when accessing the internet. Customers having the need to upload large files (such as video editors, architects and photographers) will have a superior experience if upload speeds are similar to download speeds. Gamers will also want faster upload speeds.

A customer on asymmetrical bandwidth will experience as much as half of the download speed when uploading documents/media files/application using the internet (i.e. 10Mbps download and 5Mbps upload).

What is Fair Usage Policy (FUP)?

Having an uncapped line is an extremely exciting prospect, although you need to be mindful that you share lines with others. Fair Usage Policy (FUP) refers to the monitoring of data usage. Reduced speed is applied to the customer’s bandwidth when a specific data allocation is reached. FUP is put into place to ensure that people do not take advantage of the fact that there are ‘no limits’.

What is a contentions ratio?

There are many aspects that can affect your line speed. One of these elements would be a contentions ratio. This refers to the number of people sharing the data capacity on a provider’s line. If your contentions ratio is higher and there are more people on one line, this could ultimately have an impact on the speed of your line. With FTTH, our contentions ratio is in line with Best Effort – this means that we work with the intent of keeping minimal users to one line so that you can reap the benefits of faster and smoother internet access. The base number for contentions ratio for FTTH is 25 users/homes per line.

Have more questions? Click here to download our Fibre FAQ guide.

Interested in installing fibre-to-the-home? Click here for Vodacom Fibre.

Header photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash