When buying a fixed internet connection the question is always the same: how much is it fast? In theory, the offer specifies the speed of the offer, in practice, until the user has an active connection, it will be difficult to establish the speed of his line with precision.
Leaving aside for the moment the technical reasons that can modify, even significantly, the speed between the promises of the offers and the reality of the activated line, it must first of all be specified that line type it is sold to us and how to understand if the offer respects the parameters of the law.
The AGCOM resolution
Unfortunately, advertising is often misleading, and under the bait and switch of the word "fiber" there may actually be hidden offers that have little or no fiber and which, above all, will never reach the speed of the "true" fiber.
To try to bring order also to the terms used, the Communications Authority, or AGCom, issued, with resolution No. 292/18/CONS a of 2018, the directives on the terms and respective technical characteristics that must be compulsorily used in offers.
The semaphore of the connection
In addition to precisely defining the technical parameters with which to call bids, AGCom has also prepared a simple "semaphore” with three indications, to make it clear at a glance what type of offer is being proposed: this traffic light must necessarily be displayed in the offers of the various operators and also defines the technical characteristics of the line sold.
FTTH
The optical fiber today is the technology that allows to obtain higher speed in internet connections, but in order for your line to boast the title of maximum speed, the fiber must actually arrive up inside the apartment. This means that the connection must be from the operator's fiber exchange to the cabinet on your street (from which the lines for the individual buildings are derived), from the cabinet to the cellar of your building and from the cellar to the inside of the apartment.
Fiber-only technology is called FTTH, Fiber To The Home (Fibre up to the house) and AGCOM has established that it can boast a green sticker to signal the maximum technology available.
True fiber is the only technology that can provide connection speeds of 1 Gigabit per second in download and, beyond the high-sounding names of Ultragiga, Superfibra and anything else proposed by the operator, only with this technology can you have the maximum possible speed.
FTTC
All other technologies use at least a "mixed" system called fiber-copper: that is, the optical fiber reaches a certain point and then continues on a traditional copper connection, the speeds can never be like that of pure optical fiber.
Among the "mixed" technologies is the FTTN (Fiber To The Node or Fiber to the node) or FTTC (Fiber To The Cabinet) and defines a connection that starts in optical fiber from the control unit and arrives up to the nearest control unit to the apartment to be wired. This control unit is precisely the cabinet or street cabinet: from there the connection continues towards the condominium and the apartment via a traditional copper pair. The length of the cabinet-apartment connection is essential for line performance: it should be less than 250 metres, but the shorter the copper section, the better the quality of the line will be. The maximum download speed will be 220 Mbit per second download.
For this type of technology, the AGCom traffic light is yellow.
FTTE
The latest technology, in order of performance is the one called FTTE (Fiber To The Exchange or Fiber to the exchange). This line has only the main backbone up to the neighborhood exchange in fiber, the rest of the connection that goes up to the street of the house and then up to the apartment is in copper. This is the technology used on the first ADSL connections and can guarantee a maximum speed of 20 Mbits per second, therefore the lowest of all. It is generally the one available in rural areas or with connections very far from the exchanges and street cabinets. For this type of technology, the sticker assigned by AGCom is red.
Unfortunately the AGCom directive has not yet been fully implemented and often the advertisements are still very misleading: the AGCom traffic light does not appear and connections with high-sounding names are offered even if in reality the actual speeds will be very low.
Before purchasing an offer, it is advisable to check the capacity of your line to understand what type of connection can actually be purchased.
AGCOM also makes the site available measureinternet which allows you to carry out some checks on your line and to compare the market offers proposed for your street and house number.
However, all operators have a page where, by entering your address, you can immediately know what type of connection it will be possible to purchase from that operator, so just take a tour of the major operators to understand what the maximum technically possible performance of your connection will be data.
