About 6 months ago I had an expression of interest letter arrive in the mail from TPG asking if I would be interested in having a FTTB connection set up in my apartment complex. I replied saying yes. As soon it was available, I signed up for their plan. The plan costs $69.99 and is advertised as unlimited with 50-100Mbps download speeds and 20Mbps upload speeds. Sounded good to me, but I was still a bit skeptical.

This connection replaced my original ADSL2+ connection as it goes through the same phone line from my apartment to the TPG MDF in the basement. There was some trouble connecting my particular port, but the technician was able to resolve it within an hour.

Update (15 August 2017) - I replaced the Huawei modem with a Billion BiPAC 8700AXL 1600 VDSL2/ADSL2+ Tri-WAN Modem Router.

Once the VDSL router got the sync light, I plugged my AirPort Express into it and everything was back online, no configuration was required. However, I did log into the VDSL router and disabled its own WiFi, my AirPort Express runs in bridged mode and connects my wireless devices to the router as if they were physically connected. It's a great set up, it also lets you swap the router in/out without changing the rest of the network.

My set up is like this...

OK, so how fast does it go? I did a speed test and this is what I got...92Mbps down and 38Mbps up. Quite impressive really!


Now speed test is all well and good, but in a practical situation those numbers are just theoretical maximums that I could reach. I tried a number of downloads after this and got some impressive results. I've put on a bunch of test torrents on as well and got over 10Mb/s download speeds (combined).




The only down side is the ping. At 31ms it's not the best. My ADSL2+ connection had a ping of 18ms. This is something that I am happy to live with personally.

I think overall this plan is completely worth it, if you can get it in your area/building.

-i