BT Infinity

[Spinal]

I'm currently with Virgin, and have been swearing for a while about their traffic shaping...

Suddenly, I see a leaflet from BT, advertising not only faster internet (60mb in my area, vs the 20mb I get from Virgin); at a quarter the price (£25 a month + line rental vs £100 a month from virgin I'm currently paying) - but finally, without any traffic restrictions.

Is this too good to be true? Who's with BT infinity, are they shaping?

Thanks,
M.

 

[grober]

BT Infinity is optical fibre up to the junction box at the end of your street- after that its back to the old copper wires. A friend has just got it installed - the 40Mbyte unlimited downloads package. Where he was- about 2miles from the exchange he was getting around 25Mbytes/sec when I checked. Uploading was an impressive 5Mbytes/sec compared to Virgins paltry 1Mbyte/sec on their basic package. I would take BT's figures as "best possible case" since actual speed may depend most likely on the state of the wiring between the junction box and your house. BT also had "reliability of transmission" algorithm they used to apply in the old broadband days whereby they used to check initial data transfers and "throttle" your connection till a reliable connection was established. Don't know if they still use this technique with Infinity or whether its even necessary. This is of course a separate issue to traffic shaping.

 

[Spinal]

Thanks - forgot to ask... what's the TV service like? I don't watch sports, but I wouldn't say no to having the chance to watch Dave (or any other channel with reruns of friends and top gear )

 

[grober]

My friend hasn't got the BT TV package but I doubt it will match Virgins basic Tivo based TV package which includes DAVE, Films on demand and access to catch up TV etc

 

[markjay]

I have the 80/20 Down/Up aka BT Infinity 2, it is showing 76mb/18mb in online speed tests.

It's much better than ADSL - and I had ADSL Line Bonding before i.e. 2 x 20/2.5mb ADSL lines, but it is still prone to early evening and weekend congestion due to BT's bandwidth sharing aka contention ratio.

But to be fair I work a lot with 100mb Fibre connection with symmetrical (Full Duplex) dedicated bandwidth so perhaps I am overly sensitive to contention issues.

So thinking about it impartially, FTTC (Fibre to the Cab - the technology behind BT Infinity) is probably the best home connection for the price (bar cable in cable areas).

 

[Beno]

I've just switched to BT infinity (Beginning of then year). Sorry I haven't got the TV package but the broadband is good. I'm getting download speed averaging 32mbs. No problems streaming even at busy times of day and the help/contact are in British.

 

[Rory]

I'm currently with Virgin, and have been swearing for a while about their traffic shaping...

Suddenly, I see a leaflet from BT, advertising not only faster internet (60mb in my area, vs the 20mb I get from Virgin); at a quarter the price (£25 a month + line rental vs £100 a month from virgin I'm currently paying) - but finally, without any traffic restrictions.

You surely can't be comparing like for like - £100/mth with Virgin? Yikes!

Also, re Dave, sorry if I'm missing something, but that's available to everyone on Freeview, isn't it?

 

[c63chris]

You don't have to use BT to get this. I use Plusnet and get the same service but it is cheaper and ironically the parent is BT. I'm getting consistent 38Mb at home and it works really well.

 

[Ackers1987]

Bt vision is free view tv so needs a ariel to work also it sucks ****

 

[markjay]

You don't have to use BT to get this. I use Plusnet and get the same service but it is cheaper and ironically the parent is BT. I'm getting consistent 38Mb at home and it works really well.

Quite a few ISP resell BT's FTTC, though most have a download limit i.e. impose monthly cap on the service for fear of heavy downloaders abusing it - BT are among the very few who offer unlimited/uncapped FTTC (though they do have fair use policy and some restrictions on p2p). For those who actually mind having a monthly usage cap, that is - not everyone does.

 

[c63chris]

The package I am on with Plusnet is unlimited and cheaper than BT so seemed a no brainer.

 

[Spinal]

I did consider using plusnet tbh - but they traffic shape... something about 6-tiers of traffic, which totally put me off.

BT traffic manages on most products, but to the best of what I can see, on their 2 unlimited products they don't

If you're on Unlimited Broadband, Unlimited Broadband extra, Unlimited BT Infinity 1, Unlimited BT Infinity 2, or for customers taking BT Total Broadband Option 3 from 1 February 2013, we won't place any speed restrictions no matter how much you upload or download, even at peak times

Ordering from BT immediately after posting this

M.

EDIT: Forgot to say - I did call virgin to see what they could do to convince me to say. The best they could do (as I'm on a very old tariff, hence paying so much) is to lower my monthly bill to £45; raise my speed to 30mb - but I would lose my 800-international minutes. Thanked them and told them I would be swapping once I reviewed my options.

 

[Spinal]

You surely can't be comparing like for like - £100/mth with Virgin? Yikes!

Also, re Dave, sorry if I'm missing something, but that's available to everyone on Freeview, isn't it?

Almost like for like... in fact, the virgin service is slower (20mb down), but has the cheapest virgin TV package.

Just ordered BT's package - quite nice as they waived the £130 fee to come and fit a phone line (with virgin cable currently, so no twisted-pair copper cable).

It actually works out quite well, as I've been meaning to move that 42u rack out of my bedroom and into one of the guestrooms; then convert that room into an office.. but the catch was that currently the coax ends in my room. So it should be all good!

The catch? They can't come by and install until March... so it'll be a few weeks yet... (and another virgin bill to pay)

I decided against the BT tv service... may go down that route a later date... or just get sky...

M

 

[Colin_b]

You surely can't be comparing like for like - £100/mth with Virgin? Yikes!

Also, re Dave, sorry if I'm missing something, but that's available to everyone on Freeview, isn't it?

No, freeview stations depends on your area, there is a cost to the channel per transmitter, and if the population that transmitter covers isn't profitable enough, it isn't broadcast.

We get BBC1/2/3/4, ITV1/2/3, C4,C5 and E4, no ITV4, Dave, Film 4. Freesat is fine, though.

 

[Clkrichard]

And I am happy that my speeds have crept up to 3.7/0.92 !
You guys are very lucky and FTTC is still a million miles away from me.
I do however have a relatively local firm offering wireless via their FTTM which I might investigate.

 

[cinek]

And I am happy that my speeds have crept up to 3.7/0.92 !
You guys are very lucky and FTTC is still a million miles away from me.
I do however have a relatively local firm offering wireless via their FTTM which I might investigate.

Same here...
Bought a brand house in Stevenage nearly 6 years ago, as it recently turned out, Stevenage borough council granted a building permission on what it appears to be North Herts Council area.

Cut a long story short, bt and cable upgrades have been by-passing us faaar away and there arent even plans in existence to say, further future network development has been considered.

Currently we get 1.5 down speed (on a good day), and by the sound of it, thats not about to change

 

[V12]

My bro in law just had his late christmas present. Gigler broadband connected in bournemouth. 1Gigabit down and 500 megabit up.

Need to drop by and see if it's all it's cracked up to be!

 

[Tan]

I had heard that the only provider that is truly unrestricted was sky.

I had virgin at my last house and having SKY fibre broadband installed tomorrow so will see how it compares.

 

[Spinal]

I had heard that the only provider that is truly unrestricted was sky.

I had virgin at my last house and having SKY fibre broadband installed tomorrow so will see how it compares.

Sky don't traffic-shape/throttle on their LLU products (at least, not that I can find) - but I haven't touched twister pair since leaving AoHell in late 2001 - have had cable since then... and wouldn't go back to 56k/ADSL/ADSL2...

 

[Tan]

Hi

The SKY Fibre broadband is now in, install fairly painless. Took three engineers due to some issues outside of the house, but all completed by 2pm, speeds are looking pretty good.



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