BT Infinity. , worth a punt ?

Soldato
Joined
30 Mar 2007
Posts
2,876
Location
Essex
Guys , I am currently on BT broad band and apart from having trouble with the home hub speeds are around 5 Meg.


Now for the same money I can have this new fibre optic broadband with claimed speeds of unto 40 Meg , has anyone upgraded yet and what sort of speed increase have you seen ?
 
I know a couple of people who have it (from AAISP though, not BT) and generally seems to be very good - both getting around 35-40Mbit down and 10Mbit up.

Distance to the local green cab is the factor that determines your speed, though I'd expect it to still give a decent improvement over what you currently see from regular ADSL.
 
What is classed as a good distance to the green box? Naturally the close the better? I guess my nearest would be about 30 metres from my front gate (about 3 doors down across a side road). Sadly don't have FTTC enabled in my area yet but just curious. :)
 
Now that caps have been raised to 300GB on the top package, I'd say it's well worth it. BT might even upgrade you for free if you take a broadband + calls bundle.
 
Now that caps have been raised to 300GB on the top package, I'd say it's well worth it. BT might even upgrade you for free if you take a broadband + calls bundle.

Though these offers generally lock you into another 18 or 24 month contract with BT, not personally something I would ever entertain.
 
Noticed that I can now order Infinity. Would love to do it, but I don't like the idea of being tied to an 18month contract.
 
My cabinet is just round the corner from me, been told I should get 39meg down and 10meg up (which I'll be very happy about).

I've just moved in to a new house as originally I was on Virgin 50meg but VM do not serve this area so BT is my only choice. I've been with them for the past three weeks and at the moment only on 1.5meg but thankfully I'll be getting a free upgrade in just over a week :D
 
Noticed that I can now order Infinity. Would love to do it, but I don't like the idea of being tied to an 18month contract.

Then get it from another ISP, AAISP have offered it where available for quite a long time, I think Zen are soon launching their product (though IIRC that has a 12 month contract) and there are a few other decent ISP's offering FTTC services.
 
Then get it from another ISP, AAISP have offered it where available for quite a long time, I think Zen are soon launching their product (though IIRC that has a 12 month contract) and there are a few other decent ISP's offering FTTC services.

They all have at least 12 months and BT themselves are the cheapest out there with the best usage surprisingly.

AAISP's usage policy is a bit ridiculous for the standard £21 package. 2Gb for the entire month during day time?!
 
Last edited:
My girlfriends family just got it all installed (being just too far away for adsl has got it for them in some tiny village in the middle of ni which is pretty cool)

By the sounds of it from them, its quality! Easily as good as vm service I have on the go in Belfast, would like to have a see my self next weekend too :)
 
how can you check how far the cabinet is? I thought if its fibre that doesn't matter?

Whos used this against Virgin then for a discount against the 50mb? :p
 
how can you check how far the cabinet is? I thought if its fibre that doesn't matter?

Whos used this against Virgin then for a discount against the 50mb? :p

As mentioned its FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) rather than FTTP (fibre to the premises). Although, BT are rolling out the latter for something like 1.5m lucky households. They should pretty much see guranteed 40Mb/10Mb on current infinity packages with 100Mb+ in the future.
 
Virgin uses a similar style to BT, in that they have fibre to a cabinet and then coaxial cable to the remaining distance to your house.
 
I am on BE at the moment, getting about 10-11mb speeds max due to my line distance to the exchange however was considering BT infinity too as it states i'll get 24.1mb speed from it and 10mb upload, not sure what to do....that speed is a lot better but BE customer service is brilliant.
 
I've got Infinity and have to say it's great. On ADSL the best speed I could get was around 1.5Mbit as we're a long way from the exchange. The Infinity website said I'd get 24 download / 8 Upload and I'm usually getting 30+ download and 9 upload so better than they predicted.
It's a long contract but I also know Virgin won't cable my area until 2012 so it was a no brainer for me.
 
They all have at least 12 months and BT themselves are the cheapest out there with the best usage surprisingly.

AAISP's usage policy is a bit ridiculous for the standard £21 package. 2Gb for the entire month during day time?!

Pay your money take your choice, you can buy extra units anyway. They are not an ISP aimed at the every day consumer, which is good as it means their network isn't overcrowded by the sort of people who think that paying £10 a month for their internet connection should give them everything they ask for.

TBH I can't see how the average person (excluding houses populated with lazy students and folk who sit around all day on their arses downloading stuff) can get through that much data during daytime hours.

IME People generally massively over estimate how much data they actually transfer.

I work from home a lot and generally never manage to get through more than 6-8Gb a month during their peak hours. And around 80-100Gb offpeak, most of which is iPlayer traffic, the odd game from steam and a few big downloads.

Either way with 10Gb of peak use and 150Gb offpeak it wouldn't cost me much more than £40 a month which considering their service is beyond reproach (makes Zen and co look very very poor in comparison) I don't consider to be that bad.

Add into that services such as full DNS control, routed IPv6 and as many real IPv4 addresses as you ask for it starts to become very good value in my eyes.

You do also get the advantage of a 1 month contract and units roll over too, so you probably find you need less than you think.

Sure they're not as cheap as BT but they are not generally interested in the same sort of market, they are a business focussed ISP mostly and their tariffs reflect that.
 
Guess I'm just spoilt by O2 LLU. £7.50 a month for unlimited downloads at all times and the fastest connection possible on my line out in the sticks.
 
Back
Top Bottom