BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

Man of Honour
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20 Sep 2006
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BT are killing me on prices, so going to switch to sky.

Just to check, it's all the same right? I get max sync and stable line on bt, I'll get the same on sky as it's all openreach anyway? Will it still use the openreach 3db profile that I'm on now?
Do you use your own router?

Plunet is also worth a look, I have no issues with them.
 
Soldato
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Why sky if price is the main motivator? They are likely more than other ISPs like plus.net or talk talk?

I wouldn’t expect any better service from sky compared to any of the others.

Was just looking at sky because I already have an account with them (TV) and the 18 month price for new bb customers seems more or less the same as everyone else.

Other reason I was looking at sky is because I play a lot of Rocket league and for whatever reason, quite often routing issues to their servers seem to crop up for certain isps. Never had any issues on BT, friend who lives close is on sky and never had any either, so was leaning to sky for that as well.


Do you use your own router?

Plunet is also worth a look, I have no issues with them.

Nope. I am using a hg612 plugged into the homehub, but only because the hh5 reboots every 2 weeks or so, so with the hg612 the sync is held when it does it. Don't need any advanced router features or anything like that.
 
Caporegime
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Was just looking at sky because I already have an account with them (TV) and the 18 month price for new bb customers seems more or less the same as everyone else.

Other reason I was looking at sky is because I play a lot of Rocket league and for whatever reason, quite often routing issues to their servers seem to crop up for certain isps. Never had any issues on BT, friend who lives close is on sky and never had any either, so was leaning to sky for that as well.




Nope. I am using a hg612 plugged into the homehub, but only because the hh5 reboots every 2 weeks or so, so with the hg612 the sync is held when it does it. Don't need any advanced router features or anything like that.

Currently Fibre Max is £27.99 including Line Rental with Sky so it's a decent deal. Hell it's less than I pay for my Max package as a staff member!
 
Soldato
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10 Oct 2005
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Nottingham
Been having a fun (not) couple of days with BT Support. Been getting a bit of noise on my landline and my broadband speed was tanking (particularly upload) ... going from a stable 65Mbps/12Mbps to 14Mbps/0.4Mbps on average over the last couple of days. Note it had been stable at around the first speeds for years. So raise a call with BT; their support wanted to talk me through changing my Wifi channel despite me telling them multiple times that the computer I am testing on is connected via a network cable not Wifi ....

Eventually they agreed to send out an Engineer who came this afternoon. His line test kept on coming back fine but when he plugged in his test handset you could hear the problem. This went around in circles for a couple of hours with him going off and checking the cabinet and at various points between there and here. He re-did several connections in the process and it seemed better on his test handset. So went to try my phone ... no dial tone! Eventually we remembered we had unplugged the phone to plug in his tester earlier (its not plugged into the main socket so he'd tested to make sure it wasn't the internal wiring at fault) and hadn't plugged it back in ... doh!

But it all seems fine now and my speeds are back to normal. So from a service point of view, if you can get past the initial incompetence and actually get someone who knows what they are doing, I'm quite happy with the support from BT.
 
Caporegime
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If you have noise on the line then always report a voice fault, don't even mention that your broadband speeds have been affected by it.

I've no idea how this is all going to work when the voice part of the line is optional, or is VoIP overlaid over the top of the broadband. I'm sure we'll all be on FTTP by then :p
 
Caporegime
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It confuses matters.

A noisy line is simple to report as a voice fault and doesn't involve you having to go through any scripted fault finding steps.

Usually getting the voice fault fixed also fixes the broadband issues.
It's true but while I can only talk about our systems when you report any phone fault our system also looks at the broadband too and if it's Fibre and there's any indication of slow speed or instability it'll always be a Fibre service test that gets run, not a Voice Managed Line Test.
 
Associate
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12 Jun 2010
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The important bit is that you get to the testing phase without having to jump through a load of pointless hoops.

i reported loss of sync speed 48/9 down to 30/1 and stuck at that to btwebchat, he said "stay online, dont use the connection or disconnect, im just going to run tests" came back and said hes going to book an engineer to fix it. i didnt have to do or run anything. it was really easy process.

i guess the thing is you may risk not getting a dlm reset or having sync speed checked that its back to normal if only reporting a voice fault and a voice only engineer is sent who isnt authorized to do anything regarding the broadband.
 
Soldato
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Rollergirl
I'm finding my connected devices like Google Home Hub, Chromecast etc.. disappearing from the network randomly. Would I be better using my own wireless router, and if so could anyone recommend something?

I'm just looking for reliable WiFi and for synced devices to stay connected. I would honestly rather buy my own router as opposed to contacting BT as their customer service is possibly the most painful I've had to deal with.
 
Soldato
Joined
29 Feb 2004
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3,607
Two quick questions.

I've not switched before, all the providers say they do the work, you just order with them and they arrange the swap. So when I order, do I just leave the bt modem plugged in, it stops working on whatever date, then swap in whoever I switched to.

After looking through, I might go talktalk as suggested earlier over sky. As it's slightly cheaper, has no rises during contract and a lot of the phone add ons that family members use are cheaper and it all adds up. Hub seems better than the Sky one as well. The "good network" mentioned above is for all talktalk stuff, they don't have any congestion issues or anything? I searched and seems fine in general these days.

Thanks.
 
Soldato
Joined
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12,096
Place your order with the new ISP and let them get on with it. They'll tell you when to swap the equipment over.

Plusnet is worth a look as well.

Also, don't forget to check Topcashback/Quidco.
 
Caporegime
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As above, place the order with your new provider, fill in your address/current phone number, and let them do all the work. Do not phone up and cancel with your existing provider.

If Sky think you're still in a contract and will need to pay a cancellation fee then they should let you know with enough time left to cancel the migration.
 
Soldato
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29 Feb 2004
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3,607
Definitely out of contract, so that's ok.

On BT, sky was one of the isps I was looking to switch to, but thinking talktalk now as it's overall a better deal.

Looked at plusnet as well, £28 vs £25 for talktalk, but only 12 months at that price vs 18 month, both have price lock so no raises during contract. Sky doesn't seem to have a price lock. Phone add ons (phone is still in use in this house) are cheapest on talktalk as well (annoymous call reject is £2 on talktalk vs £4 on the others), voicemail plus is free on talktalk as well.

If it's all much the same, all openreach, all similar service when it works I guess I may as well go with the cheapest. A lot of the complaints I see with talktalk seem like openreach stuff that's out of their control and I see many of the same complaints for most of the isps, but there's also a lot of complaints over poor customer service, where as sky and plusnet are much better and have uk call centres. So maybe worth a little extra for that, not sure.
 
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Jez

Jez

Caporegime
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18 Oct 2002
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33,073
@Jez uses/used TalkTalk IIRC and rates them highly for the quality of their service
Had them for years on FTTC before FTTP came to my area. My line synced at 80/20 and i never saw any peak time slow down or latency spikes, or ever had an outage. You couldnt improve on them within the limitations of FTTC.
 
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