BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

RSR · 26 Jul 2022 at 20:47

That's one of the reasons I run a backup line from a different provider, so it gives some level of reduncy.

ChrisD. · 26 Jul 2022 at 20:58

RSR said:
That's one of the reasons I run a backup line from a different provider, so it gives some level of reduncy.

Part of me is tempted to get a second line with VM, if only they had competitive prices.

RSR · 26 Jul 2022 at 21:00

ChrisD. said:
Part of me is tempted to get a second line with VM, if only they had competitive prices.

That's all I have, as I have re-used my old FTTC connection and put it on TTB.

It also means I can do away with my 4G backup, which has always been hit or miss at the best of times.

ChrisD. · 26 Jul 2022 at 21:05

Actually I can get this which isn't too bad.

Exclusive offer - M100 fibre broadband & phone £22.95 with free setup and £50 bill credit ends 31st July.

Caged · 26 Jul 2022 at 21:45

The ONT lights showing a fault are nothing to do with Sky, that will be an Openreach fault or, more likely if it went away quickly, maintenance.

ic1male · 27 Jul 2022 at 00:01

Caged said:
The ONT lights showing a fault are nothing to do with Sky, that will be an Openreach fault or, more likely if it went away quickly, maintenance.

It lasted about 45 minutes. The Sky website health check thing said they had a major fault. First time it's done it in the eight months I've had it.

ecksmen · 27 Jul 2022 at 13:49

Just a bit of a moan really, as hoping to migrate from Virgin to BT (not that I have an issue with VM, but I would rather FTTP and its nice having options). Street was activated for FTTP, initial installation date failed as there's no ducting between my house and the road fibre. Two weeks later a site visit to confirm there is no ducting, and to work out where it could go. A route was agreed and back to the office the chap went. That was three weeks ago and still no sign of them, but I'm assured today is the day that it'll all be complete. Given its already mid afternoonish and I've not heard anything I can't see them completing the job today, if they turn up.

Virgin Media on the other hand turned up exactly when they said they should, and installed it within two visits and next to no fuss.

ChrisD. · 27 Jul 2022 at 14:14

ChrisD. said:
Exclusive offer - M100 fibre broadband & phone £22.95 with free setup and £50 bill credit ends 31st July.

I've ordered this, except I added M350 for an additional £6. install sometime next month. It'll be interesting to see how Untangle works with two ISPs (FTTP 900 being my other connection).

I don't think they'll be able to bring the internal connection point to where my ONT is (as it was put in when the house was built) so I may have to have it in my office and create a VLAN to connect it over a 10 Gbps link I have back to where my router is.

ChrisD. · 28 Jul 2022 at 16:31

ChrisD. said:
Anyone on Zen here and monitor their latency? I used to get between 5 and 12ms depending on the gateway I connect to. Now it's between 12ms and 24ms, the gateways are on a different IP range to before. Full Openreach fibre.

EDIT. Looks like I was GEA migrated 2 days ago. Marvellous. Will see what they say.

Any other ISPs offering a static IP address for around £60 a months for OR 900/100?

After around 5 weeks, many emails to and fro and spending nearly 2 hours on hold today, they've agreed to cancel my contract. I've just ordered a new line with Aquiss.

ecksmen · 28 Jul 2022 at 17:42

Credit where its due, Openreach turned up today and put the ducting in and made a good job of it all things considered. Just waiting for the fibre to be run now but apparently Openreach are going on strike tomorrow so assuming it'll be another couple of weeks. It's never simple

Caged · 28 Jul 2022 at 18:31

Was it Openreach or was it a sub contractor? Afaik it's only internal Openreach staff that are covered by the industrial action.

Steveocee · 28 Jul 2022 at 20:50

ChrisD. said:
After around 5 weeks, many emails to and fro and spending nearly 2 hours on hold today, they've agreed to cancel my contract. I've just ordered a new line with Aquiss.

Interesting. I used to monitor it when it was on FTTC. I noticed a slight reduction in ping on my BQM when my exhcange went to a Zen On-Net but then the graph was also showing occasional loss. I put it down to the queueing mechanism I'm using on my router.
Now being on FTTP, I checked and latency is right down but was still seeing bits of loss so I've scrapped the BQM off.

My FTTP though is not on a Zen On-Net exchange so I probably have abou tthe best combo at the moment although I can rarely wrap the needle up to 1G - It's still far faster than any of our family use really needs.

[user@router] > ping 8.8.8.8
SEQ HOST SIZE TTL TIME STATUS
0 8.8.8.8 56 117 7ms464us
1 8.8.8.8 56 117 7ms418us
2 8.8.8.8 56 117 7ms385us
3 8.8.8.8 56 117 6ms761us
4 8.8.8.8 56 117 7ms463us
5 8.8.8.8 56 117 10ms861us
sent=6 received=6 packet-loss=0% min-rtt=6ms761us avg-rtt=7ms892us
max-rtt=10ms861us

I wouldn't have expected it to but my connection is a Zen business one, maybe the traffic is handled differently?

ecksmen · 29 Jul 2022 at 19:13

Caged said:
Was it Openreach or was it a sub contractor? Afaik it's only internal Openreach staff that are covered by the industrial action.

First was a subcontractor, then site visit and subsequent trenching were official openreach staff.

ChrisD. · 30 Jul 2022 at 17:45

Code:

chris@Christophers-MacBook-Pro-14 ~ % networkQuality -v                                                                                               
==== SUMMARY ====                                                                                                                                     
Upload capacity: 75.253 Mbps                                                                                                                          
Download capacity: 808.456 Mbps                                                                                                                       
Upload flows: 20                                                                                                                                      
Download flows: 12                                                                                                                                    
Responsiveness: High (2900 RPM)                                                                                                                       
Base RTT: 16                                                                                                                                          
Start: 30/07/2022, 17:44:02                                                                                                                           
End: 30/07/2022, 17:44:16                                                                                                                             
OS Version: Version 12.5 (Build 21G72)

This is Zen, be interesting to see what it's like on Aquiss.

RSR · 30 Jul 2022 at 20:04

How long does it take to swap to a different provider now with FTTP?

ChrisD. · 1 Aug 2022 at 15:44

Aquiss connected on port 1 of my ONT (Zen are on port 2).

Code:

[root @ untangle] ~ # ping bbc.co.uk
PING bbc.co.uk (151.101.192.81) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81 (151.101.192.81): icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=6.20 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81 (151.101.192.81): icmp_seq=2 ttl=59 time=6.18 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81 (151.101.192.81): icmp_seq=3 ttl=59 time=6.11 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81 (151.101.192.81): icmp_seq=4 ttl=59 time=6.17 ms

Vs 13ms (with jitter) with Zen.

GregI · 4 Aug 2022 at 03:50

Though this was a pretty good line by myself that ended up working. Context: Was trying to negotiate a deal on live chat cause you know being a loyal customer for years means nothing these days. They offered £48 credit if I signed a contract and I pointed out cashback site was giving £105 cashback for new customers and cheaper offers from Vodafone etc. Then the usual faff with this beauty response:

In the end: Getting the Full Fibre 100 package (with landline) for the "new customer" price of £35.99 plus £105 credit and the £9.99 delivery charge waved. Good deal?

Walter Sobchak · 4 Aug 2022 at 06:29

Currently paying £72.34 a month for BT Full Fibre 900. They did call me a month or so ago trying to tie me down to a new 2 year contract at £69.99 or something.

Who's been in a similar position and jumped to talk talk or Vodafone? My contract ends in Sep.

GregI · 4 Aug 2022 at 07:14

Walter Sobchak said:
Currently paying £72.34 a month for BT Full Fibre 900. They did call me a month or so ago trying to tie me down to a new 2 year contract at £69.99 or something.

Who's been in a similar position and jumped to talk talk or Vodafone? My contract ends in Sep.

Don't know what offer you have but here it's £55.99 for new customers (£50.99 if not including landline).

If you browse abit on the BT site eventually a pop up comes up asking if you want to speak to someone on live chat. Click it and then choose "Leaving BT". Puts you through to retentions who will do stupid good deals. As I showed above you can get them to give you the cashback that a new customer would get (so £105 credit in our cases):

Best deal right now: If you're in a cityfibre area you can get Vodafone 900Mb for £30 plus get a £155 Rainforest voucher basically making it £23.54 a month). £23.54 for 900Mb. Just crazy.

The more I think about it the retention teams of these higher tier "premium" ISP must have to give insane deals right now. With the rise in cost of living the first stuff to really get pulled back is broadband so people shop about and see "wow I can get faster speed from Vodafone for £15 less a month? Bye BT!". BT try the "but we offer superior customer service" stuff but people literally can't afford it now so they are forced to leave. The number of people leaving must be so bad the past few months they have to offer ridiculous deals. If everybody leaves they literally don't make money besides wholesale stuff. I always thought broadband prices were a scam anyway especially now. Maybe like 15 years ago it made sense because of how bad the copper infrastructure was/bandwidth limits/inc landline rental but now all they have to do is stick a box at your house and keep it there for 24 months and get close to £1,000 out of you for the privilege. With fibre being more reliable aswell you don't need as many support staff on call to answer why Netflix is buffering.

ChrisD. · 4 Aug 2022 at 08:08

It's hard to recommend BT, even with cash back deals etc it's still an expensive 24 month contract. You can get Fibre 900 with Aquiss for £55 a month with a static IP, IPv6, BTW backhaul, fast customer service and support and it's only a 12 month contract. The first 3 months is £27.50.

I reported an upload profile issue to them on Tuesday and I have an Openreach engineer coming today.