BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

[ChrisD.]

PlusNet have finally launched FTTP.

Plusnet full fibre is off the launch pad | thinkbroadband

After years of being the poor cousin in the BT Consumer family Plusnet has joined the modern age of broadband with the launch of its FTTP packages.

www.thinkbroadband.com

 

[andy_mk3]

PlusNet have finally launched FTTP.

Plusnet full fibre is off the launch pad | thinkbroadband

After years of being the poor cousin in the BT Consumer family Plusnet has joined the modern age of broadband with the launch of its FTTP packages.

www.thinkbroadband.com

Nice. I may go back to them once my Sky contract is up.

 

[RSR]

I wouldn't even begin to know how that works. Can you still get 2FA codes?

It's really very simple to setup, companies like AAISP offer a pre-configured solution. As a example AAISP is £1.20 a month + calls and on average the monthly bill is about £2.50 P/M rather than the £40 BT where charging.

Yes both account offer 2FA protection.

AAISP - https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/voip-information/
Sipgate - https://www.sipgate.co.uk/

Sipgate offer a number of solutions from PAYG to PM, they also good setup guide for a lot of VoIP hardware which is very easy to follow.

As an example for hardware, I use a Gigaset N510 Pro Base with Gigaset SL800H PRO and S700H PRO handset but you can also get gateways like the Cisco SPA112 if you want to keep your old phones etc..

 

[the-evaluator]

I wouldn't even begin to know how that works. Can you still get 2FA codes?

What do you mean by that, are you currently getting 2FA codes via the landline?

 

[V F]

It's really very simple to setup, companies like AAISP offer a pre-configured solution. As a example AAISP is £1.20 a month + calls and on average the monthly bill is about £2.50 P/M rather than the £40 BT where charging.

Yes both account offer 2FA protection.

AAISP - https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/voip-information/
Sipgate - https://www.sipgate.co.uk/

Sipgate offer a number of solutions from PAYG to PM, they also good setup guide for a lot of VoIP hardware which is very easy to follow.

As an example for hardware, I use a Gigaset N510 Pro Base with Gigaset SL800H PRO and S700H PRO handset but you can also get gateways like the Cisco SPA112 if you want to keep your old phones etc..

Can you still transfer your original copper line number after it has been transferred to an VoIP ISP with your Broadband package? Or does it become locked in with the account? So if you cancel your Broadband you lose the phone number.

 

[RSR]

Can you still transfer your original copper line number after it has been transferred to an VoIP ISP with your Broadband package? Or does it become locked in with the account? So if you cancel your Broadband you lose the phone number.

Yes, you are free to port the number out to a new service and I did just that porting the number out from BT to AAISP. In my case, I have FTTP from Zen and FTTC from TTB with AAISP providing the VoIP.

You do need to be a little bit careful with some ISPs which offer digital voice, like BT for example as the VoIP and Broadband are as one. So you can’t move one without losing the other.

The other thing to be mindful of is if your are porting a number out which has an active FTTC service as it will cause the FTTC to be terminated. That’s a non issue on FTTP due to the difference in operation.

 

[GregI]

What do you mean by that, are you currently getting 2FA codes via the landline?

Yes. My mother/father has no need for mobile (basically they just don't want to learn how to use a smartphone). However for banking, ebay and card payments those companies send 2FA code to the landline for them.

I looked at those providers and it seems ok but tbh for an extra £5 a month to keep/have the landline number converted to digital voice you also get 1 "advanced" wireless handset or 2 wireless essential handsets which is pretty cool.

 

[Walter Sobchak]

Be careful with the Game Pass BT offer, apparently people are losing the ability to resubscribe to Game Pass etc after the BT term ends:

BT customers lose control of Xbox accounts after Game Pass trial period

Errors mean Game Pass subscribers can't renew their accounts.

www.nme.com

Thanks for the warning, just checked out the BT forum and a guy managed to regain control buy adding a 1 month extension code from Amazon

 

[the-evaluator]

Yes. My mother/father has no need for mobile (basically they just don't want to learn how to use a smartphone). However for banking, ebay and card payments those companies send 2FA code to the landline for them.

I looked at those providers and it seems ok but tbh for an extra £5 a month to keep/have the landline number converted to digital voice you also get 1 "advanced" wireless handset or 2 wireless essential handsets which is pretty cool.

How are the 2FA codes sent, are they an SMS sent to the landline that BT (or whomever) then convert to an automated voicecall? I don't know which, if any VoIP providers support that. I know Gradwell didn't when I was a customer. I'll give it a try later and see what happens with my Sipgate account but I'm not expecting it to work.

Edit - I sent a text to my Sipgate number and nothing happened. I think if you want to retain the SMS -> Voicemail functionality you'll either need to stick with BT or move the number to a provider that specifically supports it, I don't know of any.

 

[the-evaluator]

Thanks for the warning, just checked out the BT forum and a guy managed to regain control buy adding a 1 month extension code from Amazon

Do you have a link to the thread? My other half is using the freebie from BT so I'd like to see how we can regain control of her account.

 

[Strikeforce]

Anyone else on Vodafone FTTP via Openreach? I’ve just moved over from BT. However, I’ve gone from latency of 10ms to at least 20ms. Looking at the Vodafone forums it seems they are having a few routing issues. I’m within my 14 day cooling off period at the moment, so I’m thinking of jumping ship.

Anyone else suffer from this?

Broadband Quality Monitor | thinkbroadband

FREE Broadband Quality Monitor to keep track of latency & packet loss

www.thinkbroadband.com

 

[RSR]

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.

How are you finding Aquiss? What's it like in terms of throughput and latency?

 

[ChrisD.]

How are you finding Aquiss? What's it like in terms of throughput and latency?

Excellent, back to 6ms to London and full throughput. I had an upload cap issue and they had Openreach fix it within a day or so. Excellent support there.

 

[ChrisD.]

@RSR I'm still tuning upload QoS but here's what TBB looks like:

From what I can tell, it's resold BT business. Static IPv6, IPv6, can have another 3 IPv4 addresses if needed and £55 a month for a 12 months contract (first 3 months £27.50). Can't grumble at anything so far if I'm honest.

The Zen connection:

You can see me playing gateway roulette.

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

Got 500 installed today and it's working extremely well.

Only thing is that I'm slightly disappointed in the buffer bloat, downloading and the ping is up to over 100ms.

 

[ChrisD.]

Got 500 installed today and it's working extremely well.

Only thing is that I'm slightly disappointed in the buffer bloat, downloading and the ping is up to over 100ms.

You should QoS upstream and downstream.

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

You should QoS upstream and downstream.

Any ideas about how? What sort of router would I want

 

[ChrisD.]

Any ideas about how? What sort of router would I want

No idea what router they give you. Don't go out rushing to buy a router if you don't know what you want.

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

No idea what router they give you. Don't go out rushing to buy a router if you don't know what you want.

It's just the router I already had, the TalkTalk Hub.

I connect it to my Plumes for Wi-Fi so I don't need Wi-Fi if it's not needed.

 

[ChrisD.]

It's just the router I already had, the TalkTalk Hub.

I connect it to my Plumes for Wi-Fi so I don't need Wi-Fi if it's not needed.

Do you want an off the shelf router, or something you can DIY?

You can get an N5105 or equivalent passive PC from Aliexpress/Toopton with 4x 2.5Gbps ports for less than £200 and chuck on OPNsense, Untangle etc.

Or if you don't want to spend time tinkering, there really isn't much wrong with a second hand UniFi USG (for cheap), it'll do line speed, albeit without IPS/IDS turned off. If you want something newer then spend some time reading as they've launched some disasters.