BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

[BEN_UK]

I tried to haggle over the phone and didn’t get anywhere. Any tips on how you managed to push them down to £35 a month? Comparing it to Vodafone?

How you finding the broadband?

After seeing it was £39 on talk talk web site i was happy enough with that for 500mbps

There was no real haggling over the phone. I might of said whats the best price he came straight back with £35 for 18 months.

Talk talk went live this week im happy enough. Speed test is 525.36mbps and 73.66mbps

The ping could be better only getting 15ms on speed test used to get 6ms on BT not sure whats happening there.

 

[robj20]

Faster than Gigabit coming soon.

Openreach Prep UK Pilot of Faster FTTP Broadband ISP Speeds

We've had it confirmed from various credible sources that Openreach (BT) are planning to launch a new pilot in the near future, which will enable UK ISPs to te

www.ispreview.co.uk

 

[ChrisD.]

Nice! Shame it's not proper XGS-PON but that will come at some point I expect.

 

[Caged]

I understand part of it is reacting to commercial pressures (regardless of how many people actually subscribe to 2Gbps+ services where they are available) but the current plan to roll out 1Gbps GPON everywhere that it's commercially viable before going back and upgrading to GPON makes sense if you're thinking about the benefits to the country as a whole. I'm sure there will be people leaving BT to get 2Gbps from Zzoomm or whatever but I would guess the majority of people on FTTP subscribe to much lower speeds on cost grounds.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

I’d call myself a proper enthusiast and even I don’t subscribe to 1gb on cost grounds even though it’s available.

I’m enough of an enthusiast to know that I just don’t need it and 150mb is more than enough with only the two of us in the house.

 

[Caged]

Yeah I'm eyeing up the 500Mbps tiers currently, but Lit Fibre are also building here and their 100Mbps symmetrical service would suit me fine.

 

[robj20]

I’d call myself a proper enthusiast and even I don’t subscribe to 1gb on cost grounds even though it’s available.

I’m enough of an enthusiast to know that I just don’t need it and 150mb is more than enough with only the two of us in the house.

I'm more than happy with 150, it's fast enough that a game downloads fast enough and that's the most demanding thing I do.

 

[BeatMaster]

After seeing it was £39 on talk talk web site i was happy enough with that for 500mbps

There was no real haggling over the phone. I might of said whats the best price he came straight back with £35 for 18 months.

Talk talk went live this week im happy enough. Speed test is 525.36mbps and 73.66mbps

The ping could be better only getting 15ms on speed test used to get 6ms on BT not sure whats happening there.

That’s impressive - speed is bang on. Strange one of the ping though.

I gave up over the phone as they were just too pushy so resorted to cashback and online. TalkTalk Future Fibre 500 ordered with ~£112.50 cashback so should work out about ~£32 give or take plus the CPI rises. Scheduled for 11th October which just about coincidences with end of contract with BT on 7th October.

There were some decent Vodafone cityfibre deals kicking about but nothing for Openreach. Also read mixed reviews although I’m sure they’d be fine. Anyone using them?

How you finding the eero?

 

[ChrisD.]

It seems that the UDM SE doesn't behave the same way as the UDM Pro with regards to PPPoE.

sed -i 's/1492/1500/g' /etc/ppp/peers/ppp0
ifconfig eth9 mtu 1508
killall pppd

When the WAN connection eventually comes back up, https://www.speedguide.net/analyzer.php is still showing 1492.

 

[ic1male]

Does anyone know if Sky will let you downgrade from 900Mbps to 500Mbps without it affecting your contract end date? I'm no longer able to access anything more than about 600Mbps as I've gone totally wireless for the time being. So it would save me a tenner each month to go back to 500Mbps.

 

[ChrisD.]

Most likely not unless you're out of or nearing the end of your contract.

 

[ic1male]

Most likely not unless you're out of or nearing the end of your contract.

I think it's moot anyway as I'm going to have to cancel the whole shebang and pay early termination fees as I'm moving in with someone soon and they already have fibre. But the monthly fee when you terminate early is about £8 difference between 500 and 900 so I could have saved a few quid.

 

[Caged]

You can ask. The early termination fees are VAT-free and should include a discount for the savings that Sky are making by not having to actually provide a service.

 

[V F]

I’d call myself a proper enthusiast and even I don’t subscribe to 1gb on cost grounds even though it’s available.

I’m enough of an enthusiast to know that I just don’t need it and 150mb is more than enough with only the two of us in the house.

Funny reading this in a strange way then reading the article then the comments, then came across this one.

"Every time speed increases are on the horizon you get the same people saying people don’t need it, we’d still be on dialup if it was up to them.

Do not impose your lack of ability to utilise things on to others please."

 

[Caged]

I can see that argument and agree with it to an extent, but in terms of the country as a whole it made sense to deploy FTTC as far as possible and then to deploy gigabit FTTP as far as possible, rather than building FTTP when the costs for everything involved were substantially higher, switching to higher capacity PON technologies whenever they enter the market, and leaving everybody on ADSL until you got to them with fibre. Only when a large enough area of the country has access to these services can the applications to utilise them truly thrive and kick off the innovation that people are talking about.

A service that runs at 1000 down and 100 up is only going to prevent someone streaming a 4K Blu-ray uncompressed from their home server, which is a niche use case. All of the actual civil works going on to build FTTP are going to be usable regardless of what technology is deployed onto the network, so the only time there could possibly be any "wasted" money is if XGS-PON is introduced soon enough after GPON goes live, and enough people sign up that leaves the original GPON OLT empty. That's incredibly unlikely to happen.

 

[V F]

I can see that argument and agree with it to an extent, but in terms of the country as a whole it made sense to deploy FTTC as far as possible and then to deploy gigabit FTTP as far as possible, rather than building FTTP when the costs for everything involved were substantially higher, switching to higher capacity PON technologies whenever they enter the market, and leaving everybody on ADSL until you got to them with fibre. Only when a large enough area of the country has access to these services can the applications to utilise them truly thrive and kick off the innovation that people are talking about.

A service that runs at 1000 down and 100 up is only going to prevent someone streaming a 4K Blu-ray uncompressed from their home server, which is a niche use case. All of the actual civil works going on to build FTTP are going to be usable regardless of what technology is deployed onto the network, so the only time there could possibly be any "wasted" money is if XGS-PON is introduced soon enough after GPON goes live, and enough people sign up that leaves the original GPON OLT empty. That's incredibly unlikely to happen.

Imagine if FTTP wasn't blocked in the 90s by Thatcher and what we're getting now could have been well on the way by 2000/2005. Not 2021/22-26. What a place it could have been ahead of time. It always seems to be we're always so far behind everyone else but gets advertised like it's groundbreaking compared to others.

 

[ChrisD.]

Imagine if FTTP wasn't blocked in the 90s by Thatcher and what we're getting now could have been well on the way by 2000/2005. Not 2021/22-26. What a place it could have been ahead of time. It always seems to be we're always so far behind everyone else but gets advertised like it's groundbreaking compared to others.

But she stopped BT having a monopoly, it would have been unfair to competitors. I can see both sides of the coin.

 

[Caged]

BT had a monopoly anyway. The move was done to make the market more appealing to cable companies since BT were not allowed to use their network for TV programmes. They wanted the regulatory block on providing premium TV removed as a way of paying for a fibre build, government didn't allow them, so they didn't.

 

[Earth[Tera].bin]

I think it's moot anyway as I'm going to have to cancel the whole shebang and pay early termination fees as I'm moving in with someone soon and they already have fibre. But the monthly fee when you terminate early is about £8 difference between 500 and 900 so I could have saved a few quid.

Say you're moving to Hull, BT don't have any infrastructure in Hull so you may get away with termination charges.

Spoiler: Hull

There are certain places around the UK where other telecoms providers have exclusive rights to provide telephony and broadband services. As a result we're not able to offer all BT services there.

The main example of this is Hull, which is served by Kingston Communications (Kcom). There are also other more recent housing developments where the property developer has given sole rights to another network provider to provide landlines and broadband. The other providers will have laid their own cables while the property was being built and we're unable to get access to those cables or put in our own. Although we can't provide you with a BT landline, BT Broadband or BT TV, you can still order BT Sport or BT Mobile.

If you had BT services at your old address and we can't supply them your new one, you won't be liable for any termination charges.

 

[ic1male]

Say you're moving to Hull, BT don't have any infrastructure in Hull so you may get away with termination charges.

I wonder what would happen if you say you were going on extended travel for six months? They can't provide services outside the UK either.