BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

KIA said:
It's cheaper if you pay for the Sky line rental upfront. Also, have a look at Plusnet.
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Jusyt saw that :). Sky line rental is £9.95 if 12months paid upfront, and BT line rental £10.75 if 12months paid upfront.


What are Plusnet like for FTTC? I had them for ADSL Max but got fed up with stupid download limits ("unlimited" wasn't unlimited") and had traffic management too. Left them the day that BeThere put their ADSL2 kit in my exchange, and haven't looked back since!
 
HEADRAT said:
What site, 31-Mar-13 is probably just a "holding" date.

HEADRAT
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It was the BT site where you put your details in to see if you can get Infinity. My exchange has been enabled for 2 years now but they are only just getting round to doing my cabinet. I sent an email to the nga address last year and they replied with the same info - 31 Mar 13 for my cabinet. I shall be patiently watching my cab for updates!
 
Is Sky FTTC available anywhere that BT have put in a FTTC cabinet, or does it work similar to how Be etc do currently where they need to have their own gear in the exchange as well?
 
Right, I've done a bit more digging...


FTTC Providers Comment
I moved to BeThere on the day they ADSL2 kit in my exchange because I was fed up with all the traffic management that other providers had, and “unlimited” not actually being unlimited. Unfortunately however BeThere don’t do FTTC, so once my exchange and cabinet finally get done in 2013 I'll be moving from them :(.
These days BT aren’t as bad as they used to be, but are still doing it quite a lot (also known for high ping due to poor routing, low speed at times due to congestion, throttling & frequent resyncing).
Orange (now EE) do throttling a lot too.
Plusnet do some throttling unless you pay them £5 extra, but at least their definition of “unlimited” is meant to be pretty good.
Sky are the best and are truly unlimited without any traffic management.

The packages below are ordered in terms of goodness from a user who wants no throttling and truly unlimited service (do QoS internally on my LAN). Also they include the cost of unlimited UK calling plans in addition to basic line rental and voicemail as SWMBO will insist.


Packages
Sky
£30 for truly unlimited 80/20 broadband, or £20 for truly unlimited 40/10 broadband.
£19.50 for Phone Line Rental and anytime UK landline calls, or £14.95 if 12months paid upfront.
£2.50 for Voicemail Plus.
That's £47.45 for 80/20 or £37.45 for 40/10. Normally Sky will do discounts of X months free or X months half price etc.

Plusnet
£24.99 for ‘unlimited’ 80/20 broadband, or £20.99 for 40GB 40/10 broadband (including the £5 un-throttle Pro fee).
£17.99 for Phone Line Rental and anytime UK landline calls, or £14.49 if 12months paid upfront.
£3 for voicemail extra
That's £42.48 for 80/20 or £38.48 for 40/10. Normally Plusnet will do discounts of first 6 months half price etc.

BT
£26 for “unlimited” 80/20 broadband, or £18 for 40GB 40/10 broadband.
£20.60 for Phone Line Rental and anytime UK landline calls, or £15.90 if 12months paid upfront.
£3.30 for BT Call Minder.
That's £45.20 for 80/20 or £37.20 for 40/10.

EE
£25 for “unlimited” 80/20 broadband, or £20 for “unlimited” 40/10 broadband.
£14 for Phone Line Rental, inclusive calls at weekends.
No mention of extra calling plans being available. On regular ADSL they did a couple of anytime calling plans and also one that included calls to UK mobiles too.
Includes discount for existing EE mobile customers.
 
I'm on Infinity 2 and if you setup your torrent client properly you'll avoid/bypass the throttling and get full speeds 24/7..

Most people on here would say go for Sky though
 
The £5 for Plusnet un-throttle pro doesn't seem to do a whole lot. If you use random ports for torrent/usenet it looks like it will just give it equal priority with gaming, etc which I can't see as being desirable.
 
KIA said:
Send an email to [email protected], give them your telephone number and postcode, ask when the cab will be ready. :)

Alcatel-Lucent ISP Trials Deliver 130Mbps via VDSL2 Broadband Vectoring

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...er-130mbps-via-vdsl2-broadband-vectoring.html
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Don't understand this - when my infinity install was done the engineer showed me the syncs on his tool thing and it showed almost exactly 130Mbit downsteam sync and 128.x upstream sync which would indicate a 30a profile was already in use. Tho he did mention some people in this area were going to be put on a trial for "Infinity 3" whatever product that is, that we might get asked if we were interested in it and that he was already on it at home.

EDIT: Unless its to do with the vectoring and BT can't currently roll out that kind of product as it stands to more than a very limited number of users.
 
Westyfield2 said:
What are Plusnet like for FTTC? I had them for ADSL Max but got fed up with stupid download limits ("unlimited" wasn't unlimited") and had traffic management too. Left them the day that BeThere put their ADSL2 kit in my exchange, and haven't looked back since!
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Truly unlimited & unshaped.

XeNoN89 said:
Is Sky FTTC available anywhere that BT have put in a FTTC cabinet, or does it work similar to how Be etc do currently where they need to have their own gear in the exchange as well?
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Sky have to carry out additional work at the exchange before they can offer FTTC.

Brummies said:
I'm on Infinity 2 and if you setup your torrent client properly you'll avoid/bypass the throttling and get full speeds 24/7..
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Not true, a VPN/SOCKS proxy is required.
 
Just looked on the new release details from BT.

I'm in a town of around 4,000 people, yet from the list nearby exchanges are getting enabled of villages with maybe 400-1000 people? Doesn't seem right.
 
I was speaking to head of Openreach the other day and BT already have the software and scripts for 30a ready and are trailing it as we speak.
 
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30a linecards allow up to 200Mbps (iirc). Though I do believe that the current generation of them only support a low number of subscriber lines, so they would need a much higher number of cabinets essentially until the next generation come out with more lines.
 
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