BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

Caged · 22 Jan 2016 at 23:20

The next upgrades are vectoring to try and improve issues caused by crosstalk, but this won't push speeds past what they are advertised as now. G.fast is the next major upgrade, assuming you don't get FTTPoD available in the meantime.

Openreach FTTC vs. Virgin Media isn't a very easy comparison to make - the former has a massive choice of providers to suit varying budgets and requirements, the latter has higher maximum download speeds but poorer upload and ongoing congestion problems in certain areas of the country.

Jez · 23 Jan 2016 at 08:54

Caged, is there a reason to your knowledge or technical factor preventing them launching a "FTTC-Max" product, as we saw with ADSL some years ago (and then ADSL2+)?

It seems a little archaic to me that this isnt offered in the same way that it is for ADSL, anyone remember the fixed 500/1000/2000 ADSL IPstream days?...

Rroff · 23 Jan 2016 at 09:00

OLDPHART said:
Hi, whats bt infinity like for gaming, as skyfibre+tv is getting a bit costly.

Thanks.

Vastly improved lately compared to what it used to be - they seem to have sorted some general routing issues i.e. people's connections taking a 300mile round trip all over the country before getting out to the internet and optimised peering - currently I'm pinging 7ms and 7-9 hops to servers that in the past I'd be pinging 10-25ms and 11-19 hops.

Buckster · 23 Jan 2016 at 09:03

past end of contract for phone line + BT Infinity 2

I think I'm paying £52 ish, line rental, BT Infinity 2, Sports (the fiver jobbie), and Evening Calls

presumably I need to do the cancellation dance - same as with Virgin, Sky etc- or is this about standard price ?

cheers

stoofa · 23 Jan 2016 at 12:23

Buckster said:
past end of contract for phone line + BT Infinity 2

I think I'm paying £52 ish, line rental, BT Infinity 2, Sports (the fiver jobbie), and Evening Calls

presumably I need to do the cancellation dance - same as with Virgin, Sky etc- or is this about standard price ?

cheers

BT gave me very minimal discounts when it came to renewal. I was on Infinity 2, Line rental and the free BT sports, was paying around £43.
I called and told them I was thinking of leaving, lowest price I was offered was £37.
Did some digging and found I could get everything (less the BT sports I don't watch) for £27 at Talk Talk.
Went back to BT, salesman still said £37 and then proceeded to spend 10 minutes telling me why BT were so great and Talk Talk so rubbish.
Cancelled, went Talk Talk and haven't looked back really.

Caged · 24 Jan 2016 at 00:05

Jez said:
Caged, is there a reason to your knowledge or technical factor preventing them launching a "FTTC-Max" product, as we saw with ADSL some years ago (and then ADSL2+)?

It seems a little archaic to me that this isnt offered in the same way that it is for ADSL, anyone remember the fixed 500/1000/2000 ADSL IPstream days?...

The rules on advertising mean that you'd have to have a certain percentage of your customers able to achieve any speeds that you launched, so even if Openreach decided to allow their kit to sync up at whatever speed it possibly could then you might get people advertising an 82Mbps product where they currently advertise 76Mbps and it just gets too confusing for the benefits.

Jez · 24 Jan 2016 at 08:42

I see, good point

From my point of view it would be nice if the 80/20 product was canned and replaced with a "Max" product. In reality 80/20 works in this way for a lot of lines anyway. The ISP's could then simply advertise as ADSL speeds are advertised, based on consumer sync speeds. I wouldn't actually benefit hugely as my line's attainable is only around 82/26, but other people have far better lines than me. It seems a shame, combined with g.vector, to artificially throttle people.

Avalon · 25 Jan 2016 at 15:43

Jez said:
I see, good point

From my point of view it would be nice if the 80/20 product was canned and replaced with a "Max" product. In reality 80/20 works in this way for a lot of lines anyway. The ISP's could then simply advertise as ADSL speeds are advertised, based on consumer sync speeds. I wouldn't actually benefit hugely as my line's attainable is only around 82/26, but other people have far better lines than me. It seems a shame, combined with g.vector, to artificially throttle people.

In effect it already is, but tiered so you have 'up to' 40mbit or 'up to' 80mbit. Realistically the wholesale cost to your ISP is only £2.55 more a month for 80/20 vs 40/10. In theory the service is capable of 'up to' 100mbit, but if you offer then only a minority of customers will get close and the market still supports people paying a premium for a faster service. I'd like to see 'max' before g.fast but it's not something that seems likely.

Jez · 25 Jan 2016 at 15:54

Sadly G.Fast doesnt seem likely either, it took them until 2015 and government funding to get FTTC to us in the first place

Avalon · 25 Jan 2016 at 19:33

G.Fast followed by FTTdp which will bring FTTP close enough for a roll out. We're likely up to a decade away from that happening though, that said we're approaching a point where speed becomes less important, if you reach a point where peak utilization fails to max your connection then making it twice as fast has no meaningful benefit to you, it becomes an irrelevant number.

I'd suggest 40-50mbit does that for a lot of people with enough overhead at present that more isn't beneficial. 80-100mbit is great in a busy household with multiple users/gaming etc. VM/BT can play the big numbers game, but as things stand we're more or less at the point where it becomes less important as the numbers get bigger. 1080p streams tend to hit 6.5mbit ish, 4k won't change that significantly, it's suggested only 15mbit is needed so even in a busy household 80mbit is at present more than sufficient for general use.

Caged · 25 Jan 2016 at 19:50

Jez said:
Sadly G.Fast doesnt seem likely either, it took them until 2015 and government funding to get FTTC to us in the first place

FTTC has pushed fibre (actual fibre) closer towards end users, and has allowed ducts to be mapped out and cleared instead of starting from a point of knowing very little. A lot of the difficult work has been done already.

With FTTdp, because they serve a lot less than 288 lines and can be powered by the subscriber (for a very rough comparison think of how your Sky LNB is powered), the build costs are substantially reduced over a street cabinet (BT were testing connectorized fibre to make the install more or less plug-and-play) so you could get into a situation where groups of 12 houses are enabled based on commitments to take service being signed. I don't really know why the idea of a pre-order wasn't used for FTTC because the BDUK developments that have had enough takeup to make the upgrade commercially viable and activate the return of funds to the local authority shows that there is a demand for the product.

Rendog · 26 Jan 2016 at 15:36

FerrariEnzo said:
And I still have no broadband

I can't believe how bad BT are and how they have not sorted it out yet. It's now officially over a month since it should have been activated. According to the FTTH Order Management team my issue has been escalated to the highest level management on the Openreach side to get it resolved. It sure doesn't feel like it, there really is no excuse for this not to get fixed. The FTTH Order Management team said they would next update me on the 20th January! I said is that some kind of sick joke to which they just keep on saying it is out of their hands and they have to wait for Openreach to update them.

The only excuse I could get out of them is the Telephony part of my order hasn't closed off properly which in turn means the broadband part of the order can't be activated and then closed off. The Openreach engineers need to manually close off the first part of the order which I really don't understand why it is taking so long considering the landline works fine. So frustrating!!

There are not enough expletives to describe my experience and how awful BT are.

Finally!! 7 weeks to the day from when my broadband was originally suppose to be activated BT have finally done it. What an absolute pain. However I will not complain about the speed, never ever had something this fast!

Strange ISP name!

I've ordered the 300Mb product so I will give it a couple of days for it to reach that as it doesn't seem to push past 200Mb yet. Although I'm fairly sure FTTP works slightly differently where it doesn't really need a 'grace period' so to speak.

Anyways, finally glad the wait is over.

KIA · 26 Jan 2016 at 16:59

FerrariEnzo said:
I've ordered the 300Mb product so I will give it a couple of days for it to reach that as it doesn't seem to push past 200Mb yet. Although I'm fairly sure FTTP works slightly differently where it doesn't really need a 'grace period' so to speak.

Try a different speedtest.net server or website.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html
http://testmy.net/

Battery! · 26 Jan 2016 at 22:33

FerrariEnzo said:
Finally!! 7 weeks to the day from when my broadband was originally suppose to be activated BT have finally done it. What an absolute pain. However I will not complain about the speed, never ever had something this fast!

Strange ISP name!

I've ordered the 300Mb product so I will give it a couple of days for it to reach that as it doesn't seem to push past 200Mb yet. Although I'm fairly sure FTTP works slightly differently where it doesn't really need a 'grace period' so to speak.

Anyways, finally glad the wait is over.

Are you in a new build?

I've got fibre outside my new build and just ordered a new phone line.

I'm praying that the FTTP kit gets installed at the same time as the phone line.

Rendog · 27 Jan 2016 at 10:43

Battery! said:
Are you in a new build?

I've got fibre outside my new build and just ordered a new phone line.

I'm praying that the FTTP kit gets installed at the same time as the phone line.

I am in a new build, if going FTTP the landline effectively goes through the fibre line. My landline phone is plugged into the Openreach modem (separate to the Homehub) that they install on to the wall, this is why they also install a little battery pack to keep the Openreach modem on for long enough should there be a powercut so you can make any emergency phone calls (apparently it's law or something along those lines).

I hope your install process goes a lot smoother than mine did!

Battery! · 27 Jan 2016 at 14:08

Interesting, did you order a new phone line or did OR just arrive and install the kit?

I have a date of Feb 8th for the install, its currently not confirmed yet though as there needs to be a survey first apparently.

Hopefully its not a delay as there is fiber sticking through a hole in my wall from the pipes outside.

Kemik · 28 Jan 2016 at 14:31

Battery! said:
Interesting, did you order a new phone line or did OR just arrive and install the kit?

I have a date of Feb 8th for the install, its currently not confirmed yet though as there needs to be a survey first apparently.

Hopefully its not a delay as there is fiber sticking through a hole in my wall from the pipes outside.

An installer come out to me.

Slightly peeved off with BT to be honest. I'm on their 76mb FTTH (or FTTP) package at £30 per month plus line rental. Sky off their UFO packages at £20 per month for 100mb or £30 a month for the max... I can't even switch provider because no other provider will offer FTTH in my area so I'm stuck with BT's pricing. £48 a month for 76mb and a phone I never use is a bit of a joke really when compared to competitors'.

If anyone has any ideas for alternatives, I would be happy to hear. Sky, Plus Net and Virgin all say "nope" or "we can offer 2Mb?".

Rendog · 28 Jan 2016 at 14:56

Battery! said:
Interesting, did you order a new phone line or did OR just arrive and install the kit?

I have a date of Feb 8th for the install, its currently not confirmed yet though as there needs to be a survey first apparently.

Hopefully its not a delay as there is fiber sticking through a hole in my wall from the pipes outside.

Same as Kemik mentions, although I'm in a 'new build' the property is actually 3 years old on a new build estate and the previous occupiers had standard Sky ADSL broadband installed. It looks like to me they were unaware they could get FTTP or chose not to have it, this meant they had a copper landline installed.

As I was a brand new install/order it didn't matter that there was already a 'landline' socket due to this being a copper line so when the OR engineer came to install the equipment he completely ignored the copper line, feed the fibre cable from the dwelling from outside the property in through a drilled hole in the wall and into the Openreach modem. Then on the OR modem plugged my landline phone into that called up his buddies at OR to enable the phone line part of the order and then it started working.

As with Kemik I am also stuck with BT and have no other option but to use them for FTTP (apart from Zen, who I know are good but way over priced), I also find it highly frustrating that with FTTP you don't actually 'need' a landline so you shouldn't have to pay the ridiculous line rental fee of £17.99 per month, but BT add that anyway with no option to opt out.

V F · 28 Jan 2016 at 15:59

Battery! said:
Interesting, did you order a new phone line or did OR just arrive and install the kit?

I have a date of Feb 8th for the install, its currently not confirmed yet though as there needs to be a survey first apparently.

Hopefully its not a delay as there is fiber sticking through a hole in my wall from the pipes outside.

I have mine confirmed for the 5th. Just off the phone.

Kemik · 28 Jan 2016 at 16:03

V F said:
I have mine confirmed for the 5th. Just off the phone.

It might be quicker than when I had mine but expect him to be there for at least an hour or two. There is a lot more equipment to install than normal and they normally have another engineer come a few days earlier to feed the cable from the man hole to your house in advance of the installation.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love 200Mb and it's great that I have the opportunity to, but at £40 a month plus £15 line rental they can jog on. There is only me so I don't mind waiting an extra few minutes for downloads. More frustrating that Sky are pricing at £30 for their maximum rating and £20 for 100Mb vs BT's 76Mb for £30.