BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

I had two sites about 50 miles apart in the West Midlands that went down at about 14:15. Both now back, but one took until 19:30.

Unfortunately I was onsite at one of them looking at an unrelated issue and it really confused things.

While I'm here...

A local Chartered Accountants has recently (last few days) found that they can't make debit card payments to HMRC. It gets to the 'Verified by Visa' part of the process and then fails. They have the same problem with several different cards.

Today I took my laptop over and tried to make a payment while connected to their network (but not joined to the domain) and it failed. I then tethered my laptop to my phone and it worked. Very strange!

I then decided to reboot the VDSL modem, Business Hub and SBS2011 server to make sure nothing daft was going on. Sometime between switching everything off and back on again BT's network failed and couldn't investigate any further.

Has anyone seen anything similar?
 
Is the 76Mbps at £30 pm worth the extra cost over the 38Mbps? It does not have a £49 activation fee so realistically it only costs £5.91 more per month, but you're getting potentially double the speed up and down.

There's also the £125 pre paid card on both which would equate to a tenner less per month also...
 
Amraam said:
Is the 76Mbps at £30 pm worth the extra cost over the 38Mbps? It does not have a £49 activation fee so realistically it only costs £5.91 more per month, but you're getting potentially double the speed up and down.

There's also the £125 pre paid card on both which would equate to a tenner less per month also...
Click to expand...

What a lot of people fail to understand is the 'monthly' cost that's advertised needs to be closely looked at. For example some companies bill on a 28 day billing cycle so you pay 13 payments a year rather than 12. The average wholesale price difference based on a 12 payment month billing cycle between 40/10 and 80/20 is £3.04+VAT per month so your ISP in year one is making an extra £2.26* out of you per month. Obviously this includes activation costs that they are billed by Openreach so in year two they save a lot and make a larger average margin. Personally for the minimal cost for twice the speed i'd go with 80/20 *if* you'll actually make reasonable use of it, if you aren't downloading large files daily then don't.

*Before some pedant points out the numbers don't add up I do state +VAT for the former and te latter includes VAT as it's a retail price.
 
Avalon said:
What a lot of people fail to understand is the 'monthly' cost that's advertised needs to be closely looked at. For example some companies bill on a 28 day billing cycle so you pay 13 payments a year rather than 12. The average wholesale price difference based on a 12 payment month billing cycle between 40/10 and 80/20 is £3.04+VAT per month so your ISP in year one is making an extra £2.26* out of you per month. Obviously this includes activation costs that they are billed by Openreach so in year two they save a lot and make a larger average margin. Personally for the minimal cost for twice the speed i'd go with 80/20 *if* you'll actually make reasonable use of it, if you aren't downloading large files daily then don't.

*Before some pedant points out the numbers don't add up I do state +VAT for the former and te latter includes VAT as it's a retail price.
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Understood, I never considered that. I guess I naively thought that "£30 per month" meant £30 x 12. I'll have to read up on their T&Cs. Is £30 reasonable value for that package though? 38Mbps would suffice realistically - 76 would be nicer for lazy moments where I want that steam game now, rather than in 4 hours ha. Really though, it's the 20 up that attracts me.

I also see that their £125 card offer ends today. I hate these decisions ha. Do I order now, or wait until tomorrow and hope BT's monthly cost is reduced.
 
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I'm with Zen and started on the '76Mbps' package. A year later, I downgraded to the '38Mbps' package as my speeds never reached over 30Mbps and are currently showing as:-

up:7852 Mbps down:22805 Mbps

I have replaced the cable from the master socket to the Openreach Modem (10m) with a higher quality one and hopefully the speeds will increase again.
 
!bluetonic! said:
I'm with Zen and started on the '76Mbps' package. A year later, I downgraded to the '38Mbps' package as my speeds never reached over 30Mbps and are currently showing as:-

up:7852 Mbps down:22805 Mbps

I have replaced the cable from the master socket to the Openreach Modem (10m) with a higher quality one and hopefully the speeds will increase again.
Click to expand...

What does BT's DSL line checker state you should achieve?
http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.Address?URL=&SP_NAME=a%20service%20provider&VERSION=41&MS=E&CAP=no&AEA=Y

Have you thought about getting one of the BT pre-filtered VDSL faceplates?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181998722035

Post up your router stats as well.
 
Sparx said:
What does BT's DSL line checker state you should achieve?
http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.Address?URL=&SP_NAME=a%20service%20provider&VERSION=41&MS=E&CAP=no&AEA=Y

Have you thought about getting one of the BT pre-filtered VDSL faceplates?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181998722035

Post up your router stats as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions.

FTTC Range A (Clean) 51 39 11.9 7.6 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 35.6 18 9.6 4.8 -- Available

I have got a VDSL faceplate on the socket.

What router stats are you after?
 
Microfilters are so flaky though. It isn't hard to install a filtered face plate and it is more reliable.
 
!bluetonic! said:
Thanks for the suggestions.

FTTC Range A (Clean) 51 39 11.9 7.6 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 35.6 18 9.6 4.8 -- Available

I have got a VDSL faceplate on the socket.

What router stats are you after?
Click to expand...

Your line must be heavily impacted if you are only achieving 22805 down and 7852 up.

Have you removed the ring wire from the master socket already? If not I would suggest doing so, really easy to do takes 2 minutes. See here, scroll down a bit

Router stats; if you could post up your current/max sync if shown along with the SNR, attenuation etc that would be useful.

V F said:
I thought this was standard by now...
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No, ISPs have started to supply filters again! Cheap and nasty things. You only got a VDSL faceplate fitted when you had a BT engineer come out to install fibre when it first came out, which is now a distant memory...
 
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That must be the reason when I had odd reactions from some over the phone years ago. Some had never heard of a filtered face plate.
 
The same applied to ADSL when it first came out, back then it was engineer only and filtered faceplate only. ADSL microfilters came later on.
 
What I've always thought was unreal... All the micro filters I've had that came bundled and was never used has eventually died or bizarre things happen with them. Even as test procedures having to plug it into the test socket to get an engineer out part of their step procedure.

Thankfully every line fault has always been outside the premises somewhere along BT's line. Sadly there is a small section of aluminium that keeps collapsing anytime an Openreach engineer pokes about moving cables in one of the junction boxes.
 
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