BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

Earth[Tera].bin · 20 May 2020 at 16:50

Just put an online order in for full fibre 900 at £59.99 pm,considering I was paying that for 300Mbps it was a no-brainer. Engineer and a new smarthub for the 11th of June, none of which I'm 99% certain I need. (Upgrade will be at the exchange and Hub2 has crap wifi so I'll stick with my existing setup)

Be nice if it all goes through smoothly but I'm expecting some contact from BT soon to say there's a problem, always a hitch somewyhere.Will update as it progresses.

A new order was placed instead of an upgrade, so that was cancelled. An upgrade has been put in place though and the Fibre 900 ( Halo 1) is due to be activated on 22/5. Let's see how this plays out

I think I'm paying over the odds by the looks of previous posts, but will see what speeds I get before I consider haggling.

the-evaluator · 20 May 2020 at 17:05

Meatball said:
when did you place your order? My FTTP order was placed on March 23rd and the original install date of 17th April never happened. I’ve had no contact since!

Sunday 17th May.

Dangerous Dave · 20 May 2020 at 17:18

Meatball said:
when did you place your order? My FTTP order was placed on March 23rd and the original install date of 17th April never happened. I’ve had no contact since!

On the welcome email you get a link to track your order, the information on the link gets updated but the email contains a fixed image of the dates when you ordered so doesn't update.

https://my.bt.com/s/apps/appsorder/customer/index.html#

I ordered on the 22nd of March but needed a new duct laid followed by another engineer to pull the fibre through a couple of weeks later, these dates updated on the order details currently my install to connect up the ONT is still showing July 13th.

spoffle · 20 May 2020 at 17:49

faceman123 said:
Hi spoffle would you be so kind to confirm how long the upgrade took? my order was "complete" yesterday but speed hasn't increased. i was advised " it has to build up - i'm pretty sure that's not the case it's not copper ! "

It took 3-4 days from ordering the upgrade to the speed increasing. I think when they've said "build up" they've just used the wrong terms. I think it just takes a few days for the order to be placed with Openreach and then for Openreach to action it.

Meatball · 20 May 2020 at 20:36

Dangerous Dave said:
On the welcome email you get a link to track your order, the information on the link gets updated but the email contains a fixed image of the dates when you ordered so doesn't update.

https://my.bt.com/s/apps/appsorder/customer/index.html#

Furyus · 20 May 2020 at 20:38

Meatball said:

Have you tried calling them ?

Dangerous Dave · 21 May 2020 at 13:58

Meatball said:

Looks like your order must have got missed/lost in the system, I would contact them and ask for an update.

BT contacted me today to ask if I want to move the appointment forward from July for the install so they must be working through the older orders

Meatball · 21 May 2020 at 20:24

I phoned them up this afternoon and turns out my order had failed and been cancelled, great. They’ll call me tomorrow to get the order put back through, I’m hoping this won’t mean I’m out at the back of the queue.

Dangerous Dave · 22 May 2020 at 15:46

Install now moved to Tuesday 26th

, you have to answer a series of questions around COVID19 also confirm you can wait in another room along with pictures of the install point and external cable location before they attend.

robj20 · 22 May 2020 at 15:49

Dangerous Dave said:
Install now moved to Tuesday 26th , you have to answer a series of questions around COVID19 also confirm you can wait in another room along with pictures of the install point and external cable location before they attend.

What if like me you'd have to be in the same room to help them, would they refuse to install?

Caged · 22 May 2020 at 15:50

Why would you have to be in the same room to help them? I think they'd refuse tbh and I wouldn't blame them. If you want it installed in a particular way and the cable run a certain way then clear the route and install a draw rope. You can't expect the engineer to violate their own terms of employment and put their (and your) health at risk because you want a cable run under the floor.

robj20 · 22 May 2020 at 15:52

Caged said:
Why would you have to be in the same room to help them?

I want the cable to go through the wall into the crawl space, where I would pass it along and up through the floor to the understairs cupboard, where they can then install the equipment.

Earth[Tera].bin · 22 May 2020 at 16:11

Well mine was upgraded today but the bandwidth is quite erratic, even seemed to be stuck at just under 100Mbps for a period. Decided to test the smarthub2 instead of using the Netgear equipment, ran some BT tests which seems to work but it's back to being erratic. Hopefully it'll settle down soon otherwise I'll give them a bell.

Actually i'll need to look into this a bit, using the Netgear Orbi it maxes out my upload at 110Mbps but my download fluctuates between 300-500Mbps. Using the Smarthub seems to prioritise my download (780-940Mbps) and halfs my download (40-50Mbps). Strange.

#Update

Seems the smarthub2 has been limiting a few peoples upload speed, some resolved via factory reset others not.

#Update

Hooked the ONT directly to my laptop and created a PPoE connection and retested, but seems Windows limits the PPoE connection to 100Mbps ffs. I'll try this again tomorrow with a Linux OS and see if I can get near max speeds the ONT is synced at .

Dangerous Dave · 22 May 2020 at 17:15

robj20 said:
What if like me you'd have to be in the same room to help them, would they refuse to install?

I got the impression they would refuse to attend if you can't be in another room. I would put a pull cord in for the cable run you want and leave the engineer to it you can then tidy up the underfloor run when they leave.

Allnamestaken · 22 May 2020 at 21:34

Can i ask an engineer to run an ethernet cable or is that taking the **** lmao?

the-evaluator · 23 May 2020 at 07:40

They won't run ethernet cables. No chance.

Normally you can pay Openreach to do it (or some engineers will do it for a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit) but they're keeping the indoor work to an absolute minimum at the moment. For example, they're not taking orders for internal telephone extensions.

Earth[Tera].bin · 23 May 2020 at 13:29

Earth[Tera].bin said:
Well mine was upgraded today but the bandwidth is quite erratic, even seemed to be stuck at just under 100Mbps for a period. Decided to test the smarthub2 instead of using the Netgear equipment, ran some BT tests which seems to work but it's back to being erratic. Hopefully it'll settle down soon otherwise I'll give them a bell.

Actually i'll need to look into this a bit, using the Netgear Orbi it maxes out my upload at 110Mbps but my download fluctuates between 300-500Mbps. Using the Smarthub seems to prioritise my download (780-940Mbps) and halfs my download (40-50Mbps). Strange.

#Update

Seems the smarthub2 has been limiting a few peoples upload speed, some resolved via factory reset others not.

#Update

Hooked the ONT directly to my laptop and created a PPoE connection and retested, but seems Windows limits the PPoE connection to 100Mbps ffs. I'll try this again tomorrow with a Linux OS and see if I can get near max speeds the ONT is synced at .

Well went for a quick install ( Kubuntu ) and setup a PPoE direct to the ONT and it's more or less maxing out the connection.

So there's something in the middle that's throttling the bandwidth. I did read some similar issues over in the Netgear forums, and it might be the case of the CPU in Orbi router struggling to route the 1GB connection, so maybe that's why it's only giving me around 500Mbps download. Also posts about setting it up as an AP instead of a router and something about hardware offloading, which I'll read up on, see if the Orbi is capable of it or not.

As for the Smarthub2, I'll retry that later but it's Wi-Fi is dreadful so It's not a long term option.

Either way it's good to find out the bandwidth is there for the taking.

Furyus · 23 May 2020 at 14:41

I called BT sales team, and just can't get them to budge on the £59pm for the 900mb. Ahhh!

Meatball · 23 May 2020 at 15:32

Meatball said:
I phoned them up this afternoon and turns out my order had failed and been cancelled, great. They’ll call me tomorrow to get the order put back through, I’m hoping this won’t mean I’m out at the back of the queue.

I didn't get a call back from the fibre team so I guess I'll have to wait until Monday to discuss my order

Earth[Tera].bin · 23 May 2020 at 15:58

So found a temp solution till It can be simplified, I've gone ONT - SH2 - ORBI ( AP mode ) .

Wired bandwidth 936/118mpbs , and wireless 498/118mpbs , pretty obscene to be fair . Need to convince the other half 8k OLEDs are thing now.