BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

Unseen said:
Well, I had to give a months notice. If all the ISP's over FTTC suffer from the same issue, it's best I cancel. If I'm still connected and found a cheap deal, let's say with Sky for example, wouldn't I just migrate within that months cancellation?
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You are better off just migrating first, the new ISP will handle everything, and the previous ISP would just send you a final bill to confirm the cancellation
 
Yes, your better off cancelling your cancellation and letting the new ISP migrate you. There is next to zero downtime when you do that. You shouldn’t really be paying much more than an effective £25 a month for an 80/20 service and closer to £20 for the 40/10 after taking into account new customer incentives and cash back deals from the likes of Quidco. The speed will be the same though.

If you move to Virgin, I wouldn’t cancel until after it’s been installed, who knows when they’ll be able to install it. Sure you’ll have a £40 overlap but if there’s a problem with the install or it’s just rubbish in your area you’ll have nothing again.

For reference, I ordered FTTP a week ago and the next install date in my area was May for the ONT install. The outside work has already been done!
 
mikehhhhhhh said:
What's the deal with FTTP installations at the moment, is there any consistency to install lead times?

I'm close to completing on a house that says FTTP available with "1 Stage Install" - once it's all confirmed, we'll be moving in under a month so just trying to gauge the likelihood of getting it installed in time.
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I had this on a new build. Went live next day for me. BT did the bit in the road on the Wednesday for my development. Ordered Friday. Live Saturday. 1 stage install

this was last week.
 
What does '1 stage install' actually mean? It apparently doesn't mean that there's already an ONT installed as it says that it'd be a 1 stage install for my brother and he's still on FTTC. It also says that for me, and I've had FTTP for about 9 months.
 
the-evaluator said:
What does '1 stage install' actually mean? It apparently doesn't mean that there's already an ONT installed as it says that it'd be a 1 stage install for my brother and he's still on FTTC. It also says that for me, and I've had FTTP for about 9 months.
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  • 0 stage install: if an Optical Network Termination unit or ONT already exists at your premises, it's very quick to get connected. We can remotely activate a port on the ONT and the rest is generally self-installation. The average connection time is between 1 and 3 working days.
  • 1 stage install: this is when the fibre cable termination is quite close to your premises. The average connection times are between 9 and 18 working days (subject to engineer availability). You'll need to be at the premises to get this connected, as the engineer will need to drill through your wall to install an ONT.
  • 2 stage install: this is when the fibre cable termination may not be close to your premises. This will take longer to install and we may need to complete a survey, as well as any external work. Because of this, the installation may be delayed*, incur excess construction charges** or be deemed infeasible. The average connection times are between 20 and 35 working days (subject to engineer availability). The engineer will complete any external work to bring the cable termination close to your premises, typically 5-10 days before installing equipment at your premises.
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They are also prioritising people without connections already e.g. new builds. Those with existing FTTC connections are at the back of the line after lockdown.
 
Just finished using BT Halo 3 for free and my personal experience of it was rubbish. The Halo Hybrid Hub connects to your SmartHub by Wifi or cable. It connects to the 4g network and shows signal strength. On my unit it showed 1 bar. During the tests of simulating the internet being down I was getting 200k down and about 10k up on 4g. Absolutely pityful. It also took at least 5 minutes to switch from my Smarthub to Hybrid hub and switching back could take anything upto 20 minutes. Not ideal when you are WFH.

So I went through testing the Hybrid, tried it in every room, even tried it outside on top of step ladders in middle of garden. Still rubbish speed. After a few back and forwards with Tech Support found out the reason. BT use EE for the Hybrid Hub. Finally an answer comes back from BT > EE limit the bandwidth to data devices such as Mifi Hubs and the Hybrid Hub from certain 4g masts. Not all of them but I dont know how many. So to test this out I bought a EE Data Sim for £8 and tried it in my tablet. Lo and behold it gave me the same crappy speed as the Hybrid Hub. Did another test with a different network providers 4G Data sim and got around 14Mbps!

Needless to say I`m not impressed. BT told me they had their hands tied nothing they could do about it which is not an ideal answer. I've not checked the T&C's of the Halo 3 contract but any unsuspecting person signing upto this and not fully understanding that 1 signal bar is pitiful will end up paying for a service that does not deliver. Fortunately for me it was free and I am now going back to my old legacy contract but I did get a free Wifi disc to keep.

If you think about it Broadband/Fibre is pretty reliable so you could be paying Halo 3 prices for like 8 months or more and not realising the service is not fit for purpose until your internet goes down !
 
The entire point of the product is that it's providing a backup that requires no intervention from the user - in an ideal world you'll be paying for the feature for the entire duration of your contract and it will never get used. If people don't see the value in having that available then they don't need to buy it.

You'd hope that poor 4G signal areas will be picked up in the order process and people either made aware of the issue or prevented from ordering the 4G failover option, but that's about all that can be done.

Yes you could get your own SIM, handle the failover yourself on your own router, decide to just tether your mobile for the duration of any outage etc. but if you know how to do all those things then you aren't the target for a service like this.
 
Caged said:
Yes you could get your own SIM, handle the failover yourself on your own router, decide to just tether your mobile for the duration of any outage etc. but if you know how to do all those things then you aren't the target for a service like this.
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This is the option I went for when my VM connection became unreliable.

I use pfSense (which you can run on any old computer you have laying around) with VM failing over to an EE 5G router. The only way I know VM has gone now is via the Telegram notification I setup on pfSense when a Gateway goes down.
 
mikehhhhhhh said:
Not much they can do if you've got bad signal where your router is located, surely?
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As Caged said point is people could potentially be paying for a service thats not fit for purpose and they will never know until their internet goes down. I've not seen any notice of this on the BT Product page warning that your Halo service may be poor.

Personally I would never buy it anyway I would just tether my mobile phone I've got 20gb data on there I hardly use anyway.
Its not a bad signal either the bandwidth is being limited on purpose by EE. My O2 data signal is perfect (tested on a data only O2 sim) and they both come from the same mast this is where the limit is.
 
Ok I'm getting impatient now.

On VM350 but out of contract so paying full retail (ugh). Their gigglebit service is available to me at the same price but I'd have to commit for another 18 months.

The issue is that my area (Solihull/Shirley) is in an ongoing FTTP rollout which started in 2019 but it's not available. I'd prefer this to VM's service but have no idea when it'll arrive so I'm obviously concerned about committing to VM for 18 months only for FTTP to arrive soon after but then I could sit here paying full retail for my 350 service for another year or more before FTTP is available.

Is there any way of finding out or even vaguely judging when FTTP might get to me? I know they originally said by end of 2021 but how much have the deployments been slowed/delayed by the pandemic?
I just wish I had something more concrete so I could make an informed decision.
 
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