Help needed with a decision whether to go fibre or not!

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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6 Sep 2005
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What's the quality of support like with BT or Sky with their fibre products these days?

I've read a couple of horror stories in BTs forum with some people taking weeks to problems sorted (and are still ongoing), I think I could triple the speed I get now with a fibre line but don't want to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

I'm currently with O2, no complaints with the broadband, but customer service was a bit dodgy when I last had to deal with them unfortunately.

I'd love to hear your opinions as if I'm going to move over there are some good cashback deals ending soon!
 
TheBigCheese said:
Thanks for the posts so far.
Why?


One thing I'm concerned about is ping...when I was with Zen for ADSL I had a ping in the mid 20s, on O2 (same premises) it's 35-40...what is FTTC like for ping generally or does it change between ISPs the same as ADSL does?
Click to expand...

No shaping, better routing and shorter contract.

Your O2 connection is probably interleaved.
 
How is traffic shaped on the BT fibre package? Or do you mean the P2P throttling? If so that wouldn't affect me.

Could someone also explain what better routing means? Would I get a faster connection on Sky than BT?

Thanks.
 
Routing is basically where your connection goes before it goes off to the big net. Better routing = lower latency.

With BT the only throttling you get is P2P traffic (such as torrents), but that itself isn't so bad (at least for me). However, their customer support really, really, annoys me. It's just talking to someone reading off a script or something. It's only when you talk to someone higher up you get some proper customer support.

Sky on the other hand doesn't throttle anything at all. I've no idea how well their customer support is though.
 
TheBigCheese said:
How is traffic shaped on the BT fibre package? Or do you mean the P2P throttling? If so that wouldn't affect me.

Could someone also explain what better routing means? Would I get a faster connection on Sky than BT?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I'm with BT and my connection is fine. I don't P2P, but I want to go to Sky, the reason is that I have my TV with them so I'd get a discount. But from my experience so far, BT have been excellent.
 
Yes, P2P. BT's traffic shaping has caused issues for gamers in the past. Lots of applications, including games, use P2P, not just bittorrent clients. ;)

Routing is the path traffic takes to get from A to B. Inefficient routing might cause latency to rise.
 
Thanks for the replies guys, it does seem that it's more a case of picking the best deal between BT and Sky at the moment.

Good point KIA regarding other programs using P2P.

I can think of Trackmania and Shootmania but I'm a bit stumped after that...anything else you can think of that uses P2P?


Does anyone know what the customer service and technical department are like for Sky?
 
Hmmm, I'm not to sure how much that would affect me really.

I do like the idea of a shorter contract though, by that time hopefully O2/Be will have got their act together and be offering FTTC in a years time.
 
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