Just been enabled for fibre... spec me a new connection

slipd

slipd

slipd

Soldato
Joined
26 Feb 2004
Posts
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Location
Hampshire, England.
Hi guys,

I've been waiting* to be enabled since September and now it looks like I finally am :D

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I realise that the figures aren't that great by a lot of peoples standards but I do live in the countryside. Now, what are my options? I'm currently on a 3MB connection with UKFSN at £19.78 for 30GB a month (unlimited off-peak) but I regularly go over my peak usage and end up having to top up with 10GB which is about another tenner. Ideally I'm after an unlimited package.

I've checked on the Plusnet site and they reckon I'd only see up to 16MB. The Sky (I've got my line rental with them) checker suggests I can get all of their packages but I notice their non-fibre specific, up to 17MB offering is free for 12 months atm. Would that be the best option if I'm only likely to see 'up to 16MB' according to Plusnet? Or am I way off the mark, my current connection is very weak, 63dB attenuation etc.

Thanks.



**Apologies that this is not really that much of a wait to those that have been waiting months/years to be enabled.
 
Plusnet only show the one figure for fibre rather than a range (the low end of Range A), so assuming no issues with your line you'd likely get a speed between 16 and the maximum shown. I migrated to Plusnet this week, Range A for me is 48 - 65 and I'm getting 65Mbps. Plusnet quoted 48.

On Sky ADSL you won't see any advantage over your current speed - to get above that 3Mbps, you'll need to switch to fibre based products.
 
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Don't worry who you go with Fibre too much, the estimators are conservative to ensure higher expectations are not set. Just go for the best bang for buck package.

Personally I would say Plusnet have the best deal on at the moment. Go for the 'up to 38Mb' packages as obviously your max will be no more than 25Mb if you're lucky. Their package is £3.75 pm for 6 months (£14.99 thereafter) and £15.95 pm line rental. What makes the deal even better, is if you complete the order via TopCashback before tomorrow night you can grab yourself £147 cashback.

http://www.topcashback.co.uk/plusnet_broadband/

https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/fibre/

Hope this helps. :)

P.S. Make sure you clear your browser's cookies before completing the order via TopCashback so the order tracks correctly.
 
Thanks guys! All makes good sense.

I think I'll go with Sky then, since we already have them for TV/phone. Unlimited is £20 (£30 setup), plus on the subject of Topcashback as an existing customer I can get 6 months free - which they seem to have worked out as £105 cashback? I'll try it anyway ;)

Next thing then, can I keep my own kit? Atm, a Billion 7800N. There are a lot of pages on the web saying you can/can't do it and that it's legal/illegal but I'm not sure how up to date the pages are?

Any thoughts?
 
£110 cashback if you do it through Quidco for Sky Existing Customer Upgrades.

Keeping your kit - yes and no... It's against the Sky T&Cs however I'm with Sky myself and extracted my UN+PW and have my own HG612 modem fitted and an Asus AC-56U router and it works great.
 
Cool, looking around there seem to be a lot of guides/instruction sets - most of which involve using Wireshark to 'sniff out' your Sky username and password.

So I should be okay with the Billion then?
 
Yes, just using Wireshark gets you your un+pw fairly quickly, it's what I used and it only took a few minutes.

You'll need to buy yourself an OR modem from the bay (i.e. the HG612) to work in tandem with the Billion router. Unfortunately the Sky stock router supplied is restricted from being set to 'modem only mode'.

To be fair, I would give the stock router a go just so you can see it's capabilities before purchasing anything else. It isn't all that bad! :) (didn't stop me replacing it though)

P.S. I would also get yourself a BT VDSL Mk3 faceplate (circa £10 from the bay) for your phone socket, if you don't already have one. It really helps improve your sync rate and reliability.
 
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Sparx said:
P.S. I would also get yourself a BT VDSL Mk3 faceplate (circa £10 from the bay) for your phone socket, if you don't already have one. It really helps improve your sync rate and reliability.
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I just checked and we've got a Mk2 - is it worth the upgrade? We had BT out in August for a line fault and the engineer upgraded our faceplate then advising us that fibre was just around the corner - I had a an ADSL Nation one which he took with him :mad:

Is it worth getting a Mk3?
 
slipd said:
Is it worth getting a Mk3?
Click to expand...

From everything I've read (and I could be wrong!), the Mk3 face-plate has extra filtering for the bell wire. If there is interference coming from the bell wire of your home phone network, then the Mk3 face-plate will help.

One way of testing if you'll benefit from the Mk3 plate is to test modem/router connection speed with modern/router connected only (to the Mk2 plate). Then if you connect the home phone line and speeds drop, then there could be a benefit from the Mk3 plate.

So just to summarize if your on a Mk2 plate, and isolating the phone lines makes no difference to speed, then the Mk3 plate is unlikely to benefit, this is how I understand it anyway.
 
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I ordered my unlimited fibre package though Quidco (so hopefully £110 cashback!) and I see Sky are doing 6 months free anyway so that could be good :p Some questions though; during my 'purchase' there was no requirement for the MAC of my current ADSL connection, which I have, is that no longer needed? Also, there was no mention of the 6 months free during the final stages? I appear to have skipped out on the £30 activation charge but they've said that I will be billed £6.95 for the delivery of the router. Is that all quite normal?

Is it too early to worry yet? Incidentally, how long now before I get to enjoy my superfast, fibre optic broadband :D
 
slipd said:
I just checked and we've got a Mk2 - is it worth the upgrade? We had BT out in August for a line fault and the engineer upgraded our faceplate then advising us that fibre was just around the corner - I had a an ADSL Nation one which he took with him :mad:

Is it worth getting a Mk3?
Click to expand...

No if you have the Mk2 that's fine! I thought you may have had an old NTE faceplate.

What does your actual order email say?
 
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Okay so I got enabled on Wednesday and the good news is I'm getting speeds of up to 30MB+ :eek:

Awesome, considering I've been on a flaky 3MB DSL connection since 2005...

How stable is fibre though; I do seem to get very different speeds depending on when I do a speedtest, does fibre go through the same 'training period that normal DSL goes through? I'm currently syncing on a 31798Kbps profile, it has been higher though.
 
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