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gahhh!"!!! broadband renwal time again
02GF74 - 29/7/13 at 11:26 AM

my spesh offer with talk-talk ends soon so looking for good deals, or same price but faster.

bb speed mean to be up to 16 M but tester shows 6.7 Mb hmmmm.

Anyone using Tesco BB? How is the speed? also how close to the promised BB do providers achieve? Toying with swapping to fibre (virgin or BT) but is the promise speeds real?


tegwin - 29/7/13 at 11:31 AM

I have actually just ditched virgin fiber as they were nowhere near the advertised speed and were terrible for streaming. Their network is not able to cope with demand in Plym and I presume elsewhere...

Just switched to the plusnet "fiber" unlimited product... Comes in over the phone line but is considerably faster than virgin and has a far better bandwidth for streaming....


daniel mason - 29/7/13 at 11:41 AM

whats BT offering with the new BT sport channel?


Slimy38 - 29/7/13 at 11:50 AM

Fibre seems much more likely to get promised speeds, I think they're only offering it in areas that have the suitable connection (and range) so if you can get it you can get the full 40Mbit/s. If you're really good you can have the 80Mbit/s connection, but since I can HD stream on 40Mbit/s it seems a bit pointless to go faster.

As a comparison, my previous copper connection was 2Mbit at it's absolute fastest. But I'm about 10 miles away from my nearest exchange, whereas I'm about 100 yards from the nearest cabinet.

I have Sky, but I'm all in for everything so that's probably overkill for what you need. Plusnet would be my preferred internet-only provider.


britishtrident - 29/7/13 at 12:18 PM

My daughter had major problems of speed and line dropping with Virgin on my recommendation she moved to Plusnet no problems since. I have recommennded a couple of dozen people to switch to Plusnet none have has any problrms I also know Be & O2 (same group) do a very good job with good speeds but Plusnet are a proper offer proper email facilities with multiple mail boxes, spam filtering and user control over setting, they also give some web space which is not as important as it ised to be.

However before doing anything you should find out if BT have converted to FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) in you area as it would be silly to sign up to a new provider then pay for an upgrade in a few months.
The FTTC programe is rolling out across the country you can check progress here
Thinkbraodband Fibre Roll-Out

Also take care to check out and compare any potential new provider on the Thinkbroadbands site
Thinkbroadband Compare ISP


coozer - 29/7/13 at 12:58 PM

When I move house I'm thinking of going over to BT fibre.

Is that a new fibre optic line and can I get rid of the landline?

Or, do I still need to pay for a land line to get the fibre line?


Slimy38 - 29/7/13 at 01:35 PM

quote:
Originally posted by coozer
When I move house I'm thinking of going over to BT fibre.

Is that a new fibre optic line and can I get rid of the landline?

Or, do I still need to pay for a land line to get the fibre line?


It's actually a bad description on BT's part. They should say that it's fibre to the cabinet, then copper to the home. You are basically keeping the last bit of copper wire that gets the signal into your house. And unfortunately, that means you're still paying line rental to the supplier. Whether you have a phone attached or not is your call, I don't know whether BT offer line rental without a phone line.

I believe only the cable providers (Virgin being the obvious one) actually present fibre to the house, and even then it's not 100%. And Virgin don't have the best track record when it comes to reliable unrestricted connections.


Slimy38 - 29/7/13 at 01:40 PM

quote:
Originally posted by britishtrident

However before doing anything you should find out if BT have converted to FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) in you area as it would be silly to sign up to a new provider then pay for an upgrade in a few months.
The FTTC programe is rolling out across the country you can check progress here
Thinkbraodband Fibre Roll-Out



We didn't have to pay to get our Sky broadband upgraded to fibre broadband, it was just the increased monthly fee and £2.97 (ish) for the modem to be posted out. And it's BT that did the connection, Sky just arranged the engineer.


stevebubs - 29/7/13 at 03:33 PM

FYI...

Plusnet - acquired by BT in 2006
O2 / BE - acquired by Sky recently


stevebubs - 29/7/13 at 03:35 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Slimy38
quote:
Originally posted by coozer
When I move house I'm thinking of going over to BT fibre.

Is that a new fibre optic line and can I get rid of the landline?

Or, do I still need to pay for a land line to get the fibre line?


It's actually a bad description on BT's part. They should say that it's fibre to the cabinet, then copper to the home. You are basically keeping the last bit of copper wire that gets the signal into your house. And unfortunately, that means you're still paying line rental to the supplier. Whether you have a phone attached or not is your call, I don't know whether BT offer line rental without a phone line.

I believe only the cable providers (Virgin being the obvious one) actually present fibre to the house, and even then it's not 100%. And Virgin don't have the best track record when it comes to reliable unrestricted connections.


Most cable providers are also copper in the last stretch...but it's a different type of cable to that used by normal telephone lines...most "Fibre" broadband deals are Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). Very few areas have Fibre to the Home (FTTH)

[Edited on 29/7/13 by stevebubs]


chrism - 29/7/13 at 05:16 PM

The only connection that I know is definately fibre to your house is BTs Infinity, Virgin Media still only do coax to your house which is perfectly capable of the high speeds advertised, only only virgin option of fibre to your house is a new thing they were doing to expand into areas they didnt cover.

I've had broadband with virgin media since about 2001 when it was a 64k connection, and in all that time theres only been a few problems, not counting the odd network outage which are few and far between, although Ive only ever the lowest speed option which is currently now 30meg I think and i am able to stream HD from lovefilm no problem while also browsing and downloading at the same time.

I do think the speed your gonna get is based on where you live and what the connection is like, I know from a check on the BT site due to where I am I would only get and average 2.5meg speed with an estimated 1meg to 4meg range.

One thing to remember though is pretty much any internet that is not Virgin Media all comes through BTs network as far as Im aware, I remember reading a story a while ago about Sky customers getting slow speeds and it turned out that Sky bought their broadband bandwith from BT and they were exceding their alloted capacity so BT were limiting their customers connection speeds.


jeffw - 29/7/13 at 06:27 PM

BT Infinity is Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). There are very few areas with Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) currently and they tend to be business parks, BT have a trial starting doing 300/30 Mb on FTTP in certain locations.

Also a lot of ISPs use BT Wholesale's Broadband offering but not all as some, like BE, had local loop unbundling with their own equipment in the local exchange.



[Edited on 29/7/13 by jeffw]


chrism - 29/7/13 at 06:47 PM

quote:
Originally posted by jeffw
BT Infinity is Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). There are very few areas with Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) currently and they tend to be business parks, BT have a trial starting doing 300/30 Mb on FTTP in certain locations.

Also a lot of ISPs use BT Wholesale's Broadband offering but not all as some, like BE, had local loop unbundling with their own equipment in the local exchange.



[Edited on 29/7/13 by jeffw]


It was BT infinity 160 I was thinking about (http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/faster-interne t) I was having an argument with someone recently and I was saying how the fibre broadband line is a bit misleading as it still uses the thin copper phone wire coming into your house so looked it up on the BT website and found this one that is fibre to your house.

[Edited on 29/7/13 by chrism]


Peteff - 29/7/13 at 07:08 PM

quote:
Originally posted by 02GF74
my spesh offer with talk-talk ends soon so looking for good deals, or same price but faster.

bb speed mean to be up to 16 M but tester shows 6.7 Mb hmmmm.


Our Talk Talk contract ended and we just left it as a rolling contract without signing up for anything new so we still get free local calls and our BB is "up to 24 meg" connection but we actually get around 17 meg on speedtest.net. A lot depends on your distance from the exchange and line quality but we have had no problems in the years we have been with them.


britishtrident - 29/7/13 at 08:11 PM

One thing to keep in mind is Virgin have had some very very bad reports in on the media (notably BBC Radio 4 You and Yours) with regard to phone charges they have been cutting off subscribers if there is a sudden increase in phone usage, NB cutting off because suddenly increased usage not anything to do with problems collecting payments.

BBC Radio 4 You & Yours Link A heavily pregnant woman tells us how her Virgin phone was cut off without warning. Virgin says it was because she was making more calls than usual. We find out if this is normal practice.


As to Plusnet they are owned by BT but run completely separately along very different lines.

[Edited on 29/7/13 by britishtrident]


David Jenkins - 30/7/13 at 07:56 PM

quote:
Originally posted by stevebubs
FYI...

Plusnet - acquired by BT in 2006
O2 / BE - acquired by Sky recently


I used to be on BT but now get better performance and lower bills since signing up to Plusnet (e.g. I almost halved my telephone bill). Customer support is also far better (i.e. straightforward and effective).

Strange, but true...

[Edited on 30/7/13 by David Jenkins]