Broadband Speed

[AndyT]

Been paying 28 a month for unlimited BT, sh1te, getting capped for P2P software, no explanation what so ever. BT Infinity doesn't get here 'til Sept 2011 and it's still ten times slower.

No way 100 meg can get through copper BT lines and they definitely have not upgraded those.

There is far, far better out there.

[Homer]

Although Virgin have been a step ahead in terms of access speed for years, their core is still heavily contended so you compete at select times.

BT are now rolling out superfast broadband and for the time being, it's unmatched. 100mb down and 40mb up, and it's in rollout phase now.

 

I've never experienced any performance issues, other than as Scott mentions when I reach the download cap, which on the 50MB service isn't exactly and inconvenience anway.

 

BT will never be able to compete until they get fibre to the local box, just look at the problems people are having even when using the 24MB service, very few get anywhere need these speeds, increasing the cap won't make any difference until BT upgrade their entire infrastructure right down to your street box (which will cost billions and take many years) That said, they are the only option when in more remote places that don't have cable.

 

[Scott]

I've never experienced any performance issues, other than as Scott mentions when I reach the download cap, which on the 50MB service isn't exactly and inconvenience anway.

 

BT will never be able to compete until they get fibre to the local box, just look at the problems people are having even when using the 24MB service, very few get anywhere need these speeds, increasing the cap won't make any difference until BT upgrade their entire infrastructure right down to your street box (which will cost billions and take many years) That said, they are the only option when in more remote places that don't have cable.

 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1166281510.png

 

 

Not sure if you know already but the 50mb service is completely uncapped. Also I notice that you are hitting the 10% ratio that is being rolled out for the upload speeds, nice

[Homer]

Not sure if you know already but the 50mb service is completely uncapped. Also I notice that you are hitting the 10% ratio that is being rolled out for the upload speeds, nice

 

I spoke to VM about this, the service is capped though the limit is very high (Think they said about 20GB/4 hours during the peak period, upload or download). Mine definetely gets capped if I hammer it, but that takes some doing

[Scott]

I spoke to VM about this, the service is capped though the limit is very high (Think they said about 20GB/4 hours during the peak period, upload or download). Mine definetely gets capped if I hammer it, but that takes some doing

 

Well the cheeky feckers are falsly advertising then. They mention caps on all the services other than in the 50mb+ where they say it is uncapped.

 

I might be wrong here but I think you are eligeable for the 100mb trial?

[Homer]

They've changed their website, traffic shaping is in place for all services, but as mentioned it's still very fast even with the cap in place

 

There's no date for it in Reading yet, but I have put forward my name for it (they said it was expected sometime this summer and is 100% free ). Apparently it's only head end upgrades that are needed, the router, modem and street side infrastrcuture is apparently capable of over 100MB up & down, so at least there are no more hardware changes needed for us already on the 50MB service.

[AndyT]

Well the cheeky feckers are falsly advertising then. They mention caps on all the services other than in the 50mb+ where they say it is uncapped.

 

I might be wrong here but I think you are eligeable for the 100mb trial?

Something I was looking into Scott. It seems you can get a far better upgrade deal. Unfortunately I am not upgrade material, haven't used 'em before, but future upgrades are gonna be pretty awesome. IE 20 meg customers now get 50 for no extra. So 50 meg customers are gonna get some pretty good deals. Get nothing with BT.

[Scott]

Something I was looking into Scott. It seems you can get a far better upgrade deal. Unfortunately I am not upgrade material, haven't used 'em before, but future upgrades are gonna be pretty awesome. IE 20 meg customers now get 50 for no extra. So 50 meg customers are gonna get some pretty good deals. Get nothing with BT.

 

All they can offer at the best of times is a figure to be honest mate. Unless you are REALLY lucky you won't get past what you currently have.

 

Virgin offer by far the best service, as long as you are talking cable broadband, their telephone internet service is as bad as BT with customer service 10 times worse than BT.

[AndyT]

All they can offer at the best of times is a figure to be honest mate. Unless you are REALLY lucky you won't get past what you currently have.

 

Virgin offer by far the best service, as long as you are talking cable broadband, their telephone internet service is as bad as BT with customer service 10 times worse than BT.

Doesn't matter about the phone stuff Scott. Got an unlisted number anyway. We only use it for emergencies, never needed BT advice before so everything's good. There's always Skype. Mobile etc.

[Scott]

Doesn't matter about the phone stuff Scott. Got an unlisted number anyway. We only use it for emergencies, never needed BT advice before so everything's good. There's always Skype. Mobile etc.

 

No no, I didn't mean the actual phone line..... Virgin also offer an internet service based over the phone line (akin to BT etc), but it is absolutely dreadful. It is as slow as BT (as it uses the BT lines) but even less reliable from what I have seen. The customer service when phoning them up is also shocking. It used to be called virginmedia.net as opposed to the virginmedia.com(co.uk) cable service.

 

Virgin phone lines are fine mate. Cheaper rental than BT and the call costs virtually nil thanks to free evening and weekend calls.

[AndyT]

No no, I didn't mean the actual phone line..... Virgin also offer an internet service based over the phone line (akin to BT etc), but it is absolutely dreadful. It is as slow as BT (as it uses the BT lines) but even less reliable from what I have seen. The customer service when phoning them up is also shocking. It used to be called virginmedia.net as opposed to the virginmedia.com(co.uk) cable service.

 

Virgin phone lines are fine mate. Cheaper rental than BT and the call costs virtually nil thanks to free evening and weekend calls.

 

That does us Scott. It's a straight call. Dad calls and sometimes the kids. As long as I can get an emergency call out I don't give a damn about landline. Just in case I'm out of battery at the worst time, it's belt and braces.

[Scott]

That does us Scott. It's a straight call. Dad calls and sometimes the kids. As long as I can get an emergency call out I don't give a damn about landline. Just in case I'm out of battery at the worst time, it's belt and braces.

 

Yup we are the very same bud

[martini]

 

https://img.skitch.com/20110221-qqiithai2ers6p2c36yixmf4a.jpg

 

[caliAl]

Classic BT. Switch to a company like BE which has their own LLU equipment in the exchange to avoid the BT IP profiles that put on their line to stop bottle necks at their exchanges.

[Scott]

 

https://img.skitch.com/20110221-qqiithai2ers6p2c36yixmf4a.jpg

 

 

 

That's cooking with gas. What's up with the upload though?

[Bobbeh]

Says 14 kb a sec in the graphic.

[Scott]

Says 14 kb a sec in the graphic.

 

Yeah, that's what I mean. Why is it so low with so many peers... unless they are all seeders. His speedtest.net shows he can hit 5MB upload

[Bobbeh]

Yeah, he is in Japan, so I'd believe that too

[neo2810]

Been paying 28 a month for unlimited BT, sh1te, getting capped for P2P software, no explanation what so ever. BT Infinity doesn't get here 'til Sept 2011 and it's still ten times slower.

No way 100 meg can get through copper BT lines and they definitely have not upgraded those.

There is far, far better out there.

 

Andy, careful spouting hate like that when your so ill informed...

 

BT Infinity is not 100mb... It's 20mb down and 1.5mb up... Around April this year BT are bringing out a fibre delivered Superfast Broadband service which has a few variants. Fibre To The Premesis (FTTP) is fibre all the way and has the full 100mb down and 40mb up. This will only be available to business initially. FTTC (FTT Cabinet) will use copper for the final few meters from the green cab to your house. It will use enhanced shdsl for that small length which is much more tolerant to interference and in most cases you will get pretty much the full 40mb down and 10mb up as advertised. Apart from Virgin's cable BT will be the only company offering this service for a while (nobody else has even begun testing so they will be a way behind). Your view on BT is very 1990's... Their New 21CN network is the most advanced in the world and the products being researched and designed currently to be launched from that platform are pretty staggering. Maybe you should read a few impartial articles on a few thing before you start slating technology you haven't a clue about, just saying....

[Homer]

Andy, careful spouting hate like that when your so ill informed...

 

BT Infinity is not 100mb... It's 20mb down and 1.5mb up... Around April this year BT are bringing out a fibre delivered Superfast Broadband service which has a few variants. Fibre To The Premesis (FTTP) is fibre all the way and has the full 100mb down and 40mb up. This will only be available to business initially. FTTC (FTT Cabinet) will use copper for the final few meters from the green cab to your house. It will use enhanced shdsl for that small length which is much more tolerant to interference and in most cases you will get pretty much the full 40mb down and 10mb up as advertised. Apart from Virgin's cable (and diabolical customer service) BT will be the only company offering this service for a while (nobody else has even begun testing so they will be a way behind). Your view on BT is very 1990's... Their New 21CN network is the most advanced in the world and the products being researched and designed currently to be launched from that platform are pretty staggering. Maybe you should read a few impartial articles on a few thing before you start slating technology you haven't a clue about, just saying....

 

Do you work for BT?

 

When will BT be able to offer a genuine 50MB down and 5MB up service to my home for £12.50 a month with almost no cap? Honest question.

My sister has the 24MB service at her home and can never get above 1.2MB connection due to the horrendous contention ratio and ancient infrastructure. BT themselves say they cannot do anything about it. I use 02 3G when at her place as the connection is so much better than wired broadband, which is a pretty poor situation. She lives in a fairly big city too.

 

I'll beleive BT's claims when I see them (much later this decade the way things are going).

[Scott]

Do you work for BT?

 

When will BT be able to offer a genuine 50MB down and 5MB up service to my home for £12.50 a month with almost no cap? Honest question.

My sister has the 24MB service at her home and can never get above 1.2MB connection due to the horrendous contention ratio and ancient infrastructure. BT themselves say they cannot do anything about it. I use 02 3G when at her place as the connection is so much better than wired broadband, which is a pretty poor situation. She lives in a fairly big city too.

 

I'll beleive BT's claims when I see them (much later this decade the way things are going).

 

Absolutely spot on. Neo, I'm pretty sure you have something in cahoots with BT one way or another.

 

You are saying that our opinion is based on 10 years ago? How can you possibly say that? Not one person I know on BT can hit what they are paying for. The fact that BT have said "Up to" from the very beginning says it all for me, and it isn't because of a legal standpoint it's because unless you are sitting on top of the exchange at 3am you won't be hitting the advertised speeds. This is as of right now, not 10 years ago.

 

Have a look in this very thread, how many people are on the BT exchange and hitting their advertised speeds? I must admit I haven't seen any. How many people on Virgin are hitting them?

 

FWIW the Virgin customer service is fantastic, I think you may be referring to the Virgin ASDL customer service which is an offshoot of Virgin.. those guys are absolutely shocking.

 

Call Andy, Darryl and myself cynical if you like. We are expressing our opinions based on personal experience and the experience of people around us, not sitting in a test lab playing with the latest BT technology that isn't available to anyone at the moment.

[Thorin]

The fact that BT have said "Up to" from the very beginning says it all for me, and it isn't because of a legal standpoint it's because unless you are sitting on top of the exchange at 3am you won't be hitting the advertised speeds. This is as of right now, not 10 years ago.

 

You're blaming BT for how ADSL works? All ISP's state "up to". If you actually do a check for your phone number on the BT broadband site it will tell you what you can expect to get, and always has. For us that says 512k... but we can get 1MB at a push.

[Matt H]

BT broadband at my mum's home was a life saver. It's still a shocking speed, but compared to what we had it's infinitely better. The realiability is the key for her - it's never failed, but she pays good money for that.

 

I've now 7 months in a contract with Sky. I'm on a 20mb service and get ~4.5mb. I'm sure I could get better down the line than that. I've got the tv and phone with Sky too and the whole service is a joke. Can't wait for summer when the 12 months is up.

[neo2810]

Absolutely spot on. Neo, I'm pretty sure you have something in cahoots with BT one way or another.

 

You are saying that our opinion is based on 10 years ago? How can you possibly say that? Not one person I know on BT can hit what they are paying for. The fact that BT have said "Up to" from the very beginning says it all for me, and it isn't because of a legal standpoint it's because unless you are sitting on top of the exchange at 3am you won't be hitting the advertised speeds. This is as of right now, not 10 years ago.

 

Have a look in this very thread, how many people are on the BT exchange and hitting their advertised speeds? I must admit I haven't seen any. How many people on Virgin are hitting them?

 

FWIW the Virgin customer service is fantastic, I think you may be referring to the Virgin ASDL customer service which is an offshoot of Virgin.. those guys are absolutely shocking.

 

Call Andy, Darryl and myself cynical if you like. We are expressing our opinions based on personal experience and the experience of people around us, not sitting in a test lab playing with the latest BT technology that isn't available to anyone at the moment.

 

Scott,

 

My post was aimed at Andy, not anyone else. His badly worded post needed a response.

 

Let's put this into perspective from the off. I do work for BT, yes, and I work as a senior IP specialist so I do get to see a lot of future plans and the proposals the way they should be rolled out. Saying that, I'm under no illusion that BT is a big misunderstood entity getting a raw deal. I'm as aware as the next person of BTs failings but for a company who has had a monopoly for so long, they are doing a pretty good job of restructuring to stay ahead in the new marketplace and applying focus on giving customers what they are asking for. They are also investing heavily in their infrastructure to close the gap (and get ahead) of the leading global providers who are already offering 100mb as a consumer product at low cost (ie, Sweden).

 

Let's just clarify the current DSL situation shall we. First of all, BT do NOT advertise their adsl1 and adsl2 products at 8mb and 20mb respectively. It's always advertised at "up to" and you know fine well why that is. The technology is affected by external factors and line length so everyones situation is different. The contention at the DSLAM is necessary to keep costs low enough to make the service competitive and low enough for the average Joe public to afford. The throttling is also necessary to stop those heavy p2p and newsgroup downloaders hogging all the bandwidth. It's not designed to give heavy users a raw deal, but to ensure bandwidth is spread around at peak times. It's completely fair. Being regulated still, BT don't have much choice in the matter. They are forced to price at a certain point and have to ensure they maintain a margin to stay in business.

All that will change when Infinity and Superfast are launched because BT are using their own (21CN) network so regulation disappears for the most part. It's also built exclusively on an Ethernet core so the network costs are a fraction o the existing leased line based core they are using. That means they can add more DSLAMs to lower contention. Contention within BTs core is 1:1 or better (the same cannot be said for most other providers who usually have just 4 core POPs which all traffic must squeeze through.

 

Let's also assume you are using a normal online speedtest. A recent MIT study has found large variations in speed test results and actual throughput. Also sync speeds are not hidden by BT. They make it perfectly clear on the process of calculating your highest stable speed over the first couple of weeks which will set your sync speed.

 

Anyway, my point is that BT are not trying to trick consumers into thinking they are getting more than they are. Everything is explained in full if you take the time to read the documentation.

 

As a final note, I was a Virgin (telewest initially) customer for years before BT gave me free broadband and although I was hugely impressed with their top service, I was wholly unimpressed every time I had to speak to them.

[Scott]

You're blaming BT for how ADSL works? All ISP's state "up to". If you actually do a check for your phone number on the BT broadband site it will tell you what you can expect to get, and always has. For us that says 512k... but we can get 1MB at a push.

 

Not at all. I am criticising BT, Sky and all the other ADSL providers for advertising false hope with their sales pitches. Not from a legal standpoint, but from a conning bastards standpoint.

 

What do you think the general public rely on with regards to information on services? Do you think they rely on the big carrot dangled in front of them in every advert, or do you think they are cynical and go onto a broadband site (when they may not have it, knowledge of it or even access to it) to see if they are one of the people who can achieve the maximum? Or even close to it for that matter.

 

Granted you can put that down to the consumer not doing their homework but there has to be a point where what the ADSL providers are accountable for false advertising. Morally the advertising is very wrong.

 

The "Up to" 20Mb service for example. What is the percentage of BT consumers who can actually achieve this figure? I am only guessing, based on experience and the fact that I have only heard of 1 person achieving it (taking their word on it, not seen any proof), that this %age would be extremely low. That for me is false advertising. It should be reasonable to assume that a good portion of the customers would be able to achieve the highest figures in order to advertise that service.

 

Post

 

 

Firstly, apologies.. I condensed your post as it was a little long for a quote

 

I don't disagree with anything you wrote there. In fact it is very promising for BT customers and future BT customers that they are at least trying to get their house in order to compete on the market and be the pinnacle for ADSL in the UK. The better BT is, the better Virgin will be for me so it's a win win scenario for the UK consumer market on a whole.

 

Your opinion of Andy's post is what it is, but you have to have a look at your reply and see where we are coming from. You said he was looking 10 years in the past. I was just saying that the problems he mentioned are very much there today, the fact that BT are sorting all that out is neither here nor there until they actually do. You came across as an employee defending your company in the retort to Andy, and none of it was very purposeful unlike your reply above.

 

April this year was mentioned (future not current)

FTTP (Future for business)

FTTC (Future)

etc.

 

All of your points are based on the future even though you stated that Andy was looking 10 years in the past. His view wasn't on BT as a company (I don't think) but rather the services that BT currently supply and the problems that people have with them, both current and in the past (the problems have always been the same, saying you will get up to "x" but never getting anywhere close).

 

Not meaning to cause offence, it's good to have a debate on it and a discussion on the future offerings from BT