Hi All,
I am currently working on project for a politician here in Oz on broadband deployment.
I have a quick question, if anyone on here has had BT Infinity installed and were already using BT Broadband can you tell me the following....
If you were ALREADY a BT broadband customer....
1] Did you need a new modem installed by BT or did you use your old modem?
2] How does the 'Infinity' fiber-optic service compare to the old DSL broadband service?
3] What was the installation process like?
For context, the Oz government is deploying a $40 billion state-owned FTTH project and my guy wants some examples of how BT's 'FTTN' project (using copper, not fiber to reach subs) is holding up.
Many Thanks.
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Comments
2) faster. probably. Not a massive difference to be honest
3) fine, there were issues with my telephone line, which struggle a bit...
Much appreciated.
Considerably faster.
Original engineer made a bit of a hash of things, which affected the telephone line. 2nd guy was more clued up and put things right.
We were one of the first areas with Infinity, so I guess teething problems were to be expected.
http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/wireless-hub-router
My telephone line was a bit marginal, voice calls on it can be a bit crackly now, but then I hardly make calls on my BT line anyway, it wasn't an issue
2. Hell of a lot quicker (about 10-12 times quicker)
3. Install was quick and painless,no settings changes needed on our router from what i remember. We had a small issue with another socket in the house which was resolved speedily by bt.
The "second router" or modem is required to enable BT and other service providers to perform their own diagnostics down the line. It is an Openreach device (BT's separated site engineering team who work for all service providers, not just BT).
The improvement in speed depends upon what speed you were getting previously, largely dependent upon distance from your telephone exchange. I live on the exchange boundary in Charlton where the loss of speed over copper cables over distance meant I was getting sub-2 Mbps. With Infinity the cabinet at the end of my street is now connected on fibre optics which brings very fast Broadband to that point and effectively means we are living next door to the exchange now. My speeds are now reliably above 20 Mbps and often as high as 38 Mbps on download. Upload is constrained at closer to 4 Mbps.
I work for BT, so if you need any more information, send me a private message.
All I'm saying is if you don't get the speeds you were expecting via wireless, try connecting via a ethernet cable straight into the router to see if you notice any improvement. My brother gains 20mb.
There are other possibilities, but those are the most likely. People tend to forget (or never know) that WiFi is inherently much slower than wired, in any situation - because there is an overhead associated with each packet (information is broken into packets in networking to make it more efficient to transfer from one place to another) - involving encryption and encapsulating packets with information about the WiFi network. It gets worse when there are more devices on the network ad well, and data isn't 'full duplex' on WiFi networks (meaning your device can't send and receive data at the same time).
In short, when you have a choice between wired and wireless, choose wired.
and I agree a wired connection is more reliable and faster normally, although you can invest in higher speed wireless equipment specifically designed for video.
It was just a weird concept for me to get my head round - after years spent telling sparks to keep their shit away from my data cabling
I know they say a small percentage of customers end up in this situation, and for the most part it runs like clockwork, but having spent several hours this week on the phone to them, I honestly cannot imagine these idiots ever getting it right. An utter and complete balls up, confounded by a CS team that have no clue how to make it right.
Thus, having been switched on this morning and cancelled as soon as I got hom from work, I might be able to lay claim to the shortest tenure as a BT customer of all time.
for some reason I couldn't get out of the contract and had to keep infinity. after complaining in writing they have shorten my contract and put the price down to what I was on before I had infinity. all this took so much more effect than it should of done.
they have apologised for the inconvenience but it wont bring back one of my laptops which has become obsolete because it cant cope with the high frequency or whatever that the modem puts out.
and I have notice little improvement with the speed of my broadband. they have put that down to the area I live in. never told me that while they were giving me the spill to buy the thing in the first place.
"BT Infinity. what a waste of fucking time.
ended up having to reconnect everything in the house (including sky hd) most manually to the hub. took ages. with little to no help from those over at BT Towers.
oh and it still isn't fixed properly. ffs "
Also they have recently employed some right shady engineers lately.
I'd like to get fibre but would go with sky once the prices come down.
2. miles faster than the 1 mb I was getting (I am only about 20 meters form the box in the street)
3. Install was just the same as standard DSL
On a side note I have to say it is great for me to have it as I am so far from an exchange but the cost is some what high
Fitting infinity is not just about router (Sure you know), there was a white box fitted to the wall, which the Infinity fed into and then a cable leads from this to the router. Did not know about this box before they arrived to fit so had to do some quick furniture shifting
Was significantly faster, but did fluctuate.
Fitting was fine but they forgot to do something which affected wireless - can't quite rememeber what but soon sorted.
Of course, even BT pale into insignificance when compared to Easynet. Don't even get me started on that muppetshow.
The wireless router/s installed give good service too, the user router is dual channel which means you don't get bled over by your neighbours, it seems to have a stronger signal too and it's much better than previous iterations.
On top of that you can ues BT hotspots, which I'm told are all over the place in London.
Openreach came up with a plan to install a back haul circuit which would save us x amount in install costs and on-going costs. What they neglected to tell me was that it was all reliant on a fibre drop......we raised the purchase order in August 13 with a go live of 30th September.
The update Openreach offered today was that there are still two fibre drops in the queue in front of us.
They do not give a shit. No escalation. Account Managers full of shit.
They have offered to expidite the install.....for a mere £2500 they will give us a proposed install date! No hint when that will be though.
SantaClaus is right, deals are quite good at Sky. They offered free line rental and broadband for a year. The bloke who gave me it had to rush to hospital due to baby birth and the bloke who followed up the call said he was surprised I was offered that immediately. It is a bit hit and miss.
Not a fiber story but the speed has slowed with Sky but at a £240 saving this year, I'll cope.