BT Infinity - any good

[EternalOptimist]

putting a second connection box in is not good.
putting extra components in is never a good thing



especially with BT

[d000hg]

ADSL2 is only as good as the cables carrying it. Problem I have is that although it's FTTC, from the cabinet to my home it's good ole copper cable, hence the 4meg tops. Checked this out many times with both O2 and BT.

The local cable cabinet for Infinity, on the other hand, is just a couple of hundred yards away. I'd assume they run a new cable from that to my home? No idea how they'd offer such a speed jump otherwise? I did lot's of "line checks" before Infinity became available, and it always quoted 2-4meg; now Infinity is available, it's quoting 23.8meg down.

You can run super-fast down a copper wire, it just degrades with distance. A couple of hundred yards of copper attached to a cabinet on fibre is fine. I thought that's linked to how we can get faster ADSL now our cabinet is fibre-enabled, but that part could be missing something. They do NOT put in a new wire to your house for fibre - you just need to be close enough to the cabinet.

[russell]

You can run super-fast down a copper wire, it just degrades with distance. A couple of hundred yards of copper attached to a cabinet on fibre is fine. I thought that's linked to how we can get faster ADSL now our cabinet is fibre-enabled, but that part could be missing something. They do NOT put in a new wire to your house for fibre - you just need to be close enough to the cabinet.

This is true, when I got mine installed they engineer just connected the FTTC modem to a phone socket (which they replaced) and then connected that to BT Home Hub. No digging or replacing any wires nearby.

[nomadd]

I think the OP has his up and down speed reversed.

Oops, I did indeed. 23.8 meg down, 7.5 up was the line checker quote.

O2 are promising my existing MAC code today, so if that has arrived when I get home, I think I'll fill in the on-line order form for BT Infinity and give it a try. Fingers crossed!

[EternalOptimist]

Oops, I did indeed. 23.8 meg down, 7.5 up was the line checker quote.

O2 are promising my existing MAC code today, so if that has arrived when I get home, I think I'll fill in the on-line order form for BT Infinity and give it a try. Fingers crossed!

Whats funny, is that anyone developing at home, needs that up speed to be higher than the down, sort of ADSL in reverse

[d000hg]

IIRC that up speed is only on the top-level service. Otherwise you only get 1-2Mb. I was tempted for reasons EO mentions, but O2 were much cheaper and able to offer 12Mb which was 3-4X faster than I had before.

[Jefferson]

I got BT infinity installed a few months ago after getting awful speeds on ADSL2 and have been very impressed.
I get download speeds of 30mb+ and even the BT home hub has been faultless despite not having a brilliant reputation.
Luckily I have had no need to use customer services yet!

[nomadd]

IIRC that up speed is only on the top-level service. Otherwise you only get 1-2Mb. I was tempted for reasons EO mentions, but O2 were much cheaper and able to offer 12Mb which was 3-4X faster than I had before.

Top, minus 1, is the package I'm going for: BT Broadband Telephone packages & great deals on broadband & phone It gets discounted to just over £25 as I'm already a BT customer. Says "up to 40meg".

The line checker has always been deadly reliable in the past for me (been at the same address for 10+ years, so gone through all sorts of connection upgrades), and it's now quoting the 24.8 meg for the Infinity product, hence I'll give it a shot. I did a lot of reading up on the ThinkBroadband forum last night, and those who have been migrated to Infinity say that when it does "drop" in speed, it's never below 10 meg, and that's only rarely; most seem to sit around the 20-24 meg mark, so although far short of 40 meg, it's still a hell of lot faster than what I've currently got with O2.

I spoke to O2 this morning and they've acknowledged they can't offer anything to match Infinity for at least 12 months in my location (they've got their own local-loop unbundled kit in the exchange.) Shame, really, as they've been excellent for the 2-3 years I've been with them. I wasn't really looking to move, but if BT are saying they can supply 6 times the speed (genuine) for just an extra £10 a month it's got to be worth a shot.

The top package now seems to be the 100Meg one, but not available in my area. Think it's only had a very limited rollout so far. Maybe next year!

[Freamon]

You can run super-fast down a copper wire, it just degrades with distance. A couple of hundred yards of copper attached to a cabinet on fibre is fine. I thought that's linked to how we can get faster ADSL now our cabinet is fibre-enabled, but that part could be missing something. They do NOT put in a new wire to your house for fibre - you just need to be close enough to the cabinet.

AIUI BT Infinity uses VDSL over the copper between the cabinet and the master socket, which only works over very short distances (couple of hundred metres maximum).

I personally am waiting until BT have to unbundle their FTTC service and allow other ISPs to put their kit into the cabinets, which I assume they'll need to do at some point.

[stek]

I have it and it is excellent. I get 36MBs downloads which translates into downloading a hd movie in @10 mins and an album in seconds.

Also BT removed there insanse 100gb download cap on the top option and it is now truly unlimited

No it isn't!, no P2P, or should I say throttled to a snails pace...