FTTC Premium

Hi,

Does anyone pay the extra £12 premium option on FTTC and do you think it's worth it?

I'm not asking for any specific reason other than I'd just like a faster connection and it's available.

I'd like to know if the higher speeds / priority on BT's network make a difference.

Thanks for any comments.

Richard

I joined almost a year ago and went for the premium option as I knew I would get almost the full speed. I get something like 75 Mbit/s. While it's nice seeing the results of a speed test, in reality I don't see much benefit. Of course, after all this time it's difficult to remember what it was really like running at 2.5 Mbit/s (and I've since upgraded my PC to SSD, muddying matters still further). So most Web pages appear nice and fast, but downloads are nowhere near using the 38 Mbit/s limit, let alone the 76. I sometimes watch Youtube music videos, and mostly they run smoothly, but occasionally buffering will cause a blip. My only other major downloads are Linux ISOs and other updates, which as usually nice and fast - but again, I doubt I would see any difference going for the 38 option. So I plan to go back to the standard FTTC. Paying £12/month for premium just doesn't seem worth it.

As well as putting you on the higher FTTC rates the premium option should give you some priority in parts of BT's network, though BT are not clear about exactly what this affects and how likely you are to see much of that effect.

I went for premium when I signed up because at the time it meant a difference between 40down/2up and 40down/10up - the main reason I was moving to FTTC was to have better upstream speeds than the ~1.5mbit I got out of ADSL2+/AnnexM so the difference was rather attractive given my line was estimated to be able to get a fair chunk of the maximum (in the end I do get the maximum).

Since upgrading to 80/20 I find long downloads from my externally hosted server (that I store large backups on amongst other things) do often hit or exceed 8mbyte/sec even for single-stream transfers (and for multi-stream transfers from multiple sources I've seen closer to 9.5MByte which is the maximum expected from a full-speed line with BT's current setup). I do sometimes have blips with youtube/iplayer/other but given the line can pull as fast as I can from elsewhere I'm guessing that is congestion further out then AAISP (and most of the time I don't see any such problems anyway). I tend to get similarly close to the maximum possible rate upstream too, though I have noticed that being a lot more variable than downstream.

It goes without saying that you check the estimates of what your line can handle: whether the upgrade is worth it to you may very much depend on that. Going from 40/10 to 80/20 is more worth while than only getting as far as, to pluck figures from the air, 50/12. I'm lucky that the line between me and the cab my home connects through is such that I can get as close to the maximum as it is possible to be with the caps BT/OR set (theoretically a few lines could get more than 80/20 were it not for those product/configuration caps).

I'm happy to keep paying for the speed as it seems to be there when I need it, but YMMV. Generally I'd say you will only notice the difference on larger transfers and/or when you have several users actively using the connection at the same time - so if neither of those things matches your use pattern you might not want to bother. You'll not see it much at all for interactive web/mail/other use (for small transfers TCP/IP isn't up to speed before the transfer completes) or on youtube style sites (where the transfer rate limit (at these speeds) is usually going to be at their end for various reasons).

Both have said about buffering for iplayer/youtube

this is a common issue at aaisp?

sounds like a 3rd party isn't get paid enough

never had 1 issue streaming full hp on iplayer or youtube at peak times with my current isp

was kinda thinking of switching to aaisp for a fibre office package but if they gonna be cheap on steaming bandwidth guess i wont bother paying the outrageous amount they charge.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/0...

a funny little read that.

In reply to a post by epyon:

Both have said about buffering for iplayer/youtube
this is a common issue at aaisp?

Nope. I've never had a single buffering event on either site, or Netflix for that matter. I've been with AA for years.