Considering moving to Infinity

Hi there,

I'm currently with Aquiss under a DSL connection. I'm very happy with their service, rock solid 8Mb speed and great support.

However, I'm being tempted by the massive speeds offered by BT Infinity.

Can someone give me some more details about how Inifiity works?

I am a light P2P user, does this traffic get throttled? I use Iplayer quite a lot, mornings and evenings. Does that play/stream completely or is it jerky?

How is their fair usage policy applied?

I've seen a few complaints here about the service ( to be expected on a forum really) but what is it /really/ like?

Rob

Edited by Robmonster (Mon 30-May-11 10:28:59)

Infinity is BT Broadband's higher FTTC offering. It is hard to beat on value for money, but does have traffic management at times, and I believe P2P restrictions. They have two options, one a 40GB allowance, the other "Unlimited". There used to be a 300GB FUP on the "Unlimited" but that was removed recently.

For an explanation of FTTC see my page here, and the sub-menu page lists other FTTC suppliers. (Including Aquiss). Orly/yarwell's spreadsheet linked to on that page gives a basic summary of them all.

You need to use this checker to get a speed estimate, as if it is below 15Mbps it won't appear on the Infinity checker. You can also check the expected date for your exchange on samknows, as the first checker I gave can be ambiguous about whether it is yet available even when it gives a speed.

Nearly all connections so far to FTTC have been well above the estimate.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 30-May-11 11:25:51)

not having infinity i cant comment on how the traffic management system works however i have adsl max on option 3 with bt and the unlimited is now truley unlimited hoiwever they do employ trafic management p2p from around 3pm ish to midnight ish daily is unusable i player is absolutley fine hear when ever i use it. and i only got a 3 meg connection.

Never had much problem. Occasionally it disconnects or loses sync for a bit but that's not exactly the ISPs fault.

Iplayer is fine. Gaming is fine. Speed is fine. Newsgroups work a treat. Bit Torrent takes a bit more effort to get running nicely but it can be done if you take the time to do the settings in whatever program you use.

I have Infinity and I would highly recommend it. At first I was dubious about getting it after reading the horror stories on this and other forums. Touch wood, I have only had one disconnection since I got it about 8 or so weeks ago and I can't complain about the speeds. I use it for listening to internet radio, watching BBC News and using the iPlayer on BBC too. I have never had any problems with lag or slow streams on these sites.

The speed is great and I get around 3.5 - 4.mb/s.

I hope you mean 3.5-4MBps, not mbps !

8 megabits should be ample for most people to be honest.
the faster the service the more restrictions you will get,, Bt or another ISp for that matter will not want you downloading the whole net type of thing.



If you feel you do need the extra speed then have a look at other ISps that offer Fibre using the BT fibre system, they may offer a better deal.

If I had 8megabits i would be happy, i would not see the need to go any higher.

I get 4 megabits and happy with that.

Very happy - though don't use P2P so that restruction doesn't bother me

I went from 4/1 to 34/8
* huge leap in upload speed, excellent for online backups
* much faster downloads
* reliable BBC HD streaming
* can now do 1080p youtube
* all of this can be used simultaneously by multiple ppl in house.

For me, switching from O2 LLU, I've been delighted.

Service is rock solid reliable.

In reply to a post by planetf1:

Very happy - though don't use P2P so that restruction doesn't bother me

I went from 4/1 to 34/8
* huge leap in upload speed, excellent for online backups
* much faster downloads
* reliable BBC HD streaming
* can now do 1080p youtube
* all of this can be used simultaneously by multiple ppl in house.

For me, switching from O2 LLU, I've been delighted.

Service is rock solid reliable.

Do you have problem with Skype? Chatting to someone in Cardiff and they use Infinity, they did use Virgin, but had a row with them, so changed to Infinity, They said that Skype is useless on it, they think it is due to BT traffic management.

If we had infinity here I would not go for it, might be faster, that is it, i don't need 40Megabits, not that it will come here.

Actually I don't use skype much at all so I can't answer that, at least not for video

I have it installed/setup, but use chat very occasionally - less than once per week, and probably use it for the odd 0800 call again once or twice per week.

The last video call I made was probably a month ago, and it was fine, though it would have been in office hours (work related) so may not have hit more drastic p2p limits, if it's that that's tripping it up.