Would you recommend BT Infinity

Just a little straw poll for actual users please. Are you happy with the performance so far?

Can be a simple Yes or No or you can provide details either way if you want.

Yes. Very happy with speeds and quality of service. It just works for me and the family. Also have BT Vision which is great when kids can watch what they want when they want.

Been no problems since it was installed.

Yep (upload is a little slower this evening for some reason - but not enough to worry me at all!!) The test was actually performed one hour later than that shown, but the TBB speedtester doesn't adjjust for Summer time.........

Edited by Garyilka (Thu 18-Aug-11 18:14:11)

Speed started off at 37Mbs and one day (long after the 10 days of having so not letting them use that old excuse) it dropped to 31ish and now 30 on a good day.

Rang up the every helpfull eglish call centre (joke), it not english and the scrip computer says no monkeys said I should be happy as the computer says I should get 30Mbs so at 32 at the time of ringing (and keep getting cut off, another story) was told I had 2 more than should so be happy.

After so many phone calls to get this far and we would see what happens and he would ring back in 10 days, never did.

Could not get the point it ran fast for weeks then just dropped 5Mbs.
Wanted to know why and could it be reset to full speed.

Had no idea what I wanted, computer said 30Mbs, getting like Little britian. stuff what the computer, was high now not!.

Part from slowdown and ping now twice what it was better than the 11Mbs we had before.

o2 was about to go up to £18 as loosing the mobile £5 discount as phone now gone for 3 network so thought have this for the same amount.

So now 29Mbs and spped around that so good and pleased sort of but never had the call back to say why it slowed, upload at 1.68 ish always the same, download dropped by 8 from the day I had to now a few months on.

Customer service in idea a joke but friendly guy that did the stuff here and up the road on install day so that was good.

Used the original router I had for o2 ( my own unlocked bought netgear as better) still as linked to the HH3 using homeplugs (insteasd of cable) and HH3 dishes out the DHCP addresses and sees things on the netgear as ethernet connections and netgear is dual band and only thing laptop works on.

sisters phone and mine can use both routers, what ever is best as two places in the house.

So to the point, would recomend, is good but hard work ringing up (if not cut off) they are not very helpfull, and just to make things better, noticed on my BT web page case was closed about this, so never rang back but shuts the case without helping, good stuff, Product ok, call centre CRA*, you know what I mean.

People have duff modem but mount on wall and seams ok. mine keeps going without being turned off.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1439031415.png
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/1...

Edited by deleted (Thu 18-Aug-11 18:33:00)

100% happy here, great speeds, great pings and reliable.

Thumbs up from me

Reporting on behalf of my non-technical neighbour who has had BT Inifinity installed since early this year (2011) -- "Yes".

Yep actual connection has been great, speeds and latency seem fine however BT call centre in Mumbia is rank. Looking forward to the speed increases that are due to roll out, although I wonder if you have to be living in the green cab to get the benefit. All in all as reliable as me Be connection if not better!

YES ...

and tech support is excellent - I always get UK located team!

Yes.

In reply to a post by MHC:

YES ...

and tech support is excellent - I always get UK located team!

Really?! What number are you calling? I always get "Richard" or "John" who are clearly not in the UK.

The 0845 or 0800 numbers provided ...

Their accent may not be English, but Scotland is still in the UK and they tend to be in Dundee, Glasgow, Alness or Durness with occasional connections to Belfast or Manchester.

One advantage of paying a little extra and having a business class service

In reply to a post by MHC:

The 0845 or 0800 numbers provided ...

Their accent may not be English, but Scotland is still in the UK and they tend to be in Dundee, Glasgow, Alness or Durness with occasional connections to Belfast or Manchester.

One advantage of paying a little extra and having a business class service

Ah, so you're on a business service then? Clearly different support numbers then as I get India or the Philipines every time, both of whom generally don't call back when they say they will.

Exactly ...

Everyone wants everything as cheap as possible. So suppliers in every industry look to where they can reduce their costs and moving to remote call centres is one way to do that. But the users don't seem to put the two together and complain about bad support.

First line business billing is in the Philippines and I have no problems when dealing with them - maybe they are a selected team.

currently on a upto 8mb package from adsl24(of which only get 2mb max in my area), exchange only has talktalk and orange llu and even with them can only get 2mb have no adsl2+(upto 24mb) at the exchange(other exchanges local to my exchange have at least adsl24+ with sky and o2/be llu plus have/will have by next month fttc).

fttc is ment to become available at the exchange in december(according to sam knows adsl2+ by end of march, tho before it said end of december), with bt being the only one with unlimited at a resonable price(tho 18month contract) wanted to check a few things before december.

other than the cs compaints also had read about bt throttling at certain times and what not with the 'standard' broradband, is this the case with infinity? do they have a fup, resitriction of p2p(torrents) etc?

oh and what is the ping/lag like in online gaming? I have a ps3 and play black ops and mw2 online, also have recently got into starcraft 2.

Edited by deleted (Fri 19-Aug-11 23:23:40)

In reply to a post by fowler002:

other than the cs compaints also had read about bt throttling at certain times and what not with the 'standard' broradband, is this the case with infinity? do they have a fup, resitriction of p2p(torrents) etc?

p2p and torrents are throttled heavily at peak times on Infinity from what I gather.

define p2p? Just curios, as for the throttling, if your a heavy torrent abuser beware, personally throttle it to high heaven All the more bandwidth for me

Yes

Hopefully I'll be answering 'yes' on Sept. 7th (rather than August 22nd, when I was hoping to be answering 'yes').

I've had Infinity since February and would certainly recommend it to others. I still have my Sky 'Unlimited' connection, but we'll be binning Sky very shortly.

My Infinity connection is rock solid 24/7 (as is my Sky connection) & speeds have been consistant from the off.


Yesterday 18:43

37480 kbps (4.69MB/s)
8362 kbps (1.05MB/s)

Friday 08:34

37488 kbps (4.69MB/s)
8164 kbps (1.02MB/s)

Tuesday 16:41

37488 kbps (4.69MB/s)
8357 kbps (1.04MB/s)

Aug 10, 13:07

37497 kbps (4.69MB/s)
8351 kbps (1.04MB/s)

Aug 9, 18:17

37420 kbps (4.68MB/s)
8372 kbps (1.05MB/s)

So what is the difference between the SKY service and BT Infinity.

I ask because I have an existing SKY service of approx the same stats. What does the FTTC react like. Does it actually feal different doing stuff on your home computers. Whats the difference?

In reply to a post by iand:

So what is the difference between the SKY service and BT Infinity.

I ask because I have an existing SKY service of approx the same stats. What does the FTTC react like. Does it actually feal different doing stuff on your home computers. Whats the difference?

The same stats as what?

37Mbps download and 8Mbps upload? Or are you misreading the post? See here for a basic description of FTTC.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 06-Sep-11 18:13:26)

you have missed the point. It is not all about the download speed. I was after the difference or in other words what is the "experiance difference"

In reply to a post by iand:

you have missed the point. It is not all about the download speed. I was after the difference or in other words what is the "experiance difference"

And you missed the question . You said "an existing SKY service of approx the same stats". The same as what?

As for the "experience", how did broadband feel after dialup?

Browsing isn't a lot different. By all reports multi-user streaming alongside gaming is dramatically different. Software downloads/updates are extremely rapid.

Ah - I just realised ytou don't mean stats at all. You mean the Sky connection speeds. They aren't relevant as they don't affect the speed you get on FTTC. That is determined by your distance from the FTTC cabinet, instead of from the exchange. So you may be close to that, or you may be a long way away and get quite a low speed.

The original poster said the moved from a SKY connection of around 6M download, which is around what I have, to a BT infinity 34M ish connection. What I was interested in was what is the difference. For those of us who are old enough when we moved from dialup to ADSL 512K the web pages were like lightning. Is this the same with a stark difference?. If the house was to have 4-5 people using the internet at the same time, does this just work with no notacable drop in speed. Are we now ar a point where it just works. I ask about the SKY vs. Infinity difference as there is a cost associated with that difference. So what is the difference. What can we do differently with Infinity vs a std SKY service, or any ADSL2(+) service?

OK, possibly the following is what you were after .......

I used to be on ADSL max, solid 8128Kbps sync, I now have the full 40 meg sync and 10 up with Infinity.

At home there are three laptops, a pc, a Wii, an Xbox, and BT Vision, and two 'smart' phones all using the connection. On the previous service when everything was busy, it could be 'felt' all a little sluggish. This now doesn't happen. The Xbox live is surely happier, you seem to host more often than not, and as Robertos said, downloads rock. I player and it's mates stream very nicely in HD.

So yes, I think it's worth it.

In reply to a post by iand:

So what is the difference between the SKY service and BT Infinity.

I ask because I have an existing SKY service of approx the same stats. What does the FTTC react like. Does it actually feal different doing stuff on your home computers. Whats the difference?

There are 6 of us in my household (wife, 4 daughters & myself) and when all 6 are online doing various stuff (daughters youtubeing, video chatting & whatnot, wife watching iPlayer, Sky Go, youtube) it was getting a bit much on the connection for me to happily do what I like online (gaming, Sky Go, iPlayer & the likes).

I decided to get a new line and have BT Infinity installed for myself. When we get rid of Sky we will all be able to be online at the same time - doing what we all normally do & do it without any stuttering or stammering. Gaming is also a lot better as my ping is far better & gaming is far more responsive. Browsing is a bit more responsive with load times, but the biggest difference is watching videos & gaming for me.

If you're the only person using the connection then it's probably not worth your time changing - unless you're looking to try to improve pings or download files faster.

Hope this helps.

OK; fourth day in and all looking good so far (but ONLY BECAUSE I've come from a 4.5Mbps connection).

I've had a maximum sync (and a 38717kbps profile) since activation.
At off-peak times Usenet (best way to max out your connection) has achieved maximum download speed whenever I've checked.

At peak times (odd occasions during the evenings and now - at 10:30am on a Saturday), maximum throughput has dropped off sharply.
Currently (again; this is at 10:30am on a Saturday) I'me getting around 30 to 33 Mbps from Usenet (so around 10 to 20% down from the maximum speed).

The BT speedtester reflects this peak-time loss of speed and is currently producing results around 22000kbps from a line with a profile of 38717kbps.

So great for me (as I migrated from a 4.5Mbps BE connection), but pretty poor for anyone who's already on a 20+Mbps ADSL2+ connection, as peak times will see little improvement over their current speeds.

It does show that already (in the very early stages of roll-out, and with very few people using FTTC on our exchange), the BT network is showing signs of congestion.
Quite how BT's network is going to cope (as more and more people switch to Infinity) is beyond me - unless they invest significantly in their back-bone networks, we're going to be seeing some very large speed drops over the coming months.

Relatively happy, but to the 'BT is great and BE's network is obviously congested' crowd (he knows who he is), I will say "so is BT's network".
At least my BE connection stayed at maximum speed 24/7 (which is more than I can say for Infinity).

If I'd have moved from a 24Mbps BE connection, I'd be thinking "I've wasted time, money and effort".
Because I've moved from a 4.5Mbps BE connection, Infinity is good for me.

Like I've said all along; Infinity would have to be seriously congested or throttled to be worse than a 4.5Mbps ADSL connection.
It's not worse yet, but give it time

If I'd have moved from a 24Mbps BE connection, I'd be thinking "I've wasted time, money and effort".
Because I've moved from a 4.5Mbps BE connection, Infinity is good for me.

Hardly anyone gets the max on Be as I have repeated elsewhere, and of course there is going to be congestion, I gave up on the idea of max speed 24/7 years ago on the old ADSL max products when I was various ISPs over the years including the expensive ones like Zen. Besides when BT do the upgrade to the current FTTC product so there is the possibility of 80Mbps download then Be`s connections are going to look piddly

Also you never know maybe BTs network is ready for the these uber fast connections!

Besides when BT do the upgrade to the current FTTC product so there is the possibility of 80Mbps download then Be`s connections are going to look piddly

.. but if they don't address possible backhaul/congestion issues, what would be the point ?
Yes, those on a real short line might be seeing 80meg sync, but if the throughput is ka-ka .......

And given that the acceptable throughput reported by the speed tester is always reported as 12000-nnnnn .....

well not seen much congestion thus far

I had to download a significant amount of image files last week. I was doing them in the evening "peak period" with about 20GB in one session alone. That was taking a little over 4 minutes per GB with the graphs on both TBB meter and Task manager near flat at the maximum throughput for my line (~32Mbps).

Sounds about right. I wonder if you're seeing what I did with BE, Entanet, etc. (that is; always getting top speed for my line, because it was synced lower than the maximum possible for ADSL1/2, so I rarely got chance to see the effects of congestion)?

Even when I had a full 38717 profile (and 39999 sync) I could still max out the connection getting 36500 or slightly more. Then one day - it all stepped down by 3Mbps

In reply to a post by MHC:

Even when I had a full 38717 profile (and 39999 sync) I could still max out the connection getting 36500 or slightly more. Then one day - it all stepped down by 3Mbps

Mine manages to max out on download speeds 24/7. Quite happily got 38717/10000 profile from the start. I doubt my dodgy existing line would have been up to the task though, but it's being binned at the end of the month when we get rid of our Sky package.

In reply to a post by reme8488:

When we get rid of Sky we will all be able to be online at the same time - doing what we all normally do & do it without any stuttering or stammering.

Make sure the wife and daughters are all connected wirelessly and you are wired. Set the wireless connection to a 11Mbps maximum rate and you will be fine.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Set the wireless connection to a 11Mbps maximum rate and you will be fine.

Oddly enough, I can't get anymore than 11Mbps out of my Home Hub3 in the first place (more often than not, its 5.5Mbps), and that's with BT's "better wireless than every other ISP! Turns out they might mean every other ISP has better wireless (i.e. 50%)
BTW; this is with a laptop which, previously, used to be able to max out the wireless on my old DG834GT (so the problem is the HH3 and its "select the same wireless channel as every other nearby router" system).

Not just the HH that does that ... there are many others which will always select Ch1 or Ch6 until the user intervenes. A colleague had some problems with wireless and I went to have a look ... There must have been 20 users on Ch1, a few on 2,3,4,5 and 15 on Ch6 ... Moved her up to 13 and all was fine. The others are still down on where they were and no one is using the higher channels.

Yes but the HH3 is specifically marketed with an intelligent wireless routine which will automatically switch to cleaner channels (except it doesn't work).

As are a lot more of them!

All the HH3s probably do a rescan at the same time, then all move to Ch11 then do a rescan, sse it is busy and the Ch1 is free so return to there!

I can concur most of the wireless speed issues can be solved by manually selecting a wireless channel thats away from the rest, plenty posts on here about this issue. However if your in an area that has alot of wireless channels nearby your snookered Fact of the matter is wireless is not the best judge of speed issues on the line. For clarity my Be speeds were rubbish in the beginning and all of it was down to the wireless router supplied and the way it was configured. Not keen on all this automatic configuration stuff, not enough control for the user.

In reply to a post by MrGrumpy:

Fact of the matter is wireless is not the best judge of speed issues on the line.

Fortunately I only use wireless for my iPhone, Android tablet and my work laptop.
Everything essential is on a wired connection.
Not a big fan of wireless (mainly because it always seems to be useless).

Same.

We do have an apple airport express thing connected to the hub which seems to work a treat. Still used wired...it's always right.

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by reme8488:

When we get rid of Sky we will all be able to be online at the same time - doing what we all normally do & do it without any stuttering or stammering.

Make sure the wife and daughters are all connected wirelessly and you are wired. Set the wireless connection to a 11Mbps maximum rate and you will be fine.

Everyone's connected to my BT connection and I'm the only one connected directly to the hub - everyone else is connected via wifi (my laptop & pad also connected via wifi.) & no problems at all .... not that I expected any problems.