Best FTTC provider

Hi,

I finally have a BT phone line now and want to ditch Virgin Media due to their poor latency issues. Surprisingly these have improved recently but still not 100% what I am looking for.

Anyway Ive been looking around for FTTC and I have no idea who is the best out there, or whether I should wait until an ISP comes along and does it completely separate from BT?

I want to avoid BT providing my internet at all costs, I had BT ADSL a good number of years ago and it was awful.

My only real options are FTTC or Virgin media - cant go back to ADSL because the top speed I would get is only 7mb even with ADSL2+.

I would get 100mb VM in a second if they had an option to guarantee best possible latency at all times (currently have 50mb), but they dont have anything like that.

BT Infinity is currently the best option for Price:Usage ratio.
Option 2 is by far the cheapest Unlimited FTTC option currently available as far as I know.

You should be able to get faster than ADSL2+ as the cabinet would be closer to your premises (Provided you are not connected directly to the exchange, where FTTC will not be available).

Personally I would go for Infinity until another, better provider comes along. I don't know about Virgin as I have never had it but I have heard their services can become quite congested at times.

Maybe someone with the 100Mbps Virgin package can comment...

Best is subjective, based on ones experiences. I am with Aquiss, and I am very happy with them (great service and great speeds), but I am also prepared to pay business rates for said service.

If you search this board, there is a document that was created in Google Docs that has a breakdown of all the current FTTC suppliers..

Hi there welcome to the forum.


"Anyway Ive been looking around for FTTC and I have no idea who is the best out there, or whether I should wait until an ISP comes along and does it completely separate from BT?"

Take a look at Orly's list this may help sort the wheat from the chaff. At the present time getting something completely separate from 'BT' in the FTTC products is not possible. As it stands, the line, modem and its installation are all down to Openreach, part of the dreaded 'BT'. Are you even aware if current FTTC offerings are available off of your street cabinet ?

Hope this helps.

I am another who is extremely happy with Aquiss and their service / support.

I too am with Aquiss


[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1267514521.png[/IMG]

.

I am with ADSL 24.

They have gone more than that extra mile for me during a period when BT let me down (twice) recently.

DrT

What does this checker say about FTTC on your line?

What is your peak-time usage like?

It says:

"Our test also indicates that your line currently supports a fibre technology with an estimated WBC FTTC Broadband where consumers have received downstream line speed of 35.9Mbps and upstream line speed of 9.8Mbps"

My usage at peak time is quite minimal compared or what others are doing. I only real do online games at peak time. Now saying "peak time" I mean what peak time used to mean which is between about 4pm and midnight. I see some ISPs, like IDnet for example, refer to peak time as between 9am and midnight, which is basically the entire day that you could be awake for! Every now and then I do download a backup of a website which is about 5gig in total, maybe once a week I do this. Otherwise its just general browsing and a lot of gaming.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Take a look at Orly's list

Thanks, that list is very useful!

So really from what everyone is saying there is no BT-less FTTC at the moment.

So then the question is, would there be a point to going for example with Aquiss instead of BT Infinity in terms of network congestion?

The only thing I really care about is the latency, I would like it to be consistently good any time of the day. Next thing I care about is the speed as Im coming from 50mb virgin media which, in terms of speed, has been great. I just wish they would improve their network and solve all the latency issues they have!