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!

In reply to a post by xiphrex:

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!

There are no LLU FTTC providers yet (sadly).

So everything is on the same network? As in going with BT infinity or someone else at the moment there would be no difference in the quality of the connection or the connection's latency and stability?

At the moment BT is the clear favourite choice

Just haven't found any other ISPs offering close to the same deal.

Two parts
a) The actual FTTC connection from green cab to your home will be managed by BT Openreach. No option here though I believe they guarantee a 20Mbs minimum speed at all times (or line speed if lower). .
b) From the exchange through backbone/ISP -- lots of variations here. Whilst an ISP could use GEA (ethernet access from the openreach handover point) in practice I think all to-date are at least in part using the BT wholesale network - though of course not necessarily within pipes used by *BT retail*

I'm on BT Infinity and completely happy. Performance rarely slows and jitter is virtually 0. However 21CN routing means my latency is a little higher (21ms to bbc) than my O2 adsl service was - traffic getting seemingly routed southampton->birmingham->london

However my key criteria was for video streaming & d/load limitts. On infinity P2P is severely restricted in peak times. However even the 300GB limit is now gone and streaming always works great. I don't generally "game", though son does (xbox live) and has no complaints

Edited by planetf1 (Tue 26-Apr-11 00:06:58)

In reply to a post by planetf1:

However even the 300GB limit is now gone and streaming always works great.

I wonder how the other ISP's will be able to compete with BT on that...

In reply to a post by xiphrex:

So everything is on the same network? As in going with BT infinity or someone else at the moment there would be no difference in the quality of the connection or the connection's latency and stability?

Click the Live BQM in my sig to see my latency. Also:-

C:\Users\Bob>ping www.bbc.co.uk

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.66] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.244.66: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.66: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.66: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.66: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 212.58.244.66:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 13ms, Average = 13ms

C:\Users\Bob>ping www.jolt.co.uk

Pinging jolt.co.uk [84.234.17.86] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=121
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=121
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=121
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=121

Ping statistics for 84.234.17.86:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 13ms

However, I agree with the others it is hard to justify anything other than BT Infinity. In my case I just wanted FTTC for the sake of it, as my usage fits easily into the IDNet lowest package. That is competitive with BT Pricing for 10Mbps upload, particularly as I paid the year up front so got a free month. Static IP is standard.

I suggest you see if you can get some ping results from Infinity users.

Some results from Aquiss for you (Done just now)...

--- www.bbc.net.uk ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 20 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 11.885/12.137/12.309/0.099 ms

--- jolt.co.uk ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 20 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 12.818/13.650/21.130/1.746 ms

My Broadband Ping (Turned Modem off this morning hence the Red).

BT routing appears as if it can sometimes be a tad complex -- in my case I'm based nr Southampton but London bound traffic appears to go via Birmingham...

Pings are over Gig.E to HH3 then fttc/infinity STCFORD

bbc.co.uk - 21ms
jolt.co.uk - 21ms
www.sky.com - 20ms
thinkbroadband.com - 20ms

Here's example routing to the bbc

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.67]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms api.home [192.168.1.254]
2 10 ms 9 ms 8 ms 217.32.141.4
3 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 217.32.140.222
4 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms 213.120.161.34
5 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 217.41.222.26
6 14 ms 14 ms 17 ms 217.41.222.178
7 13 ms 13 ms 17 ms acc1-10GigE-0-1-0-5.bm.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.248.90]
8 27 ms 23 ms 23 ms core1-te0-15-0-0.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.248.12]
9 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms core1-pos5-0-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.122]
10 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 194.74.65.42
11 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 212.58.238.153
12 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 212.58.239.62
13 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 212.58.251.44
14 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms bbc-vip112.telhc.bbc.co.uk [212.58.244.67]

Trace complete.

Some of this may relate to the latency of my connection -- obviously with fttc there is no user/isp control on the interleaving settings for example. First hop looks to be around 9ms, rest is ISP.

That was me BTW! (hadn't logged in)

I have been on Infinity for 8 months and it works fine. The current ping to bbc.co.uk is 12ms same for jolt.co.uk and thinkbroadband.com. usually get 12 to 14ms for all main UK sites so BT backhaul works for me. I am in Basingstoke.

Infinity in general is fine unless you need to contact customer services which are not good. So far, touch wood, throw black cat over shoulder etc., my connection has been solid apart from a single exchange issue where the call centre were actually helpful. Other providers have better customer services but they all have to use Openreach if it requires an engineer to sort it. Its a case of you pays your money...

The OP faces a a dilemma I did not have in that he has already got a fast connection whilst I used to get around 1.5Mbs from Sky making FTTC a no brain decision.

I am surprised Virgin are as bad as he says as my daughter who does a lot of online gaming is a Virgin cable customer. Some BT users also moan about online gaming so maybe where you are is as important as the provider as some parts of each of their networks could be congested. If you give us some sites that cause problems happy to test the ping speed.

I keep thinking of moving to FTTC and every time I look, BT Infinity comes out as the most attractive option, assuming you don't want a reasonably miserly cap of 30-50gb or to have to schedule things to download at 1am.

One ISP that I haven't seen mentioned for FTTC, but who I see offer it, is Merula. Still more expensive than BT but seems reasonable for the 100gb option.

Also Plusnet have some attractive pricing, though I've been here long enough to remember all the shaping antics they used to employ and I'd perhaps still be very wary about the small print.

Just so everyone can see what it is I am up against with virgin media and why I want to switch, this is what my connection looks like now:

My Broadband Ping

This is MASSIVELY improved over what it has been for the last 5 months, this is what it was just 3 or so weeks ago:

My Broadband Ping

When I had the problems shown on that second graph, I phoned Virgin media up and they told me, in response to this problem, that they dont think it is a big enough problem for them to attempt to investigate and then fix. Im trying to get away from any ISP with that sort of mentality.

Even the first graph is not 100% great. The second made online gaming impossible. Just now Im able to game but every now and then something detrimental happens simply because of the lag.

Virgin are renowned for overselling their exchanges, so tbh I doubt they would be able to do much anyway if your area is popular.

yeah was going to say the first graph is actually good for VM's standards.

VM's main weakness is jitter aka upstream congestion, its something that even with traffic shaping, STM and FUP letters combined they cannot get on top off. Which to me proves if you dont get the numbers right in regards to how you contend your customers and sell your service then no amount of traffic management will fix it.

Because of this upload speeds and gaming will be the strengths BT's infinity will have over VM for years to come as I cannot see VM sorting that out any time soon.

In reply to a post by xiphrex:

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.

The limit has officially been removed on the Infinity option 2 product

http://community.bt.com/t5/BB-Speed-Connection-Issue...

I've not seen any providers offering a GEA style access product yet -- where the only BT involvement would be the home-cab-exchange connection (so no latency/congestion worries really)

Most seem to be reselling services that at least in part use BT wholesale - so any benefit in jitter etc would likely come from their core routing differences & differences in exactly where they pick up traffic -- which you'll have to ask them about.

TalkTalk/Sky are making noises about using BT ducting -- that surely is a long process.

Combined then with the relatively low cost of BT Infinity, and removed limits it makes it a strong offer -- perhaps you could find someone on the same exchange as you to check latency with infinity as that will come down to exchange interconnects. Ditto for a different ISP.

I still think mine is on the high side (21ms to bbc) given southampton (5 miles away) -london, but as I think I mentioned I get routed through birmingham it seems. I'd thought Portsmouth was a main 21cn node & a more optimal (in latency) route, but I guess there's no way Southampton traffic could go through Portsmouth. It just couldn't happen

I am being offered FTTC with TalkTalk in July which I will take in a heartbeat - I expect they will use the OR infrastructure back to my exchange and then put my data through their equivalent of OR's 21CN. Will be interesting to see how it compares to an Infinity install with regards to jitter etc.

Im thinking of going with Aquiss but going with a business package so I get 10mb upload.

Any disadvatanges with going with business other than its a bit more pricey (and its not that much more to be honest!)?

In reply to a post by xiphrex:

Im thinking of going with Aquiss but going with a business package so I get 10mb upload.

Any disadvatanges with going with business other than its a bit more pricey (and its not that much more to be honest!)?

NONE! Another big *advantage* is more hours of off-peak use. I have a business/pro package with ADSL 24. As well as their having top-notch tech support, my off-peak is from 20:00 to 08:00 hrs. and the whole weekend. Not forgetting the 10MB/s upload.

DrT

What ^he^ said!