Unlimited

How is it BT can offer and unlimited Fibre service and no one else can at such a good price.
Seems a bit strange to me

Maybe they buy much more capacity per month from Wholesale and therefore get it cheaper as they're buying in bulk? Whereas suppliers with a smaller customer base simply can't get close to the volume of capacity that BT Retail uses? Just a guess...

In reply to a post by iwish:

How is it BT can offer and unlimited Fibre service and no one else can at such a good price.
Seems a bit strange to me

Have you checked on the RobertoS spreadsheet I think there's a few ISPs that are all around the same price or even cheaper than BT when you factor in other aspects of the phone service.

Not my spreadsheet. It is Orly's and Yarwell's. I just have a link to it on my FTTC supplier list page. Brilliant spreadsheet!

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 29-Feb-12 10:07:26)

I have had a look and none come close to BT price.
The ones that are cheaper per month want a stupidly high setup fee

In reply to a post by iwish:

I have had a look and none come close to BT price.
The ones that are cheaper per month want a stupidly high setup fee

TalkTalk are pretty much the same price(50p cheaper) with only a £25 setup fee if they're about in your area of course.

Sky will also be a similar price and probably slightly cheaper if you already have sky.

Both of them use GEA rather than the BT network which explains the lower prices and both only offer 2Mbps upload rather than the 10Mbps on the BT package.

Rumours are that the 2Mb upload (on Sky) is for the trial only. People being contacted to take part in it are being told to expect the upload to increase sooner rather than later.

Edited by mysticeddy (Wed 29-Feb-12 14:37:18)

In reply to a post by iwish:

I have had a look and none come close to BT price.
The ones that are cheaper per month want a stupidly high setup fee

TalkTalk seems very similar and as with Sky, the 2mb upload limit will soon likely be gone.

In reply to a post by Justo:

In reply to a post by iwish:

I have had a look and none come close to BT price.
The ones that are cheaper per month want a stupidly high setup fee

TalkTalk seems very similar and as with Sky, the 2mb upload limit will soon likely be gone.

Hopefully so as I have both Sky and TT full llu it'd be much easier to switch them straight to fibre when it becomes available than getting BT to take the lines over.

It doesn't make much sense for them to only offer 2mb upload as I would presume the links from the exchanges in to their backbones are symetrical.

BT's Fibre service is not strictly unlimited as they employ throttling on certain protocols at certain times of the day.

i have read reports of significant throttling. ie, torrents are slower than 2mb during the day.

Yes, it's nasty. Sky will show 'em how it's done.

Possibly also an expensive but deliberate policy to attract customers before Sky, BE et al have their chance.

Locking people into 18 month contracts whilst BT Retail determines how they will compete in the future on a competitive landscape.

In reply to a post by gazter:

i have read reports of significant throttling. ie, torrents are slower than 2mb during the day.

Been with Bt Infiity for over 6 weeks now,torrents speed for my downloads are blistering,
just downloaded a 700MB movie at 4.3MB(took 3 minutes) in the last hour,uploads are good too,the movie I downloded is uploading at over 200kBs now.But you must configure your torrent correctly,especially post /forwarding.

Not to mention, BT will be rolling out 80/20 soon, possibly before sky even roll out 40/2. I know if I were a paying customer where I'd go...

Would rather see traffic management than a nasty bill when you go over the limit of download/upload.
So the question still remains, Why cant they all offer the same price with the same rules then.
Why put limits on a product and some do charge more when another ISp can offer unlimited for cheaper or around the same price.
It like two garages right next to each another selling the same brand new car for the same price but one has life time warranty and the other only has 6 months.
Am really interested in the thinking behind the ISP,s that offer the same service but capped

BT Group expects to achieve annual revenue of 6 billion pounds by the end of this financial year. (This April).

They have 6 million broadband customers. At the end of December 400,000 were on fibre. If they have priced fibre at £10 per month less than they should for the unlimited and largely unmanaged service they provide, which perhaps they have done, they are reducing that revenue by £48,000,000. Forty-eight million out of six thousand million.

A fleabite in their budget, to grab the bulk of the market and kill the competition. Their TV advertising will be costing more.

We're already out of our contract with BT for Infinity and sky still haven't got a product out.

Missing the boat springs to mind

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

Yes, it's nasty. Sky will show 'em how it's done.

Yup by offering only 2Mb upload they have a hard cap rather than traffic management.

Let Sky keep all the people who want to download the internet each month, I'm sure on fibre their bandwidth bill will jump.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

BT Group expects to achieve annual revenue of 6 billion pounds by the end of this financial year. (This April).

They have 6 million broadband customers. At the end of December 400,000 were on fibre.

Its worth remembering that this is actually quite impressive given that the 6 million will relate to all BT Retail's broadband customers, while 400,000 has to be seen in context that's only the areas where FTTC is currently available - and in many of these it won't have been for long.

As well as pushing fibre aggressively (compared to other ISP's) and traffic managing torrents, the fact that they have an 18 month minimum contract (rather than a year) also makes it much more viable for them to have lower prices.

Finally their decision to align ADSL and FTTC prices seems to have paid off. BT have never been particularly 'cheap' for ADSL or line rental and being able to offer FTTC at the same price point means that existing customers will be tempted to upgrade(and be subject to new contracts) - while tying them to other BT products.

I recall when I used to meet with BT years ago, one of their main aims was to try and get as much IP traffic on their own network - its a lot cheaper than having to peer with others...

Regards
Sunil

In reply to a post by orly:

We're already out of our contract with BT for Infinity and sky still haven't got a product out.
Missing the boat springs to mind

BE are missing the boat, Sky have people on trials with a plan to launch in April.

I wonder if FTTC is even yet available at the same percentage of the country/population as Virgin Media ??

Some of us are *still* waiting for FTTC cab to be fitted :-/

BT Retail are over 500,000 now, fast approaching 600,000! That's almost 10% of their customer base and it's not available to a huger percent of the country yet.

They're obviously doing something right. It's going to take some hell of a deal for Sky to steal the lime light.

In reply to a post by DannyD12:

It doesn't make much sense for them to only offer 2mb upload as I would presume the links from the exchanges in to their backbones are symetrical.

No I agree, I know TT are lining up a trial of 80meg (assume 80/20) at the moment. I think most ISPs got mugged a bit with the initial 40/2 offering assuming any FTTC product would do to start with and of course BT went straight for 40/10.

2Mb/s during trial. 10Mb/s at launch.

And both BT and Sky will likely show Zen how it's done...