Standard vs Prioritised FTTC

So.. my cabinet has been enabled - yay.

I've decided to try Claranet SOHO as my new ISP (currently with Be). I work from home and do move a significant amount of data around during the day, and I can see the house making more use of iplayer so I'm going to go for a business package that is unlimited. Claranet have 2 service levels which are "standard" and "premium" where the "premium" is a prioritised service. The cost difference is around £10/month (~£50 vs £60) for their 40/10 service. They also offer an 80/20 service "standard" service at £60 (BT line checker says I should get 60/20, so I could double my upload speed which would be useful).

My question is: how much difference in reality does the prioritised traffic make on day-to-day usage? Does it have a significant impact if the exchange is congested? Anyone moved from a standard to prioritised service and notice a difference?

From what I hear currently nobody is experiencing congestion on the Infinity service with BT. It may be that you are paying over the odds for a 80/20 service for the belief your getting a better package when in fact it's negligible to a much cheaper service from BT.

If I was in your position I would find a cheaper 80/20 package with unlimited usage and if you experience any slow downs in the future (which may happen in a year or twos time), you can just switch to a prioritized service, at which point that package may be cheaper too.

Thanks, but I also want a static IP, which means BT business and that's almost as expensive as Clara.Nets offering (in fact £2 difference) - except it's likely to be far less congested once you're on the Claranet backbone than on the BT one. Seemed pretty simple choice really

I understand I can get BT Unlimited for £25.60, but I'm not asking that question. I really want to know whether there is any real practical difference between a prioritised offering vs a standard one?

Have Clara.Net indicated where this prioritisation takes place? I suspect its within their network as I'm not aware of a priority FTTC product from BT Openreach.

Is Claranet a LLU provider? Just wondering where the split between BT Openreach and Clara.net will be.

The 80/20 product has a 30 Meg guaranteed rate across the the openreach segment, the 40/10/2 products are 15 Meg.

So IF congestion is on the Openreach segment then the 80/20 will be better. But also so many other points it could be

In reply to a post by arad85:

My question is: how much difference in reality does the prioritised traffic make on day-to-day usage? Does it have a significant impact if the exchange is congested? Anyone moved from a standard to prioritised service and notice a difference?

Sections 2.1.5 and 2.2.6 of this document read to me as if it does nothing useful wrt competition for Openreach resources with other end users. If this is what they mean by "prioritised". It only provides room for traffic manipulation within the available bandwidth for the particular user, e.g. VOIP versus web browsing.

There is information about the WBC side of it in this one, but I concluded the same result applies. I don't see anything that means an end user can be prioritised against another.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The 80/20 product has a 30 Meg guaranteed rate across the the openreach segment, the 40/10/2 products are 15 Meg.

But what's the guarantee on the prioritised traffic on 40Mbit?

Interesting docs - thanks. I shall read them a few times to let it sink in....

Then you can explain them in English, to us all!

I have a niggling feeling that there is something else somewhere, as it has always been a given as far as we are all concerned that the "Priority" services do give priority through the BT Wholesale backhaul. However those two documents seem to specifically state that is not the case.

The "standard" service offers a minimum throughput of 12Mb by BT wholesale/Openreach whereas the "premium/prioritised" offers a minimum of 16Mb throughput - but that is only the case where there is contention on the BT wholesale network of which there is not any just yet. ISP contention and other things may come in to play regardless of the extra you pay for the additional BT wholesale service.