Since its now more likely the missing FTTC cab could be installed and active by the end of June, I'm trying to select an ISP. I've spent most of the last 8 years on unlimited ISPs and before that limits didn't really exist.
As BE aren't offering Fibre this year, I've whittled my choices down to a short list of 3. My usage is somewhere between 80 GB and 100 GB a month, so unfortunately that rules out Adsl24 and IDnet purely on price.
I've been reading in the various forums and see that both BTretail (Infinity) and PlusNet forums have people talking about congestion type effects. A friend of mine in the west country has just had PlusNet 80/20 installed, and he only gets about 1.5mbps on the tbb speedtester for example. Other speedtesters show a lot less. Latency is all over the place.
I'm not a gamer, but I use voip and other similar applications, and so consistency of latency is desirable. I don't use P2P. I therefore have ruled out Virgin Media, having used their service at a friends across town.

I'd appreciate any comments and any ideas I might have missed - but as I see it the choices are:
1) PlusNet Extra Fibre Broadband - approx £22/month - 18m contract.
- Upsides = Static IP option - Can use any PPPoE compatible ethernet router
- Downsides = Uses WBC - no 80/20 offering yet, and trial apparently full - 18 month contract
2) BT Infinity 2 - approx £26/month - 18m contract
- Upsides = 80/20 is available - Can use any PPPoE compatible ethernet router - mostly unlimited with P2P throttle
- Downsides = Uses WBC - 18month contract - speed issues for many users during April / May - dynamic IP only
3) Sky FTTC 80/20 - apparently £30/m - 12m contract
- Upsides = truly unlimited - not using WBC - only 12m contract
- Downsides = some speed issues (?) - forced to use Sky router (MER auth, not PPPoE) and no static IP option
As you can see the one I'd like to go for is PlusNet, for the static IP, and flexible router, but the lack of an 80/20 product, and the poor TBB and other speedtest results that a friend of mine gets is worrying me. Is there a congestion issue in the PN network or in WBC ? Similar "congestion" style issues showing up on BT Infinity customers on the new 80/20 product.
I really want to use a prosumer router (Draytek 2820 or similar, with VPN server features) which almost rules out Sky due to their stupid MER modified DHCP authentication protocol. (There is a Billion router that looked promising but has no VPN server support).
Appreciate other people's thoughts?
James - be* pro - 16.8 or 17.2mbps BQM
No FTTC cabinet yet (originally Mar 2011) THFB PCP 5 - hope for 21st May to 1 June !
No FTTC cabinet yet (originally Mar 2011) THFB PCP 5 - hope for 21st May to 1 June !