BT & Sky Fibre service (down/up) speeds

Hello,

I would like to know from those of you who have either BT Infinity or Sky Fibre installed what the P2P speeds are like during various times of the day, including both download and upload, if possible? Also are websites such as BBC iPlayer, 4OD and youtube constant most of the time in terms of being able to stream smooth video? Obviously network congestion is a limiting factor but speaking generally.

Also how has your service been with either or both of the companies?

I have been offered either a package from Sky for £28 p/m (loyal cust) for Line Rental, Unlimited Calls (International calls included) and 40/10 fibre for 12 months OR a service from BT including Line Rental, Anytime calls, International Freedom, Infinity (80/20) for £38 p/m (12 months also).

As you can tell, the BT offering is £10 greater than Sky but double the speed. If i require 80/20 i can always pay an additional £10 to Sky for their Fibre Pro package.

So far i have sided with the Sky's offering of £28 p/m and should think that 40/10 fibre will meet the bandwidth demands for my household. Im also aware that Sky Line Rental will increase from Sept 1st to 14.50 p/m although not applicable to existing customers.

I know that this thread was initiated to enquire about the internet service but any comments pertaining to the other elements such as calls and line rental are more than welcome.

Kind Regards.

If you are only looking at FTTC for use with Torrent/P2P downloads then save your, as ISP's in the uk are blocking them after a court order. Before that I used to D/L during the day and not bother during the evening or night waste of time to slow. I'm on 80/20Mb from BT. Have stopped now as I said because most sites are blocked. Hope this helps you
iechyd da

ISP's are blocking access to individual websites hosting the torrent file itself rather than blocking torrent data flowing, so there's plenty of life left in P2P.

They blocked like 1 site? out of hundreds

Anyways skys still having problems with throughput.

In reply to a post by paul1360:

If you are only looking at FTTC for use with Torrent/P2P downloads then save your, as ISP's in the uk are blocking them after a court order. Before that I used to D/L during the day and not bother during the evening or night waste of time to slow. I'm on 80/20Mb from BT. Have stopped now as I said because most sites are blocked. Hope this helps you
iechyd da

Yes i will be using torrents often and depending on throttling may sign up for BTGuard, perhaps try it out for a month or so. Did you get full speed both down and up when you used to torrent during the day?

In reply to a post by Kr1s69:

ISP's are blocking access to individual websites hosting the torrent file itself rather than blocking torrent data flowing, so there's plenty of life left in P2P.

Indeed, of course there are many ways around this however im mainly concerned about BT's Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and whether or not Sky implement this also. From what i hear Sky broadband is truly unlimited not shaped or throttled.

In reply to a post by epyon:

They blocked like 1 site? out of hundreds

Anyways skys still having problems with throughput.

From your signature i can see that you are attaining half speed, i have been closely following the thread on the official Sky website and also on skyuser. It seems that the issue is largely still unresolved although according to the support assistants it is not a widespread problem. Then again i suppose this depends on how many are able to notice the decreased bandwidth and thus report the issue in the first place. It doesn't inspire the greatest of confidence when looking to switch over to another provider hence i am still considering BT!

If i may ask, what are you speeds like when torrenting, both download and upload if you have done so? Also with regards to uploading to various file hosters such as rapidshare, mediafire etc is the rate constant?

Kind Regards.

In reply to a post by Kr1s69:

ISP's are blocking access to individual websites hosting the torrent file itself rather than blocking torrent data flowing, so there's plenty of life left in P2P.

Not *all* ISPs are doing this...only the big 5 - and it is not all torrent hosting sites anyway. Mine certainly is not.
DrT

Edited by deleted (Sun 15-Jul-12 15:25:10)

I have the sky 80mbps down and 20 mbps up.

24/7 speeds never slows down. Torrents peer to peer etc is all going at full whack all day everyday.

The sky routers also quite good. Gets good wifi and good throughput so don't let that put you off!
I had the 40mbps product for a while and it was the same. Just as good

Never noticed torrent throttling on my BT Infinity connection, no matter what time of day.

Connection estimated 58/19, receiving roughly 77/20. I run regular speed tests and have not noticed a considerable dip in speeds, a regular average of 72-74Mbps downstream and 19-20Mbps upstream (multiple threads bear in mind, using JDAST).

Other note I need to mention is that I'm on BT Business Infinity Option 2, not the residential one. I wanted static IP's and UK support. There are other business benefits but the business version does cost more for what it is.

BT don't throttle except p2p which their t&cs say they might throttle down to some ridiculously low level except at offpeak times. I don't use p2p much, and the only p2p I have done has appeared not to be throttled. I have seen other comments that they are not throttling at the moment, but if I were a regular p2p user I wouldn't rely on it staying that way. Streaming has been fine, except for a short period when something went silly with my line which would have probably been the same if it had been Sky.

Edited by StephenTodd (Sun 15-Jul-12 16:50:17)

In reply to a post by epyon:

Anyways skys still having problems with throughput.

They aren't in my area, I'm getting a reasonable 37 Mbps down/8 Mbps up on the 40/10 product.

Edit: Post makes more sense now.

Edited by simon194 (Sun 15-Jul-12 21:54:13)

Current number of sites unreachable because of court orders: 0

Current ways of bypassing BT P2P throttling.: 583203

nuff said.

In reply to a post by kunjar:

... OR a service from BT including Line Rental, Anytime calls, International Freedom, Infinity (80/20) for £38 p/m (12 months also).

Is that a special deal? The standard product is 18-month minimum term. The phone side may be 12 months.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by kunjar:

... OR a service from BT including Line Rental, Anytime calls, International Freedom, Infinity (80/20) for £38 p/m (12 months also).

Is that a special deal? The standard product is 18-month minimum term. The phone side may be 12 months.

Yes this too did throw me off as on the BT website all Infinity packages clearly state that the broadband is an 18 month contract. Perhaps the advisor on the phone was referring to the telephone service only. Having said that if you are on BT and have been a customer for some number of years, do ring 0800 587 7214 and enquire whether BT can offer a discount on Infinity for loyal customers. I was given Infinity (quoted 76/20) for £17.25 p/m and then rang Sky who dropped my line rental down to £3 p/m.

In the end i chose Sky as i would be getting Line Rental £3, Unlimited Calls £5 and Fibre 40/10 £20, Total= £28 p/m. Not bad at all!

Thanks for all your replies.

Thanks for letting us know. It would be good to know how it turns out after a while as well, so we can help others like you .

I've been on Sky 40/10 for just under two months. It was blistering at first, but went downhill from there. It went off completely for a week, and has been off and on since. Here's a speedtest from the other night -

- athough it's usually been a bit better than that!

To be fair, Sky, at least in the form of their Fibre team, have been much more helpful than I'd expected - calling me back to see how it's going, chasing Openreach and challenging the "issue closed" status they applied... The individual Openreach engineers have been great too, although they are all scratching their heads...I'm hoping they'll get it sorted soon!

When it worked, it was great - finally youtube would stream in HD.!