BT and Sky's confusing practises

BT and Sky (and perhaps other ISPs too) seem to want to differentiate between their 40/10 and 80/20 FTTC products. BT won't let you install their 'Infinity 2' product yourself and Sky will only let you order their 'Fibre Pro' product over the phone. What is the actual reasoning behind these practises?

In BT's case it is probably to minimise the number of complaints about not getting over 40Mbps on the 80/20 product.

Remember, it is only in the last few months that 40/10 went self-install. As the effect of poor home wiring or a poor line will be more marked on FTTC than it is on ADSLx there could be a lot 80/20 lines that perform well below their best with a self-install, where an engineer install eliminates home wiring issues and should also test the resultant sync. But - isn't Infinity 2 also self-install now?

Sky may be similar. For a long time they didn't even have 80/20 on their website. Maybe they want to keep peak time throughput down if they can.

Plusnet still have engineer install on 80/20 and 40/20. (Note, 40/20 not 40/10). They only take 80/20 off Openreach, and cap the download for the 40/20.

Thanks for the reply, sort of what I'd been thinking. It would be nice of Sky if they took online orders for Fibre Pro as that'd mean cashback!

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But - isn't Infinity 2 also self-install now?

It wasn't last time I checked (quite recently), but that may have changed.

On a side note, it would be handy to know if it was as I'm thinking of going for Infinity 2 at the end of my TT contract. I have already ditched YouView for Sky again (they knew I'd come crawling back) because TalkTalk's IPTV channels just weren't working out for me (they didn't work at all for a month, but since then they cut out every few minutes and it's pretty annoying).

It's an engineer install my infinity 2 is getting installed on Saturday and I have a engineer appointment.. Question is will he shown up or not lol

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Plusnet still have engineer install on 80/20 and 40/20. (Note, 40/20 not 40/10). They only take 80/20 off Openreach, and cap the download for the 40/20.

Correct but it will costing Plusnet lots of money to pay BT Wholesale for 100% 80/20 products is just plan silly. Don't know how can Plusnet afford it with too many offer discounts.

They should have 80/20 and 40/10.

Edited by adslmax (Sun 17-Aug-14 23:54:47)

£2.50pm per 40/20 line compared to 40/10.

EE does self-install on both their 38 Meg & 76 Meg VADSL products. They supply a combined VADSL modem/router, the BrightBox 2; no BT OR modem is needed.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

£2.50pm per 40/20 line compared to 40/10.

That's why Plusnet are clever smart without phone with them - FTTC will cost u extra £2.50 a month!

Edited by adslmax (Mon 18-Aug-14 00:12:13)

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

EE does self-install on both their 38 Meg & 76 Meg VADSL products. They supply a combined VADSL modem/router, the BrightBox 2; no BT OR modem is needed.

EE are very bad customer service! Worse ever! I wouldn't go nearer them!

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

EE does self-install on both their 38 Meg & 76 Meg VADSL products. They supply a combined VADSL modem/router, the BrightBox 2; no BT OR modem is needed.

Interesting, I thought the EE BrightBox routers only had ADSL modems in them. Just had a look at EE's 80/20 deal and it's quite comparable to BT's on pricing (EE is £35 a month with 80/20 FTTC, including anytime, mobile and international calls whereas BT is £33 a month with 80/20 FTTC and anytime calls). Saying that, all the big ISPs seem to have very similar pricing for their 80/20 packages anyway.