BT Infinity installed 20 months ago, switching questions

Hi all,

I had BT Infinity 2 installed about 20 months ago when I moved into my new house.

The Openreach engineer installed a white modem at the wall and I have PPPoE'd to that from my TP-Link TL-4300 which is running OpenWRT.

This has worked well and is a refreshing change from the ADSL days where you had to buy an ADSL modem/router or use the tosh provided by the ISP.

I'm fed up with BT's continual price-hikes and am looking to move to either Sky or Talktalk. I am getting ~60mbps with BT and will be moving to 38mbps, so I assume I'll get something close to it.

My questions are:

Are all the providers still using BTOpenreach's backbone? i.e. if the service and connection are good with BT is it safe to assume that they will be with Talktalk also, or is this more akin the dark days of ADSL LLUs?

Will Talktalk/Sky provide me with a new white modem, or a new combined item? Can I just continue to use the current setup or will the old white box be removed and replaced? I would really like to continue having a modem only -> router setup if at all possible.

Is it the same old case of a MAC code for the transfer or is it more complicated than that?

Is there anything else I should be wary of?

They use the segment of fibre from the cabinet to the exchange, then you are across the Sky or TalkTalk backhaul network, and thus separate from users of other providers.

Openreach does not do the backbone anyway.

Its
BT Wholesale or Sky or TalkTalk or Zen who are picking up the data at the various exchanges and using a network they all control of their own.

Same old Mac process still.

Sky and TalkTalk supply an all in one router, with Sky you need to extract the username/password ie. a bit of faffing but think its possible. TalkTalk don't know answer, most TalkTalk customers seem to use supplied router.

Have you looked at PlusNet, cheaper than BT Retail, they have a 40/20 service so won't sacrifice upload speeds. http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/plusnet/package/14... and are fine with your own hardware and uses the BT Wholesale network.

The FTTC connection itself is at the nearby cabinet, and Openreach from there to the exchange. The handover to BT Wholesale/Sky/TalkTalk is at the exchange.

Have you checked your exchange is Sky/TalkTalk LLU'ed? They will want to take your line rental as well. Because they are taking the line as well no MAC is needed. Getting back from them to another BT Wholesale provider can be messy.

The rest I don't really know, but I believe Sky now supply a combined modem/router. Using your own kit instead is possible given a suitable router. Unless things have changed they have a login system called MER, and not all routers handle that. Also you need to establish the login details to use in your own.

I think your existing kit would be fine for TT.

A MAC for TT and Sky Andrew?

The router will need to support DHCP Options 61 to work with Sky.

To migrate to on fttc probably not needed but can be useful to always get to trigger offers from old provider etc

Said think but recall others saying they have done it on Sky fibre ie with sr102

Thanks for all the replies.

I did not realise that Talktalk had LLu'd fibre.

I really hope that it's not abysmal. I can cancel at any point up to the day before installation so can mull it over.

BT Infinity 2 is currently costing £30pm + £17pm line rental (a bit cheaper if line rental has been bought in advance). Their Best offer for a further 18 month lock-in in £20pm + £17pm, £37pm total.

Sky's best deal works out to be £31.40 pm including line rental spread over the 18 months, which includes 6 months free broadband. It's 40/18

EE's best deal (40/20) is ~ £28 per month when worked out over the course.

Talktalk's is £24.89 per month. Half what I'm currently paying and 2/3rds of the cost of BT's cheapest deal.

It also means I can get away from BT. Their business practice of "we're the incumbent, so we don't need to make any effort and can arbitrarily increase prices and screw what the regulator says" is blooming annoying.

Should I be paying £6 per month more and going with Sky? or some other alternative?

I would be interested in views. I'm a high user (~500gb downloaded / 100gb uploaded most months), want to use my own kit (I've since investigated Talktalk's setup and apparently a BTOpenreach modem will work as long as I use the right logon/password for PPPoE).

Thanks again!

In reply to a post by qpop:

100gb uploaded most months

You'll probably want to avoid TalkTalk then as their 38Mbps package has the upload speed capped at 2Mbps, whereas it is 10Mbps with Sky.

Edited by troublegum (Wed 22-Oct-14 18:51:57)