Just had brsk 500 installed

Been on Three Home Broadband since December 2018 but fell for brsk when they started installing their infrastructure around here in October (linking via Openreach poles) and had a chat with one of the contractors doing that.

At the time the price I signed up for was £25 fixed for 2 years, which is roughly the same as my Three which has been fine on 4G+ for years but for the last 12 months increasingly showing signs of congestion following 5G being installed on the main roads and most of the area.

There has been a few months holdup as they found they needed to add some telegraph poles, against some objections. The price for new signups has gone up a bit but mine is staying as contracted.

Took two men 40 minutes to install the ONT and router exactly where I wanted and commission it, and they did a very clean job. Now have my TV, Humax box, iPad and phone set up to use it.

With luck my F1 viewing will run without buffering/stuttering this weekend for the first time in ages. .

I've just had a look at their price list - £55 to replace their ONT if it fails outside the warranty period?

I think not!

Edited by ferretuk (Fri 04-Apr-25 13:47:32)

Aren't they coming together as 1 with Youfibre/Netomnia?

Just seen that price list and ugh Hopefully it get's left behind in merge.

Edited by BuckleZ (Fri 04-Apr-25 14:49:38)

In reply to a post by ferretuk:

I've just had a look at their price list - £55 to replace their ONT if it fails outside the warranty period?

I think not!

Only acceptable if you can buy an alternative on the open market and configure it yourself. Otherwise, it has to be brsk's own kit which they are responsible for. Only acceptable to charge if the customer broke it while moving furniture or similar.

They've covered damage (which is of course fair enough) but lumped it in with out of warranty failure.
Of course, if it has lifetime warranty there's nothing to worry about!

Replacement ONT Fee - £55 - The charge for a new Brsk ONT to be replaced if it is damaged by you or replaced outside of warranty.

https://www.brsk.co.uk/documents/price-book

The deal with Netomnia was largely agreed at the time I ordered, last October. I've neither heard nor seen any more about it,

A week or so after ordering I rang to ask when they expected the estate to go live and was told late November. That was also shown on my portal. I wonder if the delay was due to that deal collapsing causing a loss of associated funding? A few additional telegraph poles have been installed, though most supply is via Openreach ones. As is mine.

As for ONT or router replacement outside warranty, I don't really see the problem. Particularly the router.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

As for ONT or router replacement outside warranty, I don't really see the problem. Particularly the router.

Blurry interfaces.

The ONT is part of the ISP's [or telecomms] network.

The router is part of the customers network, even if it is supplied by the ISP.

If the customer is responsible for replacing the ONT if it fails, then there should be no problem with the customer keeping the ONT if they move house. If the router belongs to the ISP, then the customer has to accept that the ISP having control of their DHCP might be part of the package.

Having a clear demarcation between the ISP and the customer and putting that demarcation between the ONT and the router makes life much simpler for all.

I agree in a way.

Also I don't remember any Warranty statement for anything other than the broadband supply by each monthly subscription.

Some people might be worried by the Ts & Cs . Downloading porn ist verboten.

Confusingly the T&Cs contradict the Price Book...

7.2 If the equipment is faulty. If the ONT or Brsk router becomes faulty other than for due to your, or a third party’s, act or omission, we will repair or replace it. If you or a third party damage the equipment or it becomes faulty due to your, or a third party’s, act or omission, you must pay for its replacement.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

I agree in a way.

Also I don't remember any Warranty statement for anything other than the broadband supply by each monthly subscription.

Some people might be worried by the Ts & Cs . Downloading porn ist verboten.

Only on the “BetterPhone” voice service.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

With luck my F1 viewing will run without buffering/stuttering this weekend for the first time in ages. .

I thought you were quite happy with your Three cellular broadband service, but perhaps in more recent times you were swearing more at the connection rather than by the connection 😅

In any event glad you got your fibre hooked up. It's a safer bet now that Brsk are under the YouFibre umbrella. Jeremey C. is a v/good operator. Hopefully any integration plans they have go smoothly.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Been on Three Home Broadband since December 2018 but fell for brsk when they started installing their infrastructure around here in October (linking via Openreach poles) and had a chat with one of the contractors doing that.

At the time the price I signed up for was £25 fixed for 2 years, which is roughly the same as my Three which has been fine on 4G+ for years but for the last 12 months increasingly showing signs of congestion following 5G being installed on the main roads and most of the area.

There has been a few months holdup as they found they needed to add some telegraph poles, against some objections. The price for new signups has gone up a bit but mine is staying as contracted.

Took two men 40 minutes to install the ONT and router exactly where I wanted and commission it, and they did a very clean job. Now have my TV, Humax box, iPad and phone set up to use it.

With luck my F1 viewing will run without buffering/stuttering this weekend for the first time in ages. .

Sounds great, hope you enjoy your new connection

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

I thought you were quite happy with your Three cellular broadband service, but perhaps in more recent times you were swearing more at the connection rather than by the connection 😅

Cellular is always at risk of extreme variability unless you are in an extremely rural situation. Good that Bob managed to have a reliable service for such a long time.

Potentially the Three/Vodafone merger will change things in the next 5 years again, who knows in which ways.

Yeah. Shared medium innit. 😅

I remember, pre FTTPoD in the bad old days - long line ADSL+ copper only alternative, when I first put up my first 4G-X-POL antenna on the old chimney in Suffolk in around 2015 and sniffed some of that early EE 4G goodness. 60 Mbps!! Wow it blew my mind.

In time as more subscribers got on board it got worse and worse.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Yeah. Shared medium innit. 😅

Yes, and worse as networks roll out 5G NR to more bands they are using DSS, so you end up being put on LTE instead of NR on the band that is optimised for your CPE.

I remember, pre FTTPoD in the bad old days - long line ADSL+ copper only alternative, when I first put up my first 4G-X-POL antenna on the old chimney in Suffolk in around 2015 and sniffed some of that early EE 4G goodness. 60 Mbps!! Wow it blew my mind.

I had an EE SIM back in the first few days of launching 4G, when it was only 10 Mhz of Band 3 spectrum, having seen about 40 Mbps at best on Three using DC-HSDPA but quite sluggish, on an iPhone 5 it was amazing to get 60 Mbps on LTE, renamed 4G on the next iOS update

Post deleted by seb

Can I ask how downtime has been?

I'm moving in a few days (on BT FTTP 900 currently but not available at new place) and BRSK was the only viable choice based on speed and static IP's for my servers. However since placing my order I've read a lot about downtimes. Not used to this on BT and my uptimes can be measured in the hundreds of days.

What are your experiences so far?

No downtime at all.

Excellent. I suppose you are more likely to hear from disgruntled customers than happy ones. Just a couple of days to go till my install date now. Can't wait for the additional upload speed and escape an asymmetrical connection for once.

Not taking anything away from @pluralist but the timeline is too short on his install to provide any meaningful view of unplanned outages.

You really need to be asking users over a far longer period. 6 to 12 months will give you a better idea of stability and frequency of any unplanned downtime or outages.

Ah, I haven't yet found any (well-known) speed test that does multi-thread uploads. I consistently get my full 500Mbps downstream and what looks like a single-stream 100Mbps upload..

You'll find many reports of this problem but I haven't gone into it in depth yet. Even the Ookla test which brsk uses doesn't seem to. At the moment I'm disappointed with the upload but not concerned as it's still the best I've ever had.

Latency from the Stockport area is about 16ms as it uses the brsk London tester but in normal use the rendering of any website page is fast once it starts.

I agree. It's only early days for my connection and the whole of my area. So inevitably low take-up as well. Though there is another installation quite close as my router sees it.

I keep looking up the telegraph poles looking for it! LOL

I don’t have any trouble with Ookla pulling multiple thousands of Mbps on upload. Just need to choose servers wisely.

Not that simple. I always used to find the Xilo (Maidenhead) tester the best, but I don't get offered it. Probably linked to the fact at hop 7 a tracert to xilo.com goes to the USA at 134ms until hop 13 when its a solid timeout till dropping out after hop 29.

Yes I know I can increase the hop count but I'm off to bed now.

Upload seem consistent at around 100Mbps single thread.

I don't need a high upstream at the moment but it would be nice to know it was there at the expected 500Mbps.

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, so apologies if so, but otherwise with multi-thread tests it really is that simple. You should be able to easily push your full upload (and of course download) speed on an Ookla speed test, irrespective of server. Easily. Like it’s not even remotely difficult.

If you’re actually only able to upload (total not single thread performance) at 100 Mbps on 500/500 Mbps service then there is something very wrong and it ain’t the speed tester or server choice. 😀

Things should only start to get spicy with *very* large, I’m talking 5 Gbps, 8 Gbps and beyond connections with speed testers. At that sort of level you can very easily see what speed test servers are rate limited by the bandwidth of their own connection rather than yours. But that’s obviously not what is happening with your connection.

You might want to investigate further when you get time etc. 100 Mbps total pegged upload is not right.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Upload seem consistent at around 100Mbps single thread.

Have you tried various testers to see if there is a route issue to some and not others?

https://thinkbroadband.com/speedtest
https://speedtest.net
https://speed.cloudflare.com/
https://speedtest.aa.net.uk/
https://www.virginmedia.com/broadband/speed-test