I keep thinking of moving to FTTC and every time I look, BT Infinity comes out as the most attractive option, assuming you don't want a reasonably miserly cap of 30-50gb or to have to schedule things to download at 1am.

One ISP that I haven't seen mentioned for FTTC, but who I see offer it, is Merula. Still more expensive than BT but seems reasonable for the 100gb option.

Also Plusnet have some attractive pricing, though I've been here long enough to remember all the shaping antics they used to employ and I'd perhaps still be very wary about the small print.

Just so everyone can see what it is I am up against with virgin media and why I want to switch, this is what my connection looks like now:

My Broadband Ping

This is MASSIVELY improved over what it has been for the last 5 months, this is what it was just 3 or so weeks ago:

My Broadband Ping

When I had the problems shown on that second graph, I phoned Virgin media up and they told me, in response to this problem, that they dont think it is a big enough problem for them to attempt to investigate and then fix. Im trying to get away from any ISP with that sort of mentality.

Even the first graph is not 100% great. The second made online gaming impossible. Just now Im able to game but every now and then something detrimental happens simply because of the lag.

Virgin are renowned for overselling their exchanges, so tbh I doubt they would be able to do much anyway if your area is popular.

yeah was going to say the first graph is actually good for VM's standards.

VM's main weakness is jitter aka upstream congestion, its something that even with traffic shaping, STM and FUP letters combined they cannot get on top off. Which to me proves if you dont get the numbers right in regards to how you contend your customers and sell your service then no amount of traffic management will fix it.

Because of this upload speeds and gaming will be the strengths BT's infinity will have over VM for years to come as I cannot see VM sorting that out any time soon.

In reply to a post by xiphrex:

Hi,

I finally have a BT phone line now and want to ditch Virgin Media due to their poor latency issues. Surprisingly these have improved recently but still not 100% what I am looking for.

Anyway Ive been looking around for FTTC and I have no idea who is the best out there, or whether I should wait until an ISP comes along and does it completely separate from BT?

I want to avoid BT providing my internet at all costs, I had BT ADSL a good number of years ago and it was awful.

My only real options are FTTC or Virgin media - cant go back to ADSL because the top speed I would get is only 7mb even with ADSL2+.

I would get 100mb VM in a second if they had an option to guarantee best possible latency at all times (currently have 50mb), but they dont have anything like that.

The limit has officially been removed on the Infinity option 2 product

http://community.bt.com/t5/BB-Speed-Connection-Issue...

I've not seen any providers offering a GEA style access product yet -- where the only BT involvement would be the home-cab-exchange connection (so no latency/congestion worries really)

Most seem to be reselling services that at least in part use BT wholesale - so any benefit in jitter etc would likely come from their core routing differences & differences in exactly where they pick up traffic -- which you'll have to ask them about.

TalkTalk/Sky are making noises about using BT ducting -- that surely is a long process.

Combined then with the relatively low cost of BT Infinity, and removed limits it makes it a strong offer -- perhaps you could find someone on the same exchange as you to check latency with infinity as that will come down to exchange interconnects. Ditto for a different ISP.

I still think mine is on the high side (21ms to bbc) given southampton (5 miles away) -london, but as I think I mentioned I get routed through birmingham it seems. I'd thought Portsmouth was a main 21cn node & a more optimal (in latency) route, but I guess there's no way Southampton traffic could go through Portsmouth. It just couldn't happen

I am being offered FTTC with TalkTalk in July which I will take in a heartbeat - I expect they will use the OR infrastructure back to my exchange and then put my data through their equivalent of OR's 21CN. Will be interesting to see how it compares to an Infinity install with regards to jitter etc.

Im thinking of going with Aquiss but going with a business package so I get 10mb upload.

Any disadvatanges with going with business other than its a bit more pricey (and its not that much more to be honest!)?

In reply to a post by xiphrex:

Im thinking of going with Aquiss but going with a business package so I get 10mb upload.

Any disadvatanges with going with business other than its a bit more pricey (and its not that much more to be honest!)?

NONE! Another big *advantage* is more hours of off-peak use. I have a business/pro package with ADSL 24. As well as their having top-notch tech support, my off-peak is from 20:00 to 08:00 hrs. and the whole weekend. Not forgetting the 10MB/s upload.

DrT

What ^he^ said!