In reply to a post by RobertoS:

How important is higher than 80/20Mbps. Bearing in mind those are actual connection speeds, not "up to"s.

It's also worth checking whether the faster options have any throughput "promises", or whether they are just burst speeds. There may be an Openreach caveat about that, such as only 80Mbps being sustainable.

It's not hugely important, but it's what I want. I want to make the most of the new FTTP infrastructure. I am an IT Consultant and I work from home quite a lot plus in the new house I want to make use f home automation and CCTV so having a decent internet connection is important and the extra speed will be a huge bonus. The cost is around £20pm more than we pay now.

We currently get around 70/20Mb/s with our EE FTTC service and generally speaking it's been quite reliable.

I noticed yesterday that a report on ISPs was released with their customer satisfaction ratings. BT came quite low and VM came quite high so maybe I should consider Virgin Media.

As EE is owned by BT now you are already with them. I have an 80 / 20 FTTP service with BT and it is quite capable of running 4 Olympics BBC streams to my iMac while I am on a VOIP conference call and permanently connected to the work systems at home. So I am not sure that you really need 300 / 30 unless you are really shifting a large amount of data.

I would consider the connection quality and router quality as the most important factor. I've had broadband since I moved into my house 4 years ago and have never once had to speak to BT, it just works.

My parents have lived in their house since the 70s and to my recollection since I've been around they've never had a fault of any kind, voice or broadband!

In reply to a post by Icaras:

I would consider the connection quality and router quality as the most important factor. I've had broadband since I moved into my house 4 years ago and have never once had to speak to BT, it just works.

My parents have lived in their house since the 70s and to my recollection since I've been around they've never had a fault of any kind, voice or broadband!

You'll always here that though. I know people with the opposite experience of BT.

What about the Zen Home Options? Home 80/20 FTTP for £30pm plus £16.99 voice

That's what I mean though, I could so with another provider if I don't want 200-300Mb/s. But it seems that only BT offer those speeds on FTTP. Unless I go with VM and ditch FTTP completely which would be a shame I think.

Are the BT HomeHub's any good?

The HomeHubs have a variable reputation generally wireless issues, but as the fibre ONT on FTTP just needs a PPPoE session you can use your own hardware to improve wireless and router reliability if you want.

The BT Home Hub's are built for the general person so may seem very locked down if you are used to configuring your own routers. Some like them some don't.
However BT Consumer don't force you to use their modem routers, you can use a third party router instead (just technical support may ask you to reconnect the Home Hub when asking for support).

That's good to know, thanks.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

its GPON with 2.4Gbps shared via 32 way splits

So is that contended locally? Theoretically if all 32 splits download at once, the bandwidth could be as low as 75mbps per user?