Church and charity query

Hi,
My church has recently registered as a CIO with the charity commission and we would like to move from BT FTTC business to a suitable full fibre connection.
Wondering if there are any kind folk who could offer advice as we do t seem to fit the usual package deals. BB is pretty minimal but we do livestream stuff so need good UL speeds.
Cheers,
James

What sort of streaming do they do - is it standard live streams in SD / HD or is it 4K? How many streams at once? What else will the connection be used for? How much will be done at the same time?

If it is standard streaming then even relatively low packages would likely be sufficient. Are they currently doing the streaming on FTTC as even that would likely be able to do so in which case what can you not do on FTTC that you think FTTP will give you?

This is pretty much a "how long is a piece of string" question without a lot of detail about how the connection will be used. They could go with a business ISP on a 150Mb connection to start and make sure the ISP would be happy to upgrade if needed to higher speeds.

Thank you for all that.
We want to do full hDMI with the potential to go to 4K but we are experiencing some issues which may be due to local congestion.

A Plusnet ‘salesperson’ suggested this afternoon to a colleague no problem being a church but we (not they) need some further confirmation. Obviously they don’t do business stuff now.

A good quality stream in 4K would likely use up to around 25Mb/s. If you went for a 500Mb/s package that would have 70Mb/s upstream so plenty for a single 4K stream outgoing.

Other than that it is entirely down to what else the Internet is used for.

Also, how good is your internal LAN/WLAN connectivity? If you are streaming over wireless with a poor strength signal then the Internet connection isn't going to make any difference. If you have lots of devices on wifi then they could all be vying for the same wifi bandwidth which again could impact on streaming.

Ideally you would get an IT person in that knows what they are doing to review what your usage is, your LAN/WLAN setup and what you need going forwards. Trying to do this on a forum is going to be difficult and time consuming and likely will miss things.

I think we’ve wandered a bit off the original query which was a more specific one relating to churches and Full Fibre providers so I’ll just leave it there. Thanks for your comments.

Where has it wandered off. You want an ISP that is capable of livestreaming and other stuff. The relevance of it being a church seems beside the point for the question I understood you had asked.

So, if I am off track then what is the question?

In reply to a post by ian72:

Where has it wandered off. You want an ISP that is capable of livestreaming and other stuff. The relevance of it being a church seems beside the point for the question I understood you had asked.

So, if I am off track then what is the question?

The clue is in the query heading - church and charity. I know all about ISP's and Livestream as we have a fairly complex multi camera/video and sound mixers and encoders that I have set up I may have misunderstood you, but if you are not a church leader/treasurer then its unlikely that you will know of the challenges presented to us in negotiating with potential ISP's specifically as potentially a business or charity.

I have a sense you might want to add a further word but if there aren't any other folk who have experience from a church background then this will be my last post on this particular query.
All the very best,
James..

Hi,

Is the issue here that you don't believe that you will be offered the same deals as offered to consumers because you are a charity and your question is therefore about what ISPs might offer to you from a commercial perspective?

If that is the case then the answer will vary on an ISP by ISP basis and in the case of non-vertically integrated ISPs may depend on how their underlying infrastructure provider (Openreach being the obvious one) sees your property.

At a really simple level, if there is Openreach FTTP available then BT Business will almost certainly be able to offer an equivalent deal to the one you are on now but provided over fibre, with the option for faster speeds. Other providers using Openreach will also be able to offer you fibre but it will be at their discretion whether they offer you consumer deals, business deals or something else.

In reply to a post by meteosat:

if you are not a church leader/treasurer then its unlikely that you will know of the challenges presented to us in negotiating with potential ISP's specifically as potentially a business or charity

In this case, your church will be treated the same as any other CIO. I am a trustee of a secular CIO with a multi-million annual turnover, and previously served as a trustee of a national church body established by an Act of Parliament that is a registered charity.

Most ISPs will treat your CIO the same way as any other business, and your church will typically be treated the same as any other business premises. FTTP might attract additional construction charges, depending on the nature of the building.

You would probably be best off speaking to the SME team at a few more business-oriented ISPs, though I suspect they'll offer you their standard small-business product at the regular price.

OK, I'll give a final response much the same as the 2 that posted after you posted this. You are not different to any other business/charity. ISPs don't care that you are a church - makes no difference to them, they will give you the same deals as they give to anyone else. I don't see why you think a church is unique in getting ISP provision.