EE vs BT Broadband infrastructure

Hi

I was considering moving my BT broadband to EEs Broadband when my contract expires.
The broadband package would be 67mb FTTC.

I have a few questions about this potential move, and any help would be appreciated.


Its my understanding, that the Openreach infrastructure from the property to the exchange is effectively leased by Openreach to the ISPs, in this case BT and EE.
I know BT owns EE, but as far as I can see, the actual network infrastructure is separate.

Does anyone know/anyone who has EE broadband, if its reasonable to expect that the network layer after the exchange is of the same effective "quality" as BTs network? Like can I expect the same quality of peering, transit, latency, packet loss, IP address quality, backhaul and speed, as I would at BT?

Judging off EE broadband questions on Forums on the internet, EE didn't have IPv6 when these questions were asked. Is this still the case?

Is the EE Smart Hub, pretty much identical to the BT Smart Hub?

Does EE not have network/dns level parental controls/phishing website blocking like BT? Is the only equivalent service they offer just Norton security, which is client based?

Preferably, I'd like to order EE broadband soon so I can take advantage of some current offers, but my contract expires in 2-4 months time, does anyone know if I can order it and then request a delay of activation, and if necessary multiple times, to push it back to my current contract expiry date?

Is there anything that Ofcom imposes/EEs contract Terms/any other protections that would allow me to cancel my EE contract not just if my speed drops below the guaranteed speed, but that peering, transit, latency, packet loss, backhaul, and IP address quality isn't good enough? Would my only recourse be complaining to the Ombudsmans that the service isn't "fit for purpose"?


Thanks in advance to anyone who can share their insights.

Edited by deleted (Sun 10-Mar-19 18:26:30)

The mile perhaps of Openreach copper infrastructure will be the same as will the fibre be to the handover exchange, but the decisions on the capacity to buy and how to run the network from the handover point out to the Internet is a set of decisions that each of the BT Consumer providers i.e. BT, EE, PlusNet who deal with differently.

Sounds like you've read the broadband speed guarantee stuff and it does not give any guarantees around the areas you talk about.

Though no idea what IP address quality actually is.

Thanks for the response.

It looks like there could be a difference in network quality in that case, do you know if its a big difference? Or will it most likely be the same quality? In terms of peering, transit, etc.

As theres no direct guarantee aside from speed, do you know if there was an issue with latency and packet loss, if I could argue with the Ombudsman that it wasn't "fit for purpose"?

I didn't explain what I meant by IPv6 quality very well sorry, what I meant was attributes like, the chance of the IPs in the pool being blacklisted by websites for stuff like spam, or if theres CGNAT, if you have to pay for dynamic IPs, or anything like that

Do you know how far forward an ISP can request a "working like takeover" (Please correct me if I'm wrong and this is the wrong term), can it be requested 3 months in advance?

You can always argue but Ombudsman process only kicks in after a number of weeks (6 to 12 - cannot recall exact wait required)

CGNAT not used on the BT or EE fixed line services (a little on an old 10 GB usage limited BT service)

On Blacklisting if an ISP is served a court order then usually follow them, if you want an ISP that does not do as legally obliged then I suggest moving abroad

Working like takeover - the word you want is migration and not requested in advance, but when you order and generally have a 3 week lead line.

Thanks for the answers, I have a few follow up questions

Do you know if anyone has argued successfully with an ISP/Ombudsman and been allowed to cancel free of charge for poor network conditions ( High pings that should be far lower, poor peering and transit, etc) ?

By blacklisting I meant websites blocking the client/requiring more challenges due to bad history, not ISPs blocking a website, for example, if EEs IPs are more susceptible to being challenged for captchas by cloudflare due to poor history associated with users of those IPs.

No idea on appeals to ombudsman success rates or why people go that route

On captcha - no data to base any answer on

If I'm understanding the minimum speed guarantee correctly, ISPs are required to provide this minimum speed and if they fail to fix it within 30 days or so, I can cancel the contract penalty free, right?


If this is the case, how is it conducted? Is the speed measured only from the router to an ISP servers? Or would I be able to leave if I measured below speeds over ethernet to ThinkBroadbands speedtest?

I tried to find an explanation on the internet, but haven't seemed to be able to find one yet

I suggest that you ask the ISP's that you are thinking of moving to as the new of Ofcom codes of practice can take a year to come into force. It is possible that BT might supply a router which they could do a speed test to, as I am told that they have these to issue. I don't know about EE. Plusnet told me to use a BT speed test web site.

Thanks for the response

Would that mean, in your case at plusnet, they test the speed to BTs speedtest? So if the speedtest is below the minimum speed, you could leave penalty free?

Are there any other conditions for plusnet? Like running the test over the Ethernet cable?
And would a third party test like thinkbroadbands be sufficient proof to leave plusnet free of charge?

So many questions and no-one can say for sure, since the rules have only just come into play and providers have a year to implement them.

So what each provider accepts as proof will vary.

Ok, thanks for your help

I've had IPs from EE's pool for years, musta been 1000s of them, & never found 1 blacklisted. Can't see the likelihood of this being any diff from any other ISP. It's the users not the ISP that triggers blacklisting.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Tue 12-Mar-19 12:55:20)

Great,
It looks to be the case but I just wanted to make sure, are the IP pools for EE's mobile and Broadband users different?
Are the IPs all named as EE and not the old IPs names/owners which were owned by Orange and the other companies that merged to become EE?
Have you had any issue with geolocation for services such as iplayer and Netflix that require geographic IP locations?

Many EE IP pools are registered under "Orange" as that's where EE acquired BB, but what diff does it make? You don't see it.

You may find even running on Fibre that you are given an IP registered under "ADSL2+" or even "IP Stream", due to running out of IPs. The mobile & fixed IPs are kept separate but I suppose even those could eventually merge in the same way.

I probably wasn't thinking very logically as maybe this wouldn't happen, but I was thinking if EE hadn't bothered to update the name of the owner of the IP and they then bought more IPs, they might have still not bothered to update them from the ISP they bought them from.
And then causing the location of the IP to remain where they were bought, causing iplayer to refuse to play because it would think I was in that country and not the UK due to licensing rights

You weren't! EE didn't buy IPs from Orange. Orange UK (nowt to do with any overseas Oranges) is a constituent part of EE & remains so today. Anyway they're all registered in UK. I've never had any issues watching iPlayer over EE BB.

Sorry, but you are just dreaming up remote eventualities that cannot be tested. I shall no further address them.

Do what everybody else does. Choose an ISP based on what they offer & join them. You won't know how it is until you use it.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Tue 12-Mar-19 14:27:32)

Ah, thanks for the clarification
It was a while ago, but one of my friends had a similar issue and I think they said they were on EE, so thats why I was a bit concerned

Yeah, someone, somewhere once said they had an issue with their ISP! This site is full of them & could well not exist w/out them.

In reply to a post by q4719049:

I probably wasn't thinking very logically as maybe this wouldn't happen, but I was thinking if EE hadn't bothered to update the name of the owner of the IP and they then bought more IPs, they might have still not bothered to update them from the ISP they bought them from.

The RIPE entry for "owner name" does not affect the "location" used by organisations such as BBC for iPlayer control. (The BBC run their own lists).

The mobile network side of EE is much larger and does not provide an individual IPv4 to end users, they use CGNAT, however if you use compatible hardware, EE can assign you IPv6 instead.

IPv4 has run out, ISPs cannot "buy" any more, they can only trade between each other. The future is IPv6.