Vivaciti FTTC, any experience?

Doing a little research into FTTC providers and noticed that Vivaciti's FTTC Professional (500GB peak unlimited off-peak) seems to buck the trend. Almost too good to be true. A little digging and I believe O-Bit provide the FTTC products? The packages/data limits look identical. And noticed this on this page (http://www.o-bit.net/products/fttc.html):

"Non business traffic may be restricted within business hours
in order to protect legitimate business traffic. More specifically we may restrict peer to peer and news group traffic from 8am to 6pm."

Anyone have any experience with these packages? Do they definitely throttle? Seems both on here and on Vivaciti's forums O-Bit have been a nuisance on the regular ADSL packages in the past. Don't want to jump on an FTTC product with a similar experience.

In reply to a post by Eeknay:

Anyone have any experience with these packages? Do they definitely throttle? Seems both on here and on Vivaciti's forums O-Bit have been a nuisance on the regular ADSL packages in the past. Don't want to jump on an FTTC product with a similar experience.

Can't speak about FTTC but I am on the surfwise complete package that uses the Obit network.
Not really had any issues (See my earlier thread about a bit of odd latency for a day) and seem to get maximum throughput all the time. Have a very clean CQM chart with low pings if not using the connection .

On ADSL they sell their file sharing upgrade which removes all traffic shaping and FUP but this would be another £20 and not sure if it applies to the FTTC product?
Link on Obit site

Re the shaping I only noticed it on Iplayer but this was a mistake in the traffic shaping rules which has since been corrected. If I remember correctly this slowed the connection down to around 0.3 - 0.5Mb/s during business hours so may be an indicator of how P2P would be affected.

Interesting they guarantee a minimum 12Mb/s throughput on that package. Is that unique for a FTTC product?

Gary

Someone will have to correct me if I'm mistaken but I believe that 12Mbit/s number is the minimum sync speed they'll provide, otherwise they won't go forward with a FTTC order. It doesn't mean you'll always get 12Mbit/s regardless of shaping/congestion etc etc.

I guess the 100GB/500GB FTTC Vivaciti package's are new so will probably just contact them directly to clarify.

Close .

Openreach now have two products, 15Mbps+ and 5Mbps+.

If the sync speed on the 15Mbps one is below 15Mbps the installation is reversed . The minimum expected download speed is 12Mbps on any 15Mbps+ connection.

Thanks for the clarification.

Vivaciti also got back to me rather quickly. Here is their reply:

"The FTTC Premium is the only fully unlimited package we do for FTTC at the moment. Over the other FTTC packages p2p and newsgroup downloads have a lower traffic priority during office hours (8am - 8pm) weekdays only."

Which seems reasonable (Premium in case anyone is interested is £150). What is quite shocking though is they provide no hardware of any kind for FTTC! That setup fee you have to cough up doesn't come with a modem or router. Very strange.

Edited by deleted (Mon 28-Feb-11 13:53:13)

shurely a modem is provided.

As BatBoy says. A compulsory VDSL2 modem is provided by Openreach as part of the installation.

You need a (cable) router to go with it. I have a Buffalo Airstation Nfiniti WHR-G300Nv2. Under £30 from Amazon and eBuyer and seems very flexible to me. But not a router expert. I ignored its CD and used the setup wizard - it connected within seconds and the wireless seems better than my TG 585v6, 585v7 and Netgear 834PN.

How's the wireless range on that router? If I did take a jump into the FTTC pool I'd be considering that or the Netgear WNR2000.

Edited by deleted (Mon 28-Feb-11 14:35:39)

And I've clarified with Vivaciti, they have confirmed that no modem is supplied. Very odd.

Hard to tell re the wireless other than what I have said.

This house has a metal frame with metal floor joists between upstairs and downstairs. It works fine from the spare bedroom corner to anywhere in the downstairs through room. Not exactly the weather to try in the garden.

I reckoned I couldn't lose at that price and with it being returnable.