From Be to which FTTC provider

I'm currently with BeThere and am sufficiently far from the exchange that I only get 4Mbit/s. Whilst I'm very happy with Be as a company FTTC is supposed to arrive within the next 3 months and I'm thinking of jumping ship to someone else. I work from home and can move a lot of data in a month (I have to upload gigabyte files for people at work at reasonably frequent intervals and have to download similar files more often - this takes an age at 4Mbit down/1Mbit up!!). I'm on the net almost all day, run several websites, have 6+ PCs and would like to stream iPlayer - I'm a heavy user!!! The things that I need are:

- Unlimited & unmanaged service (as BeThere provide me now)
- Proper "fair usage policy" that isn't effectively a cap
- No blocked ports
- Static IP

I'm prepared to pay, probably up to ~£50/month for a good provider. Looking at the spreadsheet provided, there only seem to be a few providers who do truly unlimited,

ClaraNet SOHO 40/10 business looks good to me (if a little pricey). Is it better than the BT offering (they still traffic shape don't they - is it only P2P they shape now?). I'm a little concerned by the 24 month contract, but I'm not likely to move.

Any alternatives?

I can't really advise on what's best for you, but so far as I know you are right in thinking that BT only shape P2P. Don't take my word for it though.

As for migrating, don't do it before you can go straight to FTTC with your chosen ISP. First, the anticipated availability of FTTC can be wrong by months, even changing during the expected month, (which checker are you using anyway, and are you giving it your phone number, not post code or address?), and second, if there is any delay then Be might have an offering anyway by then. They do have a trial running.

Additionally - you would need the BT Business package to get a static IP address with them.

Thanks. I'm not budging until FTTC is actually here as it was supposed to be here this time last year . I'm very happy with Be - by far the best ISP I've been with since I started (back in 2000). The promise of a near 10x improvement (it claims 31.4 down and up to 12.3 up) are just too much to pass up though.

Using the BT checker with phone number and post code.

I was very close to jumping ship to an FTTC provider but when I weighed up the pros and cons of leaving Be I just couldn't face it. Speaking at length with BT gave me more doubts about their offer than ever. They were so careful not to answer my questions fully especially over guaranteed speeds traffic shaping etc etc.

In the end I rang Be to ask when they'd get their act together. The result was a 50% discount in subscription rate! So now I shall wait it out for Be to offer FTTC

I left Be which had 7Meg up, 1 down. Now on BT FTTC at 34.5 down, 1.6 up. Happy enough most of the time, but you have to remember that the interenet itself is cluttered with all of this P2P and watching live TV on line. Bxxxxy Daft, as that is NOT wha tthe interenet is about, it is a one to many service, not a one to one service.

Anyway, BBC iPlayer downloads can be as little as a claieed 2Mb/s and a half hour TV programme can take 15 minutes to download. I think that is becasue it is P2P in behind the iPlayer branding. That did not get slowed down with Be.

For live.com and dropbox it seems great.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

watching live TV on line. Bxxxxy Daft, as that is NOT wha tthe interenet is about,

Try telling that to BT who are part of the YouView consortium

To be honest, that's one reason I want a decent broadband package (over and above moving large datasets around for work). If the bandwidth is there, we'll use it to stream HD content (the only DVD/BluRay players we have are in PCs to rip material when it comes in to store on a central server - the whole house is networked). Streamed iPlayer content noticably slows the internet with Be.

I am FAR from a normal home user - hence why I'm not after the cheapest option. I'm after the most reliable.

Has anyone used Clara.net? The very few reviews seem to be very mixed and the clara.net section of this forum is devoid of any useful content.

Has anyone used Clara.net?

The best place to ask that may be in the WHich ISP? (Business) forum, as they are, (I believe), primarily a business ISP. They are very rarely mentioned in this one, nor in General Braodband chatter.

I have one friend who has been with them for many years, and is perfectly content, but he is a very light user - even older than me.

Thanks Roberto - will post there now

I jumped to BT Infinity (from Be) as soon as it was available, (in fact I was the first on my cab) that was 8 months ago and haven't regretted it yet. P2P is shaped but since I don't use it, it isn't a problem. iPlayer etc all seem to work just fine.

In reply to a post by TheHorseman:

Say it with flowers, give her a Triffid

It might befriend her. Then where would you be?

I was also with BeThere and was very reluctant to leave. Their service has always been excellent. Unfortunately, although we had FTTC in our road, when I approached Be I was told that they would not be selling FTTC until at least 2013.

At the time I was working on contract with a company who had been using Claranet successfully for many years and were having to move to another supplier as they could not provide the additional security they required.

I was most impressed with my initial contact. I was not called back by a sales person, but one of the support guys, who answered all my questions readily. On the basis of that conversation, I signed up for a 80/20 Business SOHO package.

We've been with them now for a little over 2 months. Initially the service was not as fast as the old ADSL2 line we'd had before, that gave us 15Mbps. However, after that things have improved to the point of getting to 40Mbps. I phoned them on Thursday to point this out and today I hit 60Mbps. There does, however, seem to be a slowdown when the Olympics get exciting. (Is anyone else getting this problem). Just done another speed test whilst writing this and it's down to 43Mbps. However, Claranet are doing further tests and are due to report back with results on Tuesday.

All in all, Claranet's support is first class. No Bulgarian accents, just Manchester and Liverpool ones.

One thing I have noticed is not only the speed increase, but also a big jump in reliability. Even when hard hit by the Olympics and noticing speed drops, the service is not unusable, which at times ADSL2 was.

I might add that I am, what most suppliers would consider, a heavy user. My blog tells you how heavy . No limits on this service and no apparent traffic shaping.

Edited by deleted (Sat 04-Aug-12 17:17:27)

I moved from BE to BT Infinity. I see no slowdowns at all, only full speed.