You don't have to "ship your line over" with BE

Ahh OK. Thanks for correcting me.

Bear in mind anything from BT Retail comes with traffic shaping (mainly torrents but other stuff like Flash and gaming has been affected in the past).

Be* don't offer FTTC at the moment.

OK Thanks Zadeks

In reply to a post by ImranQ:

I currently have 8GB Zen Office Max

I hope you really mean 8 Mbit ps speed. But if you meant 8 GByte usage limit, then you don't really need "unlimited usage".

Sorry yes - I did mean 8Mbits speed and unlimited download.

Yes it was through the phone number check.

That would indicate that you definitely have FTTC available and are likely to get pretty good rates. The estimated figures for my line were more-or-less the same as that and I see better (you may of course not get quite as good - the estimate could be inaccurate in either direction) - the figures the BT/or engineers flashed at me upon first sync were 35,999K and 9,995K. The upstream speed mattered more to me than down so I've paid more attention to giving that a good test and everything seems come out around the 8Mbit mark for observed throughput which by my understanding is what you should expect from a sync rate close to 10Mbit. Downstream results have been more varied but always between "noticeably" and "significantly" better than the ADSL2+/AnnexM setup I've just replaced (which over the last two years had reliable sync rates between 11 and 12Mbit downstream and 1.5 to 1.6Mbit up) - I've not analysed this with any rigour yet so the variation I see could be down to my testing methods and limits at the remote ends.

Which FTTC service is best for the criteria I asked about?

If truly unlimited is a must then that rules out a few of the options. Remember that "unlimited" is pretty much always "unlimited with fair use policy" and/or "unlimited with various forms of traffic shaping". Depending on your needs both of these bits of small print may be no problem to you, but it is worth talking to people who use the ISPs you are considering to be more sure you are going to get the performance you expect.

I left Be to move to FTTC, but other than them not offering FTTC I had no complaint over the 2.5 years I was using their network. Their claim of unshaped and unthrottled traffic does seem to be true, and I am a fairly heavy user of various protocols at times (http(s) and bittorrent mainly, but some bulk over SSH and OpenVPN too). Aside from when I saturated my line interactive performance was always very good too indicating they don't have significant congestion issues within their network. Good "interactive" performance is a strong benefit if you regularly use SSH interactively, or use VPNs for access to remote sites, or use the line for gaming. They have committed to trialling FTTC but only "by the end of the year" so it may be some time before their product based on that is available in your area, and it is unlikely that it will be a cheap option (though as you currently pay £79/mo, I expect it will be cheaper than you are currently being charged).

I ruled out some providers as I think they resell FTTC service from Entanet which I had problems with for ADSL service before moving to Be. I'll not rake over those old coals here though (search the forums back around late 2008 and early 2009 if interested) as things may have changed a lot since then.

One thing to consider with BT is the 18-month minimum signup, where most of the over providers offer a 12-month minimum term instead.

FYI: I've gone for Andrews and Arnold, which doesn't fit your "unlimited" requirement especially if you expect to use an amount of downstream bandwidth between 0900 and 1800 monday-to-friday, but their off-peak rates are not bad at all, their carry-over and over-use policies are unusually flexible, upstream bandwidth is unmetered at all times (with a generic "fair use" clause as is usual), they seem to take an attitude similar to Be regarding shaping and throttling, take providing an unfiltered network seriously, and if you are a future-thinking technical type or want to host server services off your line there are other benefits (free IPv4 address allocation, as long as you can justify the number you need (I was allocated a /29 block with no difficulty), and native dual-stack support for IPv6 (everyone is allocated a /64 block initially in that addressing scheme with more easily available)). I've only been signed up a few days myself, though I've been impressed by support response thus far (there was a problem on my line late Friday evening), the control panel provided to manage your account and monitor bandwidth use is impressively detailed, and I know people (whose technical experience and opinions I rate highly) that have used their services for years and recommend them.