FTTC available, which isp?

FTTC is finally available in my area according to the bt website availability checker, now I'm trying to decide if I should go with bt infinity or sky(once their fttc broadband becomes available, 12th april according to their website).

couple of days back went on the bt website to check the fttc availability, was previously saying 31st march but that day it said 30 june.

went to the samknows website and noticed that sky had become available at my local exchange(tho no mention of when it happened), so was thinking of moving to sky unlimited + talk (as already have sky tv). having read that the fttc option will be available soon had a google which led me to https://fibre.sky.com/shop/broadband-talk/broadband-... which mentions the 12th april date.

checked the bt availability checker again today it says that bt infinity is now available in my area, so not sure what the issue was couple of days back with it changing to 30th june,

to cut a long story short basically as I asked at the start which one should I go with, bt infinity or sky unlimited broadband fibre + talk(and have a single bill rather than a sky tv bill and bt phone + broadband bill)? in terms of speed, reliability and customer service which of the 2 is better?

I understand your dilemma, but as no-one has "sky unlimited broadband fibre" I don't see how anyone can advise you. There are some Sky triallists of course, but they won't know how things will be under developing commercial load by July/August, when of course the Olympics start as well.

At the moment Infinity gets extremely few complaints and is excellent value for money. The "unlimited" option does appear to be so.

Who are you with at the moment anyway? Any reason for not taking their FTTC product? Or would you have been with Sky long ago if it had been available? Except it might have been, so you weren't particularly bothered.

Re the date changes, you hit two effects. First, because it wasn't live the date would have been put back a quarter in the last few days, along with all other March dates, and second the dates tend to go haywire during the final few days before live - sometimes even disappearing altogether. 'Tis history though .

Infinity is fine. On Sky's history so will be their fibre products. There is also the option of BT Business Infinity, with UK support and reported higher priority within the BT backhaul systems. (Prices ex vat). Available on a domestic line not just business ones.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 30-Mar-12 08:30:41)

The 12th April is the Sky launch, and on that day will only be available in areas where the BT website checker says you can get FTTC

Which is better, hard to say as no real users on Sky yet.

currently with adsl24 on their home 30 package, my exchange got 21cn enabled in febuary but still only get ~2mb down tho upload doubled from ~300kbs to ~600kbs(tho according to the bt speed test the ip profile for up is 832kbs but the router doesn't sync higher than 670kbs).

couple of reasons for not taking adsl24s fttc, firstly its more expensive and secondly we're looking at moving houses(dependent of if/when we sell the house). looking at the t&c for the fttc packages its a 12 month contract which can't be moved from 1 address to another, so can't upgrade to the fttc package as its uncertain if we'll be still at this address in 12 months time(tho the way things are going we might be, but can't take the risk).

going to bt from adsl24 is just a case of getting the mac from adsl24 and giving it to bt, but what about going to sky as I've read that sky doesn't always ask for the mac and doesn't need it any way but then how would adsl24 you've moved?
the bt business infinity is £42/month for the unlimited option or £36/month for the 100gb option(prices including vat if my maths is correct going by the prices listed on the bt website), my parents will be paying for it and doubtful they'll look at the business package over the home package. plus don't you need to have a home business or something to get the business one?

if sky had been available at the exchange ages ago would have most likely gone with them, been at the current address for little under 9yrs and have had sky tv from the start.

have checked over the years to see if sky llu had been enabled at the exchange but its always been a cross next to whenever I've looked on samknows (until recently), the only llu that had been available at the exchange over the last few years has been talktalk(2008).

As a current Sky TV customer who is thinking of leaving Sky altogether, their CS agents have been ringing me regularly to offer me their fibre broadband, obviously hoping to tie me in to their TV again. If I had accepted their first offer of broadband, I would actually be using it now, before it is offered openly to everyone.

However after asking around, there are a few reasons I didn't take Sky up on their offer. One is that I would had to move my telephone line rental to them as well, and I have heard that if I wish to take my line rental back to BT at a future date, this takes quite a while and I could even lose my current telephone number and maybe have some downtime too. Also, their fibre broadband is only just coming out of the test stage so I have no idea how reliable it will be. Plus I felt that because they are really pushing the "unlimited, no traffic shaping" aspect, there is a likelihood that the service will get over run with torrent users in the future and suffer a slowdown. That's only a guess, I have no proof of that of course. The other reason was that Sky apparently insist you use their router which I would not want to do - although I suspect there are ways and means round this.

BT Infinity sounded good and I was tempted as it is an unlimited package. I did hear that there is a lot of traffic management and that some people had had problems using Spotify on their service. But I understand that there a lot of happy users on Infinity. Another option from BT is their Business Infinity which promised priority connection at peak times and that sounded useful but was quite a lot more expensive. An unlimited option is available for an extra £5 a month.

Finally I settled on Plusnet and so far am very happy with their service. 120GB allowance (although I am hoping they will increase this at some time) excellent and reliable connection, and I pay an extra £5 a month for their prioritised connection too at peak times. Helpful staff, and I can use my own Airport Extreme router without breaking their terms and conditions. For the time being I have left my line rental with BT but plan on moving it to Plusnet soon.

Not sure if any of these ramblings are helpful to you, but good luck with your choice and I hope it all goes well for you. If it helps, 4 of my neighbours use the standard BT Infinity and one neighbour uses Business Infinity. All of them are happy with the service so far.

Edited by deleted (Sat 31-Mar-12 17:26:22)

Sku just upgraded there network by 7000Gbs

can't see much slow downs happing.

Edited by epyon (Sun 01-Apr-12 01:17:36)

Actually sky have back haul issues on quite a few exchanges ATM.

Granted they are fixing things unlike other providers. When virgin have back haul issues they often just leave it.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Actually sky have back haul issues on quite a few exchanges ATM.

Im on Sky LLU and there's no way of knowing if my exchange is affected is there ?

I know the BT Wholesale checker doesn't work for obvious reasons !

Affected exchanges here:

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Broadband-Setup-Cabl...

I was definitely affected too - although my exchange was not listed. I was told that I was affected due to being daisy chained via an affected exchange.

Also here http://servicestatus.sky.com/serviceupdates

and http://www.sky.com/helpcentre/servicestatus/messaged...

Hope this helps. Are you having issues?

I agonised over this problem for months. Decision time came last week when my cabinet was enabled for FTTC. I contacted BT but having got 2 different answers to the same set of questions (they couldn't understand that my TT phone line was not part of an unbundled service), I eventually opted for a quiet life and I will be staying with my small ISP (IDNet) for at least the next 12 months. One e-mail to IDNet: confirmation/booking by return of post and a clear invoice followed. The downside is that independent ISPs offer their products at a premium but the upside is that, generally, they run very good networks.

PS I have no link to IDNet other than being a customer of theirs for 5 years.