moving! New pad long ago had a BT connection. BT Infinity (fibre bband) is in the area.
Please if I go BT, what do I get? (or am likely to get), viz:
TIA
probably.
if its Infinity, ther wont be ADSL at all, there will be a BT supplied wireless router probably. That plugs into whatever they supply
it isnt. BT do not provide TV services except over the internet or satellite or terrestrial bbroadcast AFAIK
IIUC BT Infinity is simply BT retail's branded version of Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). You can buy the same technology from other ISPs as well
- BT wholesale provision the same thing in each case.
Yup its a normal POTS telephone line from the cabinet in the street to the property.
Yup. Its VDSL rather than ADSL, but much the same arrangement applies. You need a filter (this is a posher version of the one used for ADSL) and it fits in the master socket as an extra layer. BT openreach fit this when the service is ordered.
That allows the normal phone line to be split off from the VDSL signal. That is fed to a suitable modem (typically supplied by BT regardless of who you order from), and that in turn connects to your router if you have one suitable, or again often supplied by your ISP as part of the deal.
Its not. BT don't provide a cable TV service as such. They provide a streamed / downloaded service with PVR so it connects to the ethernet / wifi side of things.
The fibre link is only to a cabinet in your street or whatever. Still cable into your house.
Piss poor customer service, the individual but wholly owned "companies" within BT Group don't appear to be able to talk to each other internally in any sensible manner.
I think the NTE has to be changed or at least the face plate.
Infinity is delivered by VDSL (or similar acronym), BT supply a "home hub" that has built in WiFi and hopefully at least one ethernet socket so you can connect properly into your LAN.
Yes, that is on the copper pair that connects your premises to the cabinet where the fibre terminates. That copper pair then runs to the exchange as it always did to provide POTS. Note the Marketing of Infinity uses the magic words "up to". The speed you get is dependant on the distance an condition of that copper pair. I believe they target a minimum of 15 Mbps but I bet there is no gurantee.
TV is delivered over the internet. How that dribbles out of the VDSL box or if you have a seperate "TV box" that sits on the LAN I'm not sure. Not usre if you can record one channel and watch others around the house.
Google is your friend ...
and, according to a BT spokesperson, who came to our last Parish Council meeting, copper is still used for the telephone service from the exchange. the fibre connection is bridged onto your local bit of copper for High Speed internet.
You only get the fibre if you pay extra for it. Your current ADSL service is not affected in any way.
You don't have to get your High Speed internet from BT. Once it is available from your exchange, you can stay with your current ISP and pay them the extra. Unlike those on Virgin Fibre whho are stuck with Virgin.
We rented a house recently that had a "BT Vision" box, which was hooked into the broadband (using Ethernet over power line, spit) and had a TV aerial plugged into it. It seemed to do much everything a PVR could, watch one, record another, pause live TV, series recording, watch any of the "catchup" services (iPlayer, 4OD and so on) and also do pay movies on demand. I was quite impressed with how well it worked (especially given that I was on Anglesey.)
As John says, Openreach or their contractor Kellys will fit a VDSL adaptor plate to the existing NTE5 master socket in your property. The supplied modem plugs into this which then feeds your router. The phone also plugs into the NTE5 socket as at present. What you do with signal after it leaves the VDSL modem is up to you - your ISP will be able to supply a suitable router if you don't already have one. The costs of the connection should be included in the Fibre package you buy from your ISP.
You should be aware that the speed estimate you are given by your ISP has the potential to be very inaccurate. The data for all estimates is sourced from BT Wholesale and does not take into account variables such as line length from the Fibre cabinet to your property or whether or not the wiring is aluminium rather than copper. Both these factors can have a marked impact on the actual download and upload speeds. According to several Openreach engineers I have spoken with speed will start to fall off much over 1 kilometre from the cabinet and the presence of aluminium wiring can be a major headache. Apparently Ofcom are aware of this but progress in improving matters is painfully slow.
In my case the estimate from Plusnet gave 31 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload, but the actual speeds have turned out to be around 7 Mbps down and just under 0.5 Mbps up. The fibre connection was made in mid-August and since then there have been 7 visits by Openreach and contact with 16 different bods at Plusnet in an effort to get some improvement in the service. I am now waiting for another Openreach visit. From some digging around online this situation does not appear to be that frequent but neither is it isolated.
BT are forbidden by law from offering any different treatment to their wholly owned subsidiary Plusnet than they give to any other ISP. This isrigidly enforced much to the frustration of customers and staff of Plusnet.
The NTE5 is now changed as a matter of course by BT/OR engineers to one suitable for FTTC connections. The components are of much higher specifaction and the design is much improved.
The Home Hubs are only suppied to BT Broadband customers. Customers of other ISPs get a box that deals with the VDSL signals and provides an
1000 ethernet port to connect to the custmer's router.The length of the copper pair from the exchange to the cabinet has no effect on the broadband signal which is carried by fibre to the cabinet. The length and condition of the copper pair from the cabinet does affect the broadband signal and speed. Given that a large percentage of customers will be less than half a kilometre for the cabinet speeds should be quite high. Certainly they should be adequate for most people's needs.
In my experience the predicted speeds quoted by BT are seriously pessimistic. That does not mean that they always are but in the case of the twenty or so installations I have been involved in none were below the prediction and most were at least 50% higher. No guarantees of course.
On Thursday 10 October 2013 17:12 Peter Crosland wrote in uk.d-i-y:
BT own Pusnet? Jeebus...
I was one of the "2000" who was kicked of Plusnet in 2001
(There were 2 culls, week or two apart).
Before BT bought it. In many cases they were probably justified in their action.
In article , charles scribeth thus
Yes stuck and liking it, it just works and very well too:)...
That probably depends where you are.
In message , rbel@?.?.invalid writes
My son has BT Infinity and is very happy with the speed.
However, on 3 occasions in the last few months, he has turned up in our lounge asking what the password is for my router because his has "gone off".
It uses the existing copper from the box. The BT man and I both tried to find where the cable came in and whether there was anything strange hanging across it, but we failed. There are no poles and he is about
300yards across what normal people would regard as fields from the box.
We get ADSL from TalkTalk, the speed is poor due to the distance from the exchange (said to be 3.8 Km), we get about 3.9 - 4.5 Mb/sec but at least the connection has proved to be very dependable. The last time a Bt engineer visited we enquired about fibre optic since Bt was advertising the exchange as being enabled yet on all the Isp's websites our line is shown as not fibre -optic capable. He explained that lines on our small estate were cabled direct to the exchange 3.8 Km's away so there are is no intervening cabinet, so for the moment-no Fibre Optic.
Previously we did have Fibre Optic broadband from Virgin. We had their fastest domestic service promoted as 130 Mb/sec. What they actually delivered was about 16 !
DerekG
Something wrong there then. The 30 meg service we get is that all the time and sometimes it registrars as 32 odd.!..
Don't think they've ever said they can do 130 meg tho..
Zetnet did much the same to me - then charged me £75 to move my domain away from them. And I didn't leave the ISDN up all the time - I just used it quite a bit.
I went to AAISP and never regretted it.
Did he try a simple re-boot by switching off the power? Mine has responded to that on a couple of occasions since I've had it - but then so did the old system.
Probably *a lot* extra. How much are Kingston Communications charging for FTTP? Mind you the overhead installations I saw of that the other day where pig ugly, Every place now has two "dropwires" running to it, one for the FTPP and another for POTS...
AFAIK ADSL and VDSL (FTTC) cannot co-exist on the same bit of copper. If you switch to FTTC you need a replacement modem that speaks VDSL and your ADSL service will cease.
But the copper local end is still BT's and maintained by BT Openreach.
About the same distance here but we get around 6 Mbps on ali cable but heavy ali cable. Over the years and numerous faults I think all the joints have been remade as the speed has slowly crept up from less than what you have.
Yep that is also the case in most rural areas. BT have announced the plans for our exchnage, the single cabinet that there is will have a fibre box next to it and another will be installed outside the exchange, not a great deal of use for the two villages both over 4 miles from the exchange... Still the community FTTP has now passed
300+ odd households in the town and customer installs are taking place.This would be the revised all new definition of "fibre optic broadband" then as in FTTC (or exchange) rather than FTTP. I do wish the marketing would call FTTC what it *is* not what just sounds impressive. If you ain't got a bit of glass coming through the wall you *haven't* got "fibre optic broadband".
I can see this FTTC coming home to roost in 10 years time when 20 odd Mbps just won't be enough. At least a bit of glass can run at 1 Gbps with suitable kit attached and do that over a PON. Such kit is available now and at prices acceptable for mass domestic installation.
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