Broadband with added fibre?

[Bill]

There was a man down a BT hole at the top of our road so I walked up and asked him what they were doing. They are laying the fibre optic cable and the roadside boxes are due to go in next week.

My current download speed is 400kbps on the Demon 8Mbps system I'm paying for and have had erratic service with, so I think I'll be forced to change. I can't stand any more days on the line to pleasant but useless Indians.

If I were to go to BT for the same price I think I'd lose:

1. Static IP address (this used to be essential for work, probably not now)
2. Unlimited email addresses, so I'd have to use GMail ones or find out how to use the 1&1 Internet domain I've registered. I really like the unlimited email addresses as I can stream different subjects/people to different directories.
3. News, so I'd have to buy a decent news service
4. Unlimited access with a vague "fair usage policy" with Demon would come down to 40GB per month with BT. This is less than Demon and many other suppliers' limited downloads. Top price would remove the limit, I think.
5. All the contacts that I forget to tell the new email address.

I hope I'd gain "up to 40Mbps".

The BT system seems to still involve the master socket, so must be on the same wires from the box to the house. Is this right? We would have to have our master socket moved to near some power for their modem.

My usage is erratic, but I often have to download large files eg Microsoft OS's and audio and some video files. I "support" some older mainly retired home worker friends who do a lot of audio and bits of video that they produce and I try to help them with the technical side of their digital editing and management. Hence quite large files. I often have to retire for the night leaving a file downloading.

Does anyone have any advice, bearing in mind small pension and likely raging inflation in the next year or two? Should I go BT or try to continue on what I have? I really like Turnpike and hate every other email/news client I've tried..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Go to another ISP like TDnet.

time you did that.

i use a free one.

idnet are 30GB IIRC in te service is am on.

should have got that domain working 10 yrs ago. I did. :-)

[John Williamson]

IME, they don't change your IP address until you reboot the router, but I daresay they do a fixed IP sevice if you ask them.

You're allowed up to 20 aliases per mailbox.

news.btinternet.com carries a good selection of text groups and some binaries, but retention's not briliant.

Or use one of the free servers.

It does. "Fair use policy applies" or some such wording.

Can't help there, but there are probably ways to keep your old box open and forward everything to BT.

Yup, but it's probably easier and cheaper to run a power extension.

Up to you,obviously, but I'm happy with BT, and occasionally make use of their offer of unlimited free access to BT Fon and BT Openzone wifi access points while I'm out and about. The option I'm on also includes a Skype-type IP phone, so international calls and calls to other users are included in your broadband allowance.

It's also helped in the past that as it's *all* their equipment, they can't play support centre ping-pong.

[Skipweasel]

Often a bonus. They're the ones who keep forwarding you "funny" emails.

[Huge]

And BT spying on you with Phorm.

[Skipweasel]

This is reassuring - from Wikipedia's page on Phorm...

"Financial losses

The company made a loss of $32.1 million in 2007, a loss of $49.8 million in 2008 and a loss of $29.7 million in 2009. By the end of 2009 the company had lost more than $100 million, with no perceivable revenue stream."

[Mark]

Ditch your ISP and go with a decent one. AFAIK you don't /have/ to go with BT to get FTTC.

[tony sayer]

In article , Bill scribeth thus

I can't see any reason why you can't use your existing service provider over the same lines and plant as we do already. Have you called them, demon that is, and asked them?..

We have services at differing locations and I note that Zen are plugging this new service so if they can do it I rather expect that Demon can.

BTW no need to pay for news look up "Eternal September .org" and Yep!, Turnpike sure is the best news and e-mail client still out there:))..

Hope things improve for you, its a national disgrace this paying for 8 and getting .4

We have virgin Media here, on their own network, and pay for 10 and always get that every time I do a speedtest its 10 Meg on the nail:))...

[Huge]

Splendid news. Thank you.

[Mike Clarke]

him what they were doing.

Your speed is almost certainly due to the state of the BT line between you and the exchange so switching ISP's is unlikely to give you anything faster unless you switch to a system provided by a cable TV company.

After BT have installed fibre to the cabinet then the improved speeds should be available from most ISP's, including Demon but possibly at a higher cost.

But you might want to switch ISP's for other good reasons like features available or quality of support. One way this _might_ influence your download speed is that some ISP's provide a better level of support than others and if your low speed is due to a faulty line they might go the extra mile to chase up BT to sort out line problems.

... and still be stuck with an Indian call centre :-<

Some ISP's still operate UK call centres and some (though not many) of those even employ knowledgeable staff. I've been using PlusNet for several years now and have always been happy with them, support (from their own Sheffield call centre) has been quite good on the few occasions I've needed to contact them.

[Mark]

OR more likely your own internal wiring, which FTTC wont fix.

-

[Mike Clarke]

Yes, though I'd assumed that after "days on the line to pleasant but useless Indians" the OP would have already had to jump through the hoop of removing the faceplate on the master socket and using the test socket to eliminate house wiring as a source of trouble

[Mark]

The problem with that is the BTs bRas profile system, just plugging the router into the test socket will not reset the IP profile unless the ?"pleasant but useless Indians" also request a reset from BTw, or it is left plugged in to the test socket with nothing else that could be causing the low IP profile for anything upto 5days, and then as soon as you reconnect your house side wiring you are back to square one.

-

[Tim Watts]

Does Broadband with added fibre improve your ability to download logs?

[Tim Watts]

Tim Watts ( [e-mail]) wibbled on Tuesday 15 February 2011 14:45:

Which reminds me (with apologies to UserFriendly)

Reasons to never call a server "uranus":

"Hey, I can't access uranus!" "And you never will..."

"I'm having trouble downloading logs from uranus." "Maybe I should eat more fiber..."

"Uranus seems unstable." "I must have been drinking too much coffee.."

"I'm going to boot uranus." "Come over and try it, big fella..."

[Ian Jackson]

I'm also with Demon, and get 1.4Mb/s (down) and 400kb/s (up) from an

8Mb/s service. My understanding is that such speeds are 'par for the course'. I'm about 4 or 5km from the exchange, and my speed is similar to my non-Demon neighbours. And, regardless of which ISP you use, it's still a BT line, so I doubt of changing ISP will make a scrap of difference (assuming Demon are really supplying you with up to 8Mb/s).

As for the house wiring, I reckon that, if the speed coming into the house is already degraded, the state of the house wiring is immaterial.

If BT are actually replacing a clapped-out system with a new one intended to carry both phone and internet, it should not be necessary to change anything when the service improves (unless you change to real FTTC). Although my 1.4Mb/s isn't too bad, I myself am looking forward to the day when my downstream speed becomes something slightly more respectable.

[Mark]

But you can tell if it helps as your sync speed will rise straight away. If this is the case then your internal wiring is likely to be a problem.

[Mark]

I used to get 3M with a line length of 4.8km but nowadays it's closer to 2M. Since all ISPs (unless you go LLU) all use exactly the same cables and kit in the exchange then changing ISPs will make no difference at all*. For long lines ADSL2(+) is not likely to help and may make speeds worse.

I would have thought the opposite. If the signal is strong then any faults in internal wiring would have less effect. If the signal is already very weak it won't take much to kill it completely.

• Unless there is a fault and your new ISP is better at chasing BT.

[Bill]

In message , Mike Clarke writes

Yes, OP here. The faceplate has been removed many, many times each time I've dome the BT speed test that makes you wait after each test. All that proves is that the line speed is up and down. Demon will only accept this test, so just getting the info to them takes days at a time, and then they look from their end and say that it looks good at the moment but that it is saying that it has been intermittent. I never seem to have got them to understand that moving to the master socket and/or trying a different router at my end is bound to look like breaks.

The master socket is on a tiny area of lounge wall in a corner behind a nest of tables that have to be de-interlocked and moved before lying on the floor with an extension cable for the router and laptop across doorways. All the while SWMBO is saying "How long is this going to take" and all the similar phrases that we all know and love. This is why broadband that needs power at the master socket would involve a re-position of the master socket. At lest this would remove any extension wiring from the equation as it could be centralised and the phones all go cordless except the emergency one. . I'm within half a mile of the exchange, and 3 tests just now on a speed tester that doesn't say wait between tests has given results of downstream 0.7, 1.1 and 1.2 Mbps and upstream consistently 0.375. Downstream has been down to double k-figures on one occasion when Demon's Indian said it looked OK.

A friend on U-Net on a different exchange nearby had similarly dreadful speeds, and got a named English liaison person from U-net (= Claranet) to sort it out. It took him weeks and he kept apologising. She just kept saying "I pay for the service - you must supply it and keep it working without expecting me to carry out awkward tests". The last thing I heard was that it had come good when U-Net changed the "supplier" from Tiscali. So I suppose the payment/complaints chain became U-Net, ClaraNet, BT, User instead of U-Net, ClaraNet, Tiscali, BT, User. What a mess. Her BT exchange was just across the road.

AIUI, BT are putting in fibre, but unless I request and pay for a change, I'll be left connected to the current 'service'. I will ring Demon and see what they say. Maybe everyone will move to the new service and the contention ratio on what I have will massively improve.

My experience with free news servers - specifically the Italian one - has not been good when I've run them in parallel with Demon. Many outages.

I have been told that a static IP is an extra £5 pm from BT, which seems expensive. I've also been told that their "unlimited" service has a fair usage policy that is not very well defined.

Thanks to all for the replies.

[Tim Streater]

Yes. Make sure the cable from the master socket to the socket where you connect the router, at least, is in good shape. Ideally that plus another for the emergency phone should be all that's needed these days, everything else is wireless.