Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Chris P Duck on February 13, 2016, 02:31:51 PM
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Hello all
Currently on a long line ADSL2+ and now have the option to connect to FTTC (top of my road). Ive lost touch with what's available and finding it a bit confusing TBH.
Long story short, I had a nightmare with BT whilst on max etc and swore to only use smaller slightly more expensive business type ISPs for customer service and supposedly better business products.
On the old MAX/ 2+ there were low contention business offers and "normal" connections, is this still the case with FTTC? Would I notice a difference between a business product and a residential one ie high traffic slowdowns, shaping etc.?
Happy to pay a bit more for service but don't want to pay for a "business" service I dont really need.
Finally, any suggestions based on the above? With Timico at the moment for BB, BT line rental at a rather pricey £19 for 4.5meg and £17 rental evening/weekend..
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If your estimate given by the DSL checker http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome is quite high, you probably won't notice any sort of slowdown. There are plenty of offerings out there for cheap telephone lines e.g. Pulse8 and then you could get a broadband only package from Plusnet, IDnet, Zen, etc, or go for an all-in-one from BT, Plusnet, Talktalk, Sky etc.
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(https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs11.postimg.org%2Fkspo95n1f%2F121q.jpg&hash=0e099a2a02605e753f453d32a10b199c1aaea127)
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If your estimate given by the DSL checker http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome is quite high, you probably won't notice any sort of slowdown.
Not necessarily, there are quite a few problems with congestion being reported over on the BT forums. Sync speed won't help if there's not enough backhaul.
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Talk to Andrews and Arnold, see http://aa.net.uk/broadband-home1.html
You can read about them on Ispreview too.
I'll be happy to answer questions, as of course will they and so will their existing customers who are available to chat to on IRC : http://aa.net.uk/kb-irc.html
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Andrews and Arnold are dedicated to banishing congestion and making sure you get full speed according to whatever you line can deliver. They have a monitoring programme checking congestion within their own network and within partner networks (BTW or TalkTalk Wholesale) :
http://clueless.aa.net.uk/congestion.cgi
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A couple of questions about you yourself: Would you consider yourself a what low, medium, very-high user? Are you out of the house in the day?
For something you mentioned earlier : Does it drive you wild having to talk to idiot customer service staff?
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Going from a perfect 4.5 Mbps to an even heavily congested 80 Mbps won't be a problem.
However I don't see any congestion anyway :)
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Going from a perfect 4.5 Mbps to an even heavily congested 80 Mbps won't be a problem.
However I don't see any congestion anyway :)
Again, not necessarily. Sub 1Mbps speeds are being reported by folks with 80 Mbps sync speed. It doesn't appear to be hugely widespread but it does exist, seems to be mainly in Scotland.
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I take reports like that on the BT Community forum with a pinch of salt. Anyway, it's just a matter of time before BT fixes the congestion or it's usually some local fault anyway.
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I see regular local reports of congestion within the BTW network where AA have had a go at BT about problems with particular exchanges or a certain pipe somewhere or some hardware that needs to be swapped out.
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Thanks for the replies so far, will try and do some additional research on ISPs mentioned.
A couple of questions about you yourself: Would you consider yourself a what low, medium, very-high user? Are you out of the house in the day?
For something you mentioned earlier : Does it drive you wild having to talk to idiot customer service staff?
Currently average about 40gb/month, mainly streaming content. Would possibly stream more if the service was up to it! Not sure what that is classed as.
House is occupied most days but the useage tends to be evenings.
Yes, I can't abide being passed around endless departments and pinged back and forth between India and the UK who contradict each other and seemingly know less than I do!
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Let us know how you get on.
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Just saying hi Chris. Long time no see hope that you are well. ^-^
Currently average about 40gb/month, mainly streaming content. Would possibly stream more if the service was up to it! Not sure what that is classed as.
Sounds similar to mine, usage shot up after getting fttc, although that could in part be due to much more streaming content available and being able to use HD. I dont know what my monthly usage is now as the Plusnet VMBU is broken and doesnt record my usage (they say doesnt matter as Im on unlimited), but I think last time I looked it was about 80.
As regards to congestion, there has been some localised issues with the BT SVLANs, but touch wood most of those seem to get resolved fairly quickly. It doesnt take them months like it used to with the old VPs. I used to pay a bit more for max premium but have never bothered when on fttc.
I have seen some issues which seem more related to the BTw MSILs (manchester and a couple of the london ones) those took a bit longer to be fixed. The worst episodes used to be the usual peak evening time when my speeds could go down to 20-30Mbps. That said multiple threaded stuff would go through at line rate, so it wasn't even obvious on some speedtesters.
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So, is there such a thing as "low contention" business fibre products and "normal" as there is on ADSL?
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So, is there such a thing as "low contention" business fibre products and "normal" as there is on ADSL?
I'm with Eclipse business http://www.eclipse.net.uk/products/connect/broadband/
tell them TICKMIKE sent you and you should get a good deal with them. :)
I'm on a ADSL2 long line, they have a uk Technical service which is very good , it takes them about 4 sec to answer the phone :o.
Eclipse get a lot of awards for there services.
I been with them for years, I can not fault them ( although in my case I do have some local problems on my line which they are looking into with me).
Reliable, no problem with contention, free usage after 11 pm :)
I pay about £17 for my ADSL2, free phone calls, up to 100 email address's, free uk domain name also free Eclipse domain name.
I still have my BT line but get free phone calls from Eclipse with my package.
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I meant is that the case on fibre ;)
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ADSL2+ Attn 46.5db/27.7db | Target SN6db
I'll be watching this thread carefully to see how you get as your line appears to be worse than mine and when my cabinet was enabled a few months ago I was advised by my ISP that I would be SLOWER on FTTC than on my current ADSL 2+ package and they recommended I stayed with the ADSL 2+.
Weird that my line stats appear to be better than yours on Adsl 2+ but your predicted FTTC speed is great - I guess you must be much closer to your cabinet than I am to mine!
Advice I got on here was very helpful, ultimately I decided to stick with ADSL 2+ after was told I had to commit to a minimum contract of 12 months of FTTC by Zen.
I hope your upgrade goes well :)
Chunks
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Is that Zen who advised you to stay on ADSL......Something weird is going on at Zen.
They are offering 6 months free on ADSL2+ but (over on TBB) there seems to be niggling problems on FTTC with slow downloads high latency etc.
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Advice I got on here was very helpful, ultimately I decided to stick with ADSL 2+ after was told I had to commit to a minimum contract of 12 months of FTTC by Zen.
There are other ISPs who offer 1 month FTTC contracts - Pulse 8 (https://pulse8broadband.co.uk/) for example - if you wanted to try FTTC and switch back to ADSL if it didn't suit you
No personal experience of Pulse 8 but there seems to be a lot of positive feedback on TBB.
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Advice I got on here was very helpful, ultimately I decided to stick with ADSL 2+ after was told I had to commit to a minimum contract of 12 months of FTTC by Zen.
There are other ISPs who offer 1 month FTTC contracts - Pulse 8 (https://pulse8broadband.co.uk/) for example - if you wanted to try FTTC and switch back to ADSL if it didn't suit you
No personal experience of Pulse 8 but there seems to be a lot of positive feedback on TBB.
Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack Chris P Duck's thread. Yes Zen advised me not to upgrade (downgrade?). I will definitely checkout Pulse 8, I probably need to phone them up thought as their speed estimator says the usual :
(https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi43.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fe352%2FJolltax%2FCrap%2FHiSpeed_zps9epvkvcn.jpg&hash=54d79a15ecac8d6d9b3f2909bbd548e75257a2cd)
I currently get 1080/9100 on ADSL 2+. I'll post separately if I decide to do anything and try not to clutter up Chrises thread any further as I know its bad manners.
o7
Chunks
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ADSL2+ Attn 46.5db/27.7db | Target SN6db
Weird that my line stats appear to be better than yours on Adsl 2+ but your predicted FTTC speed is great - I guess you must be much closer to your cabinet than I am to mine!
Yes, cabinet is pretty much a good stones throw away :) Just waiting on a response from Timico (not holding my breath) as they promised to investigate a possible fault this week. Gut feeling is that they are just telling me what I want to hear having recently complained about poor customer service.
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I've had a an email from Timico today "All our fibre services are business grade services, charged at residential prices"
So what is business FTTC and what is residential FTTC
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Talk to Andrews and Arnold, see http://aa.net.uk/broadband-home1.html
You can read about them on Ispreview too.
I'll be happy to answer questions, as of course will they and so will their existing customers who are available to chat to on IRC : http://aa.net.uk/kb-irc.html
They are very good,been with them 18 months now on ADSL which gives me (on a good day)just under 3meg.Our exchange is finally getting ready for FTTC and is in the beta testing stage so as soon as I can I will ;D ...Not cheap though(but neither is a 30 year old tawny port) ;D
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Apologies for repeating...
So is there really "business" FTTC and "residential" FTTC connections in a similar fashion to normal/low contention ADSL?
Also, I note my ISP uses the TalkTalk LLU in my exchange, am I right in assuming a move to FTTC would be an entirely Openreach connection or would TT have some kind of input on it? I'm sure I read something somewhere about TT managed FTTC.
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Apologies for repeating...
So is there really "business" FTTC and "residential" FTTC connections in a similar fashion to normal/low contention ADSL?
Also, I note my ISP uses the TalkTalk LLU in my exchange, am I right in assuming a move to FTTC would be an entirely Openreach connection or would TT have some kind of input on it? I'm sure I read something somewhere about TT managed FTTC.
The FTTC equipment in the cabinet is controlled by Openreach. Each FTTC Cabinet has lots of bandwidth back to the exchange so you should not suffer any contention at this point.
As your ISP uses TalkTalk LLU, Openreach would hand off the traffic at the exchange to Talktalk to deal with (any connection you experience will be when the traffic is either on TalkTalk's backhaul or at your ISP)
Both BT Wholesale and Talktalk offer a mix of business/residential services - they can tag IP traffic belonging to business lines as having a higher priority within their own network.
In general, the comments I have heard about other ISPs using Talktalk Business for backhaul have been decent - its when you use TalkTalk as an ISP directly things seem to not go as well..
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When I moved to my current ISP I went from a 6 meg ADSL synch (21cn I believe) to a 4.5 meg synch which is on TT LLU. I can only assume this speed loss was to do with the move so I'm also wondering if TT being involved in a FTTC connection may also cause a lower synch...
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No the sync is between you and the cabinet, owned by Openreach so any ISP you use would get the same sync speed.
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Thanks ;)
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No the sync is between you and the cabinet, owned by Openreach so any ISP you use would get the same sync speed.
Just out of interest, I typed my line number into the AAISP site and the result says I have TalkTalk FTTC available?
"Estimated standard ADSL download speed 3,293kb/s to 7,914kb/s.
Estimated Annex-M speed 1,000kb/s Up, and 3,883kb/s down.
Talk Talk FTTC VDSL services are available."
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It's still the same Openreach connection between you and the cabinet. It probably means that TalkTalk have a GEA link at your exchange to their own backhaul.
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A&A retail a service using TTBusiness for the back-haul.
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ADSL2+ Attn 46.5db/27.7db | Target SN6db
I'll be watching this thread carefully
Against my better judgement and after swearing years ago I would not deal with BT again, I signed up for Infinity 38/10 unlimited.
getting full speed, everything delivered and activated on time, customer service has been good so far. They have promised a free upgrade to the new option 1 speed in the next few days. All good so far...
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for info
(https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.speedtest.net%2Fresult%2F5288850058.png&hash=4614e05555c1cfd7e38e5effb58dbcd5effe39f3)
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Your sig still says you're with Timco ;)
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Your sig still says you're with Timco ;)
Thank god I'm not...
Also says I'm on ADSL, will update, ta!
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As BT said they would, they regraded my line overnight and emailed to let me know. Over wifi, now getting about 46/10 and 51/10 wired.
(https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.speedtest.net%2Fresult%2F5298458092.png&hash=88682e2c2942fd74201066b0b4e604ce17533055)
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Glad your seeing decent speeds Chris P Duck, yes you must be pretty near to a fttc cabinet and have a decent copper line to it.
I upgraded to Zen fibre 1 without doing any research & believing the advertised speeds. On activation zen sent email saying service was live & giving estimated speeds of 15/0.8 Mbps, hardly better than my adsl2 that was stable at 10/1.2 Mbps. I asked to go back to adsl cos I didn't think the service was worth the extra, only if I paid the early termination charge! I pointed out that their advertise estimated speeds were misleading. Their response was that their figures came from BT!
So did the research as suggested on this site, found which cabinet I was on & what the line length is. Turns out I'm connected to a cab 1400m away not the one 100m away, moreover BT won't connect me to it. In upgrading to fibre I've only got rid of 485m of old cable to the exchange.
Initial syncs were 22/1.8 meg which fell over the next two weeks to 13/0.8 meg. A series of quiet line tests soon got to the cause, intermittent line noise. Three BT engineers later, new master socket & back plate, a change of one wire to the bottom of the street (removing approx60m of aluminium cable with copper) & gel (?) connectors at the top of the pole has improved the rates to 20/1.1 meg.
Root cause of the poor speed was given by the first engineer, sections of aluminium cable along the way to the cabinet & BT would replace it cos of the cost!
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What were the advertised speeds that you believed?
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What were the advertised speeds that you believed?
Dray, 20 to 27 down, 3.3 up. BT Fibre was same but with guaranteed min of 17 down with no up given.