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[bbnovice]

Hi everybody:

BT are trying to seduce me.

Infinity Broadband is now available in my area. I put my name down some time ago as somebody who was potentially interested in joining this service and now they are wooing me big time – phone calls, promotional letters, the whole 9 yards.

The BT sales people who have phoned say they guarantee I can get 30-40Mb download. I do not live too far from the BT fibre cabinets so I have no reason to doubt what they say.

The financial deal being offered is pretty good, and to cut a long story short, the monthly cost would not be materially different from the “up to 8Mb” (actually 4Mb in practice) ADSL service I get from Virgin National.

The biggest drawback that I forsee is that I would have to relinquish my Virgin email address and also those addresses linked to it. Because I have been with Virgin National almost from the outset.  I “own” some very unique and memorable email addresses. They cannot be transferred to BT. Also because my family have been Virgin users for so long the email addresses have been used as account names when required by third party forums etc. I have investigated this further and was staggered to discover that the inventory of references to the Virgin email addresses (for the whole family) is 11 pages long. A move to BT would therefore involve a significant migration task. Totally my fault but a salutary warning.

I have had connection problems in the recent past due to issues in the OR network but these have now been resolved (finger crossed!!). In my personal experience Virgin Customer service and technical support has improved significantly over the last 18 months or so. Before then I would have migrated to just about anybody just to avoid having to deal with Virgin.   

Moving to BT also means that that I will have to junk my trusty Netgear kit and use BT Home Hub. This involves wireless which I have avoided in the past due to reliability failures.   

Finally I do not really need the additional speed as used for email and general web browsing, No music or film downloading.

So the question is should I migrate to BT Infinity? Top sum up the issues from my perspective:

(1)   Financial – seems an OK deal from BT.
(2)   Migration from Virgin -  looks like a bit of a lengthy task but is no deal breaker. Maybe should be migrate to a neutral email system anyway in order to leave future options open.
(3)   Speed. - BT Infinity much better but not no overwhelming user requirement
(4)   Network Reliability – Have experienced some typical ADSL issues (eg HR faults in the network) but presently the network is reliable and stable (but I would add this is on a fixed/capped speed service)   
(5)   Customer Service and technical support – Virgin is much, much better recently but not perfect.  Have no personal experience of BT, so don’t know
(6)   Equipment – would have to ditch Netgear wired router/modem and wired connectivity within the house (which has proven reliability) for BT Home Hub and wireless connectivity. Wireless not good in this property in my experience and I know nothing of BT kit.


So what is your advice?

[waltergmw]

Hi BBN,

Pace, RP but I would definitely stay where you are for the time being. However the following are just my personal observations and it's you who have to decide ! Others may have different views ?

1.  It is a new technology for BT and they have a massive learning curve, as many will do as well, for a very large number of staff, and you are not in a hurry.

2.  You'll see elsewhere here that BT are still experimenting with their modems (but the modems do have an ethernet connection as well as wireless. Also it won't be the standard home hub.)

3.  It's possible that BT prices might come down.

4.  You can eventually go to other ISPs that sell the BT wholesale version of a FTTC service (E.g. Zen for a better technical support but probably more expensive or Plusnet with limitations, reasonable tech support and probably much cheaper.

5.  Before you do decide to jump ship ask Virgin whether they will be selling the FTTC product later, then you could keep the addresses. (Note also that I believe  Virgin e-mail are actually hidden Google mail accounts, but I suspect the virginmedia part is only available to them but it might just be possible to get VMs cheapest service so you can keep the addresses.

6.  Let the Gurus help sort BT out for some time !

7.. (In jest) When people get seduced they sometimes wake up with a splitting headache and can't remember what they might have done the night before !!!!!

Kind regards,
Walter

[burakkucat]

As Walter has already covered the points you have raised, my only rhetorical question is: If you are content with your current service then why change it?

In other words if it isn't broken, then why try to fix it?

[UncleUB]

Its all too easy to be swayed by financial incentives to 'jump ship'

So ask yourself is cost more important rather than reliability/good support......I know what my choice would be.

Can't comment about Virgin,but BT's support is mostly off shore (Indian)

[bbnovice]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback.

Walter - yes, Virgin email is now based on the Gmail platform but only paying Virgin customers can use the "virgin.net" addresses. Virgin have also said that they have no plans at all to launch a FTTC product.

UncleUB - You are right about the quality/price equation, and I'm not going to migrate on cost grounds alone.

I think your replies sort of reinforce whats in my mind. I've no real need to migrate for additional speed so, for the time being, its possibly a case of the "better the devil you know".