BT infinity or Plusnet fibre?

[DamnDeDoubtance]

Mornin,

I currently have my calls with bt and my broadband with plusnet and I am happy with both providers.

As of this week I can get fttc (fibre to the cabinet)

I would have to put all my eggs in one basket and switch my broadband to bt or my calls / line rental to plusnet.

I would love some advice from anyone who uses fibre with either of these providers. Is fibre any faster? I am about 300 yards as the crow flies from our cabinet, that part is still copper so I am concerned that I woould not really gain much.

Is the customer service at bt any good? Plusnet is excellent but I have read some horror stories about them as well.

Any advice would be really appreciated.

Can't you get Virgin? Might be cheaper and certainly faster to get everything through them?

Virgin isn't available here. They are faster as they provide fibre to the premises so you don't have the lag of the last mile still being copper wire.

I don't have fibre, so I can't comment on the speeds, but with BT you'll be on the Indian call centres. I'm a BT customer, my MiL is on PlusNet and I'd choose PlusNet.

It's ironic as bt own plusnet, but let them run themselves.

The customer service is excellent but I have read that it has slipped since they are growing in size.

You don't have to have the line rental with PlusNet even for you to have Fibre. Remember it's Openreach engineers who would be installing whether you are with BT or PN. I don't know exactly what packages you are comparing (up to 40 GB usage or 'unlimited' vs 250 GB) but in general the PN prices are lower and even if you have to pay the installation fee, the difference in price would mean any short term savings with BT would likely cancel out after a while.

I know there's a 50 quid Sainsburys voucher at present but can't help thinking that BT is being a bit sneaky as several of their charges go up early in January 2013. I know PN's fee (for line rental) went up recently, but you can stick with your existing service if you wish. I use Primus for the phone line as it is somewhat cheaper than BT (and I make calls using 1899.com at 5p per call to UK landlines, no matter how long, and from 1p/min for calls abroad).

As an existing customer the installation for Fibre is 25 quid (I think) as I have been looking at getting a second line and fibre (possibly both from PlusNet, though they were offering 3 months for a fiver a month for new customers recently, but no similar deal for loyal existing customer [have been with them for 8 years or so, apart from a while when there was no landline in one property I lived in a while back]). As Primus charges less for line rental and only 59 (vs 49 by PN) for a new line, I may get my second line from Primus and then add Fibre when service is available (postponed in this area from September to December).

As for customer service, any growing ISP sometimes has complaints, and PN is no different (though still regularly winning awards). If you look at the PlusNet section on the Thinkbroadband.com forum, you'll see some complaints, but there's also a small group of PN staff in tech support who try to sort out long-standing complaints. It's often the case someone posts there with their complaints when something has gone massively wrong, but the staff do (from time to time) acknowledge when something could have been handled better, and sometimes can offer goodwill in the form of discounts, or refunds when service was at fault.

When I moved here it was for higher speed but I must be in one of the few streets on Merseyside where Virgin don't supply cable/fibre... Really annoying as they send all the mailshots despite the immediate vicinity not getting service. Much as I'd like to have tried Virgin, seems like Fibre when it eventually arrives will be the service I can use to give me speeds of 30+ Mbps. 80 feet away the homes can use Virgin...

Line of sight at front and back, but nothing doing in this nice little cul-de-sac :(

I've just done what you're considering - gone to Plusnet fibre along with Plusnet phone service. I'm not expecting to save much money on the phone service but it's more the convenience of just facing one bill and not having to fight with BT's god-awful website and terrible customer service.

We're about 400-500 metres from the cabinet and we get about 65Mbps.

Lucky s*d - I have estimated 700 metres and the forecast is for 33.5 Mbps, nowhere near 50+ let alone 60+

I found some files which show the estimates on a postcode + BT Cabinet basis and am puzzled at how many postcodes (100s of metres apart at furthest pairs) seem to be forecast with the same speed... it's as if the copper from the cabinet isn't the deciding factor.

I went for Plusnet Fibre. When I first got it I was limited to 40Mb/s d/l but my line test (by the Openreach engineer) said the line would go faster. After a few months, I got notification from Plusnet that I could switch to a faster package, so now have Up To 80Mb/s - just run broadbandspeedchecker and got a test result of 70.22Mb/s. I think the 80Mb/s thing is something BTOpenReach rolled out this year, so it may or may not be available on all exchanges/FTTCabinets.

One reason I went with Plusnet over BT was that Plusnet give a higher monthly data allowance. I don't know if that is still the case, check the fine print on the BT and Plusnet product pages. Under Plusnet Extra Fibre I get a 250GB monthly allowance. It says I've used 9.68GB today - I like that feature of Plusnet as well, their website tells you how much data you are using each day.

I am about 150 yards from the cabinet but the cable route is probably at least double that, assuming it follows the road.

I've gone with Plusnet for the phone line, as they had an offer whereby I saved if I paid a year upfront for the line rental (BT does that as well, called Line Rental Saver). I rarely use my phone, so one thing I checked with Plusnet was that there was no minimum number of calls they expected me to make per month. As with all phone packages, check the small print with regards to costs of things as call and feature prices will vary between providers.

I've called Plusnet support twice so far, both times they have answered quickly and have been efficient. So I can't fault their call centre.

it's as if the copper from the cabinet isn't the deciding factor
I wonder if it's to do with the hardware in the cabinet, though I would have thought they would all have the same hardware.

Thank you so much for your replies, really helpful.

I am gonna make the jump to plusnet for everything, free installation then.

I think bt offer better hardware and possibly better speeds but I have always found plusnet service fabulous, just hope they continue in that way.

Just switched, I am exited now.

Thanks for the info, Nick. Hope all goes well, for you OP - they claim their wireless is better, but I've yet to see any magazine reviewers say it's at all different to what other routers offer. Anyway, you'll be able to tell us.

Nick - yes, know about the line rental 'saver' but Primus charges only 7.99 a month if you're only needing the phone line for incoming calls and to be able to have broadband. They do have a 12 month minimum contract but they don't need payment for the year up front to give their low rates. Check the section on landline rentals at MoneySavingExpert.com when your line rental deal is coming up to 11 months, and you might be able to save cash!

The big downside with some of these line rental saver deals is the small print says you lose your money if you decide to switch (BT has a "no refunds clause")... because OFCOM rules on rental fees (if you cancel) is that the firms can only charge reasonable levels (under about 4 quid per month) as they no longer have the fees Openreach charge them for the line (Openreach will get fee from new rental telco). It means switching after 6 months doesn't mean one paying 6 x {10 to 15 quid} any more, but 6 x {2 to 4} quid.

As for the PN 250 GB... the higher level BT / Sky etc deals say "unlimited" and I saw a post recently saying BT has now cancelled their (unquoted fair use) limit of 300 GB/month. But in any case, PlusNet doesn't count the usage from 0000-0800 so it should be easy not to exceed 250 GB, I'd hope.

I was hitting 150+ GB just on the 'Extra' account with a limit of 60 GB until recently (though iPlayer is rubbish at present because of some mess up with Adobe software and is not downloading things for me now).

Nannynick, I think line length and quality does make the biggest difference. One historical issue is that BT (or possibly it dates back to the GPO) was installing aluminium rather than copper cables for a while and they don't perform nearly as well.

I think there are two suppliers of cabinet infrastructure (Huawei and someone else) but they're both doing the same VDSL/VDSL2 service so I wouldn't expect significant performance differences.

Just a quick update. I had my fibre installed on the 13 th and everything is sooooo much faster.

My android tablet is the speediest, down load 35 mbps upload

DOH...upload 18 mbps and ping of about 20.

Even our 2 old pc's are much better and we have had zero buff
ering since the upgrade.

We have BT infinity and it's a huge improvement on the pitiful internet we used to have. We went from 1Mbps download (on a good day) to 70+mbps with ~16Mbps upload. The BT website gives estimates as to what speeds your line will achieve and most people seem to find them fairly accurate (we got a bit higher, as did another friend, but another was a bit lower, but they had aluminium lines rather than copper).

The installation engineer didn't quite manage to reconnect the phones properly, but we got another one out fairly promptly (albeit via Indian call centre) to fix it. It would be the same openreach engineers whoever you used as mentioned above.