Need help. Bt infinity etc

[Theas18]

This may be a daft q but with bt infinity do te put a fibre optic cable to the house, or does it still largely use the ( 1930 s and dodgy ) phone line?

We are sure it's that last bit of cable that affects our speed most.

If they don't then I'll stay as I am- thanks for te offer bt..... But they do I could be foolish to miss it I guess.

(we are the idiots who 20 or o years ago didn't have cable tv put in and it took about 17yrs for it bother us but it oes now as it limits our broadband suppliers! )

we've just swapped to BT infinity from TalkTalk and wish we'd done it years ago. They didn't change anything in the house, including the 20m or so of cable we have from the phone socket to the Hub, but the service is sooo much better. All the wiring/plumbing etc in our house is old and eccentric, but it still seems to work! It's probably only slightly quicker on our old computer, but so much faster on the newer laptop, even though that is wifi. The connection is much more reliable to, previously it would drop out 3-4 times a day, sometimes for an hour or so.

For most locations, the fibre goes only to a (nearby) cabinet (called FTTC - Fibre To The Cabinet). Around here, they're 3-4 ft high. Ones with the Fibre kit inside have air vents and a sticker marking them as having 240V inside (needed to make the kit terminating the fibre work).

Then there is a set of connecting cables from the fibre cabinet to the existing cabinet and the 'data' connection is linked to your copper / aluminium wire to your home.

Yes, OP that last stretch of cable to your home is the same. When I lived in N Wales I had terrible speeds and if it rained I lost not just broadband but voice calls too, for a few days. It turned out that the insulation on the dropwire (from the gutter to the master socket inside the house) had perished. Once there was a new dropwire, everything improved.

Obviously some homes have the cable underground into the street, depending on how long ago the properties were built. I suspect many from the late 80s will have the cable underground to a street junction box and then underground via plastic pipes to each home.

In some areas, there's another option, called FTTP - Fibre To The Premises. I have not investigated exactly what is done (I know a client has this installed, but have not been there in the day to see what is outside and how they are connected.

Seeline - if you have Fibre, surely they have now installed an extra box inside, a VDSL Modem, and your router/ hub is connected to that, for Infinity. If they didn't visit to install, then you have surely just changed to BT Broadband, not BT Infinity.

The new box went at the end of our indoor cable, the hub is plugged into that.

Ah, lucky you Seeline (I'm a bit green with envy)... so they did make a slight change, just not to the 20m of cable to the PC.

If it makes you feel any better, OP, the estimated speed I have from online checkers is in the low 30 Mbps (so I don't feel like paying more for an "up to 80 Mbps" service), but I recently spotted a new fibre cabinet just 15m from the back bedroom. Shame that fibre cabinet is meant to serve people over the other side of the main road :( - the one for our road is a long walk away, hence the lower speed!

As an aside - one of the things they are meant to do is to test the connection speed. I believe 15 Mbps is the minimum allowed.

Now, if you have a 'grotty' line and it doesn't get to that speed, it's clearly not your fault (they would be installing the new modem unit right by the master socket and then testing direct from there), so they should investigate the reason for the speed issue before they go on to another job.

If you are in a position to get FTTC, odds are there is sufficient competition for you to use one of the other firms than BT. Primus is offering Fibre at 8/month (a half price for 3 months deal) and they can do line rental for as low as a tenner a month (annual payment in advance, but for a no frills service... if you want 'anytime' calls it would be more).

If you are interested, PM me (they are offering to credit people with 20 quid when they sign up, and the person recommending also gets 20), or look at www.primussaver.co.uk

How are you sure it is the last bit of cable that affects things most?

I used to get less than 3mbps on ADSL (this was an improvement over the 512kbps maximum I had for quite a while).

Big green box went in down the road and today I got 73mbps+
test results picture.

So if you are on quite low now you may see a dramatic difference. Not sure you can find out for sure though without actually doing it.

/image even greener with envy

You lucky so-and-so, Nick !

I did download a lot of Openreach data some time back which had an "uplift" ratio, and for my postcode it showed a multiple of about 3.5... 3.5x 10 Mbps {my current speed} is what the estimates all say, but the 'uplift' figure is as high as 10 for some. Sounds like yours could have been around 22 !

Of course it's only when you get it installed that it would be possible to check the actual speed you get, OP.