BT reveals faster broadband pricing BT's new faster broadband service will cost from £19.99 per month, it's been announced today. The group's Retail division will sell connections based on fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology as "BT Infinity", theoretically capable of downstream speeds of up to 40Mbit/s. There will be a £50 connection charge for the basic …
20GB sounds a lot, and might lead to uniformed cries of "if you weren't torrenting all that animal porn, you'd not need more data allowance", but really truly.. a couple of modern games snagged off Steam (lots of great deals, so not an expensive passtime, normally), and one HD movie on demand, and you're already over your cap.
That's ludicrous- as lame as Orange's "unlimited" data tariff which is a mere 750MB per month (!).
And if you ever DO get to use the full 40mbits (not likely) your 20GB usage allowance will be gone in a little over 1 hour. Seems a bit silly that they would even sell a package that'll theoretically give you only an hour and 6 minutes usage before you have to stop for the month.
This is BT we're talking about though.
I wouldnt touch it.
i pay a fiver for 16Mbit (actually about 10Mbit) with 1.3 Mbit upload (actually that) of UNLIMITED data. I also get FREE FIXED IP and N router. They dont traffic shape either (and i would have noticed!)
I could get a bit of a faster speed for a lot of more money and probably some appaling limitations, so no thanks.
Bit cheeky to call it "Infinity" and then limit it to 20GB...
Admittedly for a fiver more you get "unlimited" (which won't be) and a much nicer upload speed.
But they won't be rolling out near me for a few years yet. Which is good really, because after Phorm I don't want to be tempted back to these bastards.
Now the unmetered package, will that be the same as the current "unlimited" package, where when you use over 80GB per month, your connection is dropped to 1MB during "peak hours" or 5PM to Midnight? I can understand dropping connection speeds for fair usage on heavy downloaders, but 1MB is way too little! You struggle to do simple things such as YouTube with that type of connection!
BT Infinity availability checker, headlined with a big shiny arrow saying "CAN I GET BT INFINITY?" ... put my details in... result: "Great news! We have tested your line and you can get the UK's most complete broadband, BT Total Broadband." not "No, you cannot get BT Infinity".
Bet that'll catch quite a few out.
@AC 13:50 - derp, they make the cheap package shit so everyone goes on the more expensive one. After all the difference in BT's costs between the two packages will be minimal, so why not shepherd everyone on to the one that nets them an extra fiver?
Did you do some other maths that was different from the rest of the world's? £24.99 - £19.99 = £5pm.
It'll actually cost you an extra £40 over 18 months, as you don't have to pay for the £50 "installation charge". So for an extra £40 over 18 months (or about £2.20pm) you won't have to suffer the ridiculous cap or the crippled upload speeds.
<quote>
Where are you getting this "extra fiver" stuff from?
It's clearly £8pm more, meaning it'll cost you an extra £144 over the course of an 18 month contract.
<\quote>
£24.99 less £19.99 was £5.00 when I last checked how arithmetic worked, maybe it has changed.
So 90 quid total more over the 18 month contract in monthly fees, minus the £50 for the activation fee you don't pay and it's effectively less than £3.50 a month more.
Yes it is pure marketing to get people to go for the higher package, but the differences for what is offered indicate more value than you claim.
@ Great news! We have tested your line and you can get the UK's most complete broadband, BT Total Broadband." not "No, you cannot get BT Infinity".
You can put money on it they will dig their heels in like crazy to keep the business for those who get caught out
Time to dust off the "Distance Selling Regulations"
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/general/oft698.pdf
"There was a problem checking your information - please try again later. If the problem persists; please call us on 0800 085 7343 for further information. Our advisors are available from 8:00am to 9:00pm, Monday to Friday, from 8.00am to 8.00pm Saturday and from 9:00am to 6:00pm on Sundays."
This sort of thing is why I wouldn't use them even if they did price it decently.
Just because your exchange is upgraded, don't expect that you will be able to get it!
I live in a town which has had FTTC deployed. BT has upgaded _less than half_ of the cabinets (77 of 179), concentrating on areas which already get reasonable ADSL2+ speeds.
Most of those connected to the 77 upgraded cabinets have a choice of 50Mbps Virgin, up-to 24Mbps ADSL2+ or 40Mbps FTTC. Those of us on the outskirts of the town are still left with 512kbps!
Seems backwards to me.
... traffic shaping is another entirely. I notice the BT don't give any QoS guarantee with this lightning fast connection. It'll be just like the M25 and M42 variable speed limit zones - completely jammed up and nobody getting anything quickly - or practically empty but traffic still 'shaped' down to something depressingly low.
Why do we make such a meal of providing _real_ high speed access compared to other 1st world countries? And Gordon wants high tech to lead us out of recession.
BTW if we all agreed to only sign up for packages where the QoS part of the terms and conditions were both clearly stated (hard facts please) and reasonable, maybe the ISPs would get the message. I'm still with Zen, have been for two years now. Not the cheapest but zero traffic shaping.
i'm with BE (not BT) for broadband, I pays my £14/month and i gets my "up to 24Mbits" which in reality equates to a gnats chuff under 16Mbits actual download speed.
BT's new Less For More deal is clearly aimed at the uninformed, thoug I'm sure many of BT's own workers may think it's a good deal - LOL
I can't get BE where I am, so I went with Andrews and Arnold.
I pay £30 per month for 100GB evening / weekend, 6GB "Work hours" (when I'm not at home anyway). Speed is not the defining factor.
I have never gotten lower than 8MB, hich is exactly what they said the exchange would be capable of, and Tech Support are all 3rd Line at least; Actually qualified engineers on the end of the phone!
I don't mind paying for decent service, and I'm certainly getting decent service from them.
excellent service and download speeds. I can be downloading at 10pm at the same speed as at 3am (assuming other end is not overloaded!!)
for 17.95 you could buy 2 units a month which could get you
1gb(20cn) or 1 1/4gb (21cn) during the day mon-fri (if you work this shouldn't be to much of an issue)
25gb between 18:00 and 02:00 and 06:00 and 09:00 (0.25 unit)
750gb between 02:00 and 06:00 (0.75 unit)
And extra Unit costs £3 so you could add 1gb during the day, 100gb in the evening or 1tb during the night!
BE is unlimited! Not in the BT, Orange, or Virgin sense, but in the real actual genuine dictionary sense. I could download at max speed all day every day (assuming i could find something interetsing enough to warrent wasting my life downloading all day every day in the first place).
Go BE
Sarah Davis, they do have an AUP, but even taking down 100gb in a month [getting a fresh set of linux ISOs for my VM server...] I didn't even get so much as an email asking what I was doing.
Alas, they aren't in teh Scarborough exchange where i have moved to, otherwise I'd be with them again - quite a shame really, they aren't bad at all.
Steven R
I have server at home and transfer files to/from my friends a lot. Usually I do about 40-60GB up per month, plus about 100-200GB down. Not even an email from BE.
Also they always inform before any works that can affect the connection. Except of that time download is always full speed, even afternoons and evenings.
Can you get BT Infinity - just fill out all your details not just phone number but house number and postcode.
And then - no you can't get a fraction of the advertised speed, so need some other product.
How about is BT eligible for "Great Company of the Year award" .. just fill in the details
.....
checking....
.....
Well done you are eligible for "Crap Company of the Year award"
Paris ... bunch of .... etc
"BT always give you the best speed possible on your line. The actual speed could be lower and is dependent on several factors such as whether you have internal wiring, our network management policy and the number of people using the internet at the same time. Speeds are generally lower in the evening at peak times."
What this should say is "BT always gives you the best speed possible here on this page, however we do everything to throttle the speeds across the country. You'll be the luckiest person in the street if you get half of this, what with every home in the UK having internal wiring these days now that gas lighting has all but dissappeared since the 1940's. Our network management policy has noted that you use iPlayer a lot, and download movies to your PS3, and have the cheek to NOT have BT Vision. Well we don't like that, so you can drop the speed down to 2Mb max. Oh? You're one of the 65 million people in the country who works for a living and only access at peak times? Well have half a meg then..."
I'll stick with with BE Pro* at £21.97 a month and live with ~18Mbit down and ~1.2Mbit up. BT is an appalling company with a near monopoly and really should be broken up.**
* No doubt, other ISPs are available.
** This will never happen under either Gord or Dayyve.
Why Paris? Because I shall use my 18Mbit connection and download some media content of her now.
Their terms specify:
*Plus a Virgin Phone line for £11 a month
Add to this between £3.45 and £7.95 per month for your call package (which does not include 0845+0870 numbers). Plus pretty restrictive daily download caps. Not so cheap now huh. BT works out cheaper if you select the right tariff.
It depends what BT tariff you are on. Most include the line rental.
My major gripe with Virgin is their traffic policy. You have to go for their £28+£11/month XXL package to get uncapped.
Otherwise with today's bandwith demands for HD content, it does not take much to burn your 1.5GB allowance between 4pm and 9pm. This is not made clear at purchase time and I think their sales blurb it is downright misleading. I quote:
"We think you deserve more. So no matter which of our fibre optic broadband packages you chose, you get unlimited1 downloads. That means you can download as much music, as many films and as many photos as you want without having to worry about going over any kind of limit."
In fact, this is completely untrue. You are subject to their "fair use" and traffic policy which "operates from 4pm to 9pm and 10am to 3pm to ensure a consistent user experience".
So BT's offering does not look so bad after all.
errrr you only get 1.5GB between 4 and 9pm with the 10Mb "L" package. I just moved from BT to Virgin on the 20Mb "XL" package (£31 PCM), 4 months ago and it's a far better service. Yeah, I can only download 7GB between 10am and 3pm and 3.5 GB between 4 and 9pm, but at other times I download around 200Gb a month and get slightly under 19Mb consistently. There hasn't been a peep out of Virgin. BT on the other hand are an utter nightmare. Download more than 80 GB in a single month your connection will be throttled to arround 1Mb between 5pm to 12am for the remainder of the month. So if you download say 80Gb by the 10th of a particular month you will be throttled for the remaining ~20 days. Virgin are far from perfect but at least they have a clear and transparent throttling policy. Something that cannot be said for BT. Plus even with the throttling you still have a usable connection (5Mb, providng your on the XL package) whereas with BT it is pretty much unusable.
Plus even with the throttling you still have a usable connection (5Mb, providing your on the XL package)
But you don't. They throttle the line by massively upping the packet latency. I've seen it go as high as 10 seconds! So instead on the line going down to a usable 1 or 2MB it actually becomes unusable. The Virgin call centre staff absolutely refuse to discuss latency, relying on customer ignorance with what the speed checker they point you at is telling you.
Like I said above, their sales marketing is downright misleading. How they can boldly state that you have unlimited downloads is beyond me. But it's not just Virgin. Like the energy companies, they all rely on spin and complex terms and conditions to hide the gotcha's and true price.
£30 without a phoneline, no call tarrifs. No download caps, but traffic shaping between certain hours.
With BT you have to have a phoneline, and insist on a call package (even if you don't want the line for voice calls)
£11.54 + £19.99 = £31.53, and a download cap that would expire in less than a week if you actually bother to use the service to it's potential. Terrible!
The only association with Infinity is the wait for any reasonable service.
I had the "Great News" that BT can take great delight in telling me that they can now offer me 1 Mb less than I already enjoy.
With the extra 50p monthly they will grab through my phone bills what will they provide.
Expect it to be Road Tax. All tax, no roads. All 50p, no improvement.
Busy working from home today when call arrived - no CLI - suspicions raised but some clients withhold CLI (phone companies..) Before I get to spount my "Jacqui .... How can I help you bit" I get an indian on a sputtery VOIP line.
Droid: "Is this Miss Caren?"
Me: Who is this?
Droid: "Is this Miss Jacqui Caren of <<addresss>>?"
Me: Sorry but would you please Identify yourself otherwise I am hanging up!
Droid: "Hello Miss Caren I represent British Telecom and would like to offer you .... great broadband package ...."
Me: <<hangup>>
I assume BT share thier consumer details with broadband division?
Also I am on the TPS and have stated that I *NEVER EVER* buy over the phone
both to TPS and BT.
BT have in the past called me to offer stuff and I tell them if they do this once more I will
move to a provider that honours my "do not try and sell me shit" request.
Time to move to a decent phone service provider!
Ooh wow, they're now offering speeds nearly as fast as Virgin were several months ago. One thing i don't like is that i'm paying £20 per month for an 8 meg service, surely it should be cheaper as its inferior. I also hate having to have a BT line, i'd love to have a decent wireless service. I've tried mobile broadband and the ping times are awful at the moment, plus the excessive data charges make the connection next to useless. So for now, i'm stuck with crappy old BT. But the minute a decent wireless system comes out, i'm off!
Ha what a joke. I too was surprised to get the recommendation of BT Broadband rather than being told when they are rolling out 'Infinity' in my area which was the actual information I wanted. Not only that the service the said the could offer me (6Mbps) is actually less than half of the 13Mbps i get from my present supplier. Oh and I am expecting a call from them having had to put my details in to the 'checker'
Bastards
I would imagine deploying this is a major cost. I would also think BT may want to be paid for it by somehow maybe charging its customers?
The prices quoted seem fair considering and will probably drop once enough people are sacked to keep costs down to appease the rabid hoards of 'Linux release' collectors.
This sort of thing used to cost tens of thousands per month only a decade ago and there was naff all to download then anyway!
But it meant people had secure jobs.
"Regulations mean BT has to allow other retailers to sell services via its upgraded network."
Excellent.
"Dear BT, please upgrade our local cabinet to fibre connection to the exchange 2 miles away."
Then I stand a chance of getting my connection to Be over the 6Mb I usually manage through your antique copper wires. Up to 24Mb would be great. No caps, no limits, static IP (crap router!) £18 a month.
I won't hold my breath, they'll roll it out in London & the south of England first.
It's this stupid market driven low cost model that means already today very few ISP's can deliver the advertised service without caveats and disclaimers, and that's why we have contention ratios, throtting, shaping.... So our new next generation fibre broadband is another bargain basement affair.
A lot of johnny come latelys won't remember first-gen 512k-2Mb broadband services that advertised 50:1 contention, so they were only contractually committing to you a worst case minimum only service of 50th speed. The 2Mb allocated to your house was shared with another 50 houses. When 8Mb broadband launched, nothing changed. It's still contended to heck, but nowadays no one will tell you by what ratio (=worse, surely) , and MANY PEOPLE JUST DO NOT GET THIS. It's cheap and it's contended, because it couldn't exist at that price point otherwise.
If my top quality telephone line gives me 8Mb ADSL sync today, but can only move say 4Mb across it peak times, sending me that 4Mb down a 10Mb or 20Mb fibre isn't going to help much.
It's like sending 3 cars down an empty 6 lane motorway and expecting it to be twice as quick as a 3 lane one.
The reason for the low levels of download rates is for two reasons. Firstly, the persons who did this have degrees in social science and do not understand broadband or the internet.The second reason is so that they can sell a separate "film" service by broadband. I understand that 20 Gb a month equates to a couple of episodes of Corrie and a couple of films.
We would not want the internet to be used as a TV channel would we?
I used to be with Demon until they changed my contract and I always hit their unfair fair usage policy month by month and got restricted to 15kb/sec at peak times (not useable). I'm not sure why people put up with these fair usage policies, I didn't.
I have since got a business account - 24.99 a month (2 quid cheaper than Demon) with another supplier and I don't worry about it anymore.
BTW I don't own a business and my account is setup with:
Business: n/a
Much as BT are the king big daddy of ISP's in the UK, I'm sticking with Virgin. This not least because there's still no plan to upgrade our local exchange to anything other than plain ADSL. We don't even have SDSL.
In Telford. A town created solely to serve industry and commerce.
*sigh*
Even Virgin aren't perfect. Want to upgrade from 20Mb to their wonderful, all-singing, flagship 50Mb? Be prepared for a mandatory engineer installation and not one but *two* up-front fees. Total more than £50 just for the privilige of an upgraded router and another 18 month contract.
Joy.
if the speed is that important,and it not being contended or shaped also that important, try out a leased line, PowerNGN200 is only £1250 pcm (limited offer, mind), that's a Gigabit servive guaranteeing 200mbps uncontended.
Now, does £19.99 or £24.99 really seem that bad, if all you want to do is torrent the latest waste of money, or watch some Youtube crud, or maybe even just some plain old non-illegal surfing and general downloading?
Choice is yours as it rightly should be, there are other options if you want them that badly or want to pay for them.
3 cars on a 6 lane motorway? more like, I'm not satisfied with my free broadband bundled telephony deal, coz it's not as fast as I want it to be, and Virgin can get 200mbps, so why can't you give me the same for the same price as my old deal or less, boo hoo, hoo.
Go wipe your tears and stop sniffing you 'orrible urchins.
Hmm BT seem to think I can only obtain 6.5MBs with a BT connection ?? When on Sky my stats are thus with Sky ??
DownStream Connection Speed 19998
UpStream Connection Speed 1168
I live within spitting distance of the exchange, am on a 20:1 contention with other users and can download at 1.6Meg per second at peak times
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We are on the list - sometime in the near but still dim future.
Interesting because the BT copper lines offer us a max of 1.5Mb flat out if the sun is shining and much less if its raining, I kid you not.
So for the last few years I use Virgin
10Mb whatever the weather and never a drop-off, in fact the whole south side of our Buckinghamshire town have to due to the bloody poor BT line service, whatever carrier, its the same-same poor service.
Wonder why they chose us to upgrade then?
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