Will I regret not going for fibre broadband?

LadyMcFinch · 19 May 2017 at 10:46AM

Hi!

Fibre broadband is available in my area, and I live 1.3 miles from the nearest cabinet. Until a year ago I had fibre broadband (with BT), but really couldn't tell any difference from regular broadband, so for the past year I've used Sky's broadband which was only £5 with an offer.

That deal has now come to an end and I'm looking to sign up with Zen. I was going to go with the regular broadband for a 12 month contract, total £300 for the year, but I'm feeling tempted by the fibre (£583 for the year).

I'm not too bothered by the price if we could actually get the advertised speeds - Zen indicate an average of 55mbps and a minimum of 35mbps. But when I was with BT fibre I never got over 10mbps, usually more like 4-5mbps (painful).

I just have no idea if the poor speeds with BT fibre were due to the distance from the cabinet, or because this is an oldish house or something to do with the wiring, or because BT just wasn't very good. I asked BT to look at the speeds at the time, but they wanted to charge £160 to investigate, which would only be reimbursed if they were at fault and I didn't go ahead with that.

So, any advice on whether fibre speeds can vary greatly between ISPs would be gratefully received; I don't want to regret committing to a year of regular broadband if I could be getting something better, but then obviously I don't want to pay for internet speeds I'm never going to actually see.

Thanks!

Browntoa · 19 May 2017 at 10:58AM

isp speeds should not vary with supplier if using the same pairs from the exchange or cabinet

Mister_G · 19 May 2017 at 11:04AM

LadyMcFinch wrote: »

Hi!

Fibre broadband is available in my area, and I live 1.3 miles from the nearest cabinet. Until a year ago I had fibre broadband (with BT), but really couldn't tell any difference from regular broadband, so for the past year I've used Sky's broadband which was only £5 with an offer.

That deal has now come to an end and I'm looking to sign up with Zen. I was going to go with the regular broadband for a 12 month contract, total £300 for the year, but I'm feeling tempted by the fibre (£583 for the year).

I'm not too bothered by the price if we could actually get the advertised speeds - Zen indicate an average of 55mbps and a minimum of 35mbps. But when I was with BT fibre I never got over 10mbps, usually more like 4-5mbps (painful).

I just have no idea if the poor speeds with BT fibre were due to the distance from the cabinet, or because this is an oldish house or something to do with the wiring, or because BT just wasn't very good. I asked BT to look at the speeds at the time, but they wanted to charge £160 to investigate, which would only be reimbursed if they were at fault and I didn't go ahead with that.

So, any advice on whether fibre speeds can vary greatly between ISPs would be gratefully received; I don't want to regret committing to a year of regular broadband if I could be getting something better, but then obviously I don't want to pay for internet speeds I'm never going to actually see.

Thanks!

Based on the fact that you are 1.3 miles (2km) from the cabinet, the best VDSL speed that you can get is likely to be in the order of 16Mb This will be on a grade A line. If you are currently only getting 5Mb, then it looks like your line is grade B.

Put your phone number into this

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_cid=ws_furls_adslchecker

and see what it says.

The limitation will be the quality of the line and even Zen will not be able to better this.

[Deleted User] · 19 May 2017 at 11:59AM

What were you getting from Sky ADSL then?

LadyMcFinch · 19 May 2017 at 12:03PM

Mister_G wrote: »

Based on the fact that you are 1.3 miles (2km) from the cabinet, the best VDSL speed that you can get is likely to be in the order of 16Mb This will be on a grade A line. If you are currently only getting 5Mb, then it looks like your line is grade B.

Put your phone number into this

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_cid=ws_furls_adslchecker

and see what it says.

The limitation will be the quality of the line and even Zen will not be able to better this.

Thanks for this. Thinking about distance from the cabinet, I probably overstated slightly due to thinking about walking there rather than 'as the crow flies'. I checked that btwholesale site and these are the line rates for my address: http://imgur.com/a/1uMy1

My feeling has always been that either the master socket was badly installed, or else there's something up with the wiring in our house that caused poor performance with the internet connection. When I was going through diagnostics on BT fibre the speed was no different on wifi than when it was plugged into the test socket by ethernet. I just don't know how to figure out for certain what the problem is!

LadyMcFinch · 19 May 2017 at 12:04PM

Colin_Maybe wrote: »

What were you getting from Sky ADSL then?

I'm still on Sky ADSL for now, just did a quick speed test and I have 8.42mbps download, 0.61mbps upload.

lee111s · 19 May 2017 at 1:05PM

Are you noticing problems with your regular internet usage such as videos buffering or things taking a long time to upload?

If so, then an upgrade to FTTC would seem sensible.

iniltous · 19 May 2017 at 1:22PM

LadyMcFinch wrote: »

Hi!

Fibre broadband is available in my area, and I live 1.3 miles from the nearest cabinet. Until a year ago I had fibre broadband (with BT), but really couldn't tell any difference from regular broadband, so for the past year I've used Sky's broadband which was only £5 with an offer.

That deal has now come to an end and I'm looking to sign up with Zen. I was going to go with the regular broadband for a 12 month contract, total £300 for the year, but I'm feeling tempted by the fibre (£583 for the year).

I'm not too bothered by the price if we could actually get the advertised speeds - Zen indicate an average of 55mbps and a minimum of 35mbps. But when I was with BT fibre I never got over 10mbps, usually more like 4-5mbps (painful).

I just have no idea if the poor speeds with BT fibre were due to the distance from the cabinet, or because this is an oldish house or something to do with the wiring, or because BT just wasn't very good. I asked BT to look at the speeds at the time, but they wanted to charge £160 to investigate, which would only be reimbursed if they were at fault and I didn't go ahead with that.

So, any advice on whether fibre speeds can vary greatly between ISPs would be gratefully received; I don't want to regret committing to a year of regular broadband if I could be getting something better, but then obviously I don't want to pay for internet speeds I'm never going to actually see.

Thanks!

FTTC speed will not vary much at all between ISP's, essentially you will be on identical equipment with Zen as you were with BT , after all Zen just 'rent' a port in the FTTC cab, same as BT, personally I cannot see the point of 'average speed' statistics , if Zen has 2 customers ,one close to a FTTC and gets say 80Mb, and you get 10Mb, why bother stating the average is 45Mb ?,obviously the average is based on more that a sample of 2 customers, but some providers won't take customers who will pull their avarage down.
If you do have a problem with your own wiring and sockets, then regardless of provider, that 'problem' will obviously affect your broadband performance

Mister_G · 19 May 2017 at 1:24PM

LadyMcFinch wrote: »

Thanks for this. Thinking about distance from the cabinet, I probably overstated slightly due to thinking about walking there rather than 'as the crow flies'. I checked that btwholesale site and these are the line rates for my address: http://imgur.com/a/1uMy1

My feeling has always been that either the master socket was badly installed, or else there's something up with the wiring in our house that caused poor performance with the internet connection. When I was going through diagnostics on BT fibre the speed was no different on wifi than when it was plugged into the test socket by ethernet. I just don't know how to figure out for certain what the problem is!

Looking at your figures, it looks like your line is actually a lot shorter than the distance by road (often the case).

Your current Sky ADSL speed will be dependent on your distance from the exchange, rather than the cabinet. What did the speed checker say about ADSL speeds (bottom half of table) and is your 8Mb within their quoted figure?

Last year, I changed from ADSL to VDSL (FTTC). MY ADSL was on a 5km line to the exchange and running at about 1.5Mb. With VDSL, I now get 17Mb on a line that is 1.2km from the cabinet.

What I have noticed is that it has become much more stable and reliable, probably due to getting rid of the 3.5km of aging copper cable between the cabinet and the exchange.

LadyMcFinch · 19 May 2017 at 1:44PM

Thanks again everyone for your comments on this!

Here are the ADSL results from the speed checker:: http://imgur.com/a/qSRyA

So to my untrained eye it looks like I'm getting the top of what's achievable for ADSL at my address, but I was getting the minimum/below minimum of the VDSL range when I was on fibre.

Mister_G · 19 May 2017 at 1:53PM

The fact that your are getting an ADSL speed at the top end of the range indicates that your copper line is in reasonable order.

Therefore it follows that you should have been getting the quoted figure in the table when you had your BT VDSL connection, unless there was some sort of a fault at the cabinet.

ZEN are a very good ISP and if you did have any issues with speed, then I'm confident that they would sort them out for you.

Not sure that BT would do this!

I note that, luckily, you have FTTP available. Not sure if ZEN can offer this to you.

Will I regret not going for fibre broadband?

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