BT Infinity 3 Trial

KevInChester

I registered on BT Wholesale to be informed when BT Infinity was available in my area (Chester West I believe) and was called yesterday offering me the service by the end of the month. Totally free until Dec 31st when I can cancel if needs be. It will be considered a testing period, so will need to give them feedback now and then which is a fair trade off.

Speed of the new service is 100Mb/s/15Mb/s, no hard limits on downloads, albeit still subject to a FUP which is fair enough.

Only downer? I'm contracted until Feb with O2, but once I've got this service I'll downgrade to the lowest package on O2 and so will save about £5 a month.

Anybody else had the call? From what I can gather this new one is being trialed in 2 areas.

Mark_In_Hampshire

So far as I was aware, the only other area is Milton Keynes, which has been going on for a very long time because they're having trouble putting the fibre down the ducts, so the number of people connected there is pretty low. So there aren't many others.

Believe Infinity requires BT line rental, so if your line rental is with O2 then you'll need to switch that back first, or have a second line put in - it requires a home visit anyway, so you might get a good deal on that.

hippey

There are a few areas now, Openreach are trialing underground and via pole FTTP, the trials are very limited both for technical and cost reasons.

hippey

Forgot to add, it is worth keeping your current service as a fallback, we have had only one service outage in the FTTP trial in MK but it is not a consumer product yet so you have no right to complain if you have a long outage.

I have kept my old supplier 'just in case' the service fails, but I'm about to try the phone service via FTTP so all my calls will go via the modem not the copper pair.

KevInChester

Thanks everyone, line rental is with BT so no problems with that. Am going to downgrade my O2 to the cheapest package, will save a few quid a month, but have it as a fallback.

KevInChester

Nope Getting it sorted as part of the trial - used to live in Sweden so I know about fibre.

KevInChester

I already have a 2nd line.

Grumpyswife

... and it's brilliant!

I live in MK and originally the rollout of Infinity was due last September...then March...then finally it was up and running in June. We ummed and ahhed about changing, even though we are in the middle of a new city the best we could get was 1MB and it was really tempermental, to the point of being unusable sometimes. :mad:

You have to keep on BT's back and track your order online (this is not without it's hiccups) but we were estimated to get 30MB and so far over the first 2 days we have an average of 36MB. It's like emerging from the dark ages!

I think the trick is, do your research on their website and don't take the call centre (in India I think) at their word. The story seems to change each time you call.

So I now have a very happy teenager who can play online on his XBox without lag.... heaven apparently! :A

KevInChester

As a result of this the 2nd phone line I've had for ages is not needed anymore - was thinking of getting rid anyway. The copper phone line is untouched - the fiber optic is an entirely new line, so they can both co-exist, have tested and yup, that's definitely the case.

Initially it was connecting at 15/15Mbs, has already risen to 25/20, should rise quite a bit more by the end of the week. Can't complain for the price of £0, if there are no problems will switch to this full time. I was getting 5/1 over ADSL.

This has an estimated, all going perfect speed of 100/30, but I don't expect that in real world performance, certainly above 50 should be possible.

hippey

Kev,

If possible I would keep a fallback option. We have only had a couple of outages (the last one was Saturday night) but as it's still in testing you can not be sure of a 24/7 up time!

The MK trial is for FTTP - it sounds like the chap above is on FTTC (BT Infinity 1 or 2) my speed is currently 100/15 with FVA enabled. (FVA - Fibre Voice Access) The Bradwell Abbey trial is due to end in October 2011 with a few FVA trialists carrying on until April 2012.