What's better VM 30MB or BT Infinity?

tazwhoever

I am thinking for upgrading my VM to 30MB and next month BT infinity would arrive in my area.

Now I have choice of upgrading to VM 30MB or wait for BT and get Infinity upto 40MB.

What's better for myself in terms of speed and company?

VM 30MB or BT infinity?

The cost of difference is £1.50 p/m

Please advice,

Thanks

jb66

Bt infinity UNLIMITED would probably be best due to them giving you a much higher upload speed. If its the capped Bt then I'd opt for virgin

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

visidigi

from what I have heard from users of both, they are both reliable once setup, but the initial setup is much smoother and easier with Virgin than it is with BT - One guy I know took 18 phone calls and three visits to fix the speed to be stable, in the end someone in a UK call center managed it.

Virgin also send engineers to you with less hassle from experience too, and NFF fees are lower with Virgin than thye are BT...

Buzby

Infinity is like hens teeth - few and far between. For the bulk of people, it is not an option as this required Fibre infrastructre to the local box, which BT bt doesn;t have as standard. Virgin (on the other hand) being the newer network had fiber to all their local hubs, giving them the change to claim theirs was a true 'fibre network', which BT could not (or only the limitred areas they upgraded). With the choice, VM cable is the choice for BB as it cuses Co-Ax to the door.

Mark_In_Hampshire

Virgin Media = fibre to the cabinet then co-ax to the home, but amplified around the local circuit so e.g. every home with 30Mbps actually "syncs" at 30Mbps (believe it's actually set at about 34Mbps but I could be wrong).

Thus, the 30Mbps service should always be capable of 30Mbps. Except when: 1. The local node is congested because capacity has been oversold and upgrades are now required and 2. The thing at the other end (website, FTP, whatever) is actually incapable of serving you at 30Mbps anyway.

In the case of (1) VM do seem to get around to sorting such areas out eventually, because the 30Mbps is something of a "target" for them - it is reputation affecting. (Parents area was "congested" apparently, leading to only 7Mbps on their 10Mbps service - went up last week and ran some tests at several times - bang on 9.9Mbps every time)

BT's FTTC service is fibre to the cabinet which in most cases is near your home and then copper and/or aliminimum phone line to the home. It is not amplified. Therefore the speed will be between 5Mbps and 40Mbps. It may slow down because of the same two issues as above (oversold capacity at the cabinet and/or the exchange) but crucially, it has no need to ever perform at the full 40Mbps and to do so will require a good quality phone line to the cabinet which is very short (c. 300m or less), it is not "fine tuned" as such to bring everyone's speed up to the 40Mbps.

The other thing which impacts speeds is the type of traffic - for example, BT Infinity (BT's version of FTTC) throttles P2P so as to make it basically useless; VM traffic manages and will drop your speed should you breach certain terms.

alf

I'm on BT infinity and barely get 14Mbps, which BT tells me is perfectly acceptable, I plan to change to VM.

kwikbreaks

Mark_In_Hampshire wrote: »

The other thing which impacts speeds is the type of traffic - for example, BT Infinity (BT's version of FTTC) throttles P2P so as to make it basically useless; VM traffic manages and will drop your speed should you breach certain terms.

Only important for users of P2P and NNTP....

VM introduced P2P and newsgroup shaping (ie possible throttling) from 5 to midnight weekdays and midday to midnight weekends when they started their upstream upgrades about a year back. Not everybody sees slowdowns apparently as, like all things cable, congestion issues are very local. Using SSL defeats it too.

Prunesquallor_2

Hi All
Have been considering jumping from BT to Virgin on the principle of Virgin being 'proper' fibreoptic. The info on this thread has been very helpful in that respect and the issue isn't as clear cut as I thought.

The main reason I have hesitated and I'm posting is that I assume if I left btinternet I would lose my email address - even though it is repackaged Yahoo!
I know I could redirect etc but so since many utilities, banks etc etc and etc have it, changing would be a nightmare.
So - am i right? Would I lose my email address if I were to leave BT?
(serves me right for having my principal email account with my provider).

Mark_In_Hampshire

alf wrote: »

I'm on BT infinity and barely get 14Mbps, which BT tells me is perfectly acceptable, I plan to change to VM.

For BT yes, it is.

Also in response to the above about "true fibre optic" - neither cable nor BT's version are fibre-optic in whole, only in part.

The two key differences are that

1. Cable is co-ax to the home and is amplified, whereas BT's version uses ancient phone lines in part and is not "amplified", and

2. Congestion on the cable network can be localised and problematic partly because of the way the network is set up and partly because of this fad for "unlimited usage" packages (which is why BT's Infinity product is traffic managed too)

So that's why it's not possible to categorically say which is better until you've actually had both of them at the same property.

Importantly, BT Infinity - the brand name - won't be supplied if the speed is expected to be below 15Mbps, as BT don't want people telling others that their brand new fibre network is only delivering speeds my 3G modem can easily outperform. But such lines should be relatively unusual and happen when the cabinet is e.g. a mile away not 200m away.

macman

It takes 10 minutes to set up a Gmail account and 5 minutes to do a group email to all your contacts.
Then say 5 minutes per utility/account to log in and change your email address?
So maybe an hour to an hour and a half total.
You then have an ISP-independent address forever.
How is that 'a nightmare'?