BT Infinity or stick with O2?

barnishroader

BT Infinity is now available in my area.
My O2 contract ended last Friday and currently im paying £25.31 per month for the all rounder broadband package (which i belive is ADSL Max) and evening and weekend calls.

Is Infinity worth changing to for £28/month on an 18 month contract?
£18 £7.50/mth for 3 monthsº

• + Line rental from £10

+£25 Activation charge

40GB/month

Or should i try O2 customer retentions and go on a rolling contract until LLU is available on 31st August?
Primus said i wont get their LLU unitl then.

macman

Very unimpressed with Infinity in my area. Been to see someone today who had it installed a month ago, told they would get around 36Mbps (very near to both the cab and exchange). In reality it's not even running 14MBps, which is less than they could get on ADSL2+.
They have had the original install engineer out, plus 2 more since, and still no improvement. One said, 'it's my first day, never done one of these before', another said he has no means of measuring the speed, but if it was slow 'it must be due to a virus on your laptop sir'...
He reported it again today and was told it has been passed to a 'higher authority' (the god of Openreach)?
I get the feeling that BT in their haste to roll out FTTC simply don't have the support backup in sufficient numbers. It only takes a day's training to learn how to hook it up, but that is not enough to configure it properly.

algloster

Don't wish to seem rude, but its hard for us to comment without any further information,

What speed are you currently getting - do you need 30meg down and possibly 10 up?
How much are you downloading 40gig isnt alot on fibre, you could easily burn through that in one night.
Are you suffering from traffic shaping on o2.
Is price an issue, after all you mention Primus.
Who else is enabled at your exchange, sky?
Are you happy to lock in for 18 months - thats a long time nowadays?

I only ask as I considered jumping to Infinity as my exchange goes live in april. However I decided paying £25 for broadband only versus £13 at o2 not worth it for 3 times the speed. The extra money saved is ether a months land line rental or a monthly subscription to netflix and usenet.

O2 as I just discovered will give you 50% off your broadband and £30 untill the tomorrow (2nd Feb) if you lock in for another 12 months. After that the next best offer seemed to be sky with £20 line rental and broadband, with 6 months broadband free and quidco available, also its unlimited and not subject to traffic management.

At the end of the days its down to cost, download allowance and speed - what are your priorities

InsideInsurance

Have the PlusNet rebranded version of Infinity and have to say get a very good result form it. I work from home fairly often and need to move large files down and cannot fault it to date with speeds normally around 35-7 Mbps.

It certainly is easy to hit limits though if you are a big downloader

Yolina

All depends on what speeds you're getting now... If you're happy with what you've got then you could always haggle with O2. I'm a long way from my congested exchange and was only getting between 0.5 and 1mbps over the copper wires so I jumped on Infinity when it became available in my area last April - I get around 30mbps > me happy bunny I went for the 40GB/month limit option which is enough for me.

Edit:when I got it, the promo was no activation fee, 3 months free and got £50 Quidco cashback... I decided to pay for one year's line rental in advance too.

chanz4

Its very expensive for what it is, even cable on standalone is cheaper and better. I would wait for 02 to bring it out, it is in the pipeline

Yolina

In my case: no cable in my area and 0.5 to 1mbps download speed on the copper wires (hardly useable really) it's a notorious "broadband not" spot (yes, in London, zone 2) the exchange is so bad that a few years ago they ran out of space to connect BB and people waited for months...they did eventually increase capacity but obviously that affected speeds even more. Infinity well worth it, believe me :rotfl: There's no way I would have waited.

barnishroader

Sorry i should have given more details:

algloster wrote: »

Don't wish to seem rude, but its hard for us to comment without any further information,

What speed are you currently getting - do you need 30meg down and possibly 10 up?
Currently i am getting download speeds anwhere between 4meg and 12meg. I stream movies direct to my bluray so sometimes, during peak times hd movies can buffer.
How much are you downloading 40gig isnt alot on fibre, you could easily burn through that in one night.
Not sure the total per month but id guess hd movies would add quite a bit.
Are you suffering from traffic shaping on o2.
Dont kow, maybe.
Is price an issue, after all you mention Primus.
I had been hoping to reduce my current bill (£25/mth) but if Infinity was worth it id pay the same or slightly more
Who else is enabled at your exchange, sky?
I'm not sure who else although onyl Sky Connectis available from Sky, where could i find this out?
Are you happy to lock in for 18 months - thats a long time nowadays?
Doesnt really bother me, as long as the deal is good. Mobile phone contracts are that and id rather they were shorter to change handsets more frequently but it doesnt seem to take that long.

I only ask as I considered jumping to Infinity as my exchange goes live in april. However I decided paying £25 for broadband only versus £13 at o2 not worth it for 3 times the speed. The extra money saved is ether a months land line rental or a monthly subscription to netflix and usenet.


O2 as I just discovered will give you 50% off your broadband and £30 untill the tomorrow (2nd Feb) if you lock in for another 12 months.
Ill maybe try that first.
After that the next best offer seemed to be sky with £20 line rental and broadband, with 6 months broadband free and quidco available, also its unlimited and not subject to traffic management.
Sky broadband isnt available, only Sky Connect

At the end of the days its down to cost, download allowance and speed - what are your priorities

NB:
I just called O2 and they offered 1/2 price broadband for a year.
With line rental and extras on top that brings O2 to £20.56/month so id be saving about £5.

They said that the exchange was LLU enabled but Primus told me yesterday that it wouldnt be until 31st August.
Is there any way to find this out?

macman

Do a exchange search on www.samknows.com for your LLU options.
Forget Sky Connect, that's just a resold BT Wholesale service.
if you want FTTC, then why restrict yourself to BT? Any BT reseller should be able to offer you the same, but cheaper. Have you looked at Plusnet FTTC?

barnishroader

macman wrote: »

Do a exchange search on www.samknows.com for your LLU options.
Forget Sky Connect, that's just a resold BT Wholesale service.
if you want FTTC, then why restrict yourself to BT? Any BT reseller should be able to offer you the same, but cheaper. Have you looked at Plusnet FTTC?

Results:
Congratulations, you are in a broadband enabled area.
Click here to compare packages available to you.
However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection. The following services are available in your location:

• BT Wholesale ADSL
• BT Wholesale ADSL Max
• BT FTTC
• O2 / Be LLU
• Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU

BT ADSL broadband availability

You are connected to the Randalstown telephone exchange.

• ADSL is available in your area
• Your exchange is also enabled for ADSL Max services
• Your exchange should have ADSL2+ services installed by the 31st of August 2012

According to BT Wholesale, your phone line should be able to support
up to 2Mbps via ADSL
8Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max
13Mbps or greater via ADSL2+
Standard ADSL RAG results

• You can receive 2Mbps ADSL
• You can receive 1Mbps ADSL
• You can receive 512kbps ADSL
• You can receive 256kbps ADSL

However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.

I used to be with PlusNet and thought they were great but as the poster earlier said, a 40gb limit might not be enough so ill maybe stay away from FTTC for now, as im not willing to pay more than £30/month.

macman

OK, so your LLU options are o2/Be or Sky.
I don't understand why you said earlier that only Sky Connect was available on your exchange-according to samknows you can get Sky LLU now.
You misunderstand how LLU works. It's not the entire exchange that is unbundled- it's the individual provider that becomes unbundled on that exchange.
In your case, both 02 and Sky have already done that.
Once you have ADSL2+ available in August, you should see a speed hike.