Do I *need* superfast broadband in London?

ari11

Hello! I'm moving into a new house in London and have never had to organise broadband/wifi before. I was wondering if I could ask some questions here as I know little about Technology and don't want to make the wrong decision since most contracts appear to 18 months.

I've heard the speeds in London are fairly good. I was wondering if people who aren't gamers could tell me the reasons they got superfast broadband.

My internet useage comprises:
(a) work from home 2 days a week,
(b) surf the internet alot,
(c) watch the odd movie/tv show via online streaming on weekends

I am trying to decide between BT Infinity 2 and BT Unlimited.

Many thanks.

lee111s

Depends what speed you'd get on regular ADSL broadband. If you can only get a meg or 2 then Infinity is the way to go. Personally if I got less than 5meg I'd probably go for Infinity. You can get Infinity one unlimitd thougj which gives you a maximum of 38meg which for the vast majority of people is more than enough

ari11

Thanks, I'm getting speeds of more than 5 megs.

The BT site says for my postcode..

For unlimited broadband:
Estimate download speed 15Mb.
Download speed range 12Mb-18Mb.

For infinity:
Download speed 55.1Mb.
Upload speed 13.2Mb.

There was only a small price difference between Infinity 1 and 2 after the connection charge is included into the equation for 1 (no charge for infinity 2).

Timalay

I would say unlimited adsl broadband at those speeds would more than suit your need. Unless working from home you are planning on uploading huge files to the interenet of course, then you would be better going for Infinity.

ari11

thanks timalay, thats what i thought. I just log into my work's remote access portal which then accesses my desktop computer at work. So no uploading of files.

I'm sure the extra infinity speed would be wasted on me!

lee111s

Yup sounds like you're better off saving your money and staying on ADSL.

macman

Speed in London are determined (like everywhere else) primarily by distance from the exchange. They're not necessarily 'fairly good' just because they're in a big urban area.
But nothing you have said in your post indicates that you need FTTC speeds.
Most London exchanges offer a choice of LLU providers, so why are you limiting your options just to BT?

brewerdave

Remember that if its critical that you have internet access for work you either need to pay for a business connection with an SLA (more expensive) or arrange a back up service (eg phone dongle).Otherwise with a standard home product, you run the risk of losing access for days (or even weeks) with no redress as there are no real tight SLAs.

ari11

macman wrote: »

Speed in London are determined (like everywhere else) primarily by distance from the exchange. They're not necessarily 'fairly good' just because they're in a big urban area.....Most London exchanges offer a choice of LLU providers, so why are you limiting your options just to BT?

My house is 0.5 miles from an exchange.

I considered BT because the £16 deal for Unlimited gave me 6 months (on an 18 month contract) for free. With no connection costs and £11.75 line rental for 12 months if I prepay (£15.45 after), the effective monthly cost turned out to be only £1-3 more expensive than Talk Talk, Tesco and Plusnet.

Reliability was a small factor as well. Although not critical I have internet access (I am only 15-20 minutes away from the office), I don't want it to be dropping out intermittently. I'm not from the UK, and BT (rightly or wrongly) was the most familiar name to me.

macman

I can't imagine why you would favour Plusnet over BT if BT are more expensive. PN run on the same network, but are always cheaper and have infinitely better (UK based) CS.
If you have a line issue, then it has to be fixed by BT OR regardless, who have exactly the same relationship to BT Retail as to their independent ISP customers: OR are not allowed to prioritise BTR in any way.
I wouldn't recommend TT or Tesco, but the other obvious candidate is Sky, assuming that it's available LLU on your exchange. Do an exchange search on www.samknows.com for your LLU providers. The only valid way to compare is to total all the first year costs-not base it on how many months you get 'free'
Correct, BT has been trading on it's reputation as the original state-owned sole provider since privatisation in 1984. Nearly 3 decades later, it's now time to move on.

StuC75

That transfer of data is still Uploading - in that there is a stream of data going back from your machine to the works VPN.. rather than just a straight reliance upon downloading data..

Fibre packages do tend to have a bigger upload capacity and ping times - and this something very important when working remotely - since poor pings can make such a services difficult to use..

ari11 wrote: »

thanks timalay, thats what i thought. I just log into my work's remote access portal which then accesses my desktop computer at work. So no uploading of files.

I'm sure the extra infinity speed would be wasted on me!