Is there an alternative to BT Infinity

perceptive1

Broadband on my line was only 1.2 Meg before I had fibre optic.

My only option to get better speeds was to go for BT Infinity when it came to my area.

When I changed, speeds were much better for a while (up to 35 Meg). Not brilliant but acceptable.

Now speeds seem to have been capped. Today's speed:
Download 24.19 Mbps
Upload 0.52 Mbps!!! Yes you read that correctly 520Kbps - nearly 50 times slower than download. I wanted to use a cloud service to store important documents and photos, but, this is not feasible at these speeds. I'd be quicker to put them on a memory stick and post them.

The speeds are even lower than when I twice got Openreach to check the line at the house. At that time it was 0.67Mbps. They said it was because I was in an area where aluminium cable was used, which was just buried in the ground, not even in a duct.

I am not out in the sticks but in Basingstoke (population 170,000).

I'm paying over the odds for BT infinity but get a service that is worse than many people get for their basic service.

When I check other suppliers it seems they can only offer a 1.0 Mbps download service. They are not able to use the fibre optic service of BT. I'm not in a Virgin area, so that is not an option. What do people suggest could be an option?

On another tack. BT have the capability to supply all homes in my area through their fibre optic network. They must have the capacity since they have only just wired up for Infinity to their street side cabinets. This gives BT the opportunity to provide all their services, from phone, through standard broadband all the way up to high speed broadband with bells and whistles on, using their fibre optic network. However, the final half mile is still over the antiquated aluminium cable for every house, whether they are on Infinity or not. Customers would not even necessarily know whether they were on a fibre network since the speed could be limited in the cabinet. It is not possible for the customer to know how their service is being provided. So are BT providing all services using fibre optic and deliberately keeping the speeds artificially low unless customers sign up for Infinity? Even on Infinity I am not getting the minimum level of speed acceptable for a non fibre service.

Is it time for service level agreements with ISPs where you pay for the speeds actually achieved?

JJ_Egan

What have BT said regarding your problem ??
How are you testing ?? from the master socket or via WiFi .

Alternative no as they will be using the existing cable .

perceptive1

On two occasions BT Openreach were checking with heads down manholes, at the cabinet half a mile away and at the master socket in the house. They said it was the best they could do.

This may be but I cannot understand why upload and download speeds are so different.

giraffe69

I think upload and download speeds are always very different with uploading being very much slower, perhaps because much of the demand is for downloading material. The A in ADSL stands for asynchronous. Companies who need fast upload speeds pay for it and use SDSL.
I am in a rural area with no infinity. My download speed is 13.4 and upload 1.2. No problem, however in uploading files to the cloud or via email.

JJ_Egan

perceptive1 wrote: »

On two occasions BT Openreach were checking with heads down manholes, at the cabinet half a mile away and at the master socket in the house. They said it was the best they could do.

This may be but I cannot understand why upload and download speeds are so different.

Contact your ISP via their forum
https://community.bt.com/

LazyTyper

perceptive1 wrote: »

On another tack. BT have the capability to supply all homes in my area through their fibre optic network. They must have the capacity since they have only just wired up for Infinity to their street side cabinets. This gives BT the opportunity to provide all their services, from phone, through standard broadband all the way up to high speed broadband with bells and whistles on, using their fibre optic network. However, the final half mile is still over the antiquated aluminium cable for every house, whether they are on Infinity or not. Customers would not even necessarily know whether they were on a fibre network since the speed could be limited in the cabinet. It is not possible for the customer to know how their service is being provided. So are BT providing all services using fibre optic and deliberately keeping the speeds artificially low unless customers sign up for Infinity? Even on Infinity I am not getting the minimum level of speed acceptable for a non fibre service.

Is it time for service level agreements with ISPs where you pay for the speeds actually achieved?

Fibre-to-the-Cabinet is only called BT Infinity if you are paying BT (Retail) for the service.

Unless you are on a FTTC service and paying for it, then your aluminium/copper cable runs all the way to the exchange for your bog-standard ADSL (just normal broadband). It's only when you sign up for FTTC that you get patched to the nearby cabinet.


What was the estimated speed you were informed when you upgraded to FTTC? If that is significantly less than what you were promised then you may be entitled to cancel, but you have a limited time to do this.

Unfortunately Openreach / BT Wholesale only accept this to be a fault if service falls below 15 Mbps download, and not sure what their figure on upload is, if any. I'll need to read through the BT Wholesale supplier handbook again.