Any downsides on BT Social Tariff?

NotArobot24

I have not had broadband for several years, instead relying on mobile data and odd hotspots.

I noticed that BT Social Tariff has come down a bit to £16 a month according to this MSE link (plus router) and I am considering it

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/compare-broadband-deals/broadband-social-tariffs/ 

Speed check says I can get 35/36mb on BT or 56 if I pay £25 but my budget does not stretch that far and 35mb should be adequate.

Does anyone know any downsides to this BT service?

It is throttled?

Does it have good latency?

Are there any better alternatives either in terms or speed?

I noticed Vodafone advertised 73mb for £20 but when I put my postcode in it offers me two alternatives contracts both of 32mb, 

So it seems that BT is the best option as none of the regional ones seem to be in my area.

Does anyone know if I can use my own Router and replace the BT one?

I have never had fibre before, does it present to the same ports as ADSL used to have years ago or will they fit a completely different box?

I seem to remember a family member had two BT boxes one for fibre and one for wifi/Ethermet I do not know if that was fibre or a halfway solution.

I live in a relatively modern block of flats, max height in the building is 4 floors.

The estate used to be terrible when it was ADSL, something about not enough wires so anytime a resident switched they would disconnect an existing customer to meet deadlines.  

What I like about these social tariffs is no Amazon or other card that has to be claimed on platform 13 facing ssw on a Friday 13 weeks after the contract starts, just straight prices, no price increases and just an annual check on eligibility.

Any help or advice, good or bad would be appreciated?

iniltous

TBH , I don’t think the social tariff price has ‘come down a bit’ , but it undoubtedly offers a below cost (and therefore from the recipient point of view) a really good value deal .
No the service isn’t throttled it’s exactly the same as the regular consumer offer on that speed profile , latency is the same as everyone else and depends on the site you are reaching far more that the Openreach kit you are using , yes you can use a third party router , the SH2 is only a requirement if using BT Digital Voice .

Ectophile

At 35Mb, it won't be ADSL.  That topped out at about 20Mb.

It could be FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) using VDSL, or it could be full fibre (FTTP).  What you get depends on what Openreach are rolling out in your area.  Once FTTP is available, Openreach stop offering FTTC to new customers.

Is it throttled?  Well it's only 35Mb.  Throttling these days is by adjusting your speed to what you're paying for.

As for using your own router, then it depends on what your own router can do.  Many will automatically adjust between ADSL and VDSL when they connect over a phone line.  Fibre requires your router to have a special WAN port.  The WAN port is a normal Ethernet socket but is only for connecting to your fibre feed.  Openreach installs a separate fibre-to-Ethernet box as part of the install.

Installing fibre usually means drilling a new hole in the wall.  Make sure your landlord is OK with that.

NotArobot24

Thanks for your reply, I googled SH2 and it said it means Smart Hub 2, I thought BT were on about 5 revisions in but realised those were called home hubs and now SmartHubs are what is being offered.

https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/learn-about-broadband/different-types-of-bt-hub

I searched online to try and find more about what is installed and found this page which might be of interest to others in same position

https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/full-fibre/how-is-full-fibre-installed

I ask a lot of questions because some years ago when I had ADSL Broadband there were complications, I have broadband sockets in hall, living room and bedroom but it was not easy to get them working, speaking with neighbours in the same building some had best outcome in living room while others in the hall.

TBH I thought Vodafone used BT, I did a check on Sky just to see what is installed around here, it said 67mb Part Fibre, which is their way of saying fibre to the cabinet, but would I be right to assume that any connection to flats is not going to be full fibre?   

Is it not the case that at best they could do full fibre to the ground floor energy cupboard and then run on existing copper to the different homes in the building.

I tried to go to Sam Knows website to see what was going on at my exchange, but the site forwards to a different site, I did find some speed test links that are hosted on Sam Knows.

What would be helpful for me is if any people here who are on BT 35mb level service could use these three speed test links so I could see what the likely improvement is in latency is, 


Generic Speed Test   https://fast.com/

Samknows basic speed test   https://speedtest.samknows.com/

Samknows Real speed  https://www.samknows.com/realspeed/


If some people on BT 35mb could kindly post their results for the above 3 tests it would help me see if I am going to get the improvement I seek in latency, a test on wifi would be adequate as I am seeking real world results.

Please only post your results if you are on BT 35mb service and choose a quiet time with no video streaming or big downloading going on.

Thanks! 

littleboo

You seem to be making this very complicated. If you're moving from 4g mobile broadband to FTTC, you can expect an improvement in latency. Latency is more about the underlying network architecture and technology, the location and capability of the specific server you are testing against, than simply bandwidth. What latency do you have now and what  do you need? If you want to understand the network latency, you wont be using a wireless connection to measure it

NotArobot24

littleboo said:

You seem to be making this very complicated. If you're moving from 4g mobile broadband to FTTC, you can expect an improvement in latency. Latency is more about the underlying network architecture and technology, the location and capability of the specific server you are testing against, than simply bandwidth. What latency do you have now and what  do you need? If you want to understand the network latency, you wont be using a wireless connection to measure it

Thanks for your reply, I am using wireless bridges not 4g (except where I hotspot from phone as backup).

Sorry if I am making it complicated, I am out of the arc.

All I am trying to do is determine if I will be better off with getting the social tariff BT 35mb Fibre.

I do not do gaming so latency is not for that, I live on a tight budget so no paid streaming services, I had Netflix years ago when they said sharing is caring but dumped them when they hiked prices and started playing their games with different resolutions etc.  I still have some free streaming and they work fine.

The issue is a sort of "pause" in browsing and even Alexa having a delay both in responding and in carrying out a command.

So what I want to see is what improvement I get over what I already have in terms of latency, you can see from links below that speed is around the same :







 
My sister went on holiday in a remote part of Spain and got 395mb wifi with 3ms latency, I do not expect that but it seems there is this "pause" in everything I do.

I tried changing to other DNS like Google, Open and Cloudfare, no real improvement.

I can manage on what I have, I always do, but I was recently moved from disability benefit to UC and it is slightly higher so I thought maybe I should use that for Broadband.

The use my own router thing is for two reasons, first I do not want to pay for energy of two routers and my existing one is very good OpenWrt one.  Second issue is I see people being charged for routers and having to pay to return them, I do not know if BT does this, it charges £11 for the router but it is likely I will stick it in a wardrobe and stick with OpenWrt which is a cable router.  It does not have the VDSL port, I could get one but that model is not as good as mine at the Wireless bridge.

NotArobot24

Ectophile said:

At 35Mb, it won't be ADSL.  That topped out at about 20Mb.

It could be FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) using VDSL, or it could be full fibre (FTTP).  What you get depends on what Openreach are rolling out in your area.  Once FTTP is available, Openreach stop offering FTTC to new customers.

Is it throttled?  Well it's only 35Mb.  Throttling these days is by adjusting your speed to what you're paying for.

As for using your own router, then it depends on what your own router can do.  Many will automatically adjust between ADSL and VDSL when they connect over a phone line.  Fibre requires your router to have a special WAN port.  The WAN port is a normal Ethernet socket but is only for connecting to your fibre feed.  Openreach installs a separate fibre-to-Ethernet box as part of the install.

Installing fibre usually means drilling a new hole in the wall.  Make sure your landlord is OK with that.

There will not be Full Fibre that is for sure, will they ever offer full fibre to individual flats?  Not sure how practical that is. 

My own router is a cable router running OpenWrt it has a WAN port as you say but if they provide a separate fibre-to-Ethernet box as part of the install then that will be fine.  My Landlord is an HA and they are fine with whatever happens inside my home, they only need consulting if I use communal area.  

QrizB

NotArobot24 said:

Thanks for your reply, I am using wireless bridges not 4g (except where I hotspot from phone as backup).
Sorry if I am making it complicated, I am out of the arc.

In the first line of your opening post you said:

NotArobot24 said:

I have not had broadband for several years, instead relying on mobile data and odd hotspots.

But now you say that your 4G connection is a backup and:

NotArobot24 said:

My own router is a cable router running OpenWrt

How exactly are you currently getting your internet sevice?
Do you live in a location where you are inside a bubble of public WiFi and you're bridging that into your OpenWRT router? What exactly are you thinking of replacing with xDSL or fibre?

NotArobot24

QrizB said:

NotArobot24 said:

Thanks for your reply, I am using wireless bridges not 4g (except where I hotspot from phone as backup).
Sorry if I am making it complicated, I am out of the arc.

In the first line of your opening post you said:

NotArobot24 said:

I have not had broadband for several years, instead relying on mobile data and odd hotspots.

But now you say that your 4G connection is a backup and:

NotArobot24 said:

My own router is a cable router running OpenWrt

How exactly are you currently getting your internet sevice?
Do you live in a location where you are inside a bubble of public WiFi and you're bridging that into your OpenWRT router? What exactly are you thinking of replacing with xDSL or fibre?

Sorry if it was not clear, I meant the wireless bridge is not 4g, for the 4g I use the phone's private hotspot.

I am getting internet via a wireless bridge as stated and I used OpenWrt firmware.

In earlier post I explained I have not had DSL for some years, I think 7 or 8 years, I do not really know what I will be getting, hence the thread and the questions.

I did the availability checks which I mentioned above, I said what they said I COULD have and the choice I will make is 35mb, both options are fibre which I have never had before, hence further questions.

I explained what I have is the typical BT socket that we used to get in those days, if it helps I can tell you it is a chunky port with the word OPEN REACH on it.  Others here said they will probably replace the front of it and that they will probably put a another small box in that will present an Ethernet port.

Obviously this site is about saving money and to me that means not wasting money if there is no improvement, latency can be an issue on current setup so I wanted to make sure that this improves with me having a dedicated BT connection just for me.

I do not know how BT are, in my time I have been with most of the ISP's, some use throttling, some boast they don't.

Some use something called CGNAT (??) and apparently that is an issue for site to site VPN's which is something I am keen to explore, I gather that BT uses CGNAT for some customers so that is a try it and see.

The key thing for me is latency, I have had some tech installed to help with disability, I think that these are affected by the latency but can't be sure, but it also affects browsing and almost anything based in the Cloud.

I hope this clarifies, I was hoping someone here has the 35mb BT service and could run those 3 tests on the links about and paste their results here.

littleboo

It's still not clear how you get internet access today. What is your wireless bridge bridging to? Someone else's broadband?

CGNAT is used on mobile networks and typically by some/many of the new 'altnet" broadband providere. BT don't use CGNAT for their fixed line services as far as I know

NotArobot24

littleboo said:

It's still not clear how you get internet access today. What is your wireless bridge bridging to? Someone else's broadband?

CGNAT is used on mobile networks and typically by some/many of the new 'altnet" broadband providere. BT don't use CGNAT for their fixed line services as far as I know

I am wary of going off topic, by getting into tech which I have probably done too much of already, a wireless bridge is a wireless bridge, it can connect to a whole bunch of services or even my phone's hotspot although that is pretty crappy and just for backup.

I thought BT did not use CGNAT but AI on Google quoted some sites that said they use it for "some" customers.

My key goal here is to get the latency figures from someone on BT 35mb??