[GLLUG] FTTH?

[Christopher Hunter]

On 07/04/14 10:53, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On the subject of broadband, I wonder if anyone has had FTTH/FTTP
> installed, and what the costs (install/ongoing) were for them.
>
> Rich.
>
I did.  BT's old offering was about as reliable as Virgin (on the 
ridiculous).  It was very sporadic, and complaints to BT were met with 
bafflement.  We were one of the test areas for FTTH, and it was 
disappointing, to say the least.  That's why we went with BeThere - we 
got a real, consistent 21Mb/s down, and their service was always on 
(until Murphy put a pickaxe through a cable in the next street when we 
were off for 12 hours).  It wasn't anywhere near a quarter of the quoted 
FTTH speed, but it mostly worked!

When BeThere sold out to Murdoch, I (briefly) considered their 
"service", but having had experience of the Virgin disaster (the 
takeover of Cable Camden by Cable London, Telewest, then Virgin - with 
the quality of service decreasing in seeming direct proportion to each 
increase in monthly charges) I opted to go for the Big Boys.

BT's VDSL Infinity 2 service has been flawless over the last year. We 
had one 2 hour, pre-announced outage (in the middle of the night) for an 
equipment upgrade in the local exchange, and other than that, it's 
always there.  There are some evident contention issues at peak times, 
but that just means that their >120 Mb/s drops to their advertised 80!  
I've signed for an initial year, and have yet to find much fault with 
them.  I have a telephone and Infinity 2 deal with them, and the price 
isn't actually much more than the old BeThere price!

Chris