Finally getting fibre broadband!!!

[Harrison]

BT (British Telecom) have finally upgraded my local exchange and the street cabinets with fibre optics, and activated the ability to get Fibre Broadband in my area.

BT with Fibre Infinity Broadband is the main one to go for, but some other companies are also offering it by leasing it from BT Wholesale, including Sky, Talk Talk and Plusnet.

After looking at the details for each of the providers I've decided to go with BT Infinity 2. It offers the fastest bandwidth, which will be 76Mbit download and 19Mbit upload, and completely unlimited usage.

Just placed my order and managed to combine it with a phone package that will also save me money on phone line rental and call costs.

Annoyingly the first date they could offer me for the engineer call out to connect it up is 28th May, so nearly a month to wait... but at least it is on the way.

So, has your area been upgraded to receive fibre yet?

I was really surprised Chichester was so quickly. I looked at the roll-out schedule back in December and it had Chichester down for April-July to activate the exchange, but I was very sceptical. Gad I was proved wrong and I can't wait. Finally I will be able to watch Full HD streaming video without sudden hanging and buffering. And download much faster. I worked out that a 10GB game purchased via Steam currently takes my ADSL (5-6Mbit) connection about 4 hours to download. The same 10GB game should take about 18 minutes with Infinity. Now that is a really cool speed increase.

[Stephen Coates]

Nice. Be sure to let us know how it goes!

We've been able to get fibre here for some time, but I haven't really got any need for it. Certainly not worth me paying any more for it. It wasn't that long since I got my telephone line upgraded to ADSL2+.

Harrison, how much is the fibre going to cost?

[Kin Hell]

Yeah. See Sig 12 months ago. It's poo down here because of noise margin reductions which affect how it works. Very very dissapointing & my 50Mb as sig is now 40Mb with MORE than double ping times.....

Really hope you have a fab experience with it. It should be like lightning if BT didn't dick with noise margins.

[Demon Cleaner]

I should have it already by now, as the works in my area should be finished by January this year. Sadly this winter was quite hard, and they couldn't work, and as they then also started in another area, the works in my area are only continuing in August. So I doubt that I will have fibre connection this year. At least the cable is already in the house, not that it would help, but already good to know.

[Harrison]

That's annoying DC. I thought you had fibre months ago.

@Kin. Fingers crossed it will be. I don't think that many people in my immediate area will be upgrading to it as it's a fairly rural village on the edge of Chichester, but the Fibre cabinet is right at the end of my road, so should be good. I was tempted to get Infinity Business, but the price difference for the same speed, and the contention and priority features shouldn't really be an issue here. But I can always upgrade later.

[DonAmiga]

They have just put the new infinity cabinets in my area a couple of weeks ago so shouldn't be much longer? I read online that you want your house to be within 500 meters of the cabinet or the speed can drop, my house is 360 paces (checked twice ) Also read that the more people in your area that sign up can reduce the speed.

[Harrison]

Yes that is the one. Brilliant router. It has a ADSL+ modem, but also a cable wan port, so can be used for all broadband services, including Infinity.

When I purchased it last year I instantly got a big speed increase in my adsl broadband, and I've read the same for Infinity customers.

Just be prepared for how large it is, as the unit is huge, and isn't aesthetically pleasing. But it has 3 WiFi antennas and dual band, so has great wireless coverage and range. Quite expensive but worth it.
The one thing I can say about the hub 4 is how nice it looks, with the glowing blue status light.

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[DonAmiga]

Thanks for the feedback as its quite a bit of money just want to make sure what's the best route to go, hopefully I'll be getting the infinity soon. Looks don't bother me as it sits high up on top of a unit but if the hub4 preforms well or as good as the billion then maybe I should wait and just get that for free!

[Harrison]

You will get the Hub 4 when you sign up for Infinity anyway, so it's worth giving it a try first, and if you are happy then no need to upgrade to another router.

I've read people had issues with the Hub 3 disconnecting or needing to be rebooted. I will post my findings about the Hub 4 once I've been running it a week. So far, since the install on Wednesday it has been stable and worked perfectly, and my bandwidth is still 74Mb/s down and 16Mb/s up. And the ping rate is still 7ms which is great for online gaming.

[Harrison]

It's not insecure. It works by providing a completely separate ring fenced connection for the general public which shows up as its own WiFi router. If someone tries to connect to it then it will only load a BT connection page that allows BT customers to log into their account to use the connection to access the internet, or if you don't have an account purchase access from BT. It also restricts users to utilising a maximum of 512Kb of your bandwidth, so hardly noticeable.

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