Finally getting Full Fibre broadband!

[Harrison]

I wasn't expecting this so quite excited.

I received an email from BT (British Telecom) about their January sale. It said because my contract was soon up for renewal I qualified to upgrade to their newer best package and still save £5 per month.

All it really added over my existing package was their Hybrid Connect hub. This is a separate 4G wifi router that plugs into the existing Halo Hub 2 router and takes over and provides your broadband if the main broadband goes down. It has only gone offline a couple of times in 5 years so I wasn't that interested, but if it would save me money over my existing contract it was worth the upgrade.

On logging into my BT Broadband account and selecting offers it was suddenly listing Full Fibre to the premises as an option. About a year ago Openreach dug up my road and laid fibre cables, and installed the hardware on each of the telephone poles, but that was it. I couldn't find any information on when it was going to go live and could be ordered. I had even checked in December and there was still no news. I'd been staring at the fibre hardware attached to the pole right outside my house all year. 

So anyway, being sceptical I didn't believe it was really available. I clicked upgrade and it offered me all the different options, including the fastest, and it really was £5 cheaper per month (but still expensive compared to many other providers). Order went through and it's booked to be installed on the 8th Feb.

So what will I be getting?

BT Halo 3+ 900 package.

That is their fastest full fibre to the premises package providing 900Mbps download and 150Mbps upload speeds. They also guarantee it will always maintain a speed of 700Mbps. So pretty close to 1Gbit Internet speeds. In real terms if it's running at the full 900Mbps it will download at 112.5MB/s. That's 1GB in 9.1 seconds!

Can't wait. No longer will I need to leave the PC or Playstation online all night downloading games. It in theory could download a 100GB game in just over 15 minutes.

It's also going to make server backups and installs so much nicer.

As an added bonus this BT package also gives you Xbox Gamepass Ultimate completely free!

And although I already have the previous package that came with everything else this Halo3+ package provides, you do get quite a lot.

Halo Smart Hub 2 router
Hybrid Connect 4G EE router
Complete Wifi
Full Fibre
Home Tech support
Keep Connected Promise
Price Promise

The price Promise is interesting because they say they will always offer the same or better deals then new customers. That's good because so often you see great deals only available to new customers.

The Keep Connected Promise means your broadband should never go offline, with the 4G router taking over if the main broadband goes down.

Home Tech Support I wouldn't really ever need. They will send an engineer to the house if something won't work. This also combines with the Complete Wifi promise, whereby the BT App locates any poor wifi spots in your house and BT will give you up to 3 BT Discs that form a Wifi mesh and boost the signal.

I already have one of the BT discs, but wifi is fine everywhere in the house. But I'm using it slightly differently. If you connect a disc to Ethernet it boosts and repeats the Wifi from the disc via ethernet. So I ran an armoured ethernet cable to our garden studio log cabin last year and the BT disc is connected down their repeating the Wifi signal. It works perfectly with full signal strength. It even repeats the same id and password so it's seamless. So I have wifi right dien the 50m of garden to the bottom. Lol.

[Kin Hell]

Nice speeds H.

We had SupferFast here in Cornwall about 9 years ago.

The new one they're releasing is UltraFast.

Aye so fast down here, we're still waiting for SuperFast to be Fast.....

BT couldn't wire a f'king Lan Party up....

[Harrison]

You still having issues? I remember you did years ago. What speeds are you getting?I

I was thinking that except for multiple users there is actually not too much point in them offering any future services much faster than 1Gbps as most Ethernet ports are still Gbit, so won't utilise anything faster. Not until 2.5Gb or 10Gb become the norm. 2.5Gb seems to be getting adopted by some with new motherboards supporting it. Probably because it can still use Cat5e and 6.

I was reading all these idiots on BT complaining that they couldn't get the 900Mbit speed and they were not recommending it. Every one of them was using wifi!

[Kin Hell]

Currently connected at 53.923 Mbps & 8.819 Mbps. Been up for 45 days without any Disco's.

I have seen as high as 63Mbps but it's been even crappier ever since Storm Dennis fried our local cabinet how many years ago.

I guess I shouldn't complain whilst only paying for Infinity whilst getting Infinity 2 speeds, but as usual, BT move the goal posts again kludging & bastardising industry standards.

The thing about Cornwall in the UK is this. The only way to get on the Internet is via BT wires or Satellite. The latter isn't cost effective in any manner making BT the Monopolistic scavenging bastards they are.

Only new building developments in Cornwall are getting full fibre & those new builds getting it have to be near main fibre pipelines.

On top of that, the quality of house builds is pure shit. They are nothing more than carboard houses where you can hear your next door neighbour farting. - Quality eh!

[Harrison]

It has been exactly the same here until now so you are not alone. I've got about 35-55Mbps on my existing connection since moving here in 2015. At my old address it maxxed out at the full 76Mbps.

They initially also only ran fibre to the new build estates here too. It was getting silly because new houses in the middle of nowhere had it, but older houses that needed it far more were stuck on copoer. And I agree with house building. It is completely crap and I would never buy one. It's also mad the prices they command. Often a 1/3 more expensive than far larger 1930s house in the area, and hardly any garden or parking space, plus as you say, so close together you can hear your neighbour doing everything.

Chuchester got a full fibre uograde about 4 years ago and that's only 4 miles from me. Buy living in a far more rural area I want expecting fibre any time soon, so was really surprised when they started digging our road up to install it this time last year. But then no idea when we could order it after work was finished. So big surprise when I discovered I could now order it. There was nothing through the door or from BT. I had to discover it by accident. At least that way not many know about it yet in my road so I could book it.

But if you think your situation is bad, consider this. My parents in the New Forest only had their local exchange and cabinet upgraded to FTTC last year! So only recently got 30Mbps. Before this they were on ADSL at 2Mbps and couldn't even stream Netflix or Youtube.

[Kin Hell]

I'm really tickled for you H. Enjoy it.

A good friend of mine lives close to the New Forest @ Holbury, just after the Hythe Bypass heading East. - He's in the same boat fella & he isn't a happy chappie being an I.T. Guru. He's got 10Gbit around his house!