BT Infinity

[duncan]

Does anyone here use BT Infinity and if you do would you recommend it?

I am with Sky at the moment and pay £15.00 a month and only get on average 1mb speed. I tested my phone line and BT estimate a maximum of 28mb for £18.00. SO if it's really any good it has to be worthwhile switch as we ahve the PC, 2 wii's and an x-box all needing to use the internet.

[Rob McCow]

I'm not an expert, but I'd go to Money Saving Expert as a first recourse for this sort of thing.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-broadband

They usually have good links to the comparison sites.

I think the thing to watch out for is the cap on your downloads - may be 60GB or something. Only really an issue if you download movies or games.

[Lissa]

I've been pestering my housemate to switch us from rubbish Talk Talk to BT Infinity for six months now. Talk Talk are bastards though and it's a nightmare trying to cancel them. Infinity's fibre optic and has to be the best option for anyone not in a Virgin Media area. If you are in a cabled area I'd go with Virgin.

[duncan]

Virgin still hasn't installed digital in my area so they are not an option. Infinity is fibre optic only to the local box in the street after that it's copper wire into the house but it still delivers faster speeds.

the capping isn't really an issue as we don't download stuff. My son plays his x-box on line with his friends so I don't know if that will dent our download limit?

I just really wanted to know of people's thoughts on the reliability if they had it.

[Philipnet]

I'm also curious to know if anyone has any comments on Infinity as my parents are looking to get setup with a new broadband suppllier when they move house (whenever that might be!)

[Llordllama]

Interesting! I'm about at the end of my tether with Talk Talk as well, but the one good thing they do in unmetered internets (thanks to the Wife and I's usage we'd burn 60Gb like it wasn't even there). Are there any slightly better unmetered ISPs then? Not too worried about hyperspeed as Sileby where we are runs the phone lines on bamboo cables....

[duncan]

I've made the decision to switch to infinity. My current download speed with Sky is just 0.4mb and I pay for up to 20MB. I'll be contacting Sky for my MAC on Monday

[Lissa]

Good choice. When you say 0.4mb do you mean you get 400kps when you download something? You may already be aware of this so ignore it if you are but broadband companies are all misleading swines for promoting services in megabits per second that customers will only ever see operating in megabytes per second. 8 bits in a byte means seeing a 400kps download speed gives you a 3.2 megabit connection - a lot less than the "up to" 20 megabits you were sold but still around the national average. Our crappy Talk Talk connection gives about 80kps on an "up to" 20 megabit service. If my sidekick was still single we'd be fibre optic by now. I ask you - what does his absurdly young girlfriend give him that 2 hours on the phone to Talk Talk wouldn't?

[duncan]

I went to one of the websites that test your download speed and it came out at 0.4mb download but 0.6mb upload. Sites are taking so long to load now it's like being back on dial up!

[duncan]

We didn't ever get around to switching to BT infinity as we promised ourselves but now it turns out way don't need to.

A friend of a friend told me that ideally my router should be plugged into a wall socket of it's own and not on an extension lead as it was. So, we had a move around last night and did what he suggested and my speed shot up to 4 meg. What a difference!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

You can also have a look at disconnecting your ring wire as apparently this can cause some issues, which is something I keep meaning to do but haven't yet got round to trying. But it's definitely worth noting that the wiring in your own house can cause a big difference. I was getting quite slow speeds in all the sockets in my house so tried plugging directly into the test socket and it doubled the speed straight away. 6 months later everything's still plugged into this one socket via a long extension lead. I really should get round to sorting it

[duncan]

I didn't realise that either but I had a speed of 6 meg last night so I am a lot happier than I was.