New FTTC Packages

[Clive]

Do you have to change your router to obtain FTTC?  Mine's an ancient Netgear dating back to 2010. 

[J!ll]

Yes, bought mine from IDNet, should be with me shortly.

[Clive]

I will be interested to know how you get on.  I've just begun exploratory talks with Mrs Clive but she's not very receptive at present since I put the coffee frother into the dishwasher after our Guy Fawkes night dinner party.  It was the first time we had used it too.   

[Simon]

 

[Steve]

I will be interested to know how you get on.  I've just begun exploratory talks with Mrs Clive but she's not very receptive at present since I put the coffee frother into the dishwasher after our Guy Fawkes night dinner party.  It was the first time we had used it too.   

Did work afterwards? If so I think I'll start putting the electric kettle in, got to be easier than hand cleaning.

[Clive]

   I don't yet know but I've told Mrs Clive it will probably dry out in time.  I'm afraid that when I plug it into the mains it will take out the whole building.     Alcohol was involved.   

[J!ll]

 

[andrue]

Very tempting. If I moved my phone and BB back over it'd only cost me an extra £5pcm (coming from a PlusNet/Pulse8) combo. Gonna have to think about that.

PN have mostly managed to give me full speed 24/7. The only thing they don't do is IPv6 which is hardly worth £5pcm.

But I'm tempted. How's the network running for residential users these days? It was pretty good from what I remember aside from an unfortunate issue with my router and an LNS config glitch.

[mervl]

Very tempting. If I moved my phone and BB back over it'd only cost me an extra £5pcm (coming from a PlusNet/Pulse8) combo. Gonna have to think about that.

PN have mostly managed to give me full speed 24/7. The only thing they don't do is IPv6 which is hardly worth £5pcm.

But I'm tempted. How's the network running for residential users these days? It was pretty good from what I remember aside from an unfortunate issue with my router and an LNS config glitch.

Hi Andrue! Been absolutely fine for me over the last 12 months (Stepney Green PoP). IPv6 fine. None of the old packet loss whatsoever, whenever. Only sign is about 0.5% occasional packet loss or less some days when my connection latency has the odd maximum  spike at up to 40ms under use, but minimum latency is still consistent  8%, adn average doesn't change, in fact doesn't show up on TBBQM at all. The only excitement; the rest of the time it's as quiet as a mouse even under streaming. Get full speeds, for my connection. Maybe if they become popular with heavy users again, but hopefully they've planned for and are managing the capacity. CS is always excellent as ever, but perhaps like the rest they're not as good at telling us what they're up to - who is, after all? But for me the local loop is the constraint. Have the same issue, I could save a fiver or so too. Trouble is I suspect I couldn't find anything better so why change? Money, of course, but is it everything? I was tempted by A&A but couldn't think of a good reason why?

[JohnH]

From my experience BT can limit longer FTTC lines at the cab to 40/10 even on an 80/20 package.

Yes, this happened to me. BT put me on a banded profile of 40/10 even though I was meant to be on 80/20. Through my ISP, I argued that I am only 100 metres from the cabinet and they took it off.

[Clive]

OK, I'm beginning to get sucked in by these new packages, especially since I have a cabinet just the other side of the road.  What is involved in upgrading from ADSL2+ to FTTC unlimited?  Will I have to have a new router and if so will IDNet supply and configure it?

[Simon]

I've been thinking about this myself, but the cost of upgrading, when you consider the router, then the installation fee, does mount up a bit.  Does anyone know which phone package is included, and whether the discount still applies if you pay annually?  I'm still not convinced that upgrading would be worthwhile for me, given that I don't have any problems with my current service.

[J!ll]

OK, I'm beginning to get sucked in by these new packages, especially since I have a cabinet just the other side of the road.  What is involved in upgrading from ADSL2+ to FTTC unlimited?  Will I have to have a new router and if so will IDNet supply and configure it?

I'm still waiting for mine despite Brian saying he would let me know Monday - BT I suppose! Just send them an email, you will need a new router and they will configure it.

[colirv]

I've never gone for the phone package, but I certainly get a month's discount by paying for my Fibre Lite annually.

[Clive]

I find the phone package is very good as mine includes calls to mobiles and 0870 numbers.  I'll drop them an e-mail over the weekend and try and get some figures from them - e.g the cost of the router and installation. 

[Gary]

I find the phone package is very good as mine includes calls to mobiles and 0870 numbers.

Companies have to legally provide an alternative number to 0870, so its not needed tbh these days. If in doubt http://www.saynoto0870.com/search.php type the 0870 version in get the one that is either 0333 or a proper area code, theses are included in most mobile packages now and landline ones too. (I never use mine these days cant see the point with unlimited mobile calls free 0800 etc) and you can use that number from the site now without incurring charges. 

[stevenrw]

Clive, you will be set up with a new Open Reach phone socket and a fibre modem. These will be installed and set up by a BT engineer as part of the installation procedure. You then connect your new router to the BT modem (which is a small white box) via an ethernet cable.
So you do need to have your router near to the BT master socket, along with a power point of course.
IDNet will supply a pre-configured router, but I do not know which one they currently supply.
You do not have to buy a preconfigured one from IDNet however, its a fairly easy thing to set up your own. You really only need to know your IDNet user name and password.
You will probably have to set up your own WiFi anyway.

[Clive]

Thanks Steven, much appreciated.  I can't say I like the idea of having a BT engineer let loose inside my property.   

[J!ll]

I had an engineer earlier this year to sort out the line that had broken outside, very good he was too as he replaced the phone socket as well but he didn't log it    Clive the router IDNet supply is the Billion 8800NLr2 + £63.00, costs are £25.00 I think for BT to do their bit. My present router I did myself but if IDNet will configure I agreed. All prices are there for you to check. As far as I'm aware I will not need an engineer as it's FTTC not FTTH.

[Gary]

Thanks Steven, much appreciated.  I can't say I like the idea of having a BT engineer let loose inside my property.   

Seriously? I have a friend who has spent 30 years on the tools with BT, when people spout rubbish like this it really gets my back up. Having met most of the local team though him they are all good guys, but they are under huge pressure to get x amount of jobs a day done, if they cant close a call off because it needs say a lift and shift, or an exchange engineer that is marked as poor performance and they get it in the neck. 

So many have gone ill with stress related illness as the pressure to perform is huge, they have compulsory over time as well. They work in the coldest wettest and windiest of conditions, Its not a nice job when you have to look at your numbers all the time while travelling literally hundreds of miles sometimes in day when other engineers are pulled to do big jobs. Also considering its a post war copper network designed for telephony only it does pretty well.

In my book all the guys I have have met at my home or though my friend at the exchange in town are good people. Now sub contractors may be a different kettle of fish but don't tar them all with the same brush, that's just plain wrong. Oh and they are not BT Engineers either. They work for Openreach.

[J!ll]

I have had two Openreach Engineers, both excellent! they know their stuff and always try and work with you with regards to wiring with reason.

[Clive]

   I wondered if I was going to offend someone and of course I did!  Many apologies Gary, please don't take it personally.  I have had dreadful experiences with these people trying to tell me my speeds were 8Mb/s when in actual fact I was getting just 104 Kb/s.  The same guy kept coming out and he clearly didn't know what he was doing.  This was before I switched to IDNet who discovered the problem was a corroded connector box outside the house.  I have other horror stories but I won't bore you with them. 

[Adrian]

I have to say that over the years I have had nothing but excellent service from BT engineers, and once even from a manager who late on a Friday afternoon when I was supposed to go onto Home Highway but instead was cut off completely, not only got an engineer out to the exchange to sort it out, but then gave me the direct phone number of her boss in case anything else went wrong while she was on holiday.

More recently, in fact March 2015, my newly installed FTTC cabinet was written off by a car leaving me with no internet connectivity for several weeks. I can do no better than requote a post I made on this forum concerning not only the quality of service from IDNet staff but also two BT engineers who I just happened to get talking to.

"After two and a half weeks I am back on fibre, but with a rather unusual story. Last Thursday BT OR finally installed the new fibre cabinet but it still seemed that I could not be reconnected. IDNet support have been first class in keeping the pressure on BT and have always patiently dealt with my calls and kept me updated as best they could. BT engineers seem to have taken root round the cabinet of late but today I got chatting to a guy who was immersed in vast quantities of wire inside the old telephone cabinet. He told me they were doing a complete rewire but more interestingly he told me that while the fibre cabinet was powered up it was only on batteries as the mains supply had not yet been reconnected, and they were changing the batteries every 4 hours in order to maintain telemetry with the exchange, but no new lines had been connected.

I told him my story and said that I'd be quite happy to have my fttc connection back even if it meant losing the connection and phone line periodically when the batteries went flat. He took my details and said he'd see what he could do. As I was in the process of taking one of my dogs for a walk I said I'd come back on my return. When I spoke to him again he said that he'd been unable to verify the number because my provider wasn't BT - something I'd forgotten when we first spoke, so I gave him my thanks and went home. A few minutes later his colleague knocked at the door and said they had thought of a way round the problem and he plugged in his test kit to the socket while the engineer I had originally spoken to looked for the appropriate pair in the phone cabinet. Once that was confirmed the engineer at the cabinet put the jumpers to the fibre cabinet back in, and bingo, I was back up and running.

I know BT OR come in for a lot of stick, and rightly so, but yet again I have encountered engineers who have gone beyond the call of duty to try and fix things.

I would also like to reiterate my thanks to IDNet support staff, and in particular, Simon, Nick, Brian and George who have done their best to get things sorted out - thanks guys.

As a matter of interest, how many support staff are there as I always seem to get through to Simon, Nick or Brian - I only spoke to George on one occasion.

I shudder to think what it would have been like dealing with technical support from low-end ISPs on an issue like this. You get what you pay for."

I have always found the BT engineers willing to do that extra little bit if they can, and they have always been friendly and courteous.

[mervl]

I certainly agree. Yes, I've experienced a few times where things didn't work out as I would have liked, and the BT staff were as frustrated  (even, perhaps, more so) than me. They are dealing with incredibly technically complex systems, that with due respect to us all, we don't fully understand. There's no reason why we should. And the admin systems can seriously let them down, it's the Cinderella (and where I have (not) heard that one before?). These days we all seem to have the childish view that everything comes with a magic wand, and expect some sort of mummy's kiss to come and make it all better. I suppose it comes from decades of being brainwashed by advertisements and Hollywood junk. Real life isn't a comic strip.

We should all remember that, however good we think we are (or were) at our jobs, there is always someone, somewhere, that thinks (maybe correctly) we're rubbish. How do we feel about that, when we're working out butt off (in our own opinion at least)?

[dudwell]

Thanks Steven, much appreciated.  I can't say I like the idea of having a BT engineer let loose inside my property.   

I went from ADSL Max to FTTC 8 months ago. Phone socket is a few years old. I simply replaced modem/router with the one supplied and pre-configured by IDNet (Billion-8800NL), followed IDNet's clear instructions and it all worked. Much to the relief of Mrs D who hates having workers of any kind in the house if it can be avoided!