BE unable to offer FTTC in 2012

[dave87]

I know a few of us here use BEThere for internet and have been holding out for them offering a FTTC service (as I have). It appears it will not be happening this year:

http://blog.bethere.co.uk/2012/04/update-on-fibre.html


Sad news - and after waiting this long for it, I'd guess the next couple of months will see a considerable number of people jumping ship to the updated Infinity based products from BT/Wholesale resellers.

I think Be is in a slightly unfortunate position here, they made their name in unmetered broadband, and that costs money at a level many people are unwilling to pay. So either the service would be contended, or costly with minimal margins. I do also wonder whether their acquisition by Telefonica had anything to do with it - big Spanish Telco, might be unwilling to invest in the infrastructure to compete with the encumbant BT offerings. Additionally, it seems they were unable to reach a commercially viable agreement to use the Openreach infrastructure BT already uses (there was talk of a service based on GEA - Generic Ethernet Access - so presumably BeThere would still have to invest in the rest of the kit to make it all work), which would likely have faced stiff competition and the consumer would face barriers to change due to the longer term contracts which are becoming the norm now.

EDIT to add - quote from one of the comments on their blog:

... And you're done. This is one business you can't stumble in. I think you'll find that by the time you get your stuff together, you won't have a customer base large enough to bill and pay for it.

Sadly I think this is all too accurate.


Now do I stick with a perfectly workable 24mb service, or do I jump ship to a FTTC service from another provider?

[neonplanet40]

I seen this dave87 but I didn't hold out too much hope anyway (they were much to quiet) so I moved to O2 on special offer (half price for 12 months).

Now I'm still on 24mb service but their packages now are too expensive compared to the FTTC competition they face. I was hoping to wait and switch to fibre but after waiting and it never came I just left and when this contract runs out in a year I will see what the market is like. But I suspect even then that BE still won't have anything credible to offer.

[BerZerk]

I've jumped ship two months ago from Be*. And now happily ever after with BT Infinity. Getting 74/13Mbps. Leeching Ubuntu 11 down @8.7MBps

[shaithis]

As I said in another thread a couple of weeks ago, the conversation I had when I called to cancel made me think it wasn't going to happen any time soon.

Had my 40/10 installed 2 days ago....got to remember to post the BeBox back, the only thing about BE I will be glad to see go

[vrykyl]

Sad news, but I'll be alright here for the mo - BT have said FTTC isnt due to arrive for me until December this year at the earliest!

So for the me atm Be is still the best of a bad situation - especially as I paid virgin cable to let me leave early!

[dave87]

I thought the same, but they're still having issues with iPlayer, ping on various games and packet loss. Not the top tier provider they once were anymore, sadly.

[Biscuit]

i was with O2 which was basically the same and we experienced our connection getting poorer and poorer. We were only getting around 10Mb by the end which was a drop of about 4Mb over the two years we were with them. They couldn't seem to do anything about it and then the contention at peak times became more and more noticeable.

I switched to Plusnet and havent really looked back. Its taking a bit of getting used the monthly peak time cap but its totally worth it.

[format]

A real shame to hear about this, BE were the top dog for a while in my estimation.

[Splash]

Still happy with Be tbh. Don't get me wrong, I'll bite their hands off when they have a FTTC offering, but I'd rather stick with my 12/2 and customer service that I trust than jump ship to BT. Never had great service from them as a domestic user (not so bad as a business user though).

It's very rare that I'd see the benefit of FTTC too - sure, I have a 12Gb patch for The Witcher 2 to download, and I just bought Shogun 2: Fall Of The Samurai which is another circa 25Gb but these occasions are the exception rather than the rule. 12Mb has been perfectly fine for iPlayer, and now that the initial backup to Spideroak is complete 2Mb up is plenty.

Service is still most important to me, and knowing that I can speak to a tech who knows what they're talking about if anything goes wrong means I'm unlikely to switch any time soon.

[cptwhite_uk]

Just to give all of you some perspective I'm in Sheffield, around 4 miles from the city centre on the side of the main road to the city, I'm with O2 and manage around 2.5-2.8 Mbps...there's not even an install date for BT Infinity here, cable isn't available either.

So think yourselves lucky! Best resource for finding FTTC enabled exchanges:

http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/

[Singh400]

BeThere were an amazing ISP. Sadly towards the end of my dealings (roughly around the time I first switch to BT Infinity, last year I think) with them they were plagued by various problems. Constant congestion problems, downtimes across the country.

I too would love to see a BeThere FTTC/FTTP service because I know their customer service is great and their quality is of the utmost. But I'm truily very happy with BT Infinity. Since I switched last year I've had no problems at all with the service. No downtime, no throttling, it's been a real joy to use. And I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. BT Infinity seems to have inherited a bad image from BT Total Broadband with poor quality of service and even worse customer service. But I think it's slowly starting to shed this image and coming into it's own.

[toolsong]

Network issues again!

Sorry BE, I'm leaving this time...