News - BT undercuts Virgin on super-fast broadband

[HEXUS]

The pricing for BT?s Infinity 40Mbps broadband has been released, but does it improve on the Virgin Media offering?

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[Singh400]

Excellent stuff!

[roadie]

Option 2 is unlimited huh? I'm assuming there will be some kind of traffic shaping or something of the kind applied to it though?

[Terbinator]

20GB limit :\

[Singh400]

Option 2 is unlimited huh? I'm assuming there will be some kind of traffic shaping or something of the kind applied to it though?

You betcha, but I survived on BT before with traffic shaping, and I could do now with 40mb/s down and 10mb/s up.

[Hicks12]

If it has traffic management then it isnt as good as VM as their XXL package is free from such limitations. I hate VM for TM but in some respects they do provide value for money and it is pretty clear how they go about doing traffic management. If BT have a clear listing just like VM and its acceptable (like 10gb during day? unlimited night) then I wont mind cause the price is very good and best of all.... the upload is amazing compared with VM which is pants .

[Terbinator]

The projected upload is very nice indeed, but as with the download there's always the issue of up too XMb/s - for all i know it would just be as fast(slow) as that massive 70KB/s I get with VM now.

[[GSV]Trig]

But how will distance from the exchange effect it...?

[Singh400]

But how will distance from the exchange effect it...?

Because it is fibre (FTTC I think) I don't think it will be affected by distance (unless you live like miles and miles away from your green box cabinet).

From what I understand (and some please correct me if I am wrong) it will work like this...

[EXCHANGE] ---------> [CABINET] ---------> [HOME]

Green to indicate where the fibre is being laid, and the red to indicate where copper will be used.

[[GSV]Trig]

So the red bit is the weak link then, not so good if oyur out in the sticks still I would of thought..

The local cab for Virgin is at the end of my front drive and about 6 foot to the left so I always get the speed I should, if the BT stuff was in the same cab then I might be tempted as those upload speeds look mighty fine..

Also be nice at work as our local cab is actually at the end of our road so about 30m from our actual comms room, be nice to get some decent interweb instead of the just about 4mb/400k we get at the mo, not brilliant when you tihnk theres 60 users all with net access and PVN users etc here..

[Terbinator]

Not good if your out in the sticks and/or if the line is poor quality as well.

[GaryRW]

So 40Mb/s, and a 20GB per month limit.

So assuming I've got my bits and bytes correct, 40Mb/s = 5MB/s.
20GB = 20480MB.
20480MB / 5MB/s = 4096 seconds = 68.2666 minutes

So just over an hour per month at full whack? "Unlimited" you say?

(& yes, I know it might be difficult to max out a 40Mb/s connection for any length of time, but still, the use of "unlimited" just really annoys me on principle!)

[Terbinator]

So 40Mb/s, and a 20GB per month limit.

So assuming I've got my bits and bytes correct, 40Mb/s = 5MB/s.
20GB = 20480MB.
20480MB / 5MB/s = 4096 seconds = 68.2666 minutes

So just over an hour per month at full whack? "Unlimited" you say?

(& yes, I know it might be difficult to max out a 40Mb/s connection for any length of time, but still, the use of "unlimited" just really annoys me on principle!)

Yep, thats what I was thinking - It's almost as if they want you to receive less than 40Mb/s.

[Hicks12]

Well you should really expect poor speeds when its out, BT are doing a complete overhaul but there is going to be a lot of new demand and more strain on the network so supplying 40Mb sounds a bit opptimistic if im honest. Atleast its more competition to VM high end package, maybe it will convince VM to start working on their uploads than their download speeds because really 50Mb is overkill but upload is so low its retarded.

[lodore]

just used the checker and only shows the current stuff and no fibre. BT can be annoying at times. hopfully be able to get it before bt roll out the replacement lol.
i will retry the checker on the 25th.

most things are better than standard adsl these days anyway. upload speed of 448kb is a joke tbh.

surely once its out the adsl packages should be cheaper?

[chilled]

just used the checker and only shows the current stuff and no fibre. BT can be annoying at times. hopfully be able to get it before bt roll out the replacement lol.
i will retry the checker on the 25th.

That's because they're rolling out fibre across something like 10 exchanges across the UK!