[Closed] Broadband Providers for FTTC - any real experiences of these?

If you're 2 miles from the cabinet you may get 10Mbs bepending upon the condition of your copper. If it turns out to be ally you 'may' not see a big increase.
All the providers are just reselling the BT service so the only difference is how much you pay and possible customer service experience.
BT will probably be cheaper but the choice is yours.
Zen are supposed to be good and I've hopped over to them for a couple of months before fibre is available here. Since placing the order a week ago they've managed to do nothing but **** up the process - not impressed at all so far.

I'm with plusnet FTTC. Absolutely spot on from start to finish, even the BT engineer that came to do the install 😉

I get 75ish down, 18ish up @ 200metres from the cabinet 🙂

Alex, we've been with plusnet since when I first signed up to an ISP - so about 10 years ago. They've been pretty good, not fabulous but good value.

They weren't very good at upgrading to better and cheaper service but I guess that's par for the course. On the occasion I've had to raise a tickets response has been good.

Ta all. Plusnet part of BT now I think? But they do look to provide a good range of packages. No idea if we're on ally or not. I used to know all about this stuff, but my knowledge pretty much stops at DACS and ISDN 🙂

If we got 10 meg and meg up (flickr uploading is painful. It'd be quicker to print them out and send them to the US to be scanned!) I'd be delighted.

We can't wait to get away from Plusnet. Unfortunately we paid 12 months line rental up front and when we tried to move mid term we would have lost half the rental and been forced to pay a broadband severance fee. If we tried to simply transfer we had to may £60 to move or if we signed up for another 6 months they would waive that so I think we are still stuck with 6 months left.

Don't get sucked in with claims of low prices and good customer service.

Trying to call them to get a line check tonight as I couldnt get online or use the phone as the line is very noisy and feint. Have sorted it temporarily but it involves running very short wires through outside windows.

43 minutes on hold to be told by the guy that I can always use their online wait checker before I call to see if it is quiet. I pointed out that I was calling because I couldnt get online. In the time I was on hold I managed to re-arrange all the wiring, perform multiple resets of their crappy router and eventually get something back up and running.

andyl - sounds like you have a case to break your contract on account of Plusnet's inability to service it. OFCOM, the Consumers' Association and CAB can all help. I would recommend my old mag, Computeractive, but it's a ghost of its former self these days. That said, try asking some of the consumer advice columnists on nationals (Graun and Telegraph are generally good) and on mags (Webuser and the aforementioned CA).

We're a couple of miles away from the exchange on a direct copper link (not through an intermediate fibre cabinet) so not sure we're going to get mega speeds

If you are fed direct from the exchange as in not via an exisitng copper cabinet, FTTC will not be available.
This is known as an "E/O" actually stands for exchange outlet or as the majority of people in BT wrongly call it exchange only.

Obviously to receive FTTC you need to be fed via the cabinet that has the associated DSLAM (fibre cabinet) associated with it
There is also a line length limit from cabinet to premises above which superfast broadband becomes unavailable, around about 1.5km when I retired from BT last October so may have changed since.

It would still work above that length limit, but providers do not offer it because of the decreased speed and associated complaints that would inevitably arise

Sky have been pretty good for me - £25/month for their Sky Fibre Pro package including line rental. Also comes with a static IP address and (soon) the ability to customise the line profile.

Ta for the info TT. After putting the first cabinet live, they decided to push back any rollout until June! No idea why. So I'll have to wait and see. As the crow flies we're probably not that much over 1.5km but no idea of the pole route. Just have to wait and see I suppose.

Since this is the THIRD time they've put it back, I'm not holding out much hope to even finding out until the end of the summer 🙁

Is there anyway of finding if you're served direct from the exchange? I'm making the assumption there's no cab due to number of poles and shortage of people and no obvious cabs where we live.

No problem Alex, when ADSL first started I had quite a big role in determining avaialability and associated line loss characteristics.

You can try this [url= http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker ]Checker[/url]

I know they are actively working on a solution for those fed direct from the exchange to receive superfast broadband, but as far as I know nothing available yet.

The 1.5km I mentioned is from a cabinet to the premises, although if you are only that distance from the exchange I would have thought your BB speed to be ok. This does obviously depend on what services your exchange has enabled and to some extent the line characteristics that serve you.

If you wanted to email me your landline number and postcode I could use those services available on the net to see what you might be able to get. Cannot use BT programs now I have retired, but could probably get a fair idea just from the checkers publicly available.

Thanks again TT. Shall email you. The site is useful but not very encouraging. My optimistic view of how close to the exchange we were was out by a factor of about a 100%!