I called BT to order ‘Unlimited BT Infinity 2’ and was told the equipment (Home Hub 5) would be posted to arrive on 19th December and the work at the exchange would be done on the 23rd December. I asked when the engineer would call at my house but the woman I spoke to said no visit was necessary. This surprised me because I thought there would be work to be done such as replacing the BT master socket which was put in many years ago. But still she said there would not be a visit from an engineer and there was no way in setting up my order that such a visit could be arranged.

So now I’m a bit concerned. The old master socket is in a bedroom and that is not the ideal place for a router, in fact I’d been hoping that BT would provide a new master socket in a better location or provide a special extension kit. Can anyone please advise me?

David

Yes the HUB 5 is posted out to you on an order .
And yes a person should need to come to your home to finish setting it up if your home has old phone socket box as there is a need to check out the line speed from your home to the local fibre network box which too has to have your line switched to .
you should get paperwork that tell you the speed you should have from them testing, so both parties know at start the speed to your home.

I had my broadband put in just over a year ago along with youview TV and I had both the hub and youview box sent at the same time and at the time I had only phone line with socket for the phone ... so a new socket was put in and they had go to the local fibre box and they had done that day at the exchange too. I had cable put in from the new phone socket to a place near to my TV for the hub5 so that the youview box could easy be linked.

you may get a visit at the date of the exchange fix ?

BT is self install now. Changed a while back. A lot of isp's are going down this route. In fact I doubt there will be engineer installs for much longer.

Thanks for your replies. We’ve now had an email from BT confirming the order and it says there’s no need to be at home on the day as ‘we don’t need to visit to start your broadband’.

But I don’t see how this will work. Our existing BT master socket is the NTE5 type, which only has a socket for the phone line, and not the SSFP Infinity which has separate phone and ethernet sockets and ‘is usually used for BT Infinity connections’ according to BT’s customer help pages.

David

You will have a plug in filter, same as you get with ADSL.

They used to fit a filtered faceplate to the sockets but don't seem to be doing that so much now. The disadvantage of the self install option though is that you need plug in filters on all phone sockets that have something plugged into them. The replacement faceplate they originally installed filtered the extension wiring as well as the phone socket on the faceplate.

You can buy the filtered faceplate if you fancy a bit of DIY.

Yep, it's fairly easy to fit a decent replacement, the same item the BT engineer would have fitted and no need for nasty filters.
https://www.claritybroadband.co.uk/c...-Modified.html

I concur with the above!
I cannot see how BT can connect you to fibre and NOT visit!
Who sets up the hub5?
The BT guy who connected me up to fibre about 6 months ago used a laptop to set up the Home Hub and also had to rewire a junction box in the roof to give optimum performance!
I would be very interested to read how this 'non visit' practice is meant to work!

http://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co...c-self-install

This gives some useful info on the subject!
Looks as though for Infinity2 you can ask for a visit?

You set it up, it isn't rocket science.

It works in the same way as a normal broadband connection - you plug in the router into the socket and install filters on phones/sky boxes etc.

You're absolutely right that some lines might need a bit of TLC to work at their best, but this seems to be a risk BT is willing to take (it doesn't help that customers would probably refuse to pay the extra for a technician to install it).

At least currently, the old type of installation is still available and many ISPs will order it (including Plusnet, which BT owns)

From what I remember ADSL was the same. When it first came out engineer installs were the order of the day. As BT (OpenReach) and the ISP's became acquainted with the system and likely problems self install became the order of the day.

Same thing is happening with FTTC. While there may be problems with individual lines that require an engineer self install will generally work.

It is cheaper and probably easier for the home owner - they don't have to be in for an engineer visit.

Brian

We had an engineer visit, he put a new double socket on the wall for us, nice bloke. I wonder if the savings of self install are being passed on to Infinity customers, doubt it.

Guess someone has to pay for those football rights they bought up.

Self install is probably fine for most jobs but I can't help think that many people with lousy ADSL speeds will upgrade to fibre and get lousy fibre speeds (relative to what's achievable) because their crappy phone socket and 17 star wired extensions cause terrible line performance.

However for me I'm much happier to do a self install and get the master socket replaced with a decent 2 port phone/fibre socket at the master and do it how I want.

BT have found a way of upgrading your copper wire connection from the house to exchange. You will have two boxes. Your home hub 5 and a white converter that connects to your home hub via Ethernet. The exchange is fibre optic but the line form there to house will be the same old copper. It's a very clever system and cuts out the need to dig up the footpaths. I live in rural Northumberland and get 100mbs. I can't find a fault with bt infinity 2 or the service from BT.

That sounds like a normal FTTC connection, are you sure you're not just reading the Ethernet speed of your PC? (which is nothing to do with your broadband - and reads as 100mbs even with the slowest Internet connection).

I am getting 100mb download speed. I do know the difference between a slow connection and high speed. I spoke a senior manger from BT and told him that I suspected that BT had found a way of converting copper to high speed, and he confirmed it. None of the streets have been up where I live as they weren't in Derbyshire. The exchanges are upgraded to fibre but that's it. It really is very clever. Don't forget that infinity 2 has two units. The router and the converter. The converter uses Ethernet to the router and PC connects via wifi. There isn't any physical connection between PC router and converter. It's very impressive tech.

Home Hub 5 doesn't require the white Openreach VDSL2 Modem as it has all that technology built in.

It's required for infinity 2. The white box is the tech that allows your copper wires to run at 100mb. Without the white box there's no high speed.

What? Your posts are not exactly correct my friend.

Firstly, there is no 100Mbps as the service is hard capped at 80Mbps.

They have not 'found a way to convert copper'. They are running VDSL2 DSLAMS from the street cabinets, not from the exchange. Although it is true it will give you a high speed connection, BT didn't invent this technology!

The 'converter' that you talk about is surely just a VDSL2 modem? Although you may have one, these are being discontinued as the Home Hub 5 router has this built in now. This is not what allows your line to run at high speed. It is the DSLAM at the other end that allows the high speed

The cabinet is the exchange these days. It's still very old copper wire from the cabinet to my house.
I am getting 100mb in Rural Northumberland and in semi rural Derbyshire I got 95mb.. There no cap. As stated in the literature. If you are with BT and have infinity 2 then you would know this. As I said I can't find fault with BT their service has been exceptional for me. When I moved house the transfer of accounts ran without any problems. And I even got a speed increase to 100mb. Luckily for me, my cabinet was only activated a few days before I moved in.
Who would have thought that the internet would run so fast on copper cables that are at least 10 years old. Virgin etc spent all that money digging the roads up to lay down fibre optic when bt can do the same and better for virtually nothing. Good for them

BT (Openreach) simply does not offer 100Mbit with fibre to the cabinet, that is a fact. They offer 40Mbit down, 10 up or 80Mbit down, 20 up, with actual speeds dependent on distance from the cabinet. But it is never higher than 80.

The only people on FTTC getting more than 80Mbit were the people in South Yorkshire who were on the Digital Region FTTC network before it was closed down earlier in the year. The only residential users on BT's network who are getting more than 80Mbit are people who live in areas where BT has fibre to the premises.

To say that BT did it for "virtually nothing" is untrue, too. All of those new cabinets, fibre cables to link them to exchanges and various other necessary upgrades are not free and not cheap. If anything it was Virgin who did it for less, as most of their networks were built with two-way communication in mind and didn't require huge street upgrades to do it. In addition, Virgin's network has no distance/speed relationship, everyone is capable of the same speeds.

But assuming that you're not trolling and that somehow you've got the mythical 100Mbit service, perhaps you could post a speedtest or screenshot of your BT account or something to prove it

Trust me, it's not. The cabinet is just a DSLAM, remote from the exchange.

And as moox said, please post a screenshot to prove you are not limited to 80Mbps, as I am afraid I do not believe you.

And as for BT doing it for virtually nothing, what complete rubbish! I read somewhere that they reckoned it was going to take them 14 years to get a return on the investment.

I am getting 100mb download speed on infinity 2. If you had infinity 2 them you will have received the literature that tells you that it's possible to get speeds above 80mb depending on your location relative to the cabinet. Clearly you won't believe me. But I assure you I am getting 100mb in the middle of nowhere in Northumberland. And 95mb in Derbyshire. My cabinet in Derbyshire was just a few yards from my house. As for a cap well there's no mention of that in the literature as you would know if you had it.
Why do you find it so hard to believe me?
No I'm not going to post a screenshot. Take a leap of faith. Not everyone in life is a liar Sir. What possible motive would I have for lying? I'm not into macho posturing about things like download speeds.
Trust me it's downloading at 100mb. Hey sign up to infinity 2 and find out. Believe me it's brilliant. The engineer that installed it told me I would get speeds higher than 80mb due to my location.

Compared to what it cost Virgin then they got it on the cheap. And without all of the mess that Virgin caused.

Because it isn't true. A speedtest takes 30 seconds to run and would instantly prove us wrong, but you insist on taking longer to repeat what you're saying without a shred of evidence.


Now this might have some truth. When the service is installed, they use their handheld tester to test the line. This device can tell the technician how fast the line can go if there was no limitations on it and if line conditions didn't change. The key words are "no limitations", since BT does limit it to the 40 or 80Mbit that you pay for.

When my line was installed, the tester said I could potentially get a 140Mbit service. But BT/Openreach doesn't yet offer anything above 80, so I can't take advantage.