I currently have BT Infinity 2, as when I originally took it out it was only a few pounds more than 1, but I actually only get around 40 Mbps download (I get ~13Mbps upload). There's now a bigger price difference between the two products and my contract is up - if I drop down to Infinity 1, will my speed only drop down a few Mbps and run close to the ~38Mbps advertised speed? Or will it drop even further? If it only drops a few Mbps then it might be worth dropping down for the saving - but if it drops a fair bit below 38Mbps I'd rather pay the extra for the faster speed.

The difference between Infinity 1 and Infinity 2 is the artificial cap BT put on the connection. Thus, your download speed will remain the same and your upload speed will drop to 10 Mb/s.

Thanks, that's what I thought would be the case but I wanted to double check

I had Infinity 1 and BT gave me an upgrade offer to Infinity 2.

My Infinity 1 download speed was @ 39 Mbit/s, when I was upgraded to Infinity 2 my download speed increased to... 43 Mbit/s!!

Obviously I asked BT to cancel Infinity 2 and put me back on Infinity 1 as the "upgrade" wasn't worth continuing with and I'm back @ 39 Mbit/s now, so you shouldn't see much of a difference.

Isn't this "superfast" "futureproof" FTTC technology so wonderful?

As I work on optical transmission networks Gigabit Ethernet is "access" to me, so I don't go in for any of this "superfast broadband" nonsense. However FTTC has improved my connection from 14 Mbit/s to 39 Mbit/s which, no matter how much negative spin people would like to put on it, is an almost 3x improvement. I can live with that.

Some people live kinda far from their nearest cabinet. Can't do much without FTTP, which is prohibitively expensive for most. The sad thing is all of this infrastructure investment should've been done a decade earlier - and would've been if there was any kind of competition (outside of Virgin Media).

Gigabit would be either "ultrafast" or "hyperoptic" depending on who you talk to

39Mbit is rather pedestrian in 2015, though - especially when that's a flat out 39Mbit, with no sign of improvement unless BT does FTTP, G.FAST (ugh) or something easy and quick like pair bonding


Distance from the cabinet is why FTTC should never have been the technology of choice in the first place.

I live in Cornwall, where BT has somehow managed to cover 1/3rd of properties served with FTTP (unfortunately I'm not one of them). I've personally driven along miles of country road where there is FTTP equipment on every pole, even ones that don't have any copper lines running from them. This is obviously the sort of deployment where the ROI is going to be impossible to recover, but BT did it anyway. Of course, those people will get the full 330Mbit that BT offers with ease, if they chose to get it (and judging by the lack of fibre coming out of the top, most haven't even gone for 40Mbit)

It's not that cost prohibitive - it's just that FTTC is cheaper if you only think about the immediate short term, and not the big picture. It's possible to claim that FTTC will mean not having to run miles of fibre and deal with blocked ducts, but G.FAST (as BT's new pet technology) is going to need that anyway

If I were to speculate, it seems like BT initially went for FTTC no matter what, but as time has gone on and confidence has gone up, they're doing more FTTP (based on what I've seen down here), in Cornwall anyway - I know that in the rest of the country, it's newsworthy for BT to do FTTP somewhere

Which is why I ignore such terms, they are meaningless sound-bytes.


I think it depends on what you need it for. For example at home there is me any my wife, we're not in to gaming or anything else requiring high bandwidth so for us a "pedestrian" 39 Mbit/s is more than adequate for sending or receiving e-mails and web browsing which, really, is all majority of people use the internet at home for.

Of course, but that's how the ISPs work. Including calling it "fibre optic" when it's not really any more fibre optic than ADSL or even dialup


This makes the assumption that this will always be true, forever. I'm sure the people on 2Mbps 10 years ago thought it was really fast and futureproof. That's not to say I think everyone needs symmetric 1Gbit to the home, but we shouldn't have to deal with the speed lottery FTTC continues to give us

At least with FTTP, everyone could get the speeds they want to pay for, without having to worry about how far away they live from something

That is true and FTTP is available to day to anyone who is prepared to pay for it. The trouble is most people want the benefit without having to pay for it.

There won't be a huge demand for FTTP until there is a driver for people to want it, whether that is 8K quality video on demand or something else. What needs to happen first is for the government to force BT to complete the roll-out of FTTC so that everyone is on the same footing prior to these new services to be rolled out

Some places have FTTP available for a reasonable price already. Unfortunately, most areas that got FTTC aren't due to get FTTP any time soon so if you want it, you need to pay for the line to be installed yourself, which is hundreds of pounds.

EDIT: Oh actually you can't even do that any more. So 80 Mb/s is the limit without Virgin Media for most.

FTTP on demand is a con, anyway. The prices are designed not to cannibalise leased line revenue, contain BT's usual monopoly markup, and are based on inefficient costing (since they'll only be wiring up to your pole or DP, rather than doing the entire street and getting the economies of scale out of it). It's also somewhat unfair that some businesses have to shell out while others can pay the standard £100 install fee, simply due to sheer luck that BT decided to do FTTP in the first place in their area.

If it was only a few hundred £ to install I'd be on the phone to them right away. But it isn't (unless you live practically on top of the aggregation node) and the monthly costs are extreme (you have to buy the "business" version of the 330Mbit product with 30Mbit upload and a much higher monthly price, on a 3 year contract - and why it isn't something like 100Mbit upload, considering the cost, I don't know). Most businesses won't even consider it, let alone the well heeled home user with an appetite for speed

The availability is also random. Some exchange areas can't get it, some can. Mine is one that can (a mid-sized village that doesn't have a whole lot of businesses in it, except for the industrial estate - and those businesses there that really need internet access have fat leased lines)

I've read somewhere that FTTP on demand is on hold while they work out what their strategy is with G.FAST and other technologies. Don't know how true this is, though. Hopefully any changes made will include more sensible pricing (especially on the rental costs)

40Mbits, or close to it, is still very fast. I'm hoping it's not that long before BT starts offering the between 600Mbits-1Gbit connection that they're supposedly working on.

It's really not that fast. It's roughly half of what the average LAN was capable of 10 years ago, and what has been available in many parts of the world for about the same time.

It only looks fast because of BT's previous stagnation. If you're coming from exchange-based ADSL where you could only get 3Mbit because of line length (while telcos in other countries have been doing cabinet-based ADSL for the last 15 years and ADSL2+ for 10 years), it will look brilliant. When we're talking about streaming 4K over the internet at 25Mbps, 40 is pretty low end.

Look at it in context, too - the taxpayer has paid BT handsomely for this network, and it's been sold as futureproof and modern, when in fact it's old technology (VDSL2 was ratified in what, 2005) and not at all futureproof. 40Mbit is not futureproof. 80, if you can get it, is not futureproof either. But that's what we've got, because immediate short term profits rule. Unless you live in one of the areas I've described where BT has spared no expense to do the job properly.

G.FAST (the horrible kludge that it is, with dubious economics) isn't happening any time soon for most people, if as predicted it will need equipment at the pole. If you're in an area with Virgin, you'll be pushed further up the list, but everyone else can rot on this FTTC junk. The old digital divide was those on dialup vs those who can get broadband, it's currently those who can get ADSL vs those who can get FTTC vs those who can get FTTP, and it will be FTTC vs G.FAST vs FTTP in the future.