BT FTTP - Any horror stories?

[thetapeworm]

I need to change my broadband provider, I was with Virgin on a 200 Mbps connection but that was horrible, dropped out constantly through the day, went down for days at a time and support was awful. Local issue I believe and people still with them appear to be having the same woes still.

I'm now on a 4G option with Three, it's not working out, speeds were great for a month and around 50Mbps average with decent bandwidth but then once the cooling off period ended my speeds have been measured in Kbps and if more than one person is connected it's unusable.

My house is in a development that's missed out on fibre so only copper options exist with the usual suppliers and 2Mbps seems to be my limit on that, however BT recently put their fibre in locally and I can now go for their FTTP options, expensive as they are.

Whenever they post online to advertise the responses are that the service is awful, I just wondered what the great people of PH thought of them?

Appreciate that, like Virgin, local install / config issues can be factor but just wanted to gauge general opinion. I could take out the business option that promises "always connected" but it's considerably more expensive for a slower service just to add some assurances. I realise all ISPs can't guarantee flawless service 24/7 but I'd like to think I could go through a contract (24 months!) without more than 24 hours downtime in one hit.

Finally - with FTTP why am I forced to have a phone line in the bundles? I get why you would if it was a dial-up modem or conventional internet but surely with full fibre it's unnecessary?

[random_username]

I have BT/Openreach delivered FTTP and have done for about 2 years now.

Although Openreach supply the infrastructure, you aren't tied to them as an ISP - there are plenty of other alternatives who can provide you with a connection - Zen, Uno, etc etc - there's a list at:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/08/cons...

I've been with Zen since I got FTTP, and the service has been faultless - no outages and I can pretty much get the advertised 330M speeds day or night. Initially I started with a phone line supplied by Zen, but have since unbundled it and have no physical phone line - I ported the phone number to a VOIP line from Vonage.

[boxst]

FTTP is great and I use Zen as well. Several people I know have BT for their ISP and they are fine. With FTTP there isn't too much that they need to intervene with.

I get 330mb/down and 50mb/up more or less constantly or certainly whenever I randomly run a speediest.

[Freakuk]

Long story but living in the country it's taken nearly 6 months from moving in to getting any form of BB connection. Luckily after lots of complaints OpenReach realised they could supply FTTP and I'm now with BT.

I've had no issues with the install and service since, speeds do go up and down but never less than say 100Mb, reboot of the BT supplied kit resolves things.

Their customer service trying to provide any BB service wasn't great until I'd raised enough complaints that it was dealt with by a single team/individual. Since then I've called them once and it was chalk and cheese, very good indeed.

[thetapeworm]

Thanks for your replies, I had wondered if I could look elsewhere for a provider on FTTP but presumed as it was a new roll-out I'd be stuck with BT for now, some more research needed

My speed test results from the ISP Review tester might give you an insight into my desire to end things with Three!



But eventually...

Edited by thetapeworm on Wednesday 8th January 16:18

[bmwmike]

I have BT FTTP and have done for about 3 or 4 months. It's pretty good so far. My only gripe is the crappy wifi router they give you - can't specify own DNS and it has the BT FON public access point enabled by default (have to opt out).

What routers are people using with FTTP? Guess I should open my own thread.

[C0ffin D0dger]

I'm praying I'm on some sort of fast track for FTTP. On the Faster Worcestershire website our street seems to be in some sort of black spot with a promise of "work" to be done to improve it as it doesn't meet the > 20Mbps criteria at the moment. It's pretty woeful on FTTC, getting an average of 16-18 Mbps. I know some folk would be over the moon with this but it really doesn't cut it for me!

[bristolbaron]

I currently have fttp with BT giving me 50Mbps a an unused phone line for £28.
I barely pick up a signal at the other end of the house even with a netgear booster and when it does play ball I’m looking at 30Mbps max.
If I went with Zen, for example, and their 150Mbps package would my signal strength increase? Or just a better speed through the booster when it does connect?

[Bikerjon]

bristolbaron said:

I currently have fttp with BT giving me 50Mbps a an unused phone line for £28.
I barely pick up a signal at the other end of the house even with a netgear booster and when it does play ball I’m looking at 30Mbps max.
If I went with Zen, for example, and their 150Mbps package would my signal strength increase? Or just a better speed through the booster when it does connect?

FTTP is usually a lot faster than 50Mbps, but in your case the problem is your Wi-Fi. Consider a mesh Wi-Fi system.

[DogLog]

BT FTTP here on a 150 package .... no problems at all.
I pestered them about getting fibre until they just changed their system to show our house could get it. I ordered it then openreach had to work out how to supply it
I might go with mesh but at the moment the BT router is doing ok by itself.

Edited by DogLog on Wednesday 8th January 21:00

[xx99xx]

I've been with BT on fibre for years. Generally happy with the service. Currently using the supplied homehub 6 and getting a consistent 50mb download. The speeds are capped because I don't pay for the super fast speeds and 50mb is adequate for me. Good WiFi signal on the router too.

[Paul Drawmer]

xx99xx said:

I've been with BT on fibre for years. Generally happy with the service. Currently using the supplied homehub 6 and getting a consistent 50mb download. The speeds are capped because I don't pay for the super fast speeds and 50mb is adequate for me. Good WiFi signal on the router too.

Same here. Had FTTP for about 5 years.

Rock solid performance from the fibre only exchange. I really can't remember any drop outs of any significance. I am using the BT smart and Ultrafast hub. No wifi problems anywhere in our modest 4 bed house, even though the hub is located in the corner of the building. When the family are here we have 7 or 8 devices connected by wifi and 6 by ethernet.

Edited to add
I have no beef with BTphon, I enjoy the extra connectivity when I'm away from home, and it doesn't impact performance here at all. I don't need fixed IP.

Edited by Paul Drawmer on Thursday 9th January 07:44

[Somebody]

Type in your details here and it will show you what products are available and suppliers
https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/broadb...

[Derek Smith]

Paul Drawmer said:

xx99xx said:

I've been with BT on fibre for years. Generally happy with the service. Currently using the supplied homehub 6 and getting a consistent 50mb download. The speeds are capped because I don't pay for the super fast speeds and 50mb is adequate for me. Good WiFi signal on the router too.

Same here. Had FTTP for about 5 years.

Rock solid performance from the fibre only exchange. I really can't remember any drop outs of any significance. I am using the BT smart and Ultrafast hub. No wifi problems anywhere in our modest 4 bed house, even though the hub is located in the corner of the building. When the family are here we have 7 or 8 devices connected by wifi and 6 by ethernet.

Edited to add
I have no beef with BTphon, I enjoy the extra connectivity when I'm away from home, and it doesn't impact performance here at all. I don't need fixed IP.

Edited by Paul Drawmer on Thursday 9th January 07:44

This mirrors my experience. I'v e no criticism of BT.

[Kenny6868]

I had FTTP and everything was OK, but when I split with my wife and moved out I took the broadband package with me. BT were great and connected me at my new home, but my ex wasn't able to pre-order a new package until my move was complete. This is the only downside to FTTP with BT that I can think of.
She has since been reconnected, but she had to wait until my move was complete before placing an order. She then had to wait 2 weeks or so before it was enabled. No new kit, just someone pressing a button and connecting her account to the correct line.

I'm now stuck on 35Mb FTTC.
But I have it all to myself!

[thetapeworm]

Thanks again to everyone that's replied. I have a good look around at alternative providers, contract terms, equipment supplied etc and kept coming back to BT.

So I had a quick web chat with them on Friday and they said they could do a deal on the Ultrafast 250 package at £39.99 a month, a significant saving. A number was provided to call to order.

So today I called, spoke to a very abrupt chap who said the web chat deal was impossible and it would cost me £54.99 a month and was adamant I also needed their WiFi guarantee and to spend extra on the mesh repeaters because I live in a 3 storey house.

I got annoyed and said goodbye.

Will retry on Monday in case I just got a dick of representative unhappy with working on a Saturday but a bit disappointed I didn't screenshot or save a copy of the web chat. It did ask for my name, address etc but I presume they don't keep copies.

[DogLog]

Order it online, sooo much easier.

Literally just done it for the in-laws today. Took 10-15 minutes start to finish.

[45Flipper]

thetapeworm said:

So I had a quick web chat with them on Friday and they said they could do a deal on the Ultrafast 250 package at £39.99 a month, a significant saving. A number was provided to call to order.

So today I called, spoke to a very abrupt chap who said the web chat deal was impossible and it would cost me £54.99 a month and was adamant I also needed their WiFi guarantee and to spend extra on the mesh repeaters because I live in a 3 storey house.

Tapeworm, I’ve recently moved and found BT fttp the best deal, however, don’t purchase it direct from them. I used Quidco with a £110 cash back offer, £90 prepaid card from BT AND free prime for a year. That was for the £39.99 offer too. It works out at ~£28 per month. I’m more than happy with that and doing it online means I didn’t have to talk to any pushy salesperson either. A quick look at Quidco this morning I could see they were offering up to £115 cash back and a prepaid card still.

[mikal83]

As others have written, we got bt to connect us up when nodes were put up down our lane. Took a while to persuade BT that we had cable outside our house but the connected us up withing 3 weeks. Then we both bought a cheap mobile each and asked bt to bin our landline but they refused to seperate internet and phone. so byeeeeeeeeee and now with zen

[thetapeworm]

45Flipper said:

Tapeworm, I’ve recently moved and found BT fttp the best deal, however, don’t purchase it direct from them. I used Quidco with a £110 cash back offer, £90 prepaid card from BT AND free prime for a year. That was for the £39.99 offer too. It works out at ~£28 per month. I’m more than happy with that and doing it online means I didn’t have to talk to any pushy salesperson either. A quick look at Quidco this morning I could see they were offering up to £115 cash back and a prepaid card still.

I did much the same this morning and placed my order so hopefully Quidco will come good - £115 cashback and a £90 prepaid card - no Prime but my wife already has that for a few quid a month anyway.

No doubt the next deals will be for £1,000,000 cashback now that I've committed but hopefully by the end of the month I can be free of 144p YouTube and only having one of us doing anything at a time.


Edit: Quidco just confirmed cashback of £85 rather than the £115 advertised.

Edited by thetapeworm on Monday 13th January 11:46