BT Superfast Fibre 2 (70mb) to Ultrafast Fibre Plus (150mb)

[Deep Thought]

We have BT Superfast Fibre 2 (70mb) for which we pay £58.99 a month including, i think, BT TV.

I've just seen an offer on our BT account whereby they will upgrade us to Ultrafast Fibre Plus (150mb) with no change in price?

We're no particular need for this and what we have is fine. Theres a £9.99 fee, but other than that all is the same.

Firstly - is there any downside to doing this?

Secondly - will this require a change in hardware in the house? We've an odd shaped house (from a WiFi perspective) and have only just got it all working the way we want it. We dont dont want to dick with that.

Does it require a router change or are there any other consequences?

[Deep Thought]

THP150 said:

Recently upgrade to the 150MB, had to have a new router and they changed the connection box but other than that is it.

So you will need an engineer to do the work.

Cheers, yes, that was the intimation i was reading on their site. We've had real problems getting wifi across the house and now have a Ubiquiti system which seems to have the problem cracked.

My wife in particular is wary that if we upgrade, they'll put some new technology in that will stop the Ubiquity working. I cant see it as it just is connected to the router by a network cable.

The only thing we need to do is turn WiFi off on the new router and i assume that can be done anyway.

Edited by Deep Thought on Friday 17th May 13:21

[Deep Thought]

Integroo said:

I doubt you need 150 Mbps. I pay £26pcm for '70' Mbps (guaranteed at 55Mbps). You could find a cheaper 70 Mbps provider?

No, we dont - and thats another point. Why bother?

BUT at the minute with Wifi, very thick walls, several very large fish tanks (800 litres), a lot of electrical interference with heaters, lights, an oddly shaped (for WiFi) house, and the telephone point coming in at the other end of the house, we're getting maybe 35Mbs in the lounge area. My rationale is that if we're losing 50% of the 70mb thats coming at the door, then if we go to 150Mb we'd get closer to 75Mb across the house? Or certainly better than we're getting currently.

We're on a Ubiquiti MESH system that requires the base unit - we get 70MB out of it no probs if we're connect to the primary source, but then we're losing bandwidth from the second MESH point on out. Had a previous MESH system that had similar losses and using network plugs we'd 18Mbs and drop outs.

I'm not inclined to change provider as in the past we were with Virgin and when we're speed problems coming in to the house they blamed BT and BT blamed them. I prefer one ass to kick.

[Deep Thought]

randlemarcus said:

Only if they have magic technology that differentiates between the Unifi traffic and everything else on the planet. Like you say, its just a cable

LOL. Yes, thats my view. But i said i would check on here first to make sure.

Doing my due diligence as it were.

[Deep Thought]

randlemarcus said:

Deep Thought said:

LOL. Yes, thats my view. But i said i would check on here first to make sure.

Doing my due diligence as it were.

Unless you have a Unifi USG (the small one) in IPS/IDS mode between the Telco router and the controller, in which case you have 85Mb throughput limits.

You keep saying Unifi, i said Ubiquiti?

Its this setup we have

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01L9O08PW/ref...

As i said, i've no doubt it will work fine with the new BT hub but i told Mrs Thought i'd check...

[Deep Thought]

randlemarcus said:

Ah, gotcha. Looked at those for my Mum, but went the other way to include CCTV. You'll be just fine and will enjoy faster cat memes

LOL. Yes, i think we will go for it. The other issue was if they were going to dig up the previous connection to our house but it seems not, so all good.

[Deep Thought]

cobra kid said:

Increase in price in a year's time?

Yeah i checked that. £58.99 for 18 months, then it goes up to.... £59.99.

Didnt seem unreasonable.

[Deep Thought]

Calza said:

If you're happy with what you have now, why not ask them to match the price they are advertising for the 74Mb package:

Thats not the pack we have - its this one. £39.99 introductory, then £57.99 full price.



We could push them to give us the introductory offer again, but i'm not sure they would.

[Deep Thought]

Sheepshanks said:

Deep Thought said:

Yeah i checked that. £58.99 for 18 months, then it goes up to.... £59.99.

Didnt seem unreasonable.

Got a bill a few days ago and whatever package we have is £54.49/mth, but then it's discounted by £18.50. It says it's 'Superfast Fibre 1 Unlimited' - IIRC it's nominally 80Mb - I just ran a speedcheck and it said 76.6Mb.

We've other bits too as part of that (as above) and we're outside our discounted period.

Edited by Deep Thought on Friday 17th May 16:59

[Deep Thought]

Sheepshanks said:

Deep Thought said:

We've other bits too as part of that (as above) and we're outside our discounted period.

It looks like the Entertainment bundle you linked to is the same sort of discount.

I've had my current deal for about a year and I remember being surprised how easily they offered it, and how cheap it is - I'm sure it's the least I've paid since I had broadband (had ISDN at home before that!).

Edited by Sheepshanks on Friday 17th May 17:06

Maybe we should try them to get put on the latest offer then - one that would be cheaper.

I was only looking at it from getting more for the same money, rather than getting the same for less.

[Deep Thought]

jimhcat said:

If you have a BT home hub installed then it is very difficult to turn off the wireless completely.
You can turn the wifi off in the settings but it keeps the BT wifi running regardless.
You can call BT support and get them to turn it off but I found it then occasionally comes back on after firmware updates etc.
You also have to opt out of their free wifi service to get them to turn it off
In the end I got rid of the BTHH and went with a Draytek Vigor router which has been much better.

Thats worth knowing. Thank you. I will check that out.

[Deep Thought]

roadsmash said:

DT

I have this exact package from BT and just want to advise you of a few things which you may or may not be aware of.

- Whatever speed you’re promised (it will be between 100-150mbps IIRC (mine is about 130mbps)); this ‘promise’ is only based on the speed measured at your HomeHub. So if you receive speeds of lower than this, BT Support just log in to your HomeHub and check the speed it’s receiving, and if it’s getting 100mbps+ from the outside world, they consider the matter resolved.

Yes thats something i'm concious of. So whatever comes in to the house is what they quote on. Currently 65-70mb.

roadsmash said:

- Wi-fi speeds aren’t guaranteed at all and they won’t entertain any support on that. See below for more information I bled from an engineer over the phone.

Yes. Though my thinking is, if we're losing 60% of our speed at the moment, from 70Mb to 30Mb then if we've 150Mb, we should at least get more than the 30Mb but maybe as high as 70Mb?

roadsmash said:

- Only 5Ghz wi-fi supported devices will receive 3 figure speeds over wireless. 2.5Ghz devices will max out at about 50-70mbps.

Interesting. Though we're only hitting 30Mb in the lounge area, so still scope for improvement with both.

roadsmash said:

- My biggest gripe was this; ANY device on the network that’s only capable of 2.5Ghz will throttle the WHOLE network down to 2.5Ghz. So you won’t get anywhere near 3 figure speeds on ANY device, regardless of how close you stand to the HomeHub. To give you an idea, a lot of smart plugs, smart bulbs, older smart TV’s, older laptops/PC’s, PlayStation 4’s (not Pro), certain Xbox’s, smart thermostats etc all run on 2.5Ghz so if you have any of these constantly connected to wi-fi you will need to upgrade them all to 5Ghz supported alternatives to stop bottlenecking.

- You can configure your HomeHub to separate out both networks ie broadcast BTHub6-XXX and a separate BTHub6-XXX-5. The idea being that you can connect all 2.5Ghz devices to the normal network and 5Ghz devices to the -5 network. However, the downside of this is that the devices don’t see each other and won’t talk to each other, making a smart home (that relies on being on the same network) and/or file sharing not possible.

- A bit of positivity though; devices connected via Ethernet don’t get this problem and you should receive 3 figure speeds on all of these.

- Internally at BT, this package is called G-Fast and genuinely, as of a few months ago, only a handful of sales staff could actually process the orders for it correctly, I had to have my order reprocessed 3 times before an engineer finally was booked to attend my property (they have to install the brand new G-Fast socket) and get it all set up correctly. In their defence, I took this package out immediately, as soon as it came out, so these teething issues may be resolved now. To reiterate, if the engineer isn’t booked to attend your property, your service won’t activate properly.

I hope this helps.

Thats very interesting reading. When i try to step through the process online, it does talk of needing to book an engineers appointment.

Thank you for all that

[Deep Thought]

NDA said:

If it's the same money - why not.

I've recently moved to a new property that has FTTP with 350Mbps download available.... but I've gone with a 35Mbps package at £29.99 - which seems plenty fast enough. I can't imagine what I'd need 350 for. I guess if I had a house full of teenagers maybe...

Thats ultimately the dilemma at the moment. Up to the start of last year we were getting 1.8Mb until they upgraded the cabinet beside us to fibre. But even then we've still been plagued with Wifi connectivity issues, until we upgraded to the Uniquiti solution where now we are getting at very worst a very stable 30Mb connection, compared to maybe 1 or 2 drop outs a day with home plugs and the odd one with the TENDA system.

So we now have a very stable setup with 30Mbs at the extremes and 50Mb in the study, etc.

My wife is of the opinion - now that we have a stable system that works and provides us will all the bandwidth we really need, why mess with it?

[Deep Thought]

Jakg said:

Deep Thought said:

Yes. Though my thinking is, if we're losing 60% of our speed at the moment, from 70Mb to 30Mb then if we've 150Mb, we should at least get more than the 30Mb but maybe as high as 70Mb?

It doesn't work like that - it sounds like your saying 30mbit is the limit of the link between your device and the WiFi access point. Increasing the connection at the access point end won't improve that.

Imagine you've got a Ford Fiesta that can do 105MPH - but the speed limit is 70. Your suggesting buying a Ferrari that can do 180MPH so that you can now do 120MPH on the motorway - it just isn't going to work.

If thats how it is then no it wouldnt be worthwhile. My thinking was we were losing a percentage bandwidth not that it was a link constraint.