80/20 FTTC Trial Open

[#1]

Good answers to all the questions, but this bit...

Quote from: dave

The 20Mbps HTTP rate limit on Value Fibre and Extra Fibre is going to be removed soon (hopefully before the end of the week, it'll be going through our change control process tomorrow) for all fibre customers whether they are on Value Fibre, Extra Fibre, 40Mbps or 80Mbps.

Is very good to see. I'm not sure the limit has much impact on anyone's browsing.
However, after reading the latest Ofcom "broadband speeds" report, I wondered how things would appear once PN got a big enough set of fibre testers so they would appear as a separate provider. It wouldn't have looked impressive against Infinity and Virgin.
In that report, the "actual" speeds for all variants of "super-fast" compare very favourably against the headline speeds - and miles better than ADSL2+. It would be a marketing blunder for the numbers in such a report to be artificially hobbled.

[#2]

@Dave,
As part of setting this up, do you get better speed predictions from BT than we do? The standard checker we can get is capped at 40/10.

[#3]

Quote from: andun84

My order should complete within 1 working day ...

Just got my confirmation email     

[#4]

Yeah, I've just placed about 8 orders and the estimates varied from mid 50s to mid 60Mbps on most of them. The highest I've seen so far is one that got the full 80/20 on the estimate (and achieved that too when the order completed).

[#5]

Quote from: dave

There's no special usage allowance on the trial so you'd have 40GB on Value Fibre or 120GB on Extra Fibre. ... During the trial you are free to move between Extra Fibre and Value Fibre as you wish, this won't affect the 80/20 trial. At the end of the trial there is no obligation to keep 80/20, you can switch back to what you have now and continue paying the same  amount you do now. ...

the problem is that i'm not on either of those i was on the fttc trial and so on orig product with pro addon
which i'm fine with EXCEPT it has a 20gb limit which i keep almost going over
i think if i change to one of those FTTC products i'll end up paying more won't i?
i cannot afford to pay more...
any thoughts? anyone?

[#6]

Well if you have the 20gb limit it sounds like my old package which was marginally dearer than fibre extra. I think my was Broadband Your Way Option 2 or something like that. The only thing I detested when I recently moved was that I had to sign up to an 18 month contract. Odd that I could sit on an old package and still get fibre and leave at any time but to get the new package I had to sign an 18 month contract. Suddenly they had to buy the fibre from BT. They must have been robbing it before  Had the period that I had already done on fibre been taken into account I would only have 5 months left on that contract. In spite of that I still moved.

[#7]

Value Fibre with 40GB is £16.49, Extra Fibre with 120GB is £21.49 so you could get an extra 20GB on top of what you have now but not have Pro for the same price as pay now. Pro's another fiver on top of that if you wanted it but depending on what you do the extra 20GB may be better for you than Pro if you don't want to pay any more.

[#8]

Quote from: dave

... estimates varied from mid 50s to mid 60Mbps on most ...

For a while the BT ADSL checker gave me estimates of 60.5 down and 20 up (before reverting to 40 down and 10 up), my original fibre estimate was something like 30 down and 6.5 up but I got the full 40 down even on the old 8c profile, it'll be interesting to compare the new estimate with what is achieved (hopefully it'll be as accurate as before though I'd be surprised if I get 80 down).

[#9]

As some other posters have noted, before I commit to a package change (in my case extra to fibre value/extra) will I be able to revert to my original package (that being extra) as well as keeping the 10 up if I join this trial?

[#10]

Quote from: mikeyriot

As some other posters have noted, before I commit to a package change (in my case extra to fibre value/extra) will I be able to revert to my original package (that being extra) as well as keeping the 10 up if I join this trial?

I know exactly what you mean dude. I have just switched from my old legacy pack to go to PlusNet Value Fiber just to get on this trial. The things I do for raw speed lol. I just hope this doesn't bite me in the bum? So heres hoping now.

[#11]

@dave
Thanks for the very rapid progress.  I am now synced at 64,525 / 20,000 🙂
Downstream looks to be working well.  For some reason the upstream is being capped at 10Mbps as evidenced by real world speeds and the fact that the BT speedtester is reporting my upload IP profile as 10Mbps.  I will keep an eye on it and see if it changes.

James

[#12]

Mine is up and running
Really happy with the results!

Paul

[#13]

Thanks Dave, speeds looking good.

[#14]

Looks like a bad move for me I hadn't changed my package since the 40/10 trial so was on a bargain price for FTTC and could live within my 60GB allowance. A speedtest this morning gives

This was using a wired connection, best I ever got on the original product was

and that was via wifi.
I've never seen 40Mbps before so I'm assuming the order has completed. I also believe I am somewhere between 750-800M from the exchange so I'm not expecting anything like top speeds but the BT checker briefly showed 16Mbps up when it showed > 40/10 figures and when the FTTC was installed the engineer showed me on his magic kit the line would support more than 10 if BT supported it.
Assuming there is a new training period I'm hoping this might improve otherwise any cost for 80/20 will not be worth it.

[#15]

Not a bad start  
I'm around 300m from the cabinet, all underground but there's a clear line of BT manholes from one just in front of my house all the way to the cabinet (measured by pacing the route), that's not to say there isn't a bit more wire length, especially with the link between the old cab and the FTTC cab (around 25m apart).
Resync took place shortly after midnight, TBB monitor shows it nicely: