Super-Fast Broadband
BT Infinity has brought high-speed Internet access to our area, offering initial speeds of up to 40Mbps; it uses fibre-optic cable to deliver the internet from the telephone exchange to local ‘cabinets’ — those green boxes that you see on street corners; this is FTTC or Fibre to the Cabinet.
Fibre broadband is a new type of broadband that is currently being deployed in the UK by BT, Virgin Media and other operators which use fibre optic cables to help increase the speed of your broadband connection. It is often referred to as ‘super-fast broadband’ or ‘next-generation broadband’ as it offers faster speeds than have been available using older generation networks. It is available to both home and business users.
BT’s Infinity offers a downstream speed of 40Mbps, but the actual maximum speed of the service will be slightly lower than this at around 39Mbps. Different upstream speeds are available at either 2Mbps or 10Mbps. Not everyone will receive the maximum speed as it depends on the length of your phone line to the cabinet which is providing your broadband service, BT Openreach will guarantee that the minimum sync speed will be 15Mbps. Speeds are expected to rise to 60Mbps downstream and 15Mbps upstream in the future.
BT Infinity customers will need a BT phone line and the service comes in two flavours. The first, most basic option offers 40Mbps download and 2Mbps upload speeds with a cap of 20GB. You get a BT Infinity Home Hub included, and there’s a sign-up fee of £50 and an 18-month commitment. The second option offers the same 40Mbps download speeds, but the upstream is 10Mbps. There’s no download cap on this option, and the activation fee is waived. The cheaper Option 1 costs £20 a month, and the unlimited Option 2 is £25 a month, also for 18 months minimum commitment.
BT Infinity is an engineer installed product and includes a special router to which you can connect your own router or computer. You will need to connect a device that supports PPPoE to use it; this is usually a ‘cable router’ which has a WAN port. If you currently have a router with a built in ADSL modem, this is unlikely to work with the FTTC service and you will need to get a new router. If you are only using one computer on the connection, you should be able to connect the BT provided router directly to your computer and create a PPPoE network connection to get online.
So what if you’re using someone other than BT and don’t want to move to BT broadband? At the moment, you have few choices: we know of ten alternative resellers. For those interested, BT has a phone line checker that will tell you if you’re able to get the BT Infinity service – http://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/Community/Broadband_Community/Coverage/ADSL_Availibility_Checker.html
Bob Smith, Premier Computer Services, [email protected], 01494 857572.
