Page 1 of BT Infinity or Vigin Media?

So, after many years of paying for my broadband at home, my work have finally realised they shouldn`t really be paying for it anymore.

Given that I`m on a BT Business Infinity connection right now...37Mb/s down, 2Mb/s up, do I go for the automatic choice of BT Infinity (residential connection) at £28 a month plus line rental...or look at the Virgin option? (50Mb/s?)

Looking at my router logs, I`ve managed to download around 27GB so far this month (halfway through!). And the majority of that is between midnight and 7am - not sure if Virgin have any nasty caps in place at certain times?

This item was edited on Monday, 14th November 2011, 09:54

Given the choice it would be Virginmedia every time. :)
There are no caps at all on the 50MB service - and you will (should..) get much closer to the advertised speeds than with ADSL/2/+ etc.
There are caps at certain times of the day depending on which other package you have - but they`re far more up front about it than any other ISP I know of.  Mind you, their capped limit is more than most get with their ADSL lines anyway..:)
Normal traffic management policy - here.
Traffic management policy for users in an upgraded area (me :) ) - here.
But there are no monthly limits - eg 40GB/month etc.. :)
Take tour phone with  them too and it`s even cheaper (can transfer existing number).
A few times a month I can download 30+GB a night no problem.

Ste

Cheers Ste.

Just checked Virgin out (price wise)...and it would be £46.90 a month for the XXL package including line rental and anytime calls. (£40.40 for 30Mb/s)
BT`s equivalent (ok, it`s only 37Mb/s rather than 50)...is £38 a month, plus everything`s already installed - so no engineer visit or anything.

Note: I don`t currently have or want the additional TV services (Sky or Virgin).

I`m definitely leaning towards BT.

This item was edited on Monday, 14th November 2011, 16:41

If you already have BT installed and are happy with the performance/price, I see no reason to change. Personally I would always opt for cable over ADSL given the option, but then I take other services from VM so it works out cheaper than having separate providers.

VM don`t technically have `caps`, they have STM, which limits your connection speed when you trigger a predefined limit (set according to your package) rather than stopping you downloading altogether. The 50Mbit package does not have STM in place, unless you have had your upload speed upgraded to 5Mbit (which I haven`t yet), in which case I think that drops back down to 1.75Mbit after you upload 6GB of data (which is still more than the 1.5Mbit I currently have). This only applies between 3PM and 8PM. There is no downstream STM on 50Mbit.

However, they also traffic shape P2P according to overall network load between 5PM and midnight (midday and midnight on weekends). In some cases I`ve seen this reduce my 50Mbit connection from about 6MB/sec to 1.5MB/sec when using NNTP, but lately I`ve been getting pretty much full whack at any time of the day, so I guess they must have increased network capacity (or a load of people in my area have left VM).

I don`t even want to guess at what I`ve downloaded in the last week alone. It`s probably in excess of 40GB-50GB, but without checking the logs I don`t know the exact figure. I like not having to worry about it.

Looks like it has to be BT anyway.
Since I`m only 6 months in to a 24 month contract BT said they would charge another 12 months as a cancellation fee...unless I choose the BT residential option.

Ah well.
Just looking at your prices though, are you sure that doesn`t include line rental etc.?

Ste

Sorry, it should have said "including line rental" rather than "+ line rental"

(Now corrected)

This item was edited on Monday, 14th November 2011, 16:42

Shouldn`t your work pay for that cancellation fee?

PSN & XBL: Ailegs