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BT Infinity: should I sign-up?

Our Broadband Expert says...

BT broadband (www.BT.com) began rolling out its new fibre network in 2009, connecting the first home to BT Infinity in 2009, connecting the first homes and businesses to BT Infinity in January 2010. It has now passed over five million homes and businesses and plans to cover 10 million premises by the end of 2012.

At present, around 200,000 customers have signed up to BT Infinity.

It offers speeds of up to 40Mb broadband, with uploads at up to 10Mb - and starting from £18 a month plus line rental, you can even upgrade without spending any extra cash.

Roll-out schedule

BT is laying over 50,000km of fibre across the country in a bid to bring superfast broadband to two-thirds of homes and businesses in the UK.

The company publishes regular updates of the telephone exchanges lined up to receive 40Mb speeds, but the best way to find out if and when you'll be able to get fibre is to first run a broadband postcode search.

If you can’t get it yet, the provider also lets you see when BT Infinity will be available in your area.

BT Infinity broadband speeds

As well as offering much faster broadband speeds, BT’s new fibre network also delivers very fast connections.

If you're currently using a traditional copper phone line to connect to an “up to 20Mb” service, you'll know that your actual speed rarely resembles what’s advertised. This is down to a number of different factors, but your distance from the exchange, home wiring and peak-time congestion are some of the main issues.

However, fibre optic cables are capable of carrying more data at much faster speeds - something that was made clear when Ofcom tested broadband providers in May 2011.

The regulator found that BT Infinity connections were delivering an average 33.8Mb - or 85% of the advertised speed - far faster than the 6.8Mb UK average.

It also delivered the fastest upload speeds, with almost 9Mb - perfect for home office users, gamers or anyone who wants to upload their life to Facebook.

80Mb broadband

BT isn’t stopping at 40Mb. The provider has revealed plans to double download speeds to up to 80Mb on its Infinity packages - and bump upload speeds to a maximum 20Mb.

BT is also trialling connections that run fibre direct to your home, rather than the green telephone cabinet on your road. Because “fibre to the home” (FTTH) completely eliminates copper from the equation, it can offer speeds of up to 100Mb and more. BT is currently testing super, superfast 1Gb connections using FTTH technology.

Fibre in the ‘final third’

Although BT has promised £2.5billion to cover two-thirds of homes and businesses with its fibre network, this doesn’t cover many rural areas where the service simply isn’t economically viable.

According to BT, there are some cases where the cost of connecting a very remote home to fibre can actually be higher than the value of the property.

However, BT says that with extra government funding it would be willing to add more money and could extend fibre broadband to 90% of the UK.

The government’s target is to have “the best broadband network in Europe by 2015”, and it has already doled out £530million to local authorities so that they can get communities connected. It has earmarked another £300million for the following parliament and it is this £830million total that BT, and other suppliers, will be bidding for with the hopes of securing contracts to build rural broadband networks.

The remaining 10% of homes and businesses must receive a minimum speed of 2Mb, according to the government.

Superfast alternatives

Although its network will be the largest by the time it is complete at the end of 2015, BT isn’t the only provider offering superfast broadband.

Virgin Media (www.Virginmedia.com) has its own cable network, which covers around half the UK, delivering speeds of up to 10Mb, 30Mb, 50Mb and 100Mb broadband.

And because its cable network is so fast, and doesn’t use any copper wiring, it manages to deliver an average 90-96% of its advertised speeds. Although you can sign-up to Virgin Media outside of its cable network, its National Broadband packages use copper wires and will not give you a superfast connection.

Other providers are also starting to use the BT network, so you can now get fibre from TalkTalk broadband (www.Talktalk.co.uk) and Plusnet broadband (www.Plus.net) as well as higher-end providers Eclipse Internet (www.Eclipse.net.uk) and Zen Internet (www.Zen.co.uk).

Because they use the BT fibre network, you will still have to wait until it’s available in your area before you can sign-up. However, this means that even if you're stuck in a contract and unable to switch broadband provider, you could still upgrade to fibre optic broadband.

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