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Which ISP (and I think I'm over thinking this :))?

jimmybond007

Casual Member
So I'm ready to change. My mate (who happens to to sit on the Board of BT!) says, understandably, that whilst others use BT's network, it's the CORE that matters and (if I understand him correctly) only BT use that and it's FAR superior (of course it is :)) to other ISP (like VF, Sky, Shell etc). Or he may have meant that BT don't give them full access to it (that seems right - why would they?). He therefore says I should pay the little extra that BT charge so that I have access to that core which will result in more consistent speeds.

It's about £8 a month more which is nothing on it's own, but considerable over 2 years. VF, Sky etc are all offering way better deals.

And of course, I could go to Plus.net as he says they have access to the core unrestricted.

Thoughts anyone?
 
The BT board is relatively small so I'd be interested to know who your mate is. If they really are on the board then I'd be concerned at the gross oversimplification (at best) and lack of technical knowledge (at worst).

While it's true some ISPs use the Openreach network, in some capacity, others don't.

What exactly is this "core" they refer to that other ISPs don't have "access to" ?!?
 
The BT board is relatively small so I'd be interested to know who your mate is. If they really are on the board then I'd be concerned at the gross oversimplification (at best) and lack of technical knowledge (at worst).

While it's true some ISPs use the Openreach network, in some capacity, others don't.

What exactly is this "core" they refer to that other ISPs don't have "access to" ?!?
I'm certainly not going to name him and I wouldnt judge him either. It's over a pint and I dont want to bother him with technical stuff. If you want to criticise anyone, then it's me for conveying what he told me incorrectly.
 
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Personally I’d only really worry about the quality of the network if I was ordering a 500MBit/1Gbit product.

If it’s a normal 80Mbit FTTC product then my connection isn’t really fast enough to be greatly influenced by the ISPs network. The days of congestion and peak time slowdowns don’t seem to really happen anymore.
 
Thanks. Am looking at a 109Mb FTTP.

I did just whatsapp him for clarification...

"ISPs have to supply their own core (pipes to the internet). Openreach just gives ISPs access to the pipes that go from exchange buildings into homes. PlusNet is part of BT so has access to BTs (superior) core."
 
Thanks. Am looking at a 109Mb FTTP.

I did just whatsapp him for clarification...

"ISPs have to supply their own core (pipes to the internet). Openreach just gives ISPs access to the pipes that go from exchange buildings into homes. PlusNet is part of BT so has access to BTs (superior) core."

Your contact has better clarified what he meant by core network in the text above.

For your average consumer even those buying higher speed FTTP services, the quality of the core network is very unlikely to influence your experience. Gamers might look for slight differences in round trip times to certain hosting endpoints which is influenced a bit by the core network, but in reality any differences are marginal for most consumers. I would suggest that the difference in the "core" will really impact enterprise customers who will leverage additional services to differentiate and separate traffic flows. But this is where the big money is, there's little or no profit from consumers as far as the core network is concerned other than to soak up capacity.

For your average consumer I would suggest the things that matter beyond common sense stuff like good day to day operation of the network are

1. whether an ISP has oversubscribed and oversold the available bandwidth from an area to their core network (some provide their own circuits, others opt to use BT Wholesale), and
2. the ability of their support operation to help customers with queries and faults - the main difference here is whether they read off a script or have genuinely clueful people on the end of the phone, the latter being rarer these days, and
3. the quality of the router the ISP provides and whether it supports WiFi mesh networking.
4. Other services that you might want to bundle with broadband, digital voice, content, etc. will also influence the value proposition.

So it's probably fair that your BT bigwig is aware of the ongoing investment they are making at a board level into their core network and how this will influence the BT Group to make money, but I think he's overstating the case that whichever core network you use really makes any difference to your average consumer.
 
Your contact has better clarified what he meant by core network in the text above.

For your average consumer even those buying higher speed FTTP services, the quality of the core network is very unlikely to influence your experience. Gamers might look for slight differences in round trip times to certain hosting endpoints which is influenced a bit by the core network, but in reality any differences are marginal for most consumers. I would suggest that the difference in the "core" will really impact enterprise customers who will leverage additional services to differentiate and separate traffic flows. But this is where the big money is, there's little or no profit from consumers as far as the core network is concerned other than to soak up capacity.

For your average consumer I would suggest the things that matter beyond common sense stuff like good day to day operation of the network are

1. whether an ISP has oversubscribed and oversold the available bandwidth from an area to their core network (some provide their own circuits, others opt to use BT Wholesale), and
2. the ability of their support operation to help customers with queries and faults - the main difference here is whether they read off a script or have genuinely clueful people on the end of the phone, the latter being rarer these days, and
3. the quality of the router the ISP provides and whether it supports WiFi mesh networking.
4. Other services that you might want to bundle with broadband, digital voice, content, etc. will also influence the value proposition.

So it's probably fair that your BT bigwig is aware of the ongoing investment they are making at a board level into their core network and how this will influence the BT Group to make money, but I think he's overstating the case that whichever core network you use really makes any difference to your average consumer.
A brilliant and clear answer - thank you. Think I'll go Vodafone :)
 
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To be fair - he wasn't selling it to me, just explaining it to me. It does make sense that their core is superior as they spend millions on it. What he does say though, and I dont want to start anything here, is that these new regional FTTP companies (like Hyperoptic and Hey Broadband) will not last. Very poor infrastructure. But that's something else entirely!

He's not the CIO by the way :)
 
As highlighted broadband service is dependent on each element. We rarely get visibility of the design adopted by ISPs which will vary by location

There are so many variations dependent on the use of other suppliers whether access, backhaul or core networks

BT and Virgin have the benefit of using their own networks which by definition are bigger and more resilient. Sky that uses Openreach for access has a substantial core network.

When comparing ISPs the resilience of the network and their ability to recover from major incidents should be considered.

As stated BT has three brands increasingly focused on different markets. BT Consumer is the prime but expensive unless you utilise all their package benefits.

If cost is the main driver then bare bones broadband is increasingly available. An example is Hey! now selling synchronous FTTP from £23 per month. However I wouldn’t regard them as resilient.

It depends what services you want and how important it is if it fails.
 
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And BT bigwig is right, some/many of the altnets will not last, some may have questionable core and access networks compared to what the bigger network operators would deploy but you don't tend to hear howls of disappointment that they're rubbish either.

There will be significant consolation in the industry, as the funding for building out the networks runs out, just as there was in the cable industry when ntl: and telewest hoovered up most of the independent cable companies, and then they were consolidated eventually into Virgin Media. And some of the big players will no doubt benefit from increasing their footprint through acquisition.

As you seem to be suggesting you'll go with Vodafone that means you will be doing that either over Openreach or CityFibre, both at the top of their game as UK FTTP infrastructure providers and unlikely to fail. Vodafone is also a force to be reckoned with.
 
Vodafone over openreach. I’ve been with Hey for 2 years and it’s been a sh*t show hence me moving away. I don’t need 1gb upload (or download for that matter!)
 
There's an element of truth to what your friend said - you can read reports from users of ISPs that are delivering them a gigabit service but the network is so poor (no peering, everything going out via transit) that they see traffic to UK servers routed via Paris and links getting congested - Vodafone had issues with their FTTC service a few years ago when they were growing customers rapidly. Likewise there have been instances of Sky linking exchanges up to their network by daisy chaining them together, so losing a link takes out thousands of customers.

I was a BT broadband customer for over a decade and I never had any network issues - no high utilisation, no weird routing, nice low hop counts to pretty much everything etc. It is a very high quality network. I'm not sure it's possible to state that it's "the best" but things do feel notably snappier when you're using a network set up like BTs as opposed to an altnet that just shoves everything out to Cogent.
 
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