BT Infinity: Fibre battles Virgin on price and upload speeds
BT has Virgin Media firmly in its sites today as it launched its highly-antipicated fibre product, BT Infinity.
With scant details of availability, other than a promise to roll it out to 4 million homes and businesses by the end of the year and 10 million by the summer of 2012, the corporation was concentrating on boast of speeds, particularly the pace of uploads.
While the top speed of both Option 1 and Option 2 is 40Mbps, compared to Virgin Media XXL’s 50Mbps, BT’s marketing effort is going to lengths to point out that BT Infinity Option 2 offers 10Mbps upload speeds, and Option 1 2Mbps, instead of Virgin XXL’s 1.5Mbps.
As one might imagine the launch documents go to great pains to point out that Virgin’s XXL works out at £39 per month, when a Virgin Media monthly line rental is added, while the BT packages will work out at £31.53 and £36.53 per month with a BT line included.
At a glance, the BT Infinity products offer….
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| Option | Option 1 | Option 2 |
| Standard price per month | £19.99 | £24.99 |
| Connection charge | £50 | Free |
| Download Speed | Up to 40Mb/s | up to 40Mb/s |
| Upload Speed | Up to 2Mb/s | Up to 10Mb/s |
| Monthly usage allowance | 20GB*** | Unlimited**** |
| Wireless router | Free BT Home Hub | Free BT Home Hub |
| Contract Period | 18 months | 18 months |
| Security | Basic security | Advanced security |
| Storage | 5GB Digital Vault | 5GB Digital Vault with auto back-up |
| Wi-fi minutes | 250 minutes | unlimited minutes |
BT Infinity availabilty
Aside from boast that early trialists in London and Glasgow have enjoyed HD video streaming and online games that work 30% faster, BT is remaining tight-lipped on how long ADSL customers will have to wait until their area is covered.
The company has launched an online checker but if your area is not covered, it currently does not give any indication of when your nearest exchange may be upgrade and instead attempts to sell an ADSL package instead.
Tags: Broadband Fibre, BT, BT Infinity, Option 1, Option 2, upload speed, Virgin Media, Virgin Media XXL
Category: Broadband Availability, Broadband Fibre, Broadband Performance, Broadband Pricing, Broadband Speed
January 21st, 2010 at 10:41 pm
I never really understood why Virgin launched and maintained their 50mb package with such a low upload speed. At 1:33 it’s taking asymmeteric connections to a whole new level. Downloading at 50Mb/s will mean that the entire upload bandwidth is occupied with ACK packets and other overheads.
I’m glad better upload speeds are coming to the UK; My computer has spent the last week (24/7) backing up my photos to picasa at 40KB/s, and it still isn’t even half way there!
In this day and age it shouldn’t take 2 weeks to upload 25GB
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:25 am
couldn’t agree more. i think if Wed 2.0 is teaching the media and ISPs anything it is that communication is not a one way road!
January 24th, 2010 at 1:02 am
Yes this is a breath of fresh air from an ISP. ADSL is long out of date and Annex M ADSL 2+ seems like a poor hack to improve upload.
Nice to see BT moving forward.
I can’t see any reason not to have fully symmetric fibre optics but I guess I should moan as this is a big improvement!
January 24th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Traditionally ISPs sell their upload bandwidth to hosting companies. So they acquire connectivity with similar upload & download capabilities and sell it twice – to the consumer as download and businesses as upload.
Several ISPs have made big businesses out of this model – most notably Everyone’s Internet in the states who started EV1 Servers (now The Planet) to utilise their underused upstream.
January 24th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Oh, and on another note. Do we know when there will be data available to samknows telling us when exchanges/streets(?) will be enabled? Perhaps it’ll be tomorrow when the website says the service will launch?
January 24th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
jasoncartwright, I know what you mean but it the was the ISP who would pay to put their data on the “carriers” pipes. This is why upload has typical been expensive.
However as with the nature of the internet, allot of ISP’s are setting up peering agreements with other ISP’s thus negating the need for carriers. While there will still be a place for carriers I think this decentralization is a good thing as it should bring down costs and make networks more redundant.
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Dustmaker said above,” Downloading at 50Mb/s will mean that the entire upload bandwidth is occupied with ACK packets and other overheads.”
But that’s not actually correct, a cable modem will do “ACK suppresion”, so much less ACKS are needed to maintain a 50Mbps download.