Quote:
Originally Posted by blue166
Many thanks for your answers, ....
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Not a trick question but a genuine interest in how you performed a Risk Assessment and comparative evaluation on potential advantages of BT21CN over VM?
Mainly because despite being a VM customer consistently on a low end tier for 15yrs I've also regularly looked at alternative ADSL ISPS's and obviously in latter times then BT's Infinity.
So some criteria and "intangible risks" I've looked at that probably only relates to my limited usage profile and not any avid gamester or torrenter, downloader or video streamer:
1. Just as one can't statistically evaluate the reliability/performance of an areas VM tier from the VM H&S forum site posts neither from my many cursory reviews of BT Support site posts can you achieve any better objective evaluation of Infinity?
2. Probably like many others I lazily attribute an advantage to opting for "bundles" that include my eclectic needs for Phone, TV and BB as it results in a more logistically simple single payment methodology. I appreciate more discerning subscribers will evaluate their specific specialised needs for gaming etc will attribute more "Value add" in perhaps selecting different services from different ISP's?
3. Old IT habits die hard so over 4 decades (I'm permanently retired now) I still retain and apply concepts of Disaster Recovery,Continuity of Production, Back ups and Risk Assessment strategies to provide commensurate redundancy for telephone,TV and broadband irrespective of "main" ISP(s) involved.
4. Therefore based on the above criteria I notice the following crude comparisons between BT & VM:
a) BT seem to also have an Off shore (Indo-Asian) call centre support methodology? Which appears to have as much credibility and derision as VM's Level1 offshore support!
b) BT seem to have some satisfaction guarantee(conceptually similar to VM's 28day one) with some forum posts suggesting from 10 days to even 90days!?
c) BT seem to be a far more realistically conservative in their initial speed estimates prior to installation, thus many find their actual installed data rates exceed or always consistently come within 10% of that initial advertised(?) estimated prediction. However like VM's reliability during a fixed term contract there's no indication of how easy it is to get compensation for degraded service nor exit a contract term without penalty?
d) However there's also much confusion over how DLM is instigated with diametrically opposed views of whether this is 10days on FTTC or 48hrs and what user provoked multiple Modem reboots within a certain period will re-invoke DLM triggers with a risk of IP Profile being changed to a lower data rate?
e) Equally this leads to problematic issue of re-setting the IP Profile when DLM may have been artificially confused by aforementioned user actions?
f) Thus guarantee of service speeds also seem confusing with only some tenuous guarantee related to 15Mbps minimum and no other distinction between Infinity 1 or Infinity 2 data rates not meeting it's original installed (or install + 10day) rate at some time in the future?
g) While "contention","congestion" or "over-utilisation" appear further back in BT F/O network relative to VM's last mile + HEAD END, there's still some disconcerting pointers on BT Forum that circumstantially point to BT can user connection increase causing suggestion? No doubt related to "crosstalk" before "vectoring" rollout but still a potential issue perhaps in some areas?
h) As regards TV bundling then BT's Infinity sales spin seems nothing more than a FreeView service that requires a terrestrial aerial anyway? As such apart from an STB it doesn't seem to provide any additional value add over a subscribers own Smart TV with embedded Freeview anyway?
BT also seem to leverage Sky as another option but not AFAIK any significant TVIP to equate with VM's TV STB service??
i) then there's the rather discouraging concept of BT OR actually potentially charging for tech visit if NFF?
j)Of course their Forum support does appear to have a more hands-on and responsive BT level2 team (that's not intended as any denigration of any individual VM's forum team members but merely the higher management commitment to staffing resource support levels on BT)?.
Now while I hopefully try and retain some objectivity there are undoubtedly many incorrect interpretations I've made in my cursory comparisons and thus why I'm genuinely interested in other opinions particularly yourself Blue that has already endured some of VM's reliability issues in past for a protracted period?.
FWIW I've used BT(or GPO back in the age of dinosaurs with 300baud jack plug modem) in the past and as a landline and later via dialup V56 and also when migrating to NTL digital TV(+embedded CM) + telephone but still retained BT telephone as backup until mobiles reduced in price and became a viable backup to landline.
However it just seems as much confusion caused by "myth", mis information and probably to a lesser degree "marketing spin" on BT fora as that found on VM fora?
The grass is always greener to some extent no doubt?
That said my "half-a-gut" feeling
is that on the whole BT Infinity is on average more reliable and consistent in basic data rates and latency generally than VM and I'm still tempted (like Seph already has done for some time now) to use BT Infinity bundle as a "back up" to replace my current FreeSat,Sky and MobileBB dongle alternative strategies?