BT's EE or O2 Takeover - Good idea or not?

[Bambino]

This article's author isn't too enthused about the idea. I tend to agree.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-16/if-british-telecom-buys-o2-or-ee-omg?cmpid=yhoo

[Beenherebefore]

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@Bambino wrote:

I know it's 'up to'. Max I can get from BT at the moment is 38 MB because of my distance from the exchange, so down the cable is bound to be faster.

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Distance from the local green fibre cabinet 

[Bambino]

My Virgin broadband won't be coming from the green fibre cabinet. It will come down the cable.

[Anonymous]

What will you do with all that speed @Bambino???

Virgin is rated the best at getting as near to target speeds as possible.

[Bambino]

I'll be able to stream movies with ease. At the moment, I'm on a 40GB/month cap with BT, which is severely limiting. 

[Beenherebefore]

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@Bambino wrote:

My Virgin broadband won't be coming from the green fibre cabinet. It will come down the cable.

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Sorry....I was correcting your comment about the exchange.

vDSL distance is measured from the local green cabinet as it's only the distance from there to your house which is non-fibre cabling. 

[Bambino]

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@Beenherebefore wrote:

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@Bambino wrote:

My Virgin broadband won't be coming from the green fibre cabinet. It will come down the cable.

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Sorry....I was correcting your comment about the exchange.

vDSL distance is measured from the local green cabinet as it's only the distance from there to your house which is non-fibre cabling. 

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The green cabinet is relatively close to my house. Probably no more than 50 yards, so why have I always been told that my max speed from BT or Sky would only be 38MB?

[iar1980]

Cannot comment about either BT or EE.

I have been with virgin for years and no issues.

I use a powerline kit at home on my 50mbps package connected to my pc with cat6 gold plated ethernet cable. I consistantly hit 52-54 mbps without fail (yes i get more than the advertised 50mbps via a powerline connection). Also i never have any outages or failures. Even the smartphone and tablet connected to wifi (superhub 1) have heralded excellent ping times and speeds.

Also BT has no fibre optic in my area so speeds are limited to max 17mbps.

Speed Test I have just run from my PC

[Anonymous]

If only Virgin would start to expand. They only cover 50% ish of the country currently. If they covered 98% like the mobile obligation they would be an awesome competitor to BT but no one wants the rural and semi rural business.

[Bambino]

It's not likely that they will expand. Virgin only took over the existing cable infrastructure that was laid 25+ years ago. It would take a massive investment to lay cable in rural areas, not to mention all the disruption there would be from digging up the roads.

[Anonymous]

Virgin are expanding but only in cities and towns. I believe they were expanding in Southampton during the summer for example. But they need volume to make it stack up and rural doesn't cut it hence bt or sky are the only viable options