BT Infinity

For those who don't know, BT Infinity is a broadband product by BT (the main telco in the UK) involving fibre to the street. In simple terms the junction box at the end of our street is connected via BT to the internet using fibre optics rather than copper cable, whilst the last stretch from the junction box to our house remains over the existing copper. This means that for the majority of the distance the internet traffic is on a high speed connection.

We had it fitted about a month ago so we've had time to put it through it's paces.

Installation was simple. An engineer came out (on time) and attached a new wall socket. The existing cabling to the house was untouched (no extra holes drilled) and the new modem and WiFi router put in. The modem is small and wall mounted. The router is equally small and, despite having no external aerial, gives a much better signal throughout the house. The wall socket obviously still includes points for telephones.

Although it arrives with an installation CD I never use these disks. One of the benefits of wireless connectivity is that with nothing attached to your devices there is absolutely no need to install extra software, unless you want your machine infected by the malware known as McAfee (Avira and AVG, amongst others, give much better virus protection, are free, and don't grind your machine to a halt).

Before the engineer had even finished his paperwork I was connected via both my laptop and my Blackberry and had run a speed check on the former, giving 32.7mb download and 3.9mb upload. Naturally I was pleased with that.

Over the last few weeks we've had no issues at all. Things work, and they work faster. The wife's laptop failed to connect most mornings without a reboot but replacing Vista with Windows 7 sorted that out (I'd been meaning to do it for months anyway) so I know that is not the fault of Infinity.

Most sites and online services are much quicker, especially the larger ones like Google Docs and Amazon S3 storage. I've now got the kind of speed where when a site is not loading almost instantly then nine times out of ten I'm pretty confident the fault lies with either general internet speeds beyond my BT connection or the site's servers not feeding the content quick enough. I've also taken to internet radio (DAB is almost useless for a signal in our area), especially French cafe jazz via TuneIn radio on the Blackberry.

The only issue I have is with BT's internal systems. They have an online facility to check your usage and, as I went for a package with a 40gb limit (more than enough in my simplified online life), I've been checking it every couple of days to track over the first month whether it is something I need to be particularly aware of in the future.

On the day after installation my usage was over 10gb. The cut-off point when that figure was calculated was reported as midnight the day before installation so it seems that their systems brought forward all my usage in the calendar month so far and applied it against my 40gb allowance even though that usage was already covered and paid for because at the time it was incurred I was on my previous slower, but unlimited, contract (I switched mid-month).

It won't be an issue for me as I will still be within my allowance (the 10gb was unusual) but if you're a high user you may want to look out for this as it is, in effect, double-billing for usage in month one.

You won't be charged excess usage (at £5 per 5gb) until the second month you exceed the limit, but it would be a shame to blow your first get out of jail free card to cover the installation month because BT are being sharp with their practices (I emailed them straight away but have had no answer weeks later). I suspect they have an issue allocating the traffic across different packages within a calendar month which is why they allow one month's excess to go unpunished as that's simpler than fixing it.

All in all I'm very satisfied. The installation was smooth, the guy friendly, talkative and efficient. The service runs without problems and the allowance is more than enough for me (even with internet radio, which is about 50mb an hour) as I get over a gigabyte of traffic a day if required (it's usually not). Downloads speeds are great and I can do a 250mb file in a couple of minutes. Due to charging structures and even allowing for a one-off £25 installation fee it will only cost me £1 extra in total over the first year, and will be cheaper subsequently in comparison to my previous package.

As long as you keep an eye on their stats for your first month's usage I'd definitely recommend it.