Fibre products from O2/Be may not appear until 2013
The BE network blog comes bearing bad news for the various BEings who are waiting for the provider to start selling a FTTC/P based service. It seems while the company may be able to provide a limited fibre based service during 2012, a widespread roll-out based on the GEA services from Openreach looks unlikely.
With the large providers such as BT, TalkTalk and Sky all with a fibre based service and a good number of other providers too, provides like Orange and O2/Be are playing a dangerous game if they delay too long in offering the service. This is particularly the case for Be which has a loyal following, but as they experience the faster services at friends homes, their loyalty will be stretched.
Comments
Yes especially if others do what they do IE no shaping ETC which I am sure Sky will.
I read about this about 12pm.
Wonder specifically what "limited fibre based" means.
Geographically limited, I guess?
distance from cab maybe?
Limited means not unlimited ... i.e. if they can't use GEA then they will have to pay the price and will not be able to provide a cost affective unlimited product.
That's my guess anyway.
Limited means where they have the bandwidth, hardware and registered interest i.e pockets in large cities
Spoke to o2 today and they said time Q3 2013! Saying this, I'm not prepared to fork out £25+/mth to BT for a capped service
At least people now have a clear choice. Wait around for 12 to 18 months or make your choice and move. Perhaps with a view to returning should they ever get their act together.
I guess current line speed will be a big factor in that factor. As those with slower lines have greater incentive.
BT don't offer Infinity only so you need to take their rip-off line rental/phone package which is £40/mth: far too dear for mediocre customer service
Plusnet do but is £25/mth and capped at 120GB/mth
Looks like Telefonica O2 can't get the capital to fund a backhaul rollout (they are servicing a huge debt pile IIRC) or make sufficient return out of the BT Wholesale product.
If so this is the beginning of the end for their fixed line ambitions, and they are now tieing their future to the success of LTE for internet access. That is where their strengths lie, so maybe not such a shortsighted move.
Jumped ship to Talk talk and getting fibre and all phone calls for less than paying BE, oh we'll 18 months, not to disappointedas tied into contract that's same length.
@Colin_London - I hope not! I can't even get 3G in North bloody London!
I will be a 'loyal' follower for years to come as my area isn't evenon plans for a late 2013 roll out of FTTC/P. I will still be on adsl untill 2014 or longer
BE have lost the plot, half of their customers will have gone by 2013.
I'd rather wait for the Be service than go on BT's hobby network. I remember the fiasco that was WBC when it first launched. Never again. I'm perfectly happy with my 2 x bonded Be lines.
Time to leave O2 when my contract is up in July.They have great c/s but sadly are getting left behind in the world of FTTC.
BT have no plans to upgrade my exchange(less than 3 miles from a major city centre can you believe)so my only option is Digital Region..£25 a month for a 40/10mb connection,can't get above 2,5mb with O2 due to my proximity to the exchange
Just got my MAC code from O2. At 2Mb currently vs 80Mb with FTTC that I'm now able to switch to. I forsee them losing a lot of customers currently on <8Mb.
A sad day but not a huge surprise. I said as much several months ago in reply to another article. Ah well - I've got a nice man from BT coming round on Monday to connect me up so that IDNET can be my provider from now on.
I'll always have a fond spot for Be but it's time to move on. Sad to think that once they were at the forefront of xDSL provision in the UK.
@AndrueC IDNET are great if you don't mind regular "outages" lasting nearly a week with no apology or explanation. I still use them for telephony but their internet service is rubbish.
I am sticking with Be until something better is provided at a similar rate (Or close to). I currently pay £14 a month for a 11.5/1.3Mbit connection. But this is unthrottled/shaped/limited in any way whatsoever. I would have gone with Sky had they offered 10mbit upload but 2Mbit is not worth it. The download speed does not interest me as much. I want to be able to stream my HD movies in GOOD quality from my local server to anywhere. So upload counts.
I also have experience of using my fathers FFTC and the fact it is throttled to death during the day and at weekends for P2P is useless. This is how funny it is. I go grab a download from home instead and then send it to his connection through Dropbox as it's quicker! I will pay up to £20 a month for a faster unthrottled/unshaped/unlimited connection. No more. So I will sit tight for now thank you very much.
By the time Be rolls out FFTC many Be customers will have migrated to BT Infinity which has good customer satisfaction ratings.
O2 and Be are a complete waste of time in the broadband market imho: they just don't get it.
The country is moving over to fibre, and they're still messing about with legacy network technology. Time to jump ship from them, since they can't be bothered to invest in anything new
as a retail operation they will be killed by this I think, although the BE wholesale probably will keep things ticking over.