Has anyone had a good experience of moving from FFTC to FFTP?

[#1]

I chose Plusnet FF74. The installation was carried out by Kelly Communications on behalf of Open Reach on 2nd April. The engineer put the ONT where I asked for it to be installed, which is under the desk in my home office (aka the box room on the first floor at the back of the house) and ran the fibre cable from the ONT to the outside wall, then down and along the outside wall to where the CSP was installed at ground level, so no need for cables trailing around the inside of the house, thank God. The engineer turned up within the time slot allocated to me on the day of the appointment. Installation took about 2 hours. He did a clean and tidy job. I didn't lose internet connection whatsoever, since all the power and cabling for the ONT and router was carried out before he unplugged the old BT line from the router, and I was staying with Plusnet, so it was just a change of product, not supplier.

Speed was instantly recorded at 74Mbps download on my mobile phone, while connected via 5Ghz band. My partner's phone said something like 12Mbps download, which shocked me, but then I discovered it was via the 2.4Ghz band. As soon as he switched the Wi-Fi off and on again on his phone it switched to the 5Ghz band and he got 74Mbps too. We were previously getting 37Mbps download on FTTC. Unfortunately, I forgot to check what the 2.4Ghz speed was on FTTC before switching to FF74, so I don't know if the poor 2.4Ghz speed was always there or is something new. On my phone I got a speed of 18Mbps download on the 2.4Ghz band.

The best I have seen both on my phone (via Wi-Fi) and on the laptop (via ethernet) is 75Mbps.  The contract states I should get between 72Mbps and 80Mbps download on average, with a minimum guaranteed download speed of 40Mbps. Until today, download speeds have been consistently between 72Mbps and 75Mbps. I was using a Cat5e cable from ONT to router and a Cat5 cable from router to laptop, since that was all I had. Plusnet did not send me a new router, or any new cables.

On Wednesday (9th April), we installed a Ring Video Doorbell (outside the front of the house) and Chime (in the kitchen at the back of the house). The performance of both was pretty poor, with choppy video and several missed events. I did notice that Wi-Fi is not so good in my hallway near the front door, and we can only get Wi-Fi in the kitchen on the 2.4Ghz band. So, on Thursday we purchased new Ethernet cables and a Wi-Fi extender. I now have a Cat6 ethernet cable running from the ONT to the router, and a Cat5e cable from router to laptop. The doorbell and chime have been assigned to the Wi-Fi extender, which improved their performance enough to get smooth video and fewer missed events.

Today, I logged onto the laptop to see what difference the new ethernet cables have made to the speed, and discovered the speed was incredibly variable and unstable. So I checked all the connections, did the usual router reset/reboot. Speeds have stabilised again, I think, but I don't really know what caused them to be off in the first place. Connections looked fine.

Upload speed has been a different issue. Mostly I have seen around 15 to 17Mbps on my phone. I'm supposed to be getting 18 - 20Mbps. I only had 18Mbps once on the phone before making any changes. Upload speeds on the laptop were also below the 18Mbps minimum. I've just seen 19Mbps on my phone, but it's still only 16Mbps on the laptop (with ethernet). The laptop is a few years old. Might be the device, I suppose. I will be getting a new laptop nearer October.

As to billing, Plusnet have given me the correct refund of the appropriate number of days' service at the previous out-of-contract costs I paid in the last billing period, but billed me for the new service from the start of the new contract at the undiscounted rate, so I will be raising a ticket about that as soon as I sign off this post to get the discount correctly applied. 

Good luck to anyone else switching to FTTP. My fears about the install and potential loss of service were unfounded in my case. I will see how the service unfolds over the coming months, before deciding what else to do. New router? Switch to a CityFibre provider?  Who knows...

[#2]

we had our fibre connected from pole at back of house (on allotment path), with the final box in upstairs study. The engineer ran the cable down to the external box at ground level without issue.

our *only* problems were a known fault at the exchange head end, which took a couple of days to get resolved before our new 145mbps service sprang into life, and someone at Plusnet treating our upgrade from FFTC as a 'service disconnect' and cancelling our exisiting username. So had to make up a new one whilst on the phone to PN support. And renew DD details for new account.

still, got us an extra £20 refund for loss of internet, and we still had our mobiles for emails - but it was a little odd.

and its generally faster than advertised.

[#3]

That's great that you are getting better speeds than advertised! My 2.4Ghz channel has started to give me speeds closer to the estimated range since rebooting the router. I got 69Mbps yesterday. Still getting 74Mbps on 5Ghz. Sometimes 75 or 76, but mostly 74. Upload speeds have only hit 18Mbps about 3 times, and 19Mbps once. 18 is the lower end of my estimated upload speed. I'm mostly seeing 15 or 16. I'm using a 3 year old Hub Two. What router are you using?

It's a shame about the disconnection of your old account. How did you order the FTTP? Was it by phone? I was going down that route initially and had a date set for FF145, but another forum member persuaded me to take a closer look at Zen, so I cancelled the order while I explored that option. I ended up ordering the FF74 with Plusnet through the member's login page.

I'm still waiting for the member's page to show my discount correctly, having been billed incorrectly this month, but the credit I'm owed is now in the pipeline.

[#4]

I've got the Plusnet Hub2 router - which we've had for a while, from our FTTC days,  and my older Asus RT-N66U setup as an access point. That's so I can have a guest network when we do house exchanges, with names that make sense.

we use TP-link adapters to run ethernet round the house, so don't use the wi-fi much, other than a Sonos speaker, so I've never really worried about the speeds, but there's very little speed difference compared with our wired connections, or between the Asus wireless networks & Plusnet wireless channels.

Our FTTP order was done online on our Plusnet account page, after spotting that it had become available on the BT Wholesale site (https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com).