BT ISP review

by

Another year, another ISP. This time around we’ve chosen BT’s 50Mbps download / 9Mbps upload plan as that is the fastest available at this address.

This is an FTTC connection that is throttled by BT. The connection speed peaks at 120Mbps for a split-second before rapidly descending to precisely 50Mbps.

I configured the server to run a internet speed test daily at 2:30am, and you can see a graph of the results below:

. .
Google Sheets plot of my speedtest results

It turned out that my speedtest program was inaccurate and all the times that it reported ~2.5 Mbps upload it actually meant 9 Mbps. It was a very strange bug indeed. Somewhere around April/May I switched to the newly launched official Ookla Speedtest CLI for more accurate results.

 Maximum (Mbps)Minimum (Mbps)Average (Mbps)
Download51.4828.2650.0
Upload9.562.475.2
Ping115.85.511.3
Aggregated statistics for my experience with BT as an ISP

Ignoring the occasional dips, performance was solid throughout the year and I did not experience any major issues with BT. If they offered their 76Mbps download / 18Mbps upload plan at this address, they would certainly be a recommendable choice.

Edit 01/07/2020:

Switched to Vodafone as an ISP, on their 76Mbps download / 18Mbps upload plan.

7,337 thoughts on “BT ISP review”