I've had a phone call today advising me that BT Infinity is now available in my area and would I like it. The cost is more than I pay at the moment, but not by a lot, certainly not enough to put me off having it. The question is, does anyone already have it and is it worth the up-grade?

I don't have the BT Infinity (using Virgin Media cable) but can say that cable broadband is generally faster than the service that comes via the copper telephone wires. What connection speed do you have at present?

A completely lousy 1mb. We're not in a cabled area so can't have Virgin.

I believe BT Infinity is fibre optic cable up to their nearest cable cabinet (there'll be a cabinet somewhere very near where you live). From there, it's a connection via your telephone line.

The limiting factor before was how far away you live from the nearest telephone exchange. Now it's only how far you are from the cabinet. This is much less copper wire than was involved before, so you should get a much faster connection. It just must improve on the current 1MB connection speed, so I'd personally go for it. What speed do they say you will get?

They're saying around 15.4MB, which if that is right would be so fast I'd be in cyber heaven. We are right on the very edge of being able to receive broadband at all in terms of distance from the exchange. Even if I don't get the 15.4MB if I get 5MB or 6MB at the end of the day it will be a lot better, so I think I'll go for it.

Businesses used to offer samples of their wares to convince people to purchase their product. Is there a trial period being offered to help you decide if you want to switch?
Is this just for ISP or is it for TV and other coupled products too? If you can get TV over it, that's a different thing, no? Here in the US I have Cable TV and a dial-up ISP. I am considering cancelling the cable and upgrading the phone/web connection to fiber optic, knowing I can get TV at the download speeds they provide. There is also the fastest option, WiFi, that I can consider. This uses a small Xmitter/rcvr to connect to a cell (mobile phone) tower for connections. But they usually charge by minute's usage for that service.

Regrettably no trial period is on offer. They are gradually rolling this out over the whole Country, and I think early areas had trial periods, but that was as much for their benefit to iron out snags as anything else. It is for ISP and phone. You can add "On Demand" TV for an extra £4 a month, which is mainly a catalogue of movies, and so far we havn't gone for that.

Speaking personally - *nothing* would get me back to BT. I hope that it will be worth it for you and all goes well.

I feel like that about AOL.