Good people of NSC, who is your ISP and do you recommend them?

[beorhthelm]

hmmmm, interesting reading. This distance from the exchange thing, where the further you're away the weaker the signal...is it true does anyone know or is it another smokescreen?

its very much true, its due to the underlying technology, signal loss, line noise and error correction limit what is possible. orginally they thought ADSL would only be capable of 2mb speeds, so they've done very well to increase the potential speeds so high as they have. the smokescreen is that the providers have sold the top end speeds, often only available to those within 1km of the exchange. often the "speed available" in an area is theoretical, it not tested over the actual lines which have to carry the signal. a street across could also be hundreds of meters of cable further away, so dont trust the post code checkers too much

 

[alan partridge]

thank f*** I live in Japan. Have had the same provider for 8 years. About 6 years ago they came round and said, sorry but would you like a cheaper deal, it might be a 'little' slower. It wasn't. Slower. It was cheaper.

 

[Garage_Doors]

You might as well go back to dial-up !
0.8 is pitiful. I share your pain though, mine is all over the shop half the time. Although typically, now the engineer is coming out tomorrow I've had 6-9 MB all weekend.

How are you measuring your speed with virgin ?

 

[Snowy]

I'm with virgins cheapest deal and its better than any other broadband supplier I've had before...

Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk

 

[Poyetry In Motion]

I live in Burgess Hill and we've only just got colour TV.

The new Betamax is working a treat though.

ahhh haaahhhh. You might like to know Elvis has died, Kristin shot JR, some old cowboy actor won the US presidency and Ted Moult has passed over which means your double glazing is no longer under guarantee....

 

[bhaexpress]

In terms of service, I had to call BT today as I closed my home phone & broadband account with them at the start of May, but they mysteriously decided to debit my account for a payment today, despite the final payment being settled a month ago. Waited 20 minutes to speak to an advisor, a most helpful Scottish lady who agreed that it appeared to be an error, but said she'd have to transfer me to their payment and accounts department in order to clarify and refund. So she passes me over to a call centre, and a most apologetic advisor, who stated he couldn't deal with me as my account was closed, and wasn't able to transfer my call back, so I had to hang up.

So far, after dealings with various other utility companies this afternoon (it's just not my day I think), I have entirely lost the will to hang on BT's customer service line for another twenty minutes, and nearly the will to live

Anyway, I recently changed my ISP, which appears to be the source of most of these problems, and I'm fed up with it and going to cancel the agreement. So I'm now with the first poster, and looking for recommendations as to the best ISP around.

This is why I can't stand BT. I lost my internet connection thanks to a faulty modem. Despite the fact that I told them what was wrong I had to wait a week for an engineer to come round to tell me (in less than a minute) that I needed a replacement. They sent a replacement, to an address I hadn't lived at for three years ! (To move with BT you have to close your account and then open a new one). I moved to a new ISP after that but BT messed that up thanks to bad cabling right outside my house. A relative had TalkTalk but lost that line for over a month thanks to a BT screw up (All ISPs have to go through BT apart from in the main Virgin). They are a shambles and you have to sue them to get a refund.

 

[Garry Nelson's Left Foot]

I have next to no idea what most of you are talking about on this thread. There's far too much technical speak(at least for me...). I tried the link below to see what 'mb' I had(god knows why, as I dont know what it means).

Broadband Speed Checker - THE UK's No.1 Broadband Speed Test

Turns out I have 1832 kbps download speed and 1060 kbps upload speed. Is that good? Bad? What does it mean?!

 

[kalinski]

Zen.co.uk brilliant little company. I have been with them for years now and had probably two or three drop outs in that time all of which have been due to my modem or router. Slightly more expensive, but worth it for the reliability of the service

 

[Woodchip]

Switching provider won't make a ha'porth of difference to the speed it synchs up at, they will be pretty much dependant on your line length. Contention ratio will make a difference, as will the provider's bandwidth from the DSLAM to the backbone.



I'm with o2 and they are pretty good.

Exactly this. The line speed isn't dictated by the ISP, but by the length of run and quality of cable between you and the exchange. Contention ratio and pipe size makes a difference, but not as much as line length and quality.

I'm with Plus.Net. Yes, "good honest broadband, from Yorkshire". Been with them for 13 years and never had any major connection problems (apart from when the BT box down the road was flooded). They are cheaper, but (apart from maybe Zen) can't think of anyone that gets more praise.
Sent via a fleet of trained snails

 

[Badger]

I'm with Orange and they seem ok, very cheap if you've got an Orange phone. I did have an issue a couple of weeks ago when I was getting about 0.5Mb but that seems to happen after I've done a lot of working from home hammering my connection through a VPN, I get the feeling some kind of fair usage policy kicks in.

At my last place I was with Virgin on thier 10Mb package, I was very impressed with that which is lucky because their customer service line is awful, some bloke in India that doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.

 

[eastlondonseagull]

Virgin, and it certainly has its annoyances. Goes down like the Titanic

 

[Easy 10]

How are you measuring your speed with virgin ?

With this.

Broadband Speed Checker - THE UK's No.1 Broadband Speed Test


Sometimes I get a nice consistent 8 or 9mb, which is fine. Then suddenly everything slows down, I run the test and the needle is fluctuating willdly backwards and forwards, eventually giving me a reading of about 0.5 or 1.5. You can forget about any Redtube plans once that kicks in.

 

[Pat McCrotch]

Virgin Size L (10mb) - never had a single problem with them in 6+ years.

 

[phoenix]

With Virgin 30 mb. Currently running at 32 mb, with the free super hub.Same speed on laptop.Downloaded 700 mb movie in less that 3 minutes last week.