Broadband/TV/Phone packages

[Brown and Boris]

My brother in law keeps on about his 16mb download sky package with unlimited landlines and Sky HD etc. I am tempted, as I have a BT package of all landline calls ( I make a lot of daytime calls as I work from home) for £25 and broadband elsewhere at £15 and freeview with an intermittent signal.

Any experiences of these 'packgaes' and the smoothness of changeover?

[dave_s13]

I've had Sky 16mb/basic TV/phone package thingy for a good while now and can't fault it really.

Downloads are super fast (12-13meg) and there is no fair use policy.

Change over is a bit of a lottery, absolute nightmare for me when switching from Pipex (the utter cvvnts...don't use them). It should be easy enough.

[sparkythecat]

My broadband speed is crap. Best is 2 meg, bit more typically 1.2.
BT say it's because we're so far from the exchange. ( <3miles! )
Is changing ISP likely to make any difference?

We live in a rural area and so cable isn;t an option.

[Brown and Boris]

sparkythecat said:

My broadband speed is crap. Best is 2 meg, bit more typically 1.2.
BT say it's because we're so far from the exchange. ( <3miles! )
Is changing ISP likely to make any difference?

We live in a rural area and so cable isn;t an option.

I would be interested in the answer to that too as we are semi rural.

[Riggernut]

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][/URL]

Well Pipex are taking the urine with speeds, so I'd be interested to know peoples opinions with the sky package.

[skeggysteve]

Brown and Boris said:

sparkythecat said:

My broadband speed is crap. Best is 2 meg, bit more typically 1.2.
BT say it's because we're so far from the exchange. ( <3miles! )
Is changing ISP likely to make any difference?

We live in a rural area and so cable isn;t an option.

I would be interested in the answer to that too as we are semi rural.

I'm very rural and now am getting a solid 6meg speed.
I was with Virgin and getting about 512k on an up to 8meg service.
Moved to Demon business and whilst it is more money than Virgin it is very worth it.
Virgin c£10 per month, Demon business c£40 per month. You get what you pay for!
Demon is unlimited and a faster upload speed than most non business packages.

Sky BB will be OK if your local exchange is unbundled.

[dave_s13]

Like I said Sky BB is very good indeed, how you determine what speed you'll actually get I dunno?



That was done on the wireless laptop.

Edited by dave_s13 on Thursday 1st January 23:42

[coley20]

Thats at home with noraml broadband, ill try it in uni got 16mb there

[Brown and Boris]

I am getting 5297 download with Plusnet at the moment ( only 379 upload)

[stormin]

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][/URL]

Hmmm - not pleased with mine. Time to shop around.

[JohnP68]

I used to get 0.5Mb all the time. Fitted one of these last summer, with a dedicated ADSL extension, and speed improved to about 3.5Mb almost immediately and has stayed at that level ever since:

http://www.clarity.it/acatalog/ADSL_Installation.h...

Even just disconnecting the bell wire (do a google!) improved it to about 2Mb straight away.

Best way to see if this could improve your speed is to simply unscrew the face plate of your main BT box (looks a bit like the one in the link) and plug your adsl modem straight into the master socket behind. Should see an instant improvement in the download sync speed if it'll make a difference for you.

[Blib]

Whoever you're with, it's worth having a moan at their costs. I had my monthly bill reduced by about 40% by Virgin after I threatened to leave them for Sky.

No questions asked. Took all of five minutes on the phone. These companies are desperate to keep us if they can.

I err, forgot to mention to the kind lady on the phone the fact that as I live in a flat, I'm not allowed a satellite dish and so couldn't change TV if I wanted to.

FYI below is my internet speed.

[daveake]

JohnP68 said:

I used to get 0.5Mb all the time. Fitted one of these last summer, with a dedicated ADSL extension, and speed improved to about 3.5Mb almost immediately and has stayed at that level ever since:

http://www.clarity.it/acatalog/ADSL_Installation.h...

Even just disconnecting the bell wire (do a google!) improved it to about 2Mb straight away.

Best way to see if this could improve your speed is to simply unscrew the face plate of your main BT box (looks a bit like the one in the link) and plug your adsl modem straight into the master socket behind. Should see an instant improvement in the download sync speed if it'll make a difference for you.

This is VERY good advice.

I did exactly the same at home, getting an improvement from a dodgy 2M that often cut out, to solid 5M.

Worth mentioning that it can take a few days for the BT exchange to realise there's been an improvement, and to increase your maximum download speed (which is different to the modem connection speed).

Dave

[Paul_Dids]

daveake said:

JohnP68 said:

I used to get 0.5Mb all the time. Fitted one of these last summer, with a dedicated ADSL extension, and speed improved to about 3.5Mb almost immediately and has stayed at that level ever since:

http://www.clarity.it/acatalog/ADSL_Installation.h...

Even just disconnecting the bell wire (do a google!) improved it to about 2Mb straight away.

Best way to see if this could improve your speed is to simply unscrew the face plate of your main BT box (looks a bit like the one in the link) and plug your adsl modem straight into the master socket behind. Should see an instant improvement in the download sync speed if it'll make a difference for you.

This is VERY good advice.

I did exactly the same at home, getting an improvement from a dodgy 2M that often cut out, to solid 5M.

Worth mentioning that it can take a few days for the BT exchange to realise there's been an improvement, and to increase your maximum download speed (which is different to the modem connection speed).

Dave

My ISP (Plusnet) sent me one of these Iplates http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.as... for free which does the same job of disconnecting the bell wires. My download speed went from about 600k to 1.8Mb so I'm very

[deckster]

stormin said:

Hmmm - not pleased with mine. Time to shop around.

Well I have no complaints with my 10Mb down / 500kb up line from Virgin

[Murdoc]

Be* have been great but I'm very tempted by the Sky offer. It's much cheaper then what we currently pay.

[Scraggles]

check out thinkbroadband and dslreports

avoid eclipse, talk-talk, plusnet and a few others on the forum and u should be ok

tempted to move to BE LLU, but as currently my website is hosted with ISP, it might cost more currently pay just the domain fee and apparently nothing for the hosting or bandwidth, might find that would have to pay a lot more for that - currently showing as 5.38 GB on the hard drive, it is mostly pictures, but can get unlimited photo hosting for $40 per year

speedtests showing around 3 MB, usually 6-7 MB on adsl

[F i F]

Anybody with O2? Heard some good reports but, shall we say, some of them had vested interests.

I'm also v rural and Tiscali are just taking the urine.

[sday12]

JohnP68 said:

Even just disconnecting the bell wire (do a google!) improved it to about 2Mb straight away.

Did nothing for me

[JamesNotJim]

I had plans to change provider in the new year, its been getting slowly worse over the last year (I haven't got a contract with my ISP, I've been with them for 4 years, after the first year they never updated my contract..)

Deffo going to do the ADSL adaptor thing. Think Demon or Be will be getting my business

Edited by JamesNotJim on Friday 2nd January 12:17