UK Best ISP poll?

[vohdoun]

My line will only carry 4.3 Meg so 8 Meg connection is perfect, allowing for future line upgrades etc

Future upgrades will only happen when the exchanges and lines get better. Thats the best your line can do from the distance you are to the exchange. It's not like cable where you can buy more speed.
Move your house closer and hope you don't pick up a cable that doesn't go for a 2 mile wonder.

We're stuck on this crap technology and service called copper and line adaptive rate IP profiles.
You're on a up to 8MB connection, and nobody can get 8MB. They will sync at 8MB then subtract 30% off it and you have 7150Kbps IP profile. And then technically its around 6300 - 6800Kbps true line speed.

The only people that can get 8MB and above, are those thats on this up to 24MB packages. But once again, take 30% or so off that 24MB and find out what you've truly got. I'll bet the majority roughly hit 16 and maybe pushing 20.

From doing a speed test that will show your line profile. http://speedtester.bt.com/ Good luck getting on that, usually between 2PM and midnight that site will start saying too busy, try again later after you enter your Broadband details.

ISP's can change the IP profile whenever they want. So you could be syncing at 4.3 (showing in your router) today, and the profile could be lowered to 2. So now you have a 2MB connection even though you're syncing at 4.3.
The majority of users will not know this until they start finding out, "I remember the connection being faster than this".

Too many people or rather a huge majority think if they sign up to a 8MB connection, they have it. Or they see in the router DSL sync page that its 8192, so they think its actually a true 8MB connection. This is another reason how so many ISP's get away with the marketing BS.

Their tech support is based abroad, so getting someone you can understand is a rarity, getting someone who knows what they're on about is even more unusual.

India? Just like BT's tech support, clear your browser cookies and Internet cache to solve your Broadband problems!

Your question isn't on the idiot script/board... eh dooooooh! "let me get my associate!" put on hold with lame music, back in 20 - 30 minutes! "away to get somebody else sir/madam, somebody will be back with you shortly" rinse and repeat. Sound familiar at all?

 

[Osarkon]

India? Just like BT's tech support, clear your browser cookies and Internet cache to solve your Broadband problems!

Your question isn't on the idiot script/board... eh dooooooh! "let me get my associate!" put on hold with lame music, back in 20 - 30 minutes! "away to get somebody else sir/madam, somebody will be back with you shortly" rinse and repeat. Sound familiar at all?

Very, very familiar. Or 'you need to talk to customer services about this' ...'alright, can you transfer me?' 'no, we don't have the ability to do that' when they damn well DO because I've managed to get one girl to do it before.

 

[displaced]

I'd been with Nynex/Cable & Wireless/NTL/Virgin Media ever since 1995 - cable modem with them since 2002.

It was all fine until the jump from 10Mbit to 20MBit. For the best part of a year I'd been getting between 2-6MBit actual transfer speeds -- and that's even without crossing the evening transfer limit that would've dropped speeds even lower. Simple oversubscription in my area. A bit of letter-writing ended with VM stating that they had no plans for any network upgrades. And there's no way I'd call technical support at £0.25 per minute and have to try to claim that back from them if it proved to be their problem (which it was!).

All that for £37 per month? Meh.

I got BT reinstalled and signed up with Be Unlimited ADSL. I'm almost 2km from the exchange but still get 9-10Mbit sync speeds -- and here's the best bit -- actual transfer speeds are right up there with the line speed.

Net result: my £18pm 10Mbit line is faster than my £37 supposed-20Mbit line.

Be are really very good - especially if you're in any way technical. They'll offer advice on little tweaks and changes to your modem and will even tinker with your settings at the exchange if you ask them to! They have a members-only discussion board where the support staff join in. They're also extrememly open about their network development and seem to be quite on-the-ball about addressing network congestion.