Which ISP's are available in my area & what speed will I get

I've been with Pipex (midi) service for 4-5 years now. When I first started, I received a connection speed of about 1.2-1.3MB. Over time this has reduced to an average of about 0.7Mb. However,over the last 6-9 months it has gone down even further to 0.4Mb at best & last night was only 0.1Mb.
I have checked the BT speedchecker, and this confirms the theoretical maximum speed to be about 0.5Mb on my line (North Walsham, Norfolk).
I was interested in joining Sky (as I already have their TV), but only the connect service is available as I am outside their network area. This service is also more expensive than my current Pipex deal.
What I am struggling to find out is :- how can I find out what the likely connection speeds will be, and will different providers, give different speeds ?
Might BT give a faster rate than Pipex, or will it make little difference ?
Is the download/connection speed influenced more by traffic volume (time of day) than which service provider I go with.

You're connected to a "market 1" exchange, which means only BT wholesale sell ADSL products out of your exchange.
So you can buy your ADSL from many ISPs (Plusnet, BT, Entanet, Zen, and dozens more) but you'll always end up on a BT wholesale connection.
Line speeds will therefore be the same whomever you choose, but actual data throughput speed will be very different as the ISPs buy varying amounts of bandwidth capacity from BT.
Generally you get what you pay for - If you're on a £10 a month product you can expect speeds to be rubbish; if you're on a £40 a month product you can expect them to be good.

Ade

ADSL2+ with BE
DL Sync around 4.8Mbps
UL Sync 1088kbps
DG834GT with DGTeam firmware

I'm suprised that you are getting such a poor result from BT speedchecker, unless you are are long way from the North Walsham exchange (behind the post office).
I live around half a mile from this exchange, and get varying results, at best 6.8 Mb, and at worst 0.3 Mb, according to time of day traffic etc.
BT speedchecker indicates a maximum of 8Mb for my line, and currently is 5.5Mb.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/1...
If BT only indicates a maximum speed of 0.5 Mb for you, I guess that's all you will achieve whatever ISP you use!

I am a fair distance from the exchange, about 1.5 miles (Maybank), so perhaps unlikely to get as good a speed as those closer to the exchange. I do only pay £10 for my broadband only package, so may need to upgrade , to get a better service.

How much usage do you tot up in a month, and... what do you do? Lots of browsing? Streaming? downloading? etc?

Mainly my son, on MSN (including webcam) & facebook etc, but he does stream music via spotify etc.
I have tried to use the BBC i-player, but this is so slow, it is next to useless.
I'm not sure what my download volumes are per month, but I have a 15GB limit.

If you never exceed the 15GB there are a few good ISPs to choose from, costing more like £20pm though . Upgrading with Pipex will almost certainly not improve things. They are well-known for poor performance these days.

It would be an idea for us to see what speeds you could get before you do anything. You talked about connection speed in your opening post, but it looks like you meant download speeds. Not the same thing at all.

If you can try to find and post your router stats we can see what speed you ought to get. See here for help getting them if you need it.

Bob's broadband help site:
www.robertos.me.uk
ISP history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Premium.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

I have Netgear DG834GT router.
Sync (connection) Speed = 1216 kbps(Down) 448kbps (Up)
Atten = 52.0 db (Down) 31.0db (up)
Noise Margin 14.9db (Down) 15.0db (Up)
No other messages or errors.

Well, take a deep breath!

There is something badly wrong with those figures. We need to see if we can sort those out before you do anything about migrating.

The main determinant of your connection speed is the attenuation, which generally corresponds to the line length from you to the exchange.

On 52dB I would expect between 4Mbps and 6Mbps. On ADSL Max which you are on, with a very similar attenuation, I got over 6Mbps.

Part of the reason is the very high noise margin. Normally it would be around 6dB, and if yours was at that sort of level you could be getting 3Mbps or more.

The trouble is that something has caused the high noise margin. In a way it is a symptom rather than an immediate cause of the low speed.

There are possibly several things we need to look at . It will almost certainly be worth-while.

Just for starters your Sky box is a possible source of big trouble.

What I'd like you to do first is download RouterStats Lite. Scroll down that page to find it - the full RouterStats at the top is overkill for what we want. Dead easy to install, just open it then choose the Netgear from the drop-down list.

If you look on the Graphs Tab as well I suggest you lower the Sample Interval from the default 15 seconds. I use 8 seconds, as it shows up problems better that way.

Make sure you have that running all the time your computer is on.

Some time tomorrow well after dawn and before dusk, restart your router and note the connection speed and noise margin immediately. Then try seeing what happens to the noise margin graph with the Sky box on and if you turn it off and disconnect it from the phone line.

Doing all that could tell us a lot .

In your spare time , have a read of all the pages in my website Troubleshooting section, except for the Router locking up page. The page on the main menu about Noise Margins is useful background information.

Bob's broadband help site:
www.robertos.me.uk
ISP history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Premium.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

RobertoS, thanks for your post with the info. This is the sort of info the normal man on the street just wouldn't know.
I have downloaded RouterStats Lite & have started monitoring @ 8 seconds interval as suggested.
I have rebooted router, although note quite between dawn & dusk (22:15) ! The router is turned off most of the day anyway.
The noise ratio seems to stay around 14.5 - 15db. I unplugged my sky box & this didn't seem to make much difference.
I currently have my router in a spare bedroom, where the older PC & printer are. The router is therefore plugged into an extension socket. Could this be part of the issue with the noise ?.
I recently got a BT I-Plate (BT Accelerator) and did do speed tests with the router plugged into the main BT socket & this made no difference (with or without the I-Plate). However, I have realised I didn't try plugging the router directly into the internal connection in the main BT socket (i.e with the face plate removed) , which would have the effect of disconnecting the extension sockets in the other rooms.

I will try this & report back.
Thanks