Many thanks to all the replies which have made for interesting reading!
TalkTalk FTTC. I know i'll get shot down in flames but seriously their actual broadband is very very good...
Thanks for that suggestion! TalkTalk, even from my limited understanding, seem to have a pretty bad rep. But in my desperation I've just checked them out. It appears they only currently offer 40/2 rather than the 40/10 I'm looking for. What's that all about? Anyway, for me that's a deal breaker. However it appears they will be offering 80/20 when it's available (are there any firm dates?).
The fascinating thing is that according to their 80/20 availability checker we will get 41/6.5 while our neighbours, three houses down, will get 57/13! Why such a large difference over a few metres? Are these accurate predictions or should they be taken with a grain of salt?
For VM its more like about 200mbit downstream and 40/60mbit upstream for 200-300 users.
This is why I personally believe Virgin have introduced these daytime caps: they've doubled speeds but have they doubled their capacity?
You may just have to wait and see if Sky risk running their fibre with no management at all.
Why risk? Because leaving natural contention to manage things can be a nightmare for all, just look at the congestion problems some exchanges have currently.
I recently read an article on SKY's fibre network being
far larger than Virgin's. Over 7 terabits/s was mentioned (see below). Hence my hopes they won't have to resort to these tactics.
Without getting into boring details, the new tech allows data to be transferred at seven terabits per second, meaning that in theory up to 4.6 million Sky Broadband customers could simultaneously stream a HD film over their broadband without a hiccup.
Also at the bottom of their
fibre page (register your interest) they categorically state:
Does Sky Broadband Unlimited Fibre have a usage policy?
Sky Broadband Unlimited Fibre is a residential service that offers totally unlimited usage - there is no fair usage policy and no traffic management is applied to this service.
It doesn't get much clearer than that! Mind you, a few years ago Virgin had similar stuff in their ads. It took them quite a few years to break that promise... Anyway I hope people makes a permanent copy of the above promise by SKY. I'm sure if they break it they'll come out with all the same mealy-mouthed justifications that Virgin have. Having said that I'm more hopeful due their greater financial resources.