What will my real download speed be ?

I am with Orange at the moment in a rural area on ADSL line about 2 or 3 miles from exchange, partly with overhead lines. The maximum download speed I get is about 2 Meg on an 8 Meg (max) package. However, when I do a test on my line using line-tester from BT or Plusnet, it states that I should get about 6 Meg if I signed up for one of their 8 Meg packages. However, they also say that they cannot guarantee this. Someone else said that I would still get better speed from BT (and their subsidiary Plusnet) compared to Orange in this area because the contract between BT and Orange did not permit Orange from having more than 2.2 Meg in this area. I don�t want to go through all the hassle of changing ISP if it makes no difference. How can I get a definite answer ?

run the test at speedtester.bt.com to see what your current link speed, IP profile and speed test results are, then post them here.

The line link speed will be the same with any Max package, but the proportion that you get in practice may vary between ISPs. Ofcom's recent speed testing results showed that Orange was faster than AOL or Tiscali in practice, but not slower than the other major ISPs.

but not slower than

Typo? Should be "a lot slower than"?

not a typo, OFCOM tests put Orange at the same speed as the other major ISPs 8M products tested. But they were faster than AOL or Tiscali at 95% confidence level and faster than Tiscali at 99% confidence.

The mention of 2.2Meg makes me think maybe Orange only have the customer on a Home 2000 product for some odd reason.

To the original poster, look at the exact connection info in your router, if its downstream 2272Kbps, and upstream 288Kbps then what I've said above is correct.

in which case by feeding the attenuation and noise margin into www.farina1.com/adsl you will get an estimate of your maximum speed.

Thanks for responding, the results of the speed test were:

The speed test has completed on test server test.speedtester.bt.com for user 0XXX XXXXXX and you have downloaded a 1.7Mb file at a speed of

1657kilo bits per second (Kbps), your service bandwidth will have been quoted to you in kilo bits per second.

Your IP address is 90.240.236.XXX, your browser is reported as being Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and is running on Windows XP.

BT would regard the speed ranges shown below as normal service:

For 250kbps End Users speeds between 50 - 250kbps.
For 500kbps End Users speeds between 100 - 500kbps.
For 1000kbps End Users speeds between 200 - 1000kbps.
For 2000kbps End Users speeds between 400 - 2000kbps.

That format of message tells us Orange has you only on a Home 2000 service, so dig out the other info I mentioned and you will then be able to tell whether the other estimates are reasonable for when you switch to a rate adaptive service

from that I would conclude that you are on a 2M fixed speed package, not the up to 8M, and it is performing fairly well with a speedtest of 1657 in the afternoon (1890 is probably top whack).

If you access your router / Livebox you should be able to find the downstream attenuation and SNR margin figures which will give us a clue if better speeds are possible. www.kitz.co.uk has an ADSL section including "how to get your stats" which will explain more.

Thanks again. In fact I was on a 2meg package, but they changed this in June to their new 'Broadband Starter (off net)' package which they said would give speeds of up to 8meg with umlimited downloads, for which I would be charged extra. I was not given a choice in the matter. I am using a Speedtouch 330 modem.

but they changed this in June to their new 'Broadband Starter (off net)' package which they said would give speeds of up to 8meg with umlimited downloads

I'm afraid that did not happen.