Best Option for 8 People

First of all, apologies if this is the wrong section of the forum, this seemed the most appropriate one I can find.

So here is the thing...

In 2 weeks time, I am moving into a house of 8 people (for 2nd year of university) and I volunteered myself to take over internet - for good reason considering some didn't even know what line rental was.

Quite frequently,judging by the first year, there are going to be a lot of times where a lot of us are on at once. People's typical internet habits include downloading, streaming from iPlayer and Youtube and gaming.

Now preferably I wanted one of the higher broadband speeds eg. 30mb. Now I talked to Virgin and they don't have fibre optic in my area. (York). I've also talked to Sky and Be and they're all offering speeds of 7-14mb. I passed this on and told them realistically, we're not going to get 14mb at all, more like 10mb or less.

I also phoned BT and this is where the snag is. We can get BT Infinity which is 29mb, but we are talking for the course of the contract, £88 per head; with sky we are talking £26 per head over the course of the contract.

Now I've suggested both of these options and now we have divide. Some believe that the Sky Broadband would suit 8 people fine and we can make do with the slow speeds and others think BT Infinity would be the better option for 8 people.

My real queston is this, will Sky Broadband be sufficient for 8 people when most of the time there would around 6+ people on at one time and considering the habits people have as I posted above?

In addition to this, if they all toned down their intensive internet habits, would Sky Broadband be fine?

Furthermore, if 8 people did go onto Sky Broadband, could you possibly give an idea of how the speed would be when the majority of us are on at one time?

I have also considered having two broadband packages. I believe we would need two separate phone lines, but I am unsure how to go about this as I believe this would require the landlady's permission.

Thank you for all your replies.

Edited by deleted (Sun 25-Sep-11 16:25:48)

If BT Infinity says 29 meg, then you will surely get more than this, couple this with 10 meg upload on the unlimited package, and I seriously suspect it's a no-brainer. Have you spoken with sales to see what hoops they will jump through to get your custom for the line and BB ?

Well you would think that and I would concur, but unfortunately others believe that the 7-14mb will suit us all fine as long as only a couple of us at a time are streaming etc. I am now doubting if my hunches are correct and that the 8mb broadband will do fine.

I did have a chat with the woman on BT and told her that an 18 month contract simply wouldn't do for us as it exceeded our lease on the house. I asked her then would she be able to lower the contract length to around 12 months like other suppliers I had spoken too. Her reply was that it was the only option available when considering BT Infinity in my area.

Edited by deleted (Sun 25-Sep-11 16:50:19)

Other ISP's can offer a fibre to the cab service, though I'm afraid I don't know prices, check out the link in any post by RobertoS, who has some informed advice on the subject.

I have fitted this a fair few times for students moving out of halls in Reading, why has the contract thing not been an issue for them ?







[edit to add url]

Edited by Zarjaz (Sun 25-Sep-11 16:56:01)

Sky broadband would get crippled with 4+ users on at the same time unless you could get the full 20mbps

get either BT fibre or a BT fibre based service.

As an alternative you could look at another ISP that supplies a fibre to the cabinet product. You will probably not get much more for your money but there are many available offering annual contracts.

4+ depends on what they are doing, eg. if 4 are using facebook, another person could watch a stream, and others a bit of web browsing.

Its not the number of people, but what they are actually doing.

Agreed, if one person is on iplayer and two are gaming with the rest on Facebook or email you'll be fine. The problem comes when two of those people wish to torrent also.

Another thing to consider would be the purchase of a router which can do QOS. You could then configure rules to ensure browsing, gaming and voice stay swift, through slowing down the hefty downloads at peak times. Thoughts?

Also if you have a couple of gamers in the home, agree when people will leave the connection largely to them, as a couple of others web browsing can introduce latency spikes on the sub 8Meg connections.