Best broadband provider in Chatteris, Cambs.

Hello all,

I will be moving to Chatteris, Cambs soon (PE16 6NN).

I'm looking for a good broadband provider in the area. According to Samknows, these are the providers available:

BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
BT Wholesale WBC (21CN)
BT Wholesale SDSL
BT FTTC
AOL LLU
TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU

As an ex-Be customer, comparing the available ISPs, they are all mediocre:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html?isp_3...

When can I expect better broadband services to be available? (so I don't get tied into too long a contract).

What are your general thoughts/advice?

Thanks.

What do you class as "better"?

Faster, Cheaper, Customer Service ...?

What do you class as "better"?

Faster, Cheaper, Customer Service ...?

Speed and reliability.

I've used Plusnet and BT ADSL in the past and the connections occasionally drop out, requiring a router restart.

I've also used Virgin Media (cable) and Be ADSL in the past, and both were fast and reliable.

A fair price is also important, but I weigh that against the speed/reliability received.

I don't really need a good customer service as I am competent enough to set up my own router/security/home network, etc.

Speed - you will not get faster than a BT FTTC connection and the service is also very reliable. Yes, some users have problems but they are a few small minority.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Speed - you will not get faster than a BT FTTC connection and the service is also very reliable. Yes, some users have problems but they are a few small minority.

Oh, my mistake. I thought all of the BT products there were copper phone line based.

Will definitely get fibre optic

Thanks!

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

In reply to a post by MHC:

Speed - you will not get faster than a BT FTTC connection and the service is also very reliable. Yes, some users have problems but they are a few small minority.

Oh, my mistake. I thought all of the BT products there were copper phone line based.

Will definitely get fibre optic

Thanks!

FTTC is Fibre to the Cabinet and then copper from there to the premises.

Lies. A Sky FTTC connection is faster (just) because they don't have an IP profile cap.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-May-12 18:11:01)

So, Sky are now installing their own FTTC connections are they?

Higher upload available on BT, and a fair few others FTTC products.

No, it's GEA-FTTC

Higher than 20mb? Link please.

I thought they only did 40/2 ?

They do 80/20 for new customers. It's just not widely advertised.

There you go then, wasn't aware of that.
Will they only provide service if the exchange has Easynet backhaul ?

So, who installs it?

Sky? I think not.

Openreach.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Higher than 20mb? Link please.

There are plenty of suppliers who can beat 20mb.

Link please.

In reply to a post by MHC:

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Higher than 20mb? Link please.

There are plenty of suppliers who can beat 20mb.

Why do I need to bother ... Any BT product will be faster than 20mbps and by a very large margin.

The maximum upload any BT product offers on FTTC is 20mbps. BT advertise this as up to 19mbps.

You alone seem to think otherwise, contrary to BT and Openreach's own websites, so if you want anyone to believe you, prove it.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-May-12 20:00:09)

WRONG.

The maximum speed on BT is 20Mbps. I don't need to prove it -you are the one quoting incorrect figures.

Check the BT and OR websites and you will see that they offer 20Mbps and not the much lower 20mbps that you suggest.

You just contradicted yourself several times in one post.

Where?

In reply to a post by MHC:

WRONG.

The maximum speed on BT is 20Mbps

Exactly the same as I said.

I don't need to prove it -you are the one quoting incorrect figures.

The figure I stated is identical to yours

Check the BT and OR websites and you will see that they offer 20Mbps and not the much lower 20mbps that you suggest.

Exactly the same thing cannot be much lower than exactly the same thing.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

In reply to a post by MHC:

WRONG.

The maximum speed on BT is 20Mbps

Exactly the same as I said.

I don't need to prove it -you are the one quoting incorrect figures.

The figure I stated is identical to yours

Check the BT and OR websites and you will see that they offer 20Mbps and not the much lower 20mbps that you suggest.

Exactly the same thing cannot be much lower than exactly the same thing.

Wrong - you did not state 20Mbps, the figure you stated is totally different to the actual correct figure that I quoted.

Anyone who understands the metric system will know that your 20mbps is one billionth of 20Mbps. You obviously don't understand it.

Anyone who understands common language will know mbps is an acronym for megabits per second. Acronyms aren't metric units.

You clearly don't.

There is also no such thing as a millibit, so just how you manage to get confused by it is beyond me.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-May-12 20:16:06)

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Anyone who understands common language will know mbps is an acronym for megabits per second. Acronyms aren't metric units.

You clearly don't.

There is also no such thing as a millibit.

Again you are wrong ... mbps has NEVER meant Megabits per second.

And yes there is such a thing as a millibit. ULF/ELF communication systems work down at speeds measured in millibits per second.

Millibits per second is a unit.

A millibit on its own does not exist as a unitary measurement.

Maybe you should go look up the definition of an acronym in a dictionary before trolling about how they work.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-May-12 20:18:23)

--------
There is also no such thing as a millibit, so just how you manage to get confused by it is beyond me
--------

WRONG


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbps#Megabit_per_second

Megabit per second

A megabit per second (Mbit/s, Mb/s, or Mbps; not to be confused with mbit/s which means, literally, millibit per second) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
1,000,000 bits per second or
1,000 kilobits per second or
125,000 bytes per second.
125 kilobytes per second.

You're 100% correct

Did anyone say mbit/s?

No. I said "mb", standing for "megabits", in itself an informal contraction of megabits per second.

Seems like everybody except you can understand how acronyms work.

"M" is an SI unit

"m" is an uncapitalised initialism for any word beginning with the letter "m". Which somehow manages to confuse you.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-May-12 20:22:12)

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Did anyone say mbit/s?

No. I said "mb", standing for "mega-bits", in itself an informal contraction of megabits per second.

Seems like everybody except you can understand how acronyms work.

Well again you are wrong m - milli and M - Mega THEY ARE DIFFERENT

I know, you know, and many others do.

You seem to think every "m" in the world stands for "milli". I guess if someone said "omg" you'd claim that stands for "oh milli god" or "MBR" stands for "Mega boot record"

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-May-12 20:25:38)

No that is your incorrect assumption ... In the context of electronics and communications it has for many years and will continue to do so.

MBR is within the context of electronics.

Yet the M stands for something other than "mega".

Though congratulations on totally derailing the thread by trying to argue "mb" must be an incorrect SI unit instead of an informal contraction/abbreviation.

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-May-12 20:33:10)

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Did anyone say mbit/s?

No. I said "mb", standing for "megabits", in itself an informal contraction of megabits per second.

No you didn't say mbt/s, but you should have said Mbit/s, Mb/s, or Mbps

Oh, & are you working in base2 or base10 ?

I, unlike some, think it's perfectly OK to use common informal language on the internet that's easily understood.

GEA-FTTC products offer a maximum of 20,000 bits per second line rate, so that would be 20 base-10 megabits. Not that anybody really cares at this stage.

I still find it hard to believe anyone would be confused into thinking "20mb" meant "20 millibits" in the context of a FTTC broadband service. The person I was responding to clearly understood it meant Sky offered an 80/20 service (no units, yet still clear, I guess that's wrong too huh?)

I could easily counter argue "didn't" is an informal contraction and you should have said "did not" instead, and "&" is also an informal contraction that should have been written as "and". Some publishers will reject papers for the above "mistakes" but this is an internet forum. Not a scientific research paper.

In fact, even Mbps is either wrong or an informal contraction/acronym because there is no "p" in SI unit derivation, anything "per second" should be symbolized as "/s". "Mbps" is equally as wrong as "mbps". Both are commonly used informal contractions. Neither are formally accurate SI symbolic notations.

(Meanwhile I don't see anyone trolling this guy or this guy or this guy or this guy for using informal language instead of technically accurate SI prefixes)

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-May-12 20:56:48)

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Lies. A Sky FTTC connection is faster (just) because they don't have an IP profile cap.

OK, let's step back from the M/m dispute, which doesn't really help the OP.

By accusing people of lieing you can only be being deliberately inflammatory. So I am not surprised you got unfriendly reactions. That is the troll post, not the replies triggered by it.

Back to the real issue.

By BT FTTC I understand BT Openreach FTTC. Not BT Retail Infinity.

Sky does use Openreach FTTC (GEA). The Sky product is not available in non-Sky LLU exchanges, and not even in all of those. As for unofficially available products, it does seem that's what they have. That doesn't sound very ethical.

More importantly, you worry about the IP Profiling system that WBC has. Have you any details of the stability setting that Sky apply to the GEA product? I haven't seen any. Have you any user comparisons of actual throughputs for comparable lines? Particularly on the lower Sky products? Not everybody goes for the top package from every ISP.

Nor does everyone want their phone line bundled with their broadband, especially if that means it goes to LLU rather than WLR.

I didn't accuse people of lying, the whole post was meant in jest. Course if somebody wants to interpret it a different way it's their problem, just like anyone can interpret the letter "m" to mean whatever they want. Sure humour and sarcasm carry poorly on a text-only medium, but frankly I'm beyond caring.

I'm not worried at all about IP profiling, just raising a point that you can get faster than BT, and Sky's service is technically faster on the downlink. The difference is minute (a few percent) and imperceptible but it is still a difference. Hence again the original post was meant in jest, since people are far more likely to care about the difference between 2 and 10mb upload than 37.5 vs 38.8 megs of download.

As for "BT FTTC", there is no BT in Openreach. It's part of the BT Group, but it's official name is simply Openreach. I can't find anywhere where they refer to themselves as "BT Openreach". One would assume the term "BT" refers to a company that actually has BT in the name, which Openreach don't - hence BT Retail (being the biggest provider with BT in their name) would be my first assumption. One could also reasonably assume BT Wholesale or BT Business but they'll still have the same IP profile limiter, so the same speed comparisons apply. Course you're entitled to your own assumptions as is anyone, I assumed BT Retail/Business/Wholesale because Openreach aren't BT.

I don't know what stability settings Sky apply. But since they're implemented by Openreach, they'd be applicable and apply-able by any ISP.

As for actual throughput, the only comparisons I have are on the lower product - 40/2 (vs. 40/10).

A 40 down BT Infinity service at max sync (39999) delivered no more than 37.59mb, pretty close to the maximum theoretical throughput of 37.7 after TCP/IP overheads.

Users on Sky 40/2 with maximum line sync have been shown to exceed this theoretical maximum e.g. here, here or here, and one user has even exceeded 39mbps on Sky, e.g. this Speedtest, though the accuracy of the latter is dubious.

In any case, since Sky's service has been shown to exceed the maximum theoretical throughput on BT's service, one cannot state "you will not get faster than a BT FTTC connection". Nobody's guaranteeing you will, but you certainly can.