HELP can changing my phonel provider really increase speed?

Hi everyone, first thanks for reading and for any replies

I am looking for someone in the know to help clear up a couple of things about broadband speeds for me as I'm getting confused with sales patter.

I am out on contract and currently have a set up like this Sky for tv, BT for phone line, AOL for broadband and calls. I have up to 8 meg broadband with them, unlimited.

Here's where I am starting to get confused I am considering changing to another company to get a new wireless N router and maybe other perks e.g. if I move to skyI could have a single bill service by getting everything from them and at a fiver cheaper, with Sky Anytime plus thrown in.

So When I called AOL to get my MAC issued and start the process thye told me the following if I stay a customer with them:

They would also give me a new router (fine)
They would match my price (also fine)

BUT

If I move my phone service (which is a BT line currently) to them they could increase my speed??? They reckon I could get around 11 meg or so. When I asked how is this possible? They told me its because BT used dated equipment and if I move my phone line to them they could put their own equipment in and this would increase my speed.

I done some googling to try and make sense of this and spoke to BT who tell me that what AOL is saying doesn't make sense to them (again I feel they may be biased)

I done some more googling and found that my line is in an area is ADSL2 so it would seem to me that it should already be capable of these speeds so why would I need to move my phoneline to AOL cant they give me these speeds now?

And if I choose any provider other than BT do they use BT equipment or not? Eg if I go with Sky would the speed be the same as if I went with AOL or BT?

Sorry if some of this sounds dumb but I know very little about it and don't want to be misled by sales agents. Ideally I'd like to move to Sky as I said before they have a couple of incentives but if only AOL could offer me increased speeds then it might make me think twice.

Thanks again for reading Siobhan

Hi Groovegal, welcome to the forums.

I can see why you are confused, but we need to take things a step at a time else you will get even more so. I think I can understand what is going on but need some more information.

Please can you post the link to what samknows says about your exchange.

It would also help a lot if you can try to find and post your router line stats, see here for help finding them.

What you probably don't know is that AOL belong to TalkTalk. They are talking about transferring you to a TalkTalk LLU service by the sound of it.

The stuff I ask for above will tell us all we need to know. You might also like to have a read of my What is LLU? page.

That's a good first post

The techie stuff can be hard and the sales people will often just say *anything*
I'm betting LOTS of people have been in your situation.

As RobertoS suggests, if you are happy to say what your telephone exchange is he'll be able to provide you with all your options...

Hi thanks for your replies

This is the link about my exchange:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WSKIW

This is my router info:

Its a dlink-dsl 2640r so I looked up the closest model number I could find to find out how to get the stats.

Downstream 8160 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps
Attenuation 32.5 up/18.5 down
SNR 13.5 Up/22 down

I hope thats mainly the info you need anything else just let me know

I thought LLU might have something to do with this but I don't know enough about it so I'm going to go read the guide about it.

Even phoning round earlier talking to sky, aol was mentally painful lol as they all gave me different speed estimates Sky-5 meg (odd since I already get almost 8?!), aol 6.5/up to 15 and BT 11 meg.

My head hurts especially after trying to ask sky if they provide N type routers to new customers to which he replied its a sagem.......and I could change the channel on it EH?!

You can also try the BT Wholesale Checker for an estimate of what speeds you can get on your line via 21CN Broadband Products, those provided by BT Wholesale.

Tried that heres the results

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/121/83521170.png/

Oh heck!

There's good news and bad news there, so I will try to explain clearly. Just a quick question though, did you copy and paste the line stats, or did you re-type them? The reason I ask is that the down and up attenuations and noise margins look the wrong way round to me. (It may be a reporting error in the router - such things do happen).

As you say, your exchange is BT ADSL2+ enabled, (that's the WBC line), but the way that works requires equipment changes at the ISP for them to supply it to you. For various reasons I think it likely AOL have not moved to that equipment.

Nearly all LLU ISPs and equipment are ADSL2+, and that is quite independent of BT Wholesale WBC, as you may have read by now from my LLU page. I also have a page about WBC explaing the "equipment changes" above, but unless you are keen to know about it I suggest you don't bother. At this stage it is of no practical use to you.

On ADSL2+, your stats indicate a connection speed of between 11Mbps and 16Mbps, and to narrow that down a bit I would guess 13Mbps-14Mbps. Note that connection speed is not the same thing as actual download speed.

Your connection speed is 8160Mbps. That almost certainly means you are on an AOL LLU connection and deliberately capped at that speed. The best way to confirm or confound that is to try to run the BT Speed Tester and see what that gives us. Probably an error message.

There is a faint chance you are on a now rare type of connection called Datastream. I can't remember if that allows 8160kbps or not. That's why I said "almost certain" in the previous paragraph.

Whatever, your best move would definitely be to Sky LLU Unlimited. The problem there, (the bad news I mentioned at the start), is that with the LLU suppliers there I think it highly likely the Sky LLU capacity will be fully taken up. If it is, they will put you onto the Sky Connect service. That is limited to 8128kbps connection speed and is dire even within that.

Read my LLU page if you haven't done, as that explains about Full and Partial LLU. On Sky you have a sort of choice. If you take Sky LLU Broadband and Sky Talk calls package, that will be Partial LLU. If you also take Sky Line Rental that will be Full LLU. Full LLU can be messy to leave, but may not be much of a problem with Sky. It could be significant with the AOL/TalkTalk one.

The range of estimates you have been getting are based on one of two or three BT databases which don't all show the same . The one you have already looked at is the one I prefer.

That's probably enough for now. There's a lot there to take in, but it boils down to if you can get Sky LLU Unlimited go for it. It will be far better than anything else at a lowish price on that exchange. All you would have to decide would be whether or not to go for Sky Line Rental as well.

If you can't get it due to them being full up, then we can look into several alternatives. Let's just try the best option first.

PS - If I remember, I will check tomorrow, (now later today), about the Sky router and wireless N, but I think it unlikely.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 22-Jun-11 00:10:47)

Okay cool

So from what you said Sky LLU is preffered so thats what I have signed up for sky unlimited broadband. Just spoke to the agent and I think its looking good because the price he quoted was LLU price not connect. I dont think Sky have a big customer base round where I live at the moment.

I did retype the stats maybe I did mix them up will check them again in case:

ADSL Statistics

Mode: G.DMT
Type: ANNEX_A
Status: Showtime

Downstream Upstream
Rate (Kbps): 8160 kbps 448 kbps

SNR Margin (dB): 13.5 22.0
Attenuation (dB): 32.5 18.5
Output Power (dBm): 19.5 12.5

Super Frames: 204420769 204420769
RS Correctable Errors: 8971 0
RS Uncorrectable Errors: 90 0

HEC Errors: 899 0
Total Cells: 415832 223116
Data Cells: 3118162595 1376675724
Bit Errors: 0 0

Does that help? And thanks for all your help

It tells us that you are indeed connected to a resold bt ip or data stream product, so no AOL llu, with sky llu you will see an increase in both upstream and downstream speeds,

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

It tells us that you are indeed connected to a resold bt ip or data stream product, so no AOL llu, with sky llu you will see an increase in both upstream and downstream speeds,

Cool how can you tell which bit of info? Is it not partial LLU as BT still have my phone service but AOL have my broadband? Line sharing