I think your best option would be to go with VFast. When living in Sittingbourne many moons ago, i had their wimax service (and previously Telabria's whom they took over) and was very happy. Used to get ~10 meg day and night whereas my POTS line would support no more than 0.5 meg.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help us in knowing which of the three possibilities I listed originally is the issue. It's possible that the way TalkTalk get the traffic from you back to their internal network is worse from your exchange or area than in others, but as I said, it's rather poor everywhere.

The bit of good news is something you clearly are not aware of. The "BT" information about your exchange refers to BT Wholesale. In a way, the engineer was right in saying it "IPStream" is all controlled by BT, but in another way he is wrong.

In particular, every ISP in the country barring the LLU services such as the good TalkTalk and Sky ones is available to you. You do not have to move to BT (Retail).

All the other ISPs will be using IPStream as well, as that is the only service available at your exchange. The maximum connection speed on that is the 8Mbps you have now.

The difference between the good ones, (and many of us have opinions which are the best), is that the very best will provide you with over 6.5Mbps actual download speed 24/7/365 and a consistently low latency/ping; the good will possibly do the same but it might slow down a bit or latency rise a bit at heavy load times for them, and the poor will almost certainly still be better than TalkTalk or the Sky equivalent "out of area product" Sky Connect.

Most of the quality difference is to do with the capacity they rent from BT Wholesale at the point where they take the traffic out of the BT Wholesale "Cloud" into their own network.

The vast majority offer monthly contract terms. Some also offer line rental, but none insist that is with them, though it obviously has to be somewhere.

So, remembering that you will see "up to 20Mbps" downloads and "up to 1.3Mbps" uploads on all websites, (occasionally a 2.5Mbps upload), but you will only get 8Mbps down and 448kbps up, (some offer 832kbps up at higher cost), I suggest you look at:-

vivaciti Home Allowance
Aquiss Home Broadband
xilo/uno SOHO(BT).

I think all offer phone line rental, but it is available considerably cheaper elsewhere.

Plusnet is another possibility, see tables 1.3 and 1.4 on this page - you are not in a low cost area. "Essentials" has a 10GB peak-time allowance and unlimited overnight. Unlimited is true unlimited. Rates "with phone" mean if you take line/calls rental as well - not included in that price. The deals on the Home Page may apply - I don't know.

I would move away from TalkTalk, on monthly terms, and see how you get on for a while. I think I would stick my phone with someone like Zen Home Talk, so you can move the broadband easily wihout hassle over the phone line as well. Make sure you cost in things like Caller Display and 1571 if needed.

Do you use TalkTalk email, or are you ISP-independent for that?

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 29-Jan-14 19:15:18)

Hey Richy,

I'm on the same exchange as you and I'm with Plusnet, on their unlimited plan. I consistently get (according to the speed meter on my usenet software) between 7.0 and 7.8Mbps. That said I've just run a couple of speed / ping tests, and both are showing me 6.6Mbps download and a ping of 47ms.

I'm aware of two people, one next door to me and one in the high street with similar problems to you. The one in the high street has resolved the problem by switching from sky to Plusnet. I'm not sure who next door used to be with, but they also have changed to Plusnet and I'm assuming that their issues are resolved as I'm sure I'd have heard if they weren't. For what it's worth, Plusnet are a subsidiary of BT, so that may explain it.

I've just read that back to myself and should probably point out that I do not work for Plusnet.

I came across your post as I noticed last night that www.samknows.com had changed the FTTC status of the exchange and was searching for more info. Interestingly the openreach future exchanges list shows Eastchurch as down for FTTP rather than FTTC, which would be very nice if it happens.

In the meantime I'm reasonably happy with the speed I'm getting, but I would say that your best chance for a quick improvement would be to change your ISP.

Right ...
Update ... We moved to PlusNet and everything has been fine, we are still using the same router and everything, all I done was to change the user name and password and that was it.
The speed has been perfect !!!
Thank you all for your help ...

Good of you to report back as well .

Hi Richie,

Just thought I'd let you know, if you're not already aware, Anne Boleyn Close now has a live fibre cabinet. It changed to accepting orders earlier this week. The rest of the village can't be that far behind, given the amount of cable pulling and duct clearing that's been going on recently. So if you're on the close, you can order it now. If not, keep checking.