Poor evening download speeds - is Home Supermax the answer?

So, here I am stuck out on an exchange that looks unlikely to ever get anything exciting like ADSL2, or proper fibre. Since due to the lack of activity on this forum I'm guessing my poor evening speeds aren't due to a problem with bandwidth on IDNet's centrals, and more an issue for my local telephone exchange. Boo, BT suck, etc.

Back in the day when I used to work for PlusNet for my sins, there was a lower contention ratio product you could go on that would give you supposedly better speeds. This I assume is what Supermax is, moving you onto a different virtual path, if I remember any of the terminology correctly. So the question is - if I plump for paying £35 a month for essentially the same 8Mbit connection I have, how good are the chances that I'll actually have a decent speed link in the evenings when everyone else in the village is busy downloading Strictly on the old iPlayer?

Anyone who has experience with having made the switch under these circumstances?

Depends how long ago your PN experience was. Before ADSL Max and similar, there were 50:1 and 20:1 contention ratio products from BT Wholesale.

With the introduction of variable rate ADSL,( the Max type products), that concept went out of the window. Unfortunately many ISPs seem not to know that .

Instead, there is a prioritised/prioritising product from BT Wholesale, which apparently does push traffic through the exchange faster, as stated in the IDNet SuperMax product description. I believe that priority extends further into the backhaul.

Further complicated by the fact I expect you are now on IPSC, though that's just a guess. This is an extract from the IPSC documentation:-

All BT IPstream Connect products are provided on shared infrastructure. The BT IPstream Connect Office /BT IPstream Connect Max Premium products have priority, through the shared part of the BT IPstream Connect network, over the BT IPstream Connect Home /BT IPstream Connect Max products. During a busy period a BT IPstream Connect office or BT IPstream Connect Max Premium product will receive a higher downstream throughput than the equivalent BT IPstream Connect Home or BT IPstream Connect Max product.

Hi,

I'm currently on that premium package and I am stuck on a similar exchange as you.

I can happily report that I get very few slow downs and can obtain a close download rate to my sync rate (6.5-7Mb), regardless of the time of day.

Hope that helps.