Reliable, low latency connection required (gaming)

Hello all,

I have been a happy Demon user for the last eighteen months or so. The service has been reliable, fast and with very low latency. Three weeks or so ago I was 'upgraded' to the ADSL2+ service. I believe this will have been related to the C&W takeover, and the unbundling of my local exchange. Since then, the connection has been appalling; I don't think that I have seen my router maintain a connection for longer than six hours, and during peak times the connection is dropped every one or two hours. Sometimes there are really bad patches when I get kicked half a dozen times in twenty minutes. But enough whinging about progress.

I am looking for a new ISP. As I and my wife spend a lot of time playing on-line games (primarily World of Warcraft) our priorities are a stable connection that doesn't drop, and a low latency. We don't do much in the way of downloading, so a large cap isn't vital. I would prefer to be on a short contract if possible, but I am flexible for quality and price.

From other threads, and looking at the LLU on my exchange, would O2 standard be a good bet? I also noticed some recommendations for Sky, are they worth it? I am loathe to submit myself to Sky TV though (although my wife disagrees).

This is our exchange: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/MYACO

And my router stats:

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s
WAN PPPoA 25984 31485 0 127 758

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 8692 kbps 951 kbps
Line Attenuation 41 db 11 db
Noise Margin 0 db 5 db

Thank you for all your help.

O2/Be definitely the best provider on your exchange - with Sky coming in 2nd but only if you want Sky TV as well.

I play WoW on a Be connection and it works absolutely fine. Your line is similar to mine by the looks of it and Be has been pretty much flawless in the last 2 years.

PS - the reason I keep talking about Be, in case you don't know, is that the O2 service is exactly the same platform from a physical perspective but is packaged differently.

Ian has already commented on his favourable Be experience. (O2 bought Be in order to enter the market).

Depending on how much you want to spend I would recommend Be Unlimited rather than O2 for gaming as you can get interleaving turned off so improve your latency.

But Be also charge extra for email and it is cheaper and better to get that from a third party like I do. That way you are never again held back from migrating due to having to change email addresses.

Note in either case you have till Sunday night to get 3 months free on the top two packages. (O2 will accept an order even before you have the MAC available, I don't know about Be). Have a look at MKD's comparison document.