Switching from F2S to BT Total Broadband

I have been with Freedom2Surf for nearly 5 years.
The service has been ultra reliable with consistent download speeds of +6MB.
However recently the download speed has been VERY erratic, varying from 0.25MB to 6MB.
It is always worse in the evening.
I have contemplated switching to BT Total Broadband, but having read the forums etc I feel I might just be jumping out of the frying pan and in to the fire?
Am I going to get the same problem?
Will things improve when the kids are back at school?
Any thoughts, comments, questions would be most welcome.

having read the forums etc I feel I might just be jumping out of the frying pan and in to the fire?

Correct.

Am I going to get the same problem?

Depends what you mean by erratic. With BT it will be guaranteed.

Will things improve when the kids are back at school?

You tell us re F2S. On BT, no. Totally consistent congestion and throttling.

To be more positive, if you tell us the exchange, the link to what samknows says would be perfect, plus your budget and any idea of monthly download amounts would be very useful, then many of us will be able to suggest alternatives.

BT Broadband is fine unless you use p2p which is throttled heavily in the evenings.

Thanks for the response, to answer your questions:-
Samknows link is here!
Monthly download: Never exceeded 10GB in the last 5 years.
Currently paying £13.99/mth, Max 8MB, 10GB Download limit.
I look forward to your response.

Regards
Dennis

Ah Petersfield, I just design the wood chip system at Uppark House (National Trust Mansion) last winter... nothing to do with broadband... does this get deleted??

Only BT Wholesale available there. You aren't going to get any higher connection speed than you do now. Unless you have ongoing line or setup problems.

If you can find and post your router stats we can see from those. See here for help.

At that price I think you could find Plusnet Value would give more reliable evening speeds. However it would be the full £11.99 at that exchange. Currently three months free though, and possibly £50 cashback through Quidco.

The drawback is their traffic management. Whether that matters depends on what type of usage you have, but at under 10GB per month it's possible it won't affect you much.

Better but more expensive you have Newnet Home M. The "no traffic shaping or speed restrictions" is true, and there is a short unlimited overnight period. Trouble is they also count upload.

About the same price as Newnet there is IDNet Home Lite. Don't count upload and absolutely top class.

Plusnet is actually a monthly contract on 10 days notice. If you leave in the first 12 months you have to pay for the setup and router (if you took it) if you didn't pay at the start. After 12 months those charges lapse.

Newnet and IDNet are monthly, though Newnet has a 12-month option on the same package a bit cheaper, as you can see on the page I linked. On both, depending on the time-pattern of your 10GB maybe you could manage on the next package down?

See these comparisons. Though remember those are subjective assessments.

In fairness to RandomJointer I perhaps went a bit over the top in my first post, but I think he is being optimistic. They may only throttle P2P, but I believe they still get congestion in exactly the way you are doing now.

Also you will see the sample sizes in those stats can be small, but in my opinion that won't affect the ratio of good assessments to bad ones on any.

Importantly BT is a 12-month contract, and what price were you looking at?

Hi Roberto
Thanks for all the useful information.
Router stats:

Uptime: 20 days, 0:15:57
Modulation: G.992.1 annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 7,616
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [KB/KB]: 0.00 / 1.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 11.5 / 19.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 21.0 / 34.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 22.0 / 7.0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / ALCB
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 1,040,751
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 2,387
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 2,104

The BT package on offer is 18 month contract, 3 months free, then £15.99 per month, also includes free anytime calls.

Regards
Dennis

Well you can't argue with that package except for the 10GB.

My point being that I believe over-use is now in units of 5GB at £5, with no carry-over to the next month if you only use 100MB of it.

I don't know what happens when you hit the 10GB. Whether you get redirected to somewhere to buy the extra, or it slows to a crawl, or just carries on and you get the charge on your next bill.

If you haven't checked that I suggest you do so.

Thanks Roberto
Their web site states over limit charged at £1 per GB.
My router stats I assume are good?
Think it might be worth the gamble switching to BT, will then only have one call to make if I get a problem. BT support (for what its worth) is free, where F2S charge.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards
Dennis

It's changing 1 Nov, though a bit hard to understand:-

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10495...

Third paragraph after the table.

It looks like it takes 2 consecutive months to trigger it, but once triggered it applies even to single months. Though that is just my reading of it.

Edit - a whole thread including it here.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 25-Aug-10 21:44:13)