Seeking new ISP at non-LLU exchange (Alnwick - NEAW)

I'm in Alnwick in Northumberland. Our local exchange is NEAW and I live directly next door to it. Unfortunately, the only LLU supplier is TalkTalk. I'm curently with Sky on the Sky Connect package and it's dreadful. Whilst I can get an excellent speed of over 7mbps on an 8 line most of the time, between 5pm and midnight, it drops to 0.1mbps. It's not a gradual slowing either, it's just a sudden switch.

I'm maybe on a hiding to nothing here, but I'm hoping that it may be possible to switch to another ISP to get a better connection (even though they'll all be BT resellers).

I'm quite a heavy user thanks to the wife watching Taiwanese and Chinese TV online (and her client software is peer-to-peer) every day. I also have to upload and download some pretty hefty files for my work (I work from home) and I do play online games (or would if my connection ran at a reasonable speed during peak time).

Can anyone suggest anything at all? I've tried talking to Sky about this and they just tell me that BT throttle my connection and that I need to talk to them. BT then refuse to talk to me as I'm not their customer and send me back to Sky. I'm thinking the only way things can improve is either to shift to a new ISP or to wait (and wait) until there are more LLU services at our exchange.

I'm pretty loathe to try TalkTalk as I've never heard anything good about them. When I tried their online line-speed tester, one of their sales reps immediately phoned me and gave me a high pressure barrage of sales talk for an hour, further alienating me from them.

Kindest regards,

Jonathan

Sky are lying. BT do not throttle the connection, Sky do. You are far from alone in regarding it as terrible.

Your main problem is going to be the cost of my proposed solution, and whether you are happy for the phone line to be taken away from BT. (Full LLU not Partial LLU).

TalkTalk itself would not be a good idea as they too hate P2P and throttle it to death.

Although TT is not a runner, Opal Wholesale, which is the TT-owned service underlying it, should give you what you want.

The two resellers of Opal Wholesale I can recommend are xilo/uno, who you have to contact as it isn't on their website yet, and vivaciti where it is the Broadband Complete package, shown as Surfwise Complete in the slightly confusing price list.

If you don't fancy that idea look at the Family packages from vivaciti, or perhaps the Office ones immediately below them on the price list which should perform slightly better in the daytime and have different peak/off-peak times.

Thank you, Roberto. This is precisely the kind of thing I needed to know. You don't see these kinds of deals on most broadband information sites.

I couldn't care less about what happens to my phoneline, as long as my broadband works. And I'm not too worried about cost either as I'm paying 17 quid a month at the moment for a service that's unusable when I most need to use it. So paying a bit extra for something that does work is well worth it.

I'm very disappointed in Sky. When I lived in London, I used their LLU service and it was excellent. It was cheap, fast and they didn't appear to do any throttling or shaping at all. On the one or two occasions when the connection vanished, it was back within a couple of hours. In fact, Sky promised me that their LLU service would be available in Alnwick, but this turned out to be untrue. As a result, they did give me free line rental for a year and a bundle of Marks and Spencer vouchers which was a decent apology. But I'm just getting more and more frustrated with their Sky Connect product, so it's time to move on.

Thanks again for the advice; I really appreciate your help.

Yes, Sky LLU is fine as you found.

Good luck, let us know how things go.

Take note with the Vivaciti complete package that you need to pay an extra £15+vat to switch off throttling. I found iplayer was heavily affected by this especially before 7.30pm.
This does also remove the 100GB cap though.
Unmanaged I can get full line speeds 24hours a day.

Lots of info here on this.

They were talking about offering an unthrottled 50gb package for the same price which is the package that Xilo do.

You don't see those deals on the price comparison sites as they only compare broadband suppliers that pay them to advertise on their site! nothing impartial about them at all.

I managed to make the switch to Vivaciti a few weeks ago and I'm delighted. Thank you all for your advice and help. I really appreciate you all taking the time to help me out. Without you, I'd still be getting 0.1 megabits on an 8 meg line instead of the 21 megabits on a 24 meg line I'm now getting.

Kindest regards,

Jonathan

Hi Roberto! Remember Me?

my local exchange (Stonehaven) has LLU but only with Talk Talk which Is a NO NO!

I'm with Demon.

Would the above advice apply to me?

Ohh stoney? not far from me then

and yes i would follow Robertos advice for youself aswell

Though.....i will say i have used talktalk LLU in the past and there phone CS is terrible but the forum support is pretty good if you need something sorted.

Edited by epyon (Sun 29-May-11 23:13:02)