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)

Hi there again,

How is your line performing now? The last you said was that the speed was much more stable, around 4.37Mbps on speed test. (That is still poor for your attenuation, but that's another question and needs a thread of it's own if you want to pursue it).

In answer to your question, yes - the vivaciti service should help on your line. As you have probably noticed, it is TalkTalk Business Wholesale, but that's like saying IDNet, Zen and AAISP are BT Wholesale. A much different animal from the BT and TT retail operations.

You never know, you might even find you get the speed expected on a line of that attenuation, as there could be an un-diagnosed problem with the line card at the exchange. That's a hope rather than a probability though!

And ...

On that attenuation on Demon you should be connecting at over 7Mbps. On the vivaciti LLU it should be getting on for, if not above, double that.

Hi epyon.

So where are you? I have to say I am tempted by Vivaciti and inclined to take Roberto's advice. I've looked at their website but I really don't understand all this technical stuff and particularly all the acronyms!

My exchange is listed as llu, but only for TT and Orange. So could I get the speeds roberto is writing about if I changed to Vivaciti? And how easy is it to do that? Can I use my curret router? Do they support Apple macs? And will they talk me through setting up?

Hi Roberto,

I'm very tempted. Please can you also all the questions I asked epyon. And don't forget I am very non technical! I just want faster cheaper broadband, or at least better value than I get from Demon. 14Mbps would be wonderful!

I am an apple mac user on vivaciti. they do not supply a router so using your own would be no problem.

all you need is your id and password which they will supply

I'm not sure which questions are outstanding .

For a fibre connection you need a "cable" router. It is unlikely your current one would do - what is it?

Re support for Apple Macs, if you mean support for the computer itself I didn't know any ISP did. If you mean can an Apple Mac run on a fibre connection, the answer is yes. It's the modem and router that set up the connection just like the combined modem/router you probably now have.

Several of us on these forums have Buffalo routers costing under £30. Wireless N and 100Mbps ethernet. The 1Gbps ethernet version is more expensive.

About acronyms, if you mean on my site, most of the ones I use are explained either by a menu entry or in the Glossary, though I recently realised there are some new ones flying around that I need to add explanations of. If you let me know any specific ones that aren't clear, that would help me sort things out for you and the site.

Thanks for that. That's what I thought. I actually talked to the boss at Vivaciti (Carl) On Monday. He was the only one in because of the public holiday! He explained everything and reassured me so I got my MAC code from Demon, over the phone and immediately and then signed up to Vivaciti. Should be connected by 13 June.

We shall see.

Let us know how things go - though I may not see it till a week after.