Thinking of leaving O2 - Any recommendations?

I've been with O2 coming up to 3 years now and when I joined it was unlimited and not traffic shapped. However as everyone knows unlimited really isn't (though I've never come close to it as far as I know) and they have introduced traffic shaping.

Trying to watch an 8min video on YouTube on my iPhone doesn't happen unless it's poor quality, it took about 10 mins to download a 35MB update on the PS3 the other day, the wireless connect is starting to drop all the time and after doing three speed tests at 11pm last night resulting in 0.19 Mbps - 0.12 Mbps & 0.86 Mbps when I should be getting 6-8 Mbps and as I have just had the price rise letter I thought I'd consider moving.

So, does anyone have recommendations on who would be a good choice to move to? However, to make it a bit more complicated my local exchange is not LLU in anyway so I know things aren't looking great!

Which exchange?
What line stats does your router report?

The wireless connection dropping is nothing to do with O2, unless the box has developed a fault, in which case they will replace it.

That could also be the reason your other wireless downloads are slow.

Please will you post the results from a BT Performance Test, preferably done with a wired connection, not wireless.

Your FUP is 40GB.

Post deleted by sleaver

I'm at work at the moment so I'll get the info tonight but I can tell you that my exchange is Smallfield:

Smallfield, Surrey

Obviously the wireless is a different problem but it does it on all devices, iMac, iPhone (x2), iPad, PS3 so I will be phoning O2 anyway.

The speed test I did was after swapping the O2 router for a Netgear 834GT as the wireless drop outs made using it really hard.

Hi - if your broadband is dropping below 1MBs it is highly unlikely to be O2. I'm not on your exchange but O2 in Battersea delivers 12MBs pretty much any time of day to me.
I look after computers in SW London including broadband and have a professional ADSL tester - in my experience that kind of slow performance is due to a fault on your line. Just to make things more complicated, it's highly unlikely you will tell on the phone side and BT line tests over the phone sometimes don't pick up the fault either (but it's worth getting BT to do a line test anyway). Coupled with high ££ by BT to investigate if they don't find a fault and it can be a real pain to resolve. But bottom line is that moving ISP well well not make any difference to the issue you are facing.
Dudley

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Hi - if your broadband is dropping below 1MBs it is highly unlikely to be O2. I'm not on your exchange but O2 in Battersea delivers 12MBs pretty much any time of day to me.

He's on O2 Access.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

He's on O2 Access.

Yes, and surely that was never unlimited and not traffic shaped?

@ Anonymous: O2 in Battersea, London is LLU and has no relevance to OP's situation.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

He's on O2 Access.

Yes, and surely that was never unlimited and not traffic shaped?

Yes it was

Access used to be unlimited, like the LLUs. Then over a few months they introduced an FUP at varoous levels, and settled on 40GB.

It is not traffic shaped. Congested - no doubt.

Thank you for your comprehensible explanation, unlike others

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Which exchange?
What line stats does your router report?

As I've already mentioned the exchange is in Smallfield, Surrey but my router stats are:

Uptime: 0 days, 0:09:00
DSL Type: G.992.1 annex A
Channel mode: Interleave
Maximum Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 768 / 5,184
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 448 / 4,640
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [kB/kB]: 0.00 / 0.00
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.5 / 19.5
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 13.5 / 19.0
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 11.0 / 6.0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / TSTC
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 / 1,110,959
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 258
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 160

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

....
Please will you post the results from a BT Performance Test, preferably done with a wired connection, not wireless.

Results are as follows. Theses are not from the master socket as it is impossible for me to test a wired connection from the master socket.

Wired

Download speedachieved during the test was - 2999 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :4640 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 7150 Kbps

Wireless

Download speedachieved during the test was - 3637 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :4640 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 4000 Kbps

So I'm not getting speeds in the range of 0.12 Mbps but my IP Profile is different. I had to wait an hour between tests but is there any reason for that to change?

Something not good there, but I'm just getting through a very bad cold so not thinking well.

The IP Profile fell after the first test because the connection speed was 4640kbps and you must have done the test in the few minutes it takes for the profile to fall.

As the first one was profile 7150, your previous connection must have beem 8128kbps. So we need to know why it connected more slowly.

[sniff]

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 02-Mar-11 20:43:12)

When I did those two tests (on a slave socket) I had to wait an hour between them as the site wouldn't allow more than one per hour. All I did was pull the network cable out.

Although, when I put the router back in it's normal place on the master socket I did another speed test on www.speedtest.net and wham, the speed was back to about 0.8Mbps and before someone say's it was the site, I did the same test right before I moved the router back and it was still over 3 Mbps.

This would point to it possibly being the location of the router but why would it only have started since the weekend! The channel on the router was set to 6 so I tried 11 but still the same.

Any suggestions?