What llu provider

Our local exchange has finally be unbundled with Sky / Easynet and TalkTalk (CPW).
Now I wont touch talk-talk with a barge pole directly but as some providers can just use them for the last mine I thought I'd check who use them.

I'm currently with Vivaciti who have moved me on to llu( and have no idea why) but as I'm only getting 5mb-6mb throughput(with a 13993 Kbps sync) I think its worth moving from the surfwise product.

So who do you recommend

Cheers
Dan

If you've got sky TV it would be worth getting broadband with them knocks it down to 12.50 from 15 and if you take sky talk with them too knocks it down to 7.50 as for talktalk resellers i cant really help you.

Ash

In reply to a post by dreaddan:

Our local exchange has finally be unbundled with Sky / Easynet and TalkTalk (CPW).
Now I wont touch talk-talk with a barge pole directly

Actually going with talktalk direct isn't THAT bad. Sure their telephone support sucks but what do you expect for £3.49 pm broadband? AAISP-esque type phone support? If you don't mind using their web support (which is excellent BTW) and don't spank P2P then you will be impressed by their service...shock horror! I've been with them for 6 months and wouldn't think of leaving them...touch wood

If you have a 14MB sync rate you should be getting a lot more out of the line than that. Have you raised a ticket with us for the speed issue?

Hi,
I've just been told that you don't know why Im on LLU, i've asked about the diffrence in costs and if i should be getting better speeds.


Dan

I would say go with Sky & their 'Unlimited' package. I have a connection (line rental & TV with them as well as ADSL) & it's been excellent since having it installed about a year ago (will be riunging soon to see what new deal I can get out of them). Sky's Unlimited package doesn't have a download limit and I seem to get top speeds 24/7.

no, which is why I pay more for by voice & bb.
I need a reliable connection which is why I've tended to stick with companys who have decent support.

I had talk-talk for voice before and left as soon as I could as it wasnt worth the savings .

Do the LLU and Max products have the same network? as a friend was having problems with poor speeds such that he moved back to bt just before our exchange got unbundled?

In reply to a post by dreaddan:

Do the LLU and Max products have the same network? as a friend was having problems with poor speeds such that he moved back to bt just before our exchange got unbundled?

Not quite sure what you are asking there.

Sky have LLU Everyday Lite and Unlimited. They also have non-LLU Sky Connect, which is ADSL Max.

The Sky Connect is supplied when the customer's exchange is not LLU'ed, or it is but the LLU capacity is fully occupied.

The LLU and Connect networks are totally separate, at least until they get to the core Sky routers. Connect is through a BT Wholesale DSLAM/MSAN at the exchange and then back-hauled all the way to BT Centrals rented by Sky, where it is handed over to the internal Sky systems. They seem not to have sufficient capacity at that point, (insufficient Centrals), to prevent serious congestion a lot of the time. (I'm well out of date on costs, but BT Centrals used to be well over £1 million per year each, with a maximum 622Mbps throughput per Central).

LLU product customers' lines are connected direct to a Sky DSLAM/MSAN at the exchange and they rent dedicated backhaul capacity from one of several suppliers, possibly including BT, from there to their routers, but it goes direct to their own systems not to BT Centrals. No congestion.

I recently signed up with Sky, switching to the LLU unlimited product. We have been very pleased with them, and their customer support has actually been quite good. Just stick to you guns with the first person (using the correct technical language), and you will be passed very quickly onto a technical person who (so far) seem to know what they are doing and talking about. I was expecting it to be quite poor but have been pleasantly suprised.

Like the OP, I've just moved to an exchange which has the same LLU providers.

The BT exchange is about 3 doors away.

I called TalkTalk, whom were just rude on the phone and the sales guy just hung up on me! So, they won't have any business from me.

Sky ... hmm, Placed an order when I moved in 21st Feb. I was called back to be advised that the previous tennant still had a service active on the line.
I kept getting calls from Sky to complete the sale, but couldn't as the line was still active.
Once the line went dead, they told me I needed it to be re-activated.
I then placed a new order, and waited a month. Come the day of install, the engineer didnt arrive. I called sky to find out why, and was told that the order had screwed up in the system, and the needed to place a new order!!!!! He told me that he needed to cancel the order, wait for it to clear off the system and then place a new order, and this would be done by Friday. Consequently I'm still waiting!

I'm livid. But at £26 a month for unlimited broadband, unlimited calls, and line rental has got to be decent value for money.

Edited by deleted (Mon 11-Apr-11 12:09:29)

I can wholly recommend O2/BE, been with them over two years on LLU. Now gone up to £13 p/m.
Aftersales exceptional for a large company, straight in phone answered within seconds every time.
If it wasnt for the BT copper line i would still be with them, ala 75db attenuation.

Combine above with free calls day and night nationally including line rental try www.yourcalls,net Must be good if i have been with them 5 years.

Total all of above around £26/27 p/m without checking plus other benefits to mobiles and golden destination.

Don't forget the O2 packages now on sale are nothing like as good as the previous ones. I assume you are still on Premium.

Yes on Premium out of contract.
Managed to get an extension last night until 19 April then FTTC changeover to new ISP yesterday Webtapestry due to ADSL24 dragging their feet for two weeks.

One of the ways to get O2 price down £5 p/m is to top up £10 every three months on O2 mobile whether you use it or not, you are better off by a fiver.
Rarely use my mobile and got around £50 credit.

You miss my point

O2 Premium is great, but you can't get in now, so pointless to recommend it to anyone looking for a provider.

The three new packages have:-

Basics - 20GB allowance and vicious traffic management;
All Rounder - 100GB FUP and very heavy traffic management;
The Works - 250GB FUP and reasonable traffic management.

Not at all like you have - unlimited with no traffic management.

Re the O2 mobile on PAYG that you quote, the cleverer trick is to have Favourite Place on it. Then in month 1 of 3 use it to make all outgoing calls from your place instead of the landline, and in months 2 and 3 use up the £11+£1 = £11 in the same way. Thus minimising your landline calls bill. 0845 and 0870 landlines calls should be sufficient to satisfy the free BT calls package requirement if that is what you have.

One of the ways to get O2 price down £5 p/m is to top up £10 every three months on O2 mobile whether you use it or not, you are better off by a fiver.
Rarely use my mobile and got around £50 credit.

WHAT? So, you spend £10 every 3 months to save £5 a month, but you don't use the £10 on the mobile. So, you save £5 over the space of 3 months, but have £50 lying as dead money in credit on your mobile which you hardly use? Great savings there

???
Where does the £50 come from?

You also ignore my post that added to the one you replied to, showing how how the £11 net topup can be beneficially used. I find it hard to believe that many people never make chargeable calls from their landline, however much they claim not to need it.

As for the "great savings", a saving of £15 for an expenditure of £10 looks like a 50% return on capital to me. I can't think of any other consumer investment that does better. Are you advising people not to do it, even if they don't use up the £10/£11 to lower their landline costs?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I find it hard to believe that many people never make chargeable calls from their landline, however much they claim not to need it.

I don't! I rarely make chargeable calls on my BT Anytime Plan; I go to great pains to avoid them by, e.g., http://www.saynoto0870.com/search.php or the geographical # firms often supply for calling from overseas

So, your "great savings" cannot be made when you cannot use the £10/Q credit on your O2 mobile.

Hence, I am in a great dilemma if I find I have to migrate to O2 after Orange's threatened move to 21CN WBC (Tuesday) and I discover its performance to be degraded , even tho' I have an O2 PAYG mobile on which I spend about £5 every year .

As I said, £5 is a significant saving even if the SIM topup is never touched. The saving can be looked at as either a return of £15 on a capital expenditure of £10, ie a 50% return on capital in three months - most investors would like that, or even horse-backers, or it can be looked on as a reduction in the standard quarterly broadband charge, where it amounts to £1.67 per month - again significant as a percentage of the the standard cost.

As for you looking at O2, I don't think I would want to rejoin them, with the traffic management that exists there. Not just the official caps on protocols, but unspecified TM at busy times. Apart from The Basics the FUPs wouldn't affect me; whether it would affect you only you can tell.

Be would be a better idea in my opinion.

(Edit - typo).

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 16-Apr-11 16:04:10)

Sorry, I had a temp mental block. Yes, you are right, you do save £5/Q even if you throw away the £10/Q top-up.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As for you looking at O2, I don't think I would want to rejoin them, with the traffic management that exists there. Not just the official caps on protocols, but unspecified TM at busy times. Apart from The Basics the FUPs wouldn't affect me; whether it would affect you only you can tell.

O2's TM and FUPs don't worry me. I don't use more than 20GB/m and just occasional use of streaming and YouTube (not me tho'). All Rounder would be ideal.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Be would be a better idea in my opinion.

Be is dearer than O2 (wouldn't consider Value as I exceed 12 Meg ). Also I'm put off by recent constant reports of Network Issues on Be. They don't appear to be so prevalent on O2 altho' they are the same network. Any idea why this is?

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Also I'm put off by recent constant reports of Network Issues on Be. They don't appear to be so prevalent on O2 altho' they are the same network. Any idea why this is?

Most of the techie O2 users seem to have left, or post about this in the Be forum when it happens. I have to say that the frequency doesn't seem to have changed since I was on O2, and even when it happened it rarely affected me.

I think if you analyse the posters complaining about it, you will find a couple of "usual suspect" axe-grinders blowing occurrences up at every opportunity. I think at least one is no longer on O2/Be anyway. Even BT cable breaks and Linx problems fuel their ire, though they do have a point that the Be network could be more resilient. The prices could also be higher and the performance lower, to pay for that extra resilience.

Be users by their very nature are more likely than O2 ones to detect even short-term problems and publicise them, out of sheer boredom here.

O2 and Be each have their own DNS servers so there is a point of diffence there. Again, I always used the automatically assigned O2 ones and I think I had one problem in all the time I was there, even though others seemed to have trouble with exactly the same ones. Work that out!

I wonder if the same thing is happening on Be, as theirs seems flaky for some users but not many join in when it is playing up for them. It is noticeable that OpenDNS users on Be seem to get a similar frequency, so it all implies to me some other mechanism is interfering for these people.

Yes, it did occur to me, when I put my Q, that nowadays that the O2 users are not so techie as Be's.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Linx problems fuel their ire

I've seen these mentioned often. What are they? I am not aware of them affecting Orange.

Where does the £50 come from?

Rarely use my mobile and got around £50 credit

What is the point of topping up a mobile every so often and not using it to the tune of £50?

As for the "great savings", a saving of £15 for an expenditure of £10 looks like a 50% return on capital to me.

Where does the saving of £15 come from? I make it a saving of £5, but at the same time there is a needless expenditure of £10 into a mobile topup that seems to be unused.

I get from your reply that you really can't see the irony of "spending" £10 on a barely used mobile to save a total of £5. That's like me going in to Tesco and buying 2 tins of cat food to get a cheap bottle of wine when I don't have a cat . Must be missing some of your logic here......

It's really simple. There's nothing stopping you using the mobile credit any time you want. The same can't be said about cat food.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

It's really simple. There's nothing stopping you using the mobile credit any time you want. The same can't be said about cat food.

Well, actually I could get a cat or I could get the taste for cat food. I'm sure it is stuffed with goodness

[edit] My issue is, the way this is presented. You DO NOT save £15. You would save £5 a quarter, or £20 a year. I may be Scottish, but that seems like a lot of hassle to save £20 a year. If it was £50+ I would consider it worthwhile.

Edited by deleted (Mon 18-Apr-11 09:42:31)