BT, Talk Talk, or Sky?

I get my calls and broardband from BT, but my 12 month contact is about to expire. I've done some research and realised their prices are considerably higher than the other 2 operators on my line: Talk Talk and Sky. My exchange is

Sherburn Hill

My current BT BB package is for 40gb and i went over this for the first time last month. Talk Talk and Sky are both unlimited so that would be a bonus (I know BT also offer unlimited BB but the price is prohibitibvely high for me.)

My major concern is how a move to Sky or Talk Talk would effect my broardband speed. I'm 3300m from the exchange and I currently get around 2.5mps.

I phoned all 3 companies. Talk Talk said they could get me over 4mps, Sky said I would get between 0.3 and 1.5mps with them, and BT guaranteed I'd lose speed if I left them.

I don't know who to believe. I'm a Sky TV customer so it would make sense to choose them but I don't want speeds that low.

Also, how should having ADSL2+ installed on my Exchange by March 31st effect my decision?

Any help anyone can provide will be much appreciated.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

I get my calls and broardband from BT, but my 12 month contact is about to expire. I've done some research and realised their prices are considerably higher than the other 2 operators on my line: Talk Talk and Sky. My exchange is

Sherburn Hill

My current BT BB package is for 40gb and i went over this for the first time last month. Talk Talk and Sky are both unlimited so that would be a bonus (I know BT also offer unlimited BB but the price is prohibitibvely high for me.)

Someone suggested using BT FON to avoid exceeding your usage limit.

Post your router stats.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Also, how should having ADSL2+ installed on my Exchange by March 31st effect my decision?

Probably no effect on your speed at all. Same goes for TT & Sky which are ADSL2+, but we can only tell from your current stats.

I recently moved from BT to TalkTalk.

TalkTalk tele sales people assured me I would get 9.6mbps on my line. They quoted this to me twice on the phone, also their website gave a similar figure and their paperwork said the same figure.

However tonight I see I am getting 3.3mbps.

My experience over the past month has been very variable for speeds from 3 to 10 mbps. But mostly 6 in the day and 3 in the evening. With BT I was far more consistent around the 6mbps mark.

You pays your money and you take your chance, at least I get free unlimited telephone calls 24/7 now instead of evening and weekends with BT

Dave H

It's all surmise until we see router stats.

My usage stats

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 384807 599607 0 460 8419 25:40:20
LAN 10M/100M 3775240 2496795 0 1868 795 103:49:54

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3360 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 53 db 15 db
Noise Margin 3 db 18 db

I currently can't use BT FON, to cut down on usage, because i use my own Netgear router. But it's a good idea, if i stay with BT I'll set up the router they sent me and give it a go.

You should be getting about 1 Meg Sync faster now, but you won't benefit from ADSL2+.

What does this: http://speedtester.bt.com/ say?

BT speedtester results:

Download speedachieved during the test was - 2272 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :3360 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 2500 Kbps

Hi, go with Orange for broadband, landline phone and line rental. It�s like being with BT but you pay Orange prices and if you already have Orange mobile phone contract you get £5 per month knocked off the broadband price.

http://shop.orange.co.uk/broadband/

http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/support/personal/b...

But not before 21CN WBC is enabled at his exchange. It's not there yet.

As I said earlier, you are only getting about 75% of your line's capability.

Have you removed ring wire?

Do you have any phone extensions, Sky Boxes, ...? Are they all filtered?

Is the router on a long extension cable?

If the present contract is about to end, best to move now and will be ready for 31/03/2012. My exchange was upgraded to 21CN WBC one month ahead of the BT schedule.

Contracts don't just end; they go onto a fixed notice period basis.

Also RFS dates are not always adhered to.

I'm not sure about the bell ring. About 3 months ago my speed had dropped to about 0.5 mps, after a few calls to BT the open reach guys came out. At first they assumed it was something inside the house (it's an old house and the guy reckoned the cabling was 40 years old.) A new wire was run from my front door and a new faceplate was put on.

When I open it up the wires are blue, brown, green and orange (I'm a little confused because they are the pre 1980 colours but the cable is 3 months old.) The green and brown cables are not connected. The blue cable is connected to a socket labeled "B" and the orange cable is connected to a socket labeled "A." There is also sockets labeled "2", "3", and "5" which are all empty.

My home setup is this:

I have only one socket in my home. This has a ADSL filter attached. I have a wired netgear router connected by a 1 meter cable. From this I run 3 cheap 20m RJ45 cat5e cables. One goes to a slingbox, another to an Xbox, and third goes to an aiport express. The airport express provides the wireless Internet for the whole house, it is positioned away from the router because it's a big house with thick walls and unless I position it in this place I can't get wireless throughout the house.

The cat5e cable is not shielded so I could be losing some signal there. But in the past when I've compared speeds between the wireless and wired there has only been a small difference.

The telephone part of my filter goes into a 1-4 splitter, and I have 2 phones, a Sky box, and a fax machine connected.

Forgot to mention, the fault that caused 0.5mps was actually along the street. When this had been resolved my speeds jumped to around 3.5mps. I was delighted because the previous quickest speed I'd ever had was 2.8mps.

However after about a day the speed dropped down to around 2.5mps. And today my speed fluctuates between 2.2 and 2.7mps.

In that setup I suggest adding a second filter somewhere. Either immediately before the 4-way, or between it and the Sky box.

If before the 4-way that would also perhaps cover any problems from the fax machine. Stronger still of course would be the second between the Sky box and the 4-way, and a third simularly for the fax machine.

Whilst typing, it occurred to me you probably have at least one phone extension cable into the 4-way? Those usually contain ring (bell) wires and are ruinous to ADSL.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 09-Dec-11 12:31:39)

If only one socket, could invest in a filtered face plate, that would take care of it and the ring wire issue and get it all filtered at source.

If I were you, I wouldn't count on the ADSL2+ (WBC) date for your exchange. Some of the dates lately are slipping (I am on an exchange where it has slipped 2 months on - It now has the same date as yours: 31/01/2012). Out of TalkTalk and Sky, I would personally go with Sky because their speeds are usually quite decent, while having low prices.

Edited by chris6273 (Fri 09-Dec-11 13:02:00)

I think I'm going to get a filtered face plate, it seems that would be a good way to ensure I'm not getting any inference from the fax, the sky and the telephone extensions I use.

As for whether to stay with BT or move to Sky or Talk Talk, I've decided to rule out Talk Talk. There is just so much negative feedback about them around the Internet that I don't want to take the risk

Plus Talk Talk called me back pushing for a deal. I mentioned that I was worried by the amount of negative feedback and they became aggressive and said this is not true, they claimed they constantly rate top of BB companies in customer service polls voted on by their customers, which is "all that matters to them." They also lectured me on how only the unhappy post on forums and how their many happy customers don't.

So, it's probably either Sky or BT. Is there any reason to believe that my BB speed would change either negatively or positively with a move to Sky? I know they quoted me speeds of between 0.3 and 1.3mps, down from the 2.5mps (ish) I currently get, but I'm guessing this is only an estimation.

My final play with BT will be to get through to their retentions department and ask for my MAC code. Hopefully then I'll get some kind of competitive offer, but i'm not holding my breath.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

When this had been resolved my speeds jumped to around 3.5mps.

I think that you have been quoting throughput/speedtest speeds throughout whereas I've been on about Sync Speeds as reported by router, which are the most crucial.

I think that was when you were getting the expected Sync Speed from your line. Has anything changed since then, like introducing a Sky Box?

As vivaciti says, the correct make of filtered faceplate should cover the ring wire in extension cable issue, and look a lot neater than the existing dangler. I know the XTE-2005 from ADSL Nation filters the ring wire from its phone socket, but not sure about Solwise, Pressac etc.

Even then, it is worth bearing in mind my second or third filter suggestion. Sky boxes can sometimes need them. Fax I doubt, but don't know.

All power supplies are suspect as well. Cheaper ones that may have been supplied with kit can be noisy, and even good ones can fail.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

When this had been resolved my speeds jumped to around 3.5mps.

I think that you have been quoting throughput/speedtest speeds throughout whereas I've been on about Sync Speeds as reported by router, which are the most crucial.

I think that was when you were getting the expected Sync Speed from your line. Has anything changed since then, like introducing a Sky Box?

Exact same set up. Nothing has changed.

Ref price with BT, phone 0800 328 6738 ask for options / retenion team they will match or better Sky / Talk Talk price, Think you are in a ' Market 1 ' area BT are very keen to keep you from leaving, Normal sales team can not offer the best price but retenions can alter the deal to keep you. Think of paying phone line rent up front saving £46 year. Mike A

My personal rule is no matter what the service level is like, or I perceive it to be, if the sales people are being pushy I walk away.

I have the same exchange and live in Shadforth. Currently on TalkTalk as was the only provider with ADSL2+ out of Sherburn Hill - everyon else subscribes to BT's offering which currently is not ADSL2+. If I tweak the SNR margin down to 4 ish (from 15) then I get a sync download of 6.9Mb and an actual download of 5.8Mb. Currently I have set SNR margin to around 5.6 which is holding steady through the evenings this is currently giving me about 4.5Mb (just tested).