Moving over to the UK

Hello there,
I'm new and am moving to the UK shortly.
One of the numerous things I have to take care about is the internet connection though as soon as I took a step into looking at all the offers, I felt overwhelmed.
I know some stuff although I am no expert but I know what I want.

The spec I am looking for is essentially one: unthrottled p2p traffic.
I know this is pretty much impossible but since I am a heavy downloader I would like to find the best performance ISP even with throttled traffic enabled.

My initial thought was Virgin since they have a 100Mb connection and even if they throttle it half the way it's still 5 times faster than what I have now!
I have already lurked some forums and seen that BT has some problems whiel PN has to have the PRO option to get some real benefits.

Before making the decision though I thought I would post to ask your advice.
I have a 50£/mo budget.

Thank you in advance

It would help to know where you are moving to - in particular, which telephone exchange serves the area, to see what LLU services are available.
As I understand it (not being a Plusnet customer) the Plusnet "throttling" is just giving priority to some protocols over others, so for example a heavy p2p won't slow down an online game. It applies both within your connection (if you do something interactive it will feel faster because the p2p won't be eating all the bandwidth, but if you don't use the connection for anything else p2p will get the full speed subject to the next bit) and within the whole network (but this is only an issue if there is a lot of congestion, and it looks like they are trying to avoid that). You may actually find out that Plusnet works better without the PRO option.
As for VIrgin, what you get would depend on how many other heavy downloaders / p2p users are already in the area. Again, it would be useful to know where you are moving to. In any case, if Virgin cable is not available in the place Virgin ADSL is not a viable option!

It really matters where you intend to live.

Qustions you need answering for the premises are.

In order of importance

Is it served by FTTP/FTTC
Is it served by Virgin
Does it have Sky LLU
Does it have WBC
Any other LLU


Sky claims no throttling or download limits so Sky FTTC is top choice.
Other smaller suppliers also claim this but tend to be more expensive but higher service levels.
BT may restrict P2P (appears to be Torrents only) but claim no download limits on Infinity.
Virgin has a high claimed speed BUT may suffer from high contention in some places.
Sky LLU claims no throttling but speed more dependant on distance
Smaller suppliers over WBC claim no throttling as above.
Some smaller suppliers use other LLU operators.
last choice is a smaller supplier over 20c but only where there is no other option.

Easy site to see what is in an exchange area is sam knows
If you have an address use the BT wholesale checker this will give you estimated speed for each type of service ( LLU will be similar to WBC)
If you have a telephone number this will be much more accurate

Edited by kitcat (Fri 18-Jan-13 17:35:09)

Sorry, I had edited the post but I wonder why it didnt save the changes.
Here is the exchange point:
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EMSHRWO

I am quite close (1mile)

Cheers!!!

In reply to a post by clang:

Sorry, I had edited the post but I wonder why it didnt save the changes.
Here is the exchange point:
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EMSHRWO

I am quite close (1mile)

Cheers!!!

Well you're in luck.
That exchange has plenty of providers (with Sky probably being the best for high usage p2p customers). It also appears to have cable TV (so you could also get broadband through that service).

If you go for ADSL (sub 24Mbps speeds) you'll probably get around 10-12Mbps being around 1mile from the exchange, but that figure could be as low as 3-4Mbps if the phone cables take the scenic route.

If you go for "FTTC" with Sky, BT, etc. the distance from the exchange is irrelevant as your broadband will be carried by fibre to the local street cabinetm where the broadband is then carried (as VDSL) over the existing copper phone wires to the home.
FTTC will give up to 80Mbps download / 20Mbps upload, if you're close enough to the nearest green BT street cabinet (less then around 200 metres away should see you getting full 80/20 speed).

All right so sky is the best.
I have also done the test inputting my postcode on the virgin site (just to see what happened) and it said I was covered by the 100Mb. Does that mean that I can use sky at the same speed?
Also I have read a lot of good reviews about Xilo, how is that ISP?

Thanks

In reply to a post by clang:

All right so sky is the best.

Quite possibly.
You can sign up online http://www.sky.com/products/broadband-talk/broadband... or call them they may be able to arrange for a new phone line (or to take over the old one) - in the UK you must have a phone line to get broadband (unless you go with Virgin Media - more about that later).
All phone lines are owned by a division of BT (called 'Openreach') your teleco (which may be BT's retail division, Sky, or a number of others) then leases the line and the broadband equipment from Openreach.
You won't have a contract with Openreach, just with your chosen provider and so far as 'FTTC' goes (fibre to the local BT green cabinet, then traditional copper/aluminium phone lines to the premises) the best of the bunch seem to be Sky, BT Retail and probably Plusnet, although you'll likely suffer less p2p throttling with Sky.

In reply to a post by clang:

I have also done the test inputting my postcode on the virgin site (just to see what happened) and it said I was covered by the 100Mb. Does that mean that I can use sky at the same speed?

No; Sky uses BT Openreach FTTC/VDSL products so is limited to 80Mbps down / 20Mbps up (although I understand you first get switched on with a 40/10 product then Sky manually switch you to 80/20 if you call them).
Virgin Media (in cable TV areas) use their own infrastructure, which is a combination of fibre and co-ax copper cables. Nobody else uses their infrastructure so the only way you can get 100Mbps broadband via the Virgin Cable TV feed is if you get a cable TV, phone and broadband package direct from Virgin (although I believe Virgin now offer a broadband only package for £35 a month (no TV, no phone) or £42 a month if you want 100Mbps plus phone line rental plus a calls package, then they have their top "VIP" package, which is 100Mbps broadband, phone line, phone calls (unlimited UK landline calls - mobiles and international calls are extra), plus Tivo and about 200 TV channels, for £99 a month!!!
The equivalent Sky package (phone line, calls, 80Mbps broadband, Sky's HD PVR and around 400 TV channels including sports & movies, plus their HD package) is pretty much the same price at £100.50/month - or £1206 a year!!!).

In reply to a post by clang:

Also I have read a lot of good reviews about Xilo, how is that ISP?

I know very little about them.

Just a word of warning (and it may be so in other countries, too) but broadband in the UK is a bit of a mine-field.
Providers often make wild claims about "unlimited" products but then hide "limits" or something called "fair usage policy" deep in their terms & conditions, so all is often not what it seems (and just going by price isn't always an indicator - there are plenty of expensive providers which charge an arm and a leg for very low monthly allowances but you may well get a better service than a cheaper one which claims to be "unlimited").

The UK telecoms regulator (Ofcom) is largely toothless and its bark is definitely worse than its bite.
Every so often they pull an ISP up on claims (normally related to the advertised speeds more than anything else).
So long as an ISP which claims to be "unlimited" doesn't prevent you from downloading once you've reached a level set out in the FUP or terms & conditions, Ofcom seem disinterested (at best).
So the more shady companies (and they include some of the big players and big names - including Talk-Talk for practically everything, BT for peak-time p2p, amongst others) have worked out a system where they limit the download speed on certain protocols (e.g. p2p - some even cap Usenet speeds), rather than simply cut you off when you reach a limit on the "unlimited" package.

The ISPs claim they're still providing an unlimited product. Because they don't stop heavy users from downloading full-stop, and only limit the download speed, the ISPs claim they're still giving you unlimited downloads.

Many users may take "unlimited" to mean you can download at your connection speed 24/7 all month and not get limited.
Unfortunately the ISPs don't agree.
Even BT and Sky have FUP limits on their "unlimited" products, although I've never heard of any customer actually being pulled up on it.
But the FUPs are there, none the less, and all ISPs have wording such as "if you regularly go over an imaginary (and as yet made up) maximum monthly limit, we may reduce your speed and repeat offenders may be cut-off and have their contracts terminated" (or words to that effect).

Virgin are known to have very active capping & speed limiting in place, so despite the 100Mbps claim (they even say "Unlimited downloads � no caps no hidden charges") Virgin have very strict traffic management policies.
For example (something I just pulled from a Google search), the 100Mbps "unlimited" product has a daytime period of 10am to 3pm.
If, within these hours you download more than 20GB in one daytime period (easily possible, given a 100Mbps connection can download 20GB in about 30 minutes), they cap your speed by 50% for five hours.
Virgin then have an even stricter "evening" period between 4pm and 10pm.
During these hours, if you download more than 10GB in one evening period they cap your speed by 50% for five hours.
Only 10pm to 10am is allegedly un-throttled.

Effectively Virgin Media's traffic management policy limits a total monthly download (between 10am & 10pm) to 900GB if you want to avoid your speed dropping by half (no apparent limits outside of these hours).

However; it's not so much the total amount (900GB should be enough for anyone), it's the fact that you have to restrict your 10am to 10pm downloads to no more than 30GB a day if you want to avoid losing half your speed.

BT are better (except for p2p use there appears to be no throttling at all and very little evidence of lack of capacity).
Sky are even better (very little evidence of throttling of any kind).

So for heavy users I feel Virgin Media are best avoided like the plague.


Bit wordy, but I hope this helps

Edited by adebov (Sat 19-Jan-13 00:36:06)

In reply to a post by adebov:

All phone lines are owned by a division of BT (called 'Openreach') your teleco (which may be BT's retail division, Sky, or a number of others) then leases the line and the broadband equipment from Openreach.

Just to prevent any possible misunderstanding by the OP, athough you do clarify later, Virgin cable phone lines are not owned by Openreach.

You won't have a contract with Openreach, just with your chosen provider and so far as 'FTTC' goes (fibre to the local BT green cabinet, then traditional copper/aluminium phone lines to the premises) the best of the bunch seem to be Sky, BT Retail and probably Plusnet, although .

I'm not sure you are right about "you'll likely suffer less p2p throttling with Sky" when compared to Plusnet.

Plusnet does not throttle P2P per se. It does however use traffic management to prioritise other traffic types above it.

In particular if a user does anything other than P2P concurrently with P2P then this is advantageous, not disadvantageous as you appear to think. See It's Unlimited! Why is it still traffic managed?

Sky may or may not do the same. I don't think we know. If they don't, then a user could suffer problems where on Plusnet they wouldn't.

...
So the more shady companies (and they include some of the big players and big names - including Talk-Talk for practically everything, BT for peak-time p2p, amongst others) have worked out a system where they limit the download speed on certain protocols (e.g. p2p - some even cap Usenet speeds), rather than simply cut you off when you reach a limit on the "unlimited" package.

The ISPs claim they're still providing an unlimited product. Because they don't stop heavy users from downloading full-stop, and only limit the download speed, the ISPs claim they're still giving you unlimited downloads.

Many users may take "unlimited" to mean you can download at your connection speed 24/7 all month and not get limited.
Unfortunately the ISPs don't agree.
Even BT and Sky have FUP limits on their "unlimited" products, although I've never heard of any customer actually being pulled up on it.
But the FUPs are there, none the less, and all ISPs have wording such as "if you regularly go over an imaginary (and as yet made up) maximum monthly limit, we may reduce your speed and repeat offenders may be cut-off and have their contracts terminated" (or words to that effect).

Ummmm!

Quite a few contentious statements there. For a starter - "Shady".
"when you reach a limit on the "unlimited" package" - BT, Plusnet and Sky do not have limits.

Re the rest of that quote, I think you are years out of date there in relation to BT, Plusnet and Sky. Plusnet as of the announcement of their new unlimited products on 19 December 2012, and BT and Sky long ago, have no such FUP type wording. BT and Sky did have, and removed it. Other ISPs still do have such, I agree.

A bit you missed out re BT Retail P2P . It appears from many posts in the BT forum here that upstream P2P throttling is in place possibly 24/7. This of course has the effect of restricting the download speed even when the explicit download throttling is not active.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 19-Jan-13 11:32:14)

@clang (and apologies to adebov if I've unintentionally upset him).

Just to clarify the intent of my recent post.

On re-reading it, it looks a bit like I'm trying to shoot adebov down. My intent was far from that!

I agree with the whole tone of his post, about what you have to look out for. It is just the detail bits to do with what looks like your short list I felt warranted some comment.

I'm not sure you are right about "you'll likely suffer less p2p throttling with Sky" when compared to Plusnet.

Basically I assumed that as Sky claim to have no limits (other than the FUP, which I wasn't aware had been recently removed) and claim to have no traffic management in place, that there's a lesser chance of having p2p speeds affected with Sky than with Plusnet.
True; Plusnet do not apply rate limits to "Fibre Unlimited". However; they have produced a nice table (published, and still live, on their own website) which states they have a "Traffic prioritisation" system in place.
This table shows their unlimited products "standard/fibre" has five different levels of traffic prioritisation (p2p & Usenet occupying the lowest level).
They do say " at busy times, higher priority queues will take bandwidth from the lowest queue(s) currently in use (but never enough to take the lower queue below its minimum bandwidth allowance)." although this is a fairly ambiguous statement...
Where is the "queue"? Is it a per customer queue (i.e. does your p2p traffic take a lower priority over your own streaming traffic), or is it a global queue (i.e. your p2p traffic takes a lower priority over streaming traffic from some family in Devon)?

As for the rest of it, I was aware Plusnet no longer claimed to have an FUP on their unlimited packages, but I wasn't aware BT and Sky had completely removed any references to the usual arbitrary (and unknown) "to the detriment of other users" fine-print (i.e. the unknown usage limit where they decide you're taking the 'P' and decide to cut you loose).

As for the word "shady" - I think it perfectly applies to companies like BT who whilst telling customers there's no limits, no traffic management apart from p2p during peak times, they proceed to throttle p2p downstream at other times, by other methods (i.e. throttling p2p uploads which, as you say, affects p2p downloads without BT having to actually cap them during off-peak) and don't actually define "peak time" and BT still go on to say "you can still download as much as you want without any limitations"...er; no I can't, because you're throttling the speed, which has the effect of placing a limit way below that of the actual broadband connection speed...ergo it is a limited "unlimited" package.
Of course all this is largely irrelevant due to the higher connection speeds available with fibre unlimited packages it's simply not possible to get anyway near the maximum available download per month simply because you'd run out of stuff to download within a few days (something like 24TB a month on an 80Mbps product) with, or without throttling (or "traffic prioritisation" or whatever jazzed up words the ISPs come up with).

As for the effectiveness of BT's "work around" (i.e. a way of reducing p2p download speeds such that they don't actually physically cap the downloads, so can continue to claim it's "unlimited" or "unthrottled"), I can't comment as I don't do the p2p thing.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

and apologies to adebov if I've unintentionally upset him

That's not possible Bob

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

On re-reading it, it looks a bit like I'm trying to shoot adebov down. My intent was far from that!

Feel free to do that anyway - especially where I've got my facts wrong (it did pass me by, that BT and Sky removed the "hidden" FUP limits - in the form of deleting the usual "if you take the p*** and download too much, on your unlimited product, we'll cut you off" fine print).

I still say what BT are doing to effectively rate limit p2p downloads off-peak (by applying 24/7 upload rate limits - which has the effect of reducing p2p download speeds) is somewhat "shady".

In reply to a post by adebov:

I'm not sure you are right about "you'll likely suffer less p2p throttling with Sky" when compared to Plusnet.

Basically I assumed that as Sky claim to have no limits (other than the FUP, which I wasn't aware had been recently removed) and claim to have no traffic management in place, that there's a lesser chance of having p2p speeds affected with Sky than with Plusnet.
True; Plusnet do not apply rate limits to "Fibre Unlimited". However; they have produced a nice table (published, and still live, on their own website) which states they have a "Traffic prioritisation" system in place.
This table shows their unlimited products "standard/fibre" has five different levels of traffic prioritisation (p2p & Usenet occupying the lowest level).
They do say " at busy times, higher priority queues will take bandwidth from the lowest queue(s) currently in use (but never enough to take the lower queue below its minimum bandwidth allowance)." although this is a fairly ambiguous statement...
Where is the "queue"? Is it a per customer queue (i.e. does your p2p traffic take a lower priority over your own streaming traffic), or is it a global queue (i.e. your p2p traffic takes a lower priority over streaming traffic from some family in Devon)?

Did you read the article I linked to?

The system works on both the individual connection, where it is clearly of considerable benefit, and "across the platform", (that being the phrase they use), where it all comes down to capacity v demand. What has recently been stated by the chap in charge of monitoring that is that he and his team are checking the (publicly available) network loading graphs daily to see if there is a capacity problem looming.

So overall it looks to me like a good and openly declared system. As opposed to the shady () BT method and the completely unknown Sky setup.

VOIP, live streaming and such get priority. P2P gets as much as it wants until it threatens those. It isn't "capped" as such.

If the network capacity is insufficient, then that prioritisation is still good, and potential network congestion is a separate issue for any ISP, including Sky. I imagine it is safe to say that Sky have some similar monitoring system in place. Not to have would be lunacy - not something I would accuse Sky management of. What the budgeted capacity per customer is for BT Retail, Sky and Plusnet I have no idea. (AIUI that is how basic capacity planning is done). I believe TalkTalk is amazingly low.

In reply to a post by adebov:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

and apologies to adebov if I've unintentionally upset him

That's not possible Bob

Wanna bet? What if it was ever intentional?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Did you read the article I linked to?

Yes.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The system works on both the individual connection, where it is clearly of considerable benefit, and "across the platform", (that being the phrase they use)

So 'global' then.
Agreed; on a per customer/connection basis, traffic prioritisation (by the ISP) would be useful - provided they waited until your connection was running flat-out before reducing p2p.
To work correctly they must be actively looking at all protocols going in & out of every single customer connection (otherwise how would they know there's any point reducing p2p priority, if nothing else is going on anyway).
If must be a fairly complex system (to be able to reduce p2p priority by just the right amount, so that you still maintain full throughput - the extra made up by speeding up other apps, and not leaving you with a massively reduced speed because they've de-prioritised p2p too much).

I have to say a lot of my anti-Plusnet bias comes from personal experience, when I ended up migrating away from a Plusnet unlimited DSL connection when they were truly, truly awful to the point my connection was running little faster than dial-up speed and Plusnet were throttling pretty much everything - Usenet ports/protocols were throttled - even http traffic to Easynews (which, at that time, had a mostly web-interface - so all downloads were done in the same way as downloading files from any other website - Plusnet ended up throttling port 80 traffic to the Easynews servers so much, it took literally minutes just for the Easynews website to appear).

It's difficult to shift the memory of that kind of experience and difficult to believe there could be such a massive turn around in the performance of Plusnet (how is it possible for one of the worst ISPs, that throttles practically everything, to suddenly become one of the best, that throttles nothing?).

Edited by adebov (Sun 20-Jan-13 00:15:58)

In reply to a post by adebov:

(how is it possible for one of the worst ISPs, that throttles practically everything, to suddenly become one of the best, that throttles nothing?).

Change of ownership.

In reply to a post by hitachi:

Change of ownership.

Normally makes things worse (e.g. Eclipse being taken over by KCom, BE being taken over by O2, Bulldog being taken over by Tiscali).
It seems the norm (certainly in communications) is for companies to be taken over for asset stripping or for the purchasing company to gain extra infrastructure.
It's almost unheard of for a company to be acquired by another for the reasons of making it better

Thank you everyone for your answers
it seems this got a little more complicated as to be expected.
I guess I am still shooting for Sky but plusnet has come into the possible options.
I still would like to know something about Xilo.
A thing that stumps me is that the companies that claim to give you fiber always give speeds well below what fiber can offer.
Sky writes 40Mb and then they will settle the speed with some time depending on how far you are from the exchange point.
So if they start off at 40 and then you are quite far you might go down to 20? That woulb be a complete waste of a FTTC.

I hope i didnt write any nonsense.

In reply to a post by clang:

A thing that stumps me is that the companies that claim to give you fiber always give speeds well below what fiber can offer.
Sky writes 40Mb and then they will settle the speed with some time depending on how far you are from the exchange point.
So if they start off at 40 and then you are quite far you might go down to 20? That woulb be a complete waste of a FTTC.

That's the way FTTC works - the longer the distance to the DSLAM in the cabinet, the lower the achievable speed.

Not nonsense, but either you are very lucky where you are at the moment, or need to read up some more . What service and speed are you on at the moment? Some sort of fibre, or some sort of ADSL?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Not nonsense, but either you are very lucky where you are at the moment, or need to read up some more . What service and speed are you on at the moment? Some sort of fibre, or some sort of ADSL?

Your question is already answered in the OP: "My initial thought was Virgin since they have a 100Mb connection and even if they throttle it half the way it's still 5 times faster than what I have now!" i.e. 10Mbps.

Which could be FTTP or distance-dependent ADSL2+.

Actually it's a 7Mb ADSL2+ (that's all I know)
Also with fibre can I still open/forward ports as I am used to doing with my normal router/connection?

In reply to a post by clang:

Actually it's a 7Mb ADSL2+ (that's all I know)

That is dependent on your distance from your telephone exchange then. FTTC brings mini-versions of the exchange broadband equipment to a local distribution point (cabinet) usually much closer to the premises than the exchange.

The link from the exchange to that cabinet is fibre optic so not affected by the distances involved in this context. So only the pre-existing copper from the local distribution point to the premises has any slowing effect.

For example, on ADSL2+ my connection speed was around 6Mbps, with download speeds 4-4Mbps or so.Upstream connection around 1Mbps. On FTTC I connect at 54/14Mbps with real speeds to match.

FTTP(remises) brings it into the home, but is only being rolled out to a few areas, for the next few years. However "Fibre on Demand" should be released during this year, where for a fairly large installation fee, (£500-£1500 is talked about), in FTTC-enabled areas it will be possible to get FTTP installed. (Direct connection by fibre to the fibre spine that feeds the FTTC cabinets).

That is distance-independent and gives fixed connection speeds. Real world download speeds depend on the ISP capacity and the output capacity of the target websites.

Also with fibre can I still open/forward ports as I am used to doing with my normal router/connection?

You may need to get a better router than the ones some ISPs offer free. I don't need to play with ports so can't advise, but it is possible, and many people on these forums do it.

OK so looking at the sky offers it seems I have to get the "Weekend calls" in order to get the unlimited fiber package, which is a bit of a deal breaker for me since I don't like paying for something I don't use.

Now I'm left with the well represented PLUSNET (thanks RobertoS) and Xilo which I know nothing about.

Has anyone had any experience with the latter ISP?

Edit:
Only downside I see of plusnet is I have to get a 18 month contract which is a bit long since I will probably move again in 9 months.

Edited by deleted (Tue 22-Jan-13 12:56:56)

You will need to pay voice line rental to someone for any of the xDSL options

Standard per month price is £14 to 15, some are less e.g. Primus

It's odd that nobody has commented on Xilo, (also known as "uno"). There are quite a high number of its customers on here, and the owner posts with the nick uno.

Nearly all reports are that is it good, with excellent support. Just like all ISPs however, there is the occasional discontented user. Very few of those. Try asking about them in the Resellers forum.

Plusnet Unlimited, with the 18 month contract - at any time you can buy out the remaining months at £5.75pm, rather than the full £19.99. If within the first 12 months of the eighteen and you've taken the "free" router, you have to pay for that as well.

Somewhere around in the T & Cs I think there is a free House Move option as well, which may be relevant. I haven't the patience to look right now .
_{Edit - typos.}

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 22-Jan-13 15:50:37)

erm... do you work for plusnet?

LOL.
Nope. Just that when I change ISP I do look into things carefully, as you are doing.

Four years ago I wouldn't have touched them with a barge-pole as both the traffic management and support appeared to be dreadful. They seem to have turned all that round, especially over the last couple of years. Particularly noticeable is the excellent support from the reps here and on the Community Forums, when first line support has failed to sort out a slightly complex issue.

Difficulties with first-line do crop up. With well over half a million customers and at budget prices, that isn't surprising - though for routine queries they seem as good as any smaller niche ISP and better than the bigger boys who tend to have script monkeys, often overseas and sometimes unintelligible.

When I went from an O2 LLU ADSL2+ connection to fibre, I chose safety, at a premium price, with IDNet. That contract ran out after 12 months, (February 2012), and I didn't like the very high prices for not much apparent benefit to me. By then Plusnet had FTTC products, and in the end I sort of tossed up between them and BT Infinity.

A single phone call to sales at both, asking for more information, was rather conclusive!

I feel I made the right choice, as the wheels seem to be coming off Infinity, which was still getting high praise a year ago.

Mid-contract with Plusnet I upgraded from my £16.49pm product to the £19.99 one, just for the sake of a small, unnecessary, speed increase. Just for the heck of it. Connection speeds in my sig. That didn't increase the contract length.

Then in December the new Unlimited one at the same price came along, so mid-January, 11 months into my 18-month term, I upgraded. That meant restarting the 18 months and I was not in the least bothered.

The ISPs I have had in recent years:

- Prodigynet. Excellent for a while, and recommendable, then went downhill fairly rapidly, so I left. A year later they went bust.
- Newnet. The service itself really good. Support nice and pleasant, but toothless and useless when BT Wholesale were intractable over a problem I had. Highly recommendable for the broadband, medium for CS. Now absorbed into a bigger group and I wouldn't recommend them any more.
- O2 LLU. Went to them after initial reservations about LLU, when I started to exceed my allowance on O2 and the next step up was more than I wanted to pay. Superb service and support. I recommended them strongly for a long time, leaving for FTTC and to get rid of a long-standing phone line problem. (A problem between the cabinet and the exchange that FTTC bypasses). Their next product lineup had much less going for it, with lots of throttling and usage caps. Slightly better now but not a place I would recommend any longer.
- IDNet. See above.

Happier ?

And Xilo - I haven't a bad word to say about them, unlike some other ISPs. Just not what I would choose.

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for the lengthy answer.
Plusnet has a 18 month contract but I think I'll be moving again in 9 months (although I'm not sure about it) so it wouldn't be convenient for me to commit to such a long contract.
12 months is also too long but if I find nothing else I will have to go with that kind of contract.

Despite all this another issue has really put my FTTC crave to a halt: my distance from the exchange point.
It's nearly 2km! I thought it was a close distance but according to this page my FTTC would slow down to a crawl!

Maybe it's best for me to continue using an adsl2?

P.s. Xilo needs me to have a pre-existing landline which seems not to be there so they are out of the equation...

Thank you

Edit: found bt's wholesale checker and once I input my postcode the results are really appalling... What a pity it seems it will go slower than where I am now... 6mb. *sighs and sobs*

Edited by deleted (Thu 24-Jan-13 21:34:55)

I think you may have missed the Plusnet contract buyout terms I gave you in this post.

A link to the BT Wholesale checker doesn't show us your results, just the entry page . Did it mention FTTC? (A copy and paste of what it says is best).

You say 2km from th exchange point. What exactly do you mean by that? The exchange serves a large number of cabinets.

On ADSLx it is your distance from the exchange that matters. On FTTC it is your distance from the cabinet. Almost always much less.

Yes, I know the link wont give the results, but I didn't have an editing program for editing images.
Here is the screenshot.
I didn't know that thing about the cabinet... I suppose it's quite near then: how do I find out?.

Edited by deleted (Fri 25-Jan-13 08:26:27)

You've cropped the exchange and cabinet number out, but there is no line in the table for the FTTC speed/estimate anyway.

That probably means it isn't scheduled for fibre - not all cabinets on an exchange get it, at least in the initial rollout. There is a slight possibility that those figures are missing because it is going live in the next few days, as it does often disappear when that is the case.

The ADSL2+ estimate isn't too bad, most people get towards the top end of the range for the connection speed. Then a few other controls (speed losses) come into play, depending on the CP (Communications Provider - BT Wholesale, Sky, TalkTalk, O2/Be, C & W are the usuals). So the ISP recommendation could well be different.

Please give us a screenshot of what this checker says . (Don't be misled by a banner add I've just seen on it, about the Official Openreach website - this one is not that but gives you other information we need and is often updated from the OR one. As you will see).

We could do with knowing the exchange and cabinet(s) from it, even if you are shy about the postcode. We don't need the map and lower stuff.

Weird, there didn't seem to be anything else on the screen besides what I cut...

I have done the check you asked. Here it is. I have wiped out all maps and postcodes for obvious reasons (maybe I'm a bit paranoid!).

That is very strange, as that one is saying all lines on whetever postcode you entered can get FTTC.

Are you unparanoid enough to PM me your postcode? I want to check a bit whether that checker is getting something wrong. (It would be the first time I've seen it do so though).

The thing is that cabinet serves 26 postcodes, not all of them showing as 100%. Meaning some of the postcodes are also served by other cabinets.

Is there any chance you typo'ed the postcode in either of the checkers?

PM has been sent.
I don't think I would get that wrong... it shows up correctly in the map too.
But hey, you never know what becoming senile might do to you!

Postcode checked and should definitely be live.

The only thing I can think of is that the FTTC cabinet is full, and awaiting upgrade. Got to go now, but there is a way to ask Openreach. Hopefully someone will post it. Off the top of my head I don't know it.

Ok thanks. I see now that if you are on a contract and you change home, you can take your broadband with you(if it's available), which is great news and opens the doors once more to several opportunities. So plus net is back in the game.
Now it's all p to finding out where the cabinet is, but I haven't found it yet

In reply to a post by clang:

Ok thanks. I see now that if you are on a contract and you change home, you can take your broadband with you(if it's available), which is great news and opens the doors once more to several opportunities. So plus net is back in the game.
Now it's all p to finding out where the cabinet is, but I haven't found it yet

When you come to the UK remember that when travelling by train to introduce yourself to the other people on the same table.

In reply to a post by somerset:

When you come to the UK remember that when travelling by train to introduce yourself to the other people on the same table.

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In reply to a post by RobertoS:

?

It's on a par with Terry Wogan's advice many years ago to tourists visiting France- greet the Customs officers with "Bonjour, cochon"...