Any OL1/0L4 Cabinet 49 users? New ISP needed

Hello all,

I posted on another forum some weeks ago complaining about Virgin Media's troubling peak time traffic in the area as it has been horrendous for a good number of years. I have been a loyal Virgin Media Broadband customer since 2007, well I say I, my folks have. We decided to cancel our one month rolling contract last week and are now on the lookout for a new broadband provider. When we were cancelling they offered us a massive deduction in our monthly bill but we declined as the reason we were cancelling is not money related, it's the poor download speeds we are getting on a daily basis from 15:00 to 00:00, which causes lots of arguments when everybody is on the net at the same time with pings spiking, constant buffering, slow webpage loading and slow speeds on the whole and this as absolutely nothing to do with traffic management, happens regularly with the one user connected too. Many calls to Virgin, many review dates and no actual fix. They could offer us the top service for free for 24 months and I would decline at this moment, we were already on that package by the way.

My only choices seem to be cable and a BT ISP. Hyperoptic and Gigabit? Are not available in the area. The distance from the cabinet to my house following the most logical route would be 400M according to Google Maps and the PCP cabinet is pretty close to the FTTC cabinet.

http://imgur.com/vnIHQg3

Which brings me to the subject does anyone have any knowledge of the postcodes and cabinet above? It would be nice to know in advance what I may be letting myself in for before putting an order through with one of the ISP's. Low latencies? Fairly accurate estimates? stable speeds? Peak time speeds? drop outs? any extras like vectoring enabled etc. Anything that is useful. We are quite far from the telephone exchange and the FTTC cabinet is awkwardly located for most of us. Just to add I have absolutely no idea if the wiring used underground is aluminium or copper, anyone know how I can find out? The FTTC cabinet is at the top of Sholver Lane for anyone not in the area who may want to check on Google maps.

BT Broadband Availability Checker (address check) believes I can get upto 74.6MB High 57.1 Low on download and 20 High and 17.7 Low on Upload on VDSL Range A Clean. Range B obviously lower, can post them up too if it is important information.

I would like a 76/19 package if the line and distance allows 70 MB ish download and 15M + upload. Dropping down from 150MB to 50MB seems a bit steep. What I want more than anything is a stable connection with no mass drops in the afternoons and evenings is it possible? What I do like about some of the BT ISP's is the change in traffic manage policy which will work in my favour as working around Virgin Media's policy on upload is a ballache.

Edited by deleted (Fri 27-May-16 07:19:33)

In most cases you get somewhere within the A range, but the quoted figure when enquiring on ISP websites can be in the B range - to cover themselves against complaints of "I was promised ..." if you end up in there and below the bottom of A.

A good idea if you know of any neighbours on a BT rather than VM setup would be to enter just the postcode into the Address checker you are using. I do mean the Address checker, not the Postcode option.

You will get a drop down list of all properties in the postcode and can check their estimates. As the estimates adjust over time to roughly the actual for lines on FTTC you will be able to see what sort of figures they are coming in at and whether they are significantly lower than those known to be on VM like you.

Asking anyone you know nearby on that cabinet & FTTC of course is wise - and you can also compare what they say against the estimate for their address. Better still the one for their phone number.

Beware of them telling you lousy wifi speeds though. It's connection speeds you are looking at, as wifi as I'm sure you know is up to the user to sort out.

Don't worry about ADSLx estimates as those are distance from the exchange related, not from the cabinet.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 27-May-16 11:00:40)

Yeah, I randomly inputted local postcodes on nearby streets closer and further to the FTTC to get a rough estimate on speeds and to be honest the estimates are not all that different. I also did something a bit naughty and went onto the BT phone pages and started inputting random popular surnames and the beginning of my postcode and then did the telephone checks through BT Telephone Checker, time consuming I know but I found it to be worth it, gave me a clearer idea to the speeds in the area, and this again pointed to similar results as the address check findings. Unfortunately I do not speak to many people in the area and any friends are also on Virgin Media.

I just hope the actual FTTC cabinet isnt overcrowded as I do not want the same experience as with Virgin with potential slowdowns. Virgin seem to be all about sheer speed but they never seem to take into consideration fluctuations in the speed which can really mess with a users performance, this is before you cater in weird traffic management policies and over utilized areas causing everything to ground to an halt.

I personally have never used wireless and the main usages we get out of our connection is on the main PC's that are all ran through ethernets and switches. I would probably buy my own router setup anyway once I switch.

Do you or anyone else have any suggestions on a ISP? SKY 76/19 we have SKY TV already. Plusnet 76/19 I hear is alright and a budget provider and BT 76/19 seems to be decent if you can somehow avoid customer service and it would have BT Sport, still at an extra cost mind due if we want to put the subscription through SKY but would be cheaper. I'm not really keen on taking the risk with the likes of pulse8, zen I may consider that option in the future as I hear some of these that are a bit more expensive and less known to the majority are actually a pretty good shout for some. The switch would be pretty much for gaming and the obvious on the side like browsing, watching Twitch, Netflix and the like, the usual . downloading/uploading. Preferably no traffic management, unlimited usage, stable speeds and the rest I would need answering from those on the cabinet, argh.

Edited by deleted (Sun 29-May-16 15:11:12)

FTTC cabinets basically don't get congested. They have plenty of backhaul to the fibre headend.

Two things can happen. One, they fill up, either completely which can take a long time to sort out, or just line cards need adding which takes a while but not as long.

While they are full you are basically waiting for someone to come off it. Unfortunately if you are on it and want to migrate you can end up losing your port, because of the way the system works.

The second thing is that as users are connected to the cabinet your line can pick up crosstalk from them and degrade your connection speed. This is why the BT Wholesale checker gives a range, on both Clean and Impacted estimates. It doesn't degrade in proportion to the number of people on it. It is more to do with wiring adjacent to yours.