Help got too many providers

Think I am paying too much.
Got phone plus evening & weekend calls with BT for last 20 yrs paying £18.99 plus £3.80
Broadband was with 02, who were bought over by Sky, they charge £10 pm plus 'penalty' for not having Sky Talk of another £5 pm
Question: should I switch broadband to BT or phone to Sky? O2 were such great providers but since went to Sky broadband quite often crashes for a few minutes which never happened before, but then I've heard BT can be not so good too. No cable in my area. I'm on Milngavie exchange. Any advice would be welcomed thanks.

Are the 'crashes' reflected by the DSL light on the modem flashing to show its reconnecting?

O2 were such great providers but since went to Sky broadband quite often crashes for a few minutes which never happened before, but then I've heard BT can be not so good too.

These "crashes" will not be due to the ISP but instead a setup issue or an external fault. Simply put just because you have Sky as an ISP does not mean your line will "crash." The vast majority of customers on Sky, BT, TalkTalk, Plusnet etc do not experience these issues, the fact you have these problems purely demonstrates an underlying issue that needs resolving. Changing ISPs but keeping the same poor setup or not fixing the same external line fault will do very little to resolve thing.

As for your price, what is the total paid for Broadband + Line Rental + Phone.
I am getting £18.99 + £3.80 + £10 + £5 = £37.79 is that accurate?

Are you on fibre service or ADSL2+?

Yes £37.79 would be right that's why I thought bundling phone with broadband might be cheaper.
Maybe crashes isn't the right word, I mean I can be on website and the screen jams or I go to open a new tab and get message not connected to server, so I walk away for few mins until it comes back. So it's hardware rather than the ISP?

That description could be anything from a stall on the PC operating system, through to DSL resync, through to DNS issue, through to temporary routing failure at ISP through to the website itself being slow.

Does this happen with the router connected to the PC with an ethernet cable?

What are the router line stats?

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

What router do you have, we can diagnose whether the broadband itself is dropping out? If not, it is your hardware causing the issues.

It would be cheaper to bundle it all together yes, e.g. Sky is only £18.99 a month for ADSL2+ for a new customer (including line rental). I see no reason retention's would be unable to get you close.

Plusnet is £19.99 inc line rental

Talktalk £20 inc line rental

(all prices from uswitch).


For what you are paying you could save £10 and still get fibre with some ISPs.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Wed 10-May-17 14:27:36)

Sorry, took me ages to figure out where to find these, hope this helps:
ADSL
2.1 DSL Status : Up
2.2 Uptime : 20 days 3 hours 8 mins 17 secs
2.3 Type : ADSL2+ Annex A
2.4 Line Rate (Up / Down) : 1369 Kbps / 5507 Kbps
2.5 Noise Margin (Up / Down) : 4.4 dB / 8.8 dB
2.6 Attenuation (Up / Down) : 22.4 dB / 39 dB
2.7 Power (Up / Down) : 12.2 dBm /
This all means nothing to me, but any help/advice would be appreciated ta
The router is Thomson O2 wireless box IV

Edited by deleted (Thu 11-May-17 00:06:52)

Those stats show that the router has been connected for many days, so are the drop outs you report wifi related then ?

The downstream sync rate looks lowish for the line attenuation, and the SNR implies something amiss too. Could you please describe the physical set up in your house, telephone points, what's connected where and so forth ?

You could try connecting the router to the TEST socket within the BT Master Socket to see if the line stats improve e.g. sync rate increases, if they do it would suggest the internal wiring etc could be causing issues.

Putting the line stats into MrSaffron's line speed checker indicates you should be getting better speed from your ADSL2+ service:-

http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/calc/index.php?param=RG...

An explanation of line stats from Kitz :- http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/linestats_explanation.htm