o2 any good? any hidden nasties?

I'll try and keep this short.

I currently have 8mbit/832k through an enternet reseller, currently im syncing at a 4500kbps profile with the full 832k upload, which to me is quite slow. I'm interested in a speed bump both in download and upload and a bit more freedom with usage limits.

I took a look at samknows for exhange info and 21CN enable date is months away, LLU providers is reasonable now, and I saw o2 on there, their 20mbit down and 1.6mbit up is very appealing, Its less money than what Im paying now, it has faster download and uplaod and is unlimited (yeah right )

So some questions...

1) What sort of speed increases will I see, if any? swapping to their service, im not sure if it's adsl2+ or what, I sync at 4500kbps due to line quality, is it likely that I will get the same download speed? I hear that ADSL2+ gives you slightly better downloads on the same line quality, Im just wondering reaslistically how thats going to effect me. Should I at least see an increase in upload to the 1.6Mbit?
2) How unlimited is "unlimited", they reserve the right to kick users off their service, what sort of downloading uploading is going to get me kicked off?
3) How fast is their network during the day and during the evening? if its just going to crawl to a halt then I wont bother!
4) Do they port throttle, port block, trottle by protocol or by certain applications, is there any traffic management going on at all?

thanks for any input

-Frosty

Put your router stats in to http://www2.farina1.com/ADSL/default.aspx to get an ADSL2+ estimate.

Unlimited on the LLU products seems to be greater than 500GB per month.

Day speeds may be more dependent on your exchange.

They do not traffic manage.

You won't gain a lot on sync speed up or down, but possibly quite a bit on actual download speed. If you joined O2 then you may also find you get two or three hundred more sync speed on by forcing ADSL2 rather than ADSL2+. I and a few others have all experienced this on longer lines like yours.

If you think of your sync speed now, and the IP Profile it gives you, and note what download speeds you get from that profile, then compare that with 83% of sync speed which is what you get on O2 then you will get some idea.

To illustrate, on Newnet ADSL Max I sync'ed around 6800kbps, got a profile of 6 or 5.5Mbps, and actual downloads never above 5600kbps on the 6Mbps profile. More likely in the 4500-5200 range. On the 6800 sync on O2 I get consistently over 5600 actual.

The two important advantages you would get are the effectively unlimited bandwidth, and the non-profiling system. 83% of sync is what you get. If you get a low sync one night, next morning you re-sync high again and immediately back to full speed. No 3-5 day wait. And no ALT either.

DrawbacksThere are several people experiencing DNS problems and having to use OpenDNS or other options.

A few also have speed and ping problems, though I think most of those are on O2 Access not O2 LLU. Some on LLU as well though. My line is as I said - always over 83%.

Thanks for all the info, thats a bit help

I'm on o2 LLU. Have a look at the o2 broadband forum - if you live in the south east I would not get it. Speeds are appalling during peak hours.

Better define peak hours. To an Entanet customer peak is 8am to 10pm and off peak is 10pm to 8am and all weekends. They get the poor speeds in off-peak!

Which O2 broadband forum do you mean? The one on this site? If so just check how many problems since yesterday afternoon when some major upgrade seems to have happened - the previous many posts per day has stopped.

They're probably referring to forum.o2.co.uk
Which is to say, 100 new threads about the same problems. :/
The majority of people complaining on their really have no sense (not all of them, but a quite a lot). They fail to understand the uptake of customers has had on the exchanges.

Oh and they don't bother to read through the forum before ranting their problem.
I now try not to look at that forum, I reckon it affects your health lol.

I am.

The reason there are so many threads is because the service is almost unusable in certain areas. Also there is no set date for this problem to be fixed. I phoned up and they told me that it was in BTs hands and to try again in a few weeks when they might have a date for the exchange to be upgraded. They are giving refunds and not charging disconnection fees to people in the affected areas because they know the service is that bad.

I personally am hanging on in the hope they will sort it out soon, the service was really good at an excellent price when I first joined - its a shame it has gone so bad.

I don't think O2 don't know how to deal with a bad rep, that's why they pass the buck to BT(did you try getting them to clarify what they meant it was in BT hands?).

Lets face it, at least they are willing to let customers go and be fair to customers without a usuable service, unlike some ISP's that regularly turn up on here (see ISP unhappiness)...