New house new broadband

I'm moving home, and I don't currently have a contract with any broadband company, though I do already have a BT line going in. I can�t get Sky satellite or Virgin Cable, as it�s a rental property.

I'll be on the Slough/Langley exchange (2.2 miles drive away from my new house at SL3 9HT), and according to Samknows the LLUs available are as such:
O2 / Be: Enabled as of 09/12/2006
Orange: Enabled as of 01/12/2006
Sky / Easynet: Enabled as of 04/12/2006
TalkTalk (CPW): Enabled as of 11/11/2006
Tiscali: Enabled as of 15/03/2006
Tiscali TV: Enabled

I'm a heavy user - I watch a lot of online videos, download music from iTunes and play a lot of WoW.

So I'm after a connection that will allow me to download lots, at a fast speed, most importantly with low latency. I don�t mind spending a bit extra to get decent speed and download limits.

Is there a provider that offers this nirvana? I've heard Be is pretty good, and their Pro service is only £21.50 per month.

Many thanks in advance

I would say that is probably your best bet. However at 2.2 miles it is highly unlikely you will get anything approaching the high speeds you want . The good news with Be is that interleave can be disabled easily so helping your latency.

I don't know how to make an estimate from the distance, but if you check using this page it may give you some idea.

Thanks for that page - I didn't see that when I looked through it. Here are the results:

SL3 9
ADSL available at ~1.5Mbps
BT Total broadband
TalkTalk LLU (8M is free)
Sky LLU (2M is free, 8M is £5pm)
AOL LLU (£10pm discount)
Pipex broadband
Plusnet broadband
Tiscali broadband
Tiscali TV
And many more...
ADSL2+ available at ~1.8Mbps
Be Unlimited
O2 broadband
UK Online (incl 20M packages)
Sky Max (LLU) (16M for £10pcm)
Some cable services available
Virgin Media phone

1.8mpbps!? That makes me sad panda

So is it even worthwhile buying the full 24mbps service, or should I go for the basic 8mbps? I assume I'd get the same speed from both, is that right?

If 2.2 miles by road and what is probably a likely route for the phone line then this is around 4km of telephone cable, and people can manage 8Mbps at 3km just about, there is a real chance of you getting 3 to 4Mbps.

Until you know the attenuation of the line for ADSL, i.e. it is up and running all estimates before that are estimates.

With Be if they accept your order they will usually give you their estimate

I'd also consider UK Online. Unlike O2 which appears like a bit of a roller-coaster ride depending on where you are if you are unlucky enough to live in an area with contention problems, I've never seen any reports of localised congestion and slow speeds on UK Online. They don't do any special offers like O2 and they are a little more expensive including a ridiculous mandatory router purchase of £50 but the service appears far more solid than O2.

Regards,
Steve

Thanks for that. The 2.2 miles by road is a bit longer than the crow flies, as I live the other side of the M4 to the exchange (Datchet vs. Langley for those familiar with the area) and the route is a bit squirrely.

A friend of mine put his info into that page, and he said they predicted he'd get 0.3 mbps, and he actually get 2mbps, so I live in hope.

And thanks for the hint SJR, I'll check them out.

Looks like the others have got you organised while I've been away. At least you know now the sort of connection speed you might get .

Good luck.

In reply to:

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If 2.2 miles by road and what is probably a likely route for the phone line then this is around 4km of telephone cable,

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Unlikely.
2.2 miles is 3.5km, so using the average multiplier of 1.4, the line length would be around 4.93km.
However, based on the fact I'm getting a reliable sync (on ADSL2+) between 4.3-4.6Mbps, at 2.49km direct distance, but 6.94km cable length (if BT's dodgy data is to be believed), I'd think there's every chance the OP could achieve well over 5=3Mbps (if a 7km line can do 4.5Mbps, I'd expect a line which is 2km shorter, to do even more - except, I know BT's data is false, and my line is not 6.94km).

The 1.4 multiplier usually is used for a straight line route.

As I've said once the attenuation is known things are a lot clearer. ADSL generally out performs all of the older chart based estimates

In reply to:

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The 1.4 multiplier usually is used for a straight line route.

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And, as we all know, even the by road distance [given by the OP] isn't always that used by BT (or anywhere near it).
I my case, the by road distance is a little under 3.8km (if using old roads - more likely to be the route of the phone wires), yet my cable distance is 7km (according to BT) - God only knows where BT have put the other 3.2km!

Yes, the line attenuation will make things a lot clearer.
My line attenuation (56dB on ADSL1; 58.5dB on ADSL2+) would imply a cable length slighty longer than the road distance, and about 2/3rds of the figure in BT's "database" (using 12dB per km - seems to be a good figure, based on BT's original line length and dB limits for their 2Mbps vanilla product).

Fortunately, and no thanks to BT's dodgy data, I managed to get onto an LLU product (after many phone calls).
Unfortunately, unless I can find a way to get BT to correct their obviously flawed data (since when was a 7km line able to connect at over 5Mbps), I'm not likely to be able to switch away from BE (not that I want to, but it would be nice to have options).