New House, New ISP!

Hi there,

As we (family) are moving house soon my dad has given me the right to pay the broadband bills as he is currently even though he doesn't use it. This means im looking to get off BT Broadband, the first and so far my only ever ISP. We are out of the minimum contract and have been for a while, have been getting alot of calls from BT to renew it. They have been very good in general for me apart from the slow peak times and throttling. As we have 3 active users during peak times I want to be able to find an ISP that will maintain speeds all day long. Myself and my brother often play games so good pings are a must.

This is my exchange:
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NESS

2 ISP's im thinking about are SKY LLU and O2. The advantages for Sky would be that I am going for the SKY HD TV packages at our new house so would be nice having it all together apart for the Telephone packages and phoneline which will stay with BT. O2's pluses would be the higher download and upload speeds.

However I have noticed a few complaints regarding speed issues even on the LLU. My cousin who doesn't live that far from our new place syncs at the full 20meg but when I was last there he was getting slow speeds. I have read though O2 are doing upgrades to solve this so may not be an issue. Also doubts about sky as I have heard about DLM which sounds like it does more bad than good. Would just leaving my router on 24/7 avoid any issues with it as my family often swith off things at night.

The House is even more closer to the exchange than I currently am and my stats are:
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 8128 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 19 db 10.5 db
Noise Margin 9 db 20 db

Current location O2 : We've estimated that your maximum is 17 meg .This is based on information BT gave us about your BT line.

Would I recieve that much more on O2 (download & upload speed) than sky which is capped at 16M to make it worth it or play it safe and go for SKy LLU MAX who seem to get good speeds all the time.

Also as I have never changed ISP before, doing it while moving house makes it worse for my simple mind. Would it be as simple as getting my dad to call saying he wants to request a Mac and tell them we are moving to a new house but want to keep our BT Talk. Would they then transfer our exsisting phone number and broadband to the new house to minimize downtime for me to then use the mac. Would this tie me into a contract for the fact I have moved into a new house.

Or do I cancel BT Broadband at my current house before I move and then just sign up to a new ISP when I get to the new house. There will be no one moving into our current house so it doesn't matter if any issues arise if I cancel.

I think I covered most of my plans but if you need any more info or I missed something just ask.

Thanks.

You wouldn't need a MAC to transfer the BT Broadband to the new house, but without going through all the T & Cs I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't either tie you into a new 12-month contract or some other penalty like having to pay for the move if you leave within a year.

If I was doing it then I would read through it all, but I expect there would be some sort of snag as above.

If I wasn't too worried about the money I would cancel the BT Broadband at the current address. Find out what the "Cease" charge is.

Speed issues on O2 LLU are very rare. Not the weekend just gone, but both the weekends before that there were cable breaks so was that when you saw the poor speeds? Also I believe there have been problems in the Bristol area that might have been solved now.

In any case I think Be would be a better choice than O2 as O2 apply interleaving automatically and getting it turned off I believe isn't always easy. That's bad for pings/latency/gaming. Be you can alter it yourself on the top two packages, or get an even better non-interleave if you phone support. (They also turn off some other error correction that the user option doesn't).

Look in the O2 or Be forums here for a recent post by MKD and follow the tinyurl link in is sig to his excellent comparison.

As to Sky, I honestly don't know how to choose. Maybe the 3-month contract on the top 2 Be packages makes that favourite, as you can easily move to Sky if it doesn't suit?

Leaving the router on wouldn't really make any difference.

Thanks for the reply,

Right so it looks like cease broadband is the way to go. I can't find much about leaving BT broadband on thier site I did find the following:

http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cc...

"Any term remaining on your existing contract will be transferred to your broadband service at your new address. However, if this term is less than three months, a new three-month term will apply at your new address"

Does that only apply to those in a contract or anyone even out of contract. This is if wanted to transfer my broadband first then request a MAC.


http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cc...

Is this the same as cease? In that case that would mean I could cancel without charges.

I also found this:
http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/Public/notifs/28-...

BT Broadband - Cease Charge

"A cease charge of £18.12 inc. VAT is payable if a customer ceases their broadband service outside the minimum period and does not request and use a migration access code to move to another service provider. This charge will not be raised if the customer is moving home and BT is unable to provide the service at the new address."

£18.12 inc. is not bad at all and if it meant a clean, problem free way of closing the Broadband side of things without affecting my BT Talk.


Also I read about cease putting tags or such on phone lines would that only be for my current phoneline and not linked to a database for my phone number? Sorry if its a silly question.

Regarding keeping the router on, that was aimed at DLM of sky which apparently always keeps an eye on your connection. I would hate to reduce my speed due to my family constantly switching it off.

Thanks for your feedback on O2, I didn't want one problem to put me off from them. No it wasn't recently actually a while back. I can live with an odd day of slow speeds at peak, I have been with BT you know... . Im not one for jumping on the forum once my speeds hit a low.

I never thought about Be as I thought they would be a bit more expensive that O2 premium £14.68, Sky Max £15 (with TV packages). Be unlimited at £17.50 a month is very good and as you say seems more easier to sort interleaving issues then that is a huge plus. 3 months contract is always a plus too.

Thanks very much RobertoS as helpful as ever.

I'm feeling lousy today, with a hangover and a very bad cold, so can't think very straight.

If you can get a free transfer of the BT Broadband to the new address and then migrate out 3 months later I don't see much harm in that, and it saves you £18. (That's assuming what you say is right - that's where my brain has gone AWOL).

Or you can pay the £18 and get going on O2 or Sky straight away. That's probably self-financing anyway as aren't they both cheaper than BT anyway? And you get the good service 3 months earlier.

Hehe get well soon

Hmm your right I would save that amout in the 3 months on the new isps anyways lol. Im probably going to go for a cease then. I did ask emma ( http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cc...)

"Ending your service outside of the minimum contract period

If you are outside the minimum contract period then we'll charge you £18.11 (including VAT). This is what it costs us to carry out the disconnection work at your local exchange. However, we won't charge you if are switching to another broadband provider using the MAC process. The cease charge is also not applied in cases of death, severe illness, a house move or if you're a BT Basic customer."

A house move in my case not sure if that means you don't have to pay if you can't get bt broadband at your new house. Not to bothered i'd just like to get it all sorted and i noticed Be have a cash back offer too going untill the end of this month. Hopefully we will have been settled in by then.

Well thanks again Robertos, il post back to say how my experience went!