Choosing ISP is sending me insane!!

Hello everyone, I posted on here as you seem to get quick responses and isp representatives answer questions too, so here goes.

I'm a heavy user, currently with Demon for a 60GB fup which I have to work around and have MAC in hand.

Nothing seems to suit me at all with packages on offer, I'll give you why.

I stream things like SkyPlayer (Non sky customer), MLB.tv (baseball), and always NFL (HDGamePass in the autumn/winter), Youtube and iPlayer. I subscribe to fully legal services and want to use them to their fullest capacity.

I need heavy peak time usage not off-peak to watch these things, so currently I usually have to watch on lower quality streams even though my BB can handle about 5Mbps throughput.

I estimate I would need around 100-150GB peak allowance to satisfy these needs. I never use torrents or download off-peak after midnight so unlimited off peak is pretty irrelevant my cpu is switched off.

I thought I might get an LLU service (ADSL24, Vivaciti etc.) but I reckon they wouldn't dig my huge peak usage even on a so called unlimited LLU ADSL2+. Also these services will surely get caned a lot especially at weekends when I mainly watch my sport and suffer from poor speeds.

I thought I might just have to stump up for an unlimited business package and reckoned on IDNET, the £80/month surely worth it for prioritised traffic and no caps or FUP. Then I go and read about people using this service probably for reasons like me being a heavy home user and even paying all that cash getting their MAC codes sent and being told to find a new ISP, for using maybe 150GB+.

I really respect this companies reputation and so wanted to join them but can't anyone offer me a heavy peak usage without any restrictions, I will pay you know LOL!! I want quality and the ability to have confidence I can actually use the service for my proper needs. HELP!!

The first thing we need is a link to your exchange details, given here.

yes sure mate, accrington

I think I'm about 2km from exchange so get reasonable 5.5MB sync and about 5MB throughput on a 49dB attenuation.

Entanet says not enabled but I have done service checks with some companies and they say they can provide me on this exchange.

Edited by BigBandBroad (Sat 25-Jul-09 16:17:33)

Be/O2 LLU is your best solution. Search for user MKD and look at his comparison document.

I have considered them believe me. I hear the odd rumour about Be/O2 maybe rethinking their terms and conditions, I mean you can't just offer up a real free for all download surely, and expect the network to cope. Thats whats made me think twice about these companies especially O2 with their over subscription of its service, mainly affecting its access only package I know not the LLU.

I did wonder if maybe yes O2/Be tolerated huge downloads for p2p people that were off peak but for me just legally streaming during peak hours 150GB/month, I can't be certain this wouldn't cause them to get annoyed.

Thats why I considered a smaller company not as massively subscribed to as those two.

Check on the Be and O2 forums but I know of no evidence that the LLU service is oversubscribed or is likely to be oversubscribed in the near future.

If you have Sky TV then their broadband is similarly priced to O2, and also unlimited on the top package.

In reply to a post by BigBandBroad:

I have considered them believe me. I hear the odd rumour about Be/O2 maybe rethinking their terms and conditions, I mean you can't just offer up a real free for all download surely, and expect the network to cope. Thats whats made me think twice about these companies especially O2 with their over subscription of its service, mainly affecting its access only package I know not the LLU.

I did wonder if maybe yes O2/Be tolerated huge downloads for p2p people that were off peak but for me just legally streaming during peak hours 150GB/month, I can't be certain this wouldn't cause them to get annoyed.

Thats why I considered a smaller company not as massively subscribed to as those two.

I agree with john2007 that O2/Be are the place for you to be.

Accepting the reservation you voiced about changes to T & Cs, you have to be very careful about FUD being put out by scaremongers. Since long before I joined O2, in fact IIRC before O2 bought Be, these people have been forecasting the imminent demise of Be.

My view on it at the moment, not having read the new Be T & Cs myself yet, is similar to what another poster has pointed out. The average profitability of Be per customer is almost certainly far below that of its sister company O2 and in the current financial maelstrom the owners Telefonica SA could very well have said they had to improve.

There has been no mention yet of any changes at O2. I opened a thread in O2 forum just pointing at the Be change and wondering whether the same might happen, but all that has happened is the thread has diverted on to discussion of Be, in fact of its web site redesign. Pretty pointess diversion! Shrugs.

Deeper thought on that does of course lead on to the possibility the internet-grabbers may swap over to O2, but the impact there would be far less damaging due to the huge number of people they must have using under 10GB per month, and not necessarily on the lowest price package.

I really don't think there is much to worry about regarding changes - especially on O2. (By the way here's the link to MKD's excellent document that john2007 mentioned. Note the Quidco info).

There is no general over-subscription on O2 LLU. There have been occasional problems at one or two exchanges such as Canterbury a few months ago, but now sorted.

O2 Access, the BT based product, should be avoided by anyone wanting serious connectivity.

To illustrate - on LLU the maximum possible speed is about 85% of sync due to normal TCP/IP and ATM overheads, nearly all of which are absorbed inside the IP Profile on BTW-based services so isn't as bad as it first looks. In fact it's good, as it seems we nearly all get 81%-84% of sync 24/7.

Mine varies between 83.5% and 83.8%. Although at a time of real peak demand with the Ashes and the USA Open being streamed by many it fell to only just over 80%. I wonder how other ISPs did that well?

Peak time is a frequently mis-applied term. Think what it really means. The time of highest demand.

As Be and O2 have withdrawn their premium-priced business products the peak demand except in school holidays has to be evenings and weekends. So your daytime usage is going to hit clear resources. 150GB per month is in any case way below the heavy usages we see reported on here, and I'm sure even more that keep their mouths shut and don't report on here.

So. unless you are an avid gamer, choose O2 instead of Be. Cheaper and marginally safer. Also with a 30-day money back getout don't forget.

Now consider the alternatives you are looking at, apparently willing to pay £80 per month. That's £960 per year. Look at the annual costs of O2 Premium. First year is approximately paid for by one month of the alternative.

So after one month of O2, if the T & Cs did change and you didn't like the new ones you have already saved enough to pay off the year. Over the year you save nearly £900, and in the second year (when you will be on one month notice) you save over £800.

If still in doubt, have a look at vivaciti LLU Unlimited, which IIRC has a £23 join fee and a monthly contract, though a £23 exit fee if you leave within six months. That's two halves of the BT charge to them to shift the connection to the LLU kit. They swallow half initially and the other half after six months. It runs on the C & W network.

Hi,
That type of usage would not be a problem on our LLU service, we currently have customers in excess of 500GB of data usage in a month.

Thanks for the feedback all, some informative stuff there too Roberto, cheers.

A question to vivaciti though, that usage of 500GB I guess I can believe for sure, but surely most of that was off-peak maybe p2p usage. Theres quite a lot of providers not bothered about after hours stuff so is peak usage never an issue either?

I mean could vivaciti really tolerate me streaming @1800kbps so around 900MB of data per hour for a bout 6 hours, for say 5 days solid whilst watching the ashes on skyplayer? All this during day time early evening?

Also when the NFL season starts it could be as high as a 2500kbps stream as its a HD service so that would be around say 1200MB/hr for 3hrs a game. Watching 2 games back to back on a sunday night so in total around maybe 6-7GB during the hours of 6pm-12am.

The baseball MLB service can stream as high as 3000kbps and games usually last 2.5-3hrs also.

Yes I know I'm a sport junky, currently watch a couple of MLB games a week, probably 5/6 NFL games a week during the winter. To be fair lol, my usage is pretty light during the early months of the year.

I hope by being upfront with the ISP's about my usage they can accomodate me, as I say I pay for these services from the states that are fully officially endorsed and legal products of the respected sports authorities like the NFL/MLB.

I look forward to hearing back from Vivaciti on this and maybe any other companies that feel I wouldn't be a bandwith problem and could genuinely cater for my sporting addiction. Cheers, most thanks.