BT to TT?

My contract with BT is nearly up and I'm looking to move to get a better deal. Whilst I've been happy with BT, at off peak times my 8mbit can reach the top speed, but at peak times (evenings) the speed can drop as low as 1mbit. My exchange says I can get LLU service from TalkTalk. Have they improved their act and is the recent takeover of tiscali going to slow down TT's network? I would like a fast BB package with at least 20gb of downloads. I would also take the broadband boost (up to 24mbit). I would expect 16-20mbit on my line but TT says I would get 8.8 (with boost). I assume they are just being ultra cautious?

If we can see the modem stats (how to get them http://www.kitz.org.uk/adsl/frogstats.php) we can suggest whether their estimate is conservative.

TalkTalk uses traffic management so depending on what you are doing to hit 20GB you might see things slow down at peak times again

As I understand it the general performance on TT is quite good these days, but any P2P at any time of day is heavily throttled.

My stats are

Noise margin (Down/Up) 12.3 dB / 24.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 19.0 dB / 10.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 19.8 dBm / 12.2 dBm

I don't use P2P - just downloads like service packs, isos (from msdn) etc....

I think you will find that TT are looking at the usually very conservative BT estimator. What does the BT Retail estimator give, and also the BT Wholesale one.

Putting your stats into one of the best estimators, and assuming from your opening post you connect at 8128kbps, then a connection speed of around 20Mbps with a download speed of over 16Mbps should be possible.

There is a slight possibility that Turbo Boost or whatever TT call it isn't available on your exchange which may be why they give the 8Mbps or so figure. I only found out recently that not all TT exchanges supply it.

I suggest you ask in the TT forum about service packs and MSDN ISOs. Sounds OK to me, but I'm not a TT expert on that aspect.

Yes my sync is 8128. Both BT testers state top speed of 8mbps. I will check on talktalk forum to see if my exchange is boost enabled...