In reply to a post by willsweet2:

acpsd775, your speeds made me feel tingly inside LOL. Looks like TalkTalk aren't a complete and utterly useless mess like a lot of people make them out to be. There is definitely something to look into here. What's more, they gave me a speed estimate of 14.5meg, so if I can achieve that then I will be amazed!

Thanks and keep 'em coming folks.

They gave me 1 of 7-9 lol and i get 10-11 so i was happy im going on FTTC as said so the ADSL speed was never realy a problem for me even if it was slow as id would only be till end of this month but im happy with the speed i get now to put me on lol although my neighbour gets 15 im convinced BT have put me on a long line haha

Ash

In reply to a post by willsweet2:

... if you are recommending and ISP, please try and quote a speed test result from http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

Other people's speeds are completely irrelevant as the connection speed is primarily dependent on the line length from the exchange, and the speed test speed is dependent on that.

If you asked for connection, speed test, and P2P/torrent speeds, to see how the three compare with each other for each respondent, that would be useful to you .

As you are a heavy downloader as per the Subject, I reckon you will find considerable throttling on a standard TT service. Again, you need to know what kind of usage the TT customers here have. It could be P2P is now not throttled by TT, or it only happens at certain times.

What do you call heavy downloading anyway? I've seen people here saying they are heavy users, and they don't do 100GB per month. On some ISPs, 500GB+ per month is common.

Talktalk's Plus package is unlimited (so is Essentials with the Download Boost, says 80GB but this is effectively un-metered .......... at the moment), but P2P is throttled during peak hours:
http://www.talktalk.co.uk/legal/broadband-traffic-ma...

I'm not aware of TT restricting anyone's line due to excessive usage no matter what package they're on.

With no FTTC and few LLU options (I've not touched TT in years and probably never will due to past experiences friends have had with that business, and I have no experience with Sky) your options are limited.

Even with going LLU you are going to see ilttle difference in downstream rate if the limit is your line rather than throttles at the ISP. All the providers will be giving you ADSL2 or similar. You might get a boost in upstream speed though: many ISPs offer accounts with the faster upstream rate option on ADSL Max, which should equate to an 85% boost to your current maximum upstream speed (832kbit/s rather than 448kbit/s, so "up to 88KByte/sec" to "up to 47Kbyte/sec") which will help those large video uploads.

Other than that there isn't much you can do (other than try multiple lines which is presumably too expensive for the benefit you'll see) if your line is the limitation rather than the ISP.