21 replies to this topic

[PaulW]

For the past month I've noticed the internet slowing down a bit, swirly thing coming up on iplayer and egg timer appearing now and again. On Monday I struggled to connect at all during the day until about 6 o'clock, yesterday was worse and this morning was nothing at all.

So I call up Orange, yes adsl lights on, filters are fine, yes I've rebooted it etc etc for 5 minutes until "tech guy" admits it may be a line problem and begrudgingly does a line test. One thing led to another and they promise to have it all running beautifully by this afternoon. Call back comes just after 6pm (might be afternoon in India?) from "Mr Customer Services" who has found the problem......." Sir, I have discovered the problem, as you have a 1mb package sometimes, during busy periods like during working hours, your 1mb package will only deliver 0.2 or 0.3mb and so your router is not recognising this as internet!!!!" So, my contract with you from 3+ years ago says 20mb?????? "Ah yes Sir, as customers don't like increased charges, especially in these hard times, what we do is reduce your speed rather than increase your bill - Unbelievable so for £15.60 per month plus vat I'm getting less than 1mb, sometimes nothing all to save my bills going up. When I asked at which point do I start providing Orange with internet services he failed to understand

So peoples, which isp's are decent, provide a quick and reliable service and more importantly won't steal from me

Also, just ran a broadband speed check on my mobile dongle from 02, it's showing as a "low reception" but I'm still getting almost 1.6mb which is about twice as fast as Orange achieve over a wired connection!!!!!!

[Paul_S]

That's shocking. At the moment people like Virgin (cable) are doubling your speed for the same cost!

[Chilli Red]

a year on and we are still 'working with BT' to get ours sorted. I hate internet speeds, then you get people like Andymc bragging about his speeds.
He'll pop up now and start bragging again

[Paul_S]

Ah yes, poor Andy is on 100Mb and Virgin can't double than so it's only going up to 120Mb.

[Greg Warnes]

I currently get 10Mb from virgin national (telephone line) but it can be a bit temperamental. sorry Sarah i joined virgin from BT enough said.....

[paul_k]

"Up to" should be replaced by guaranteed minimum!
I'm lucky if I get 1.8Mb with Tiscali and the service is shocking.
Took 2 weeks for an email to reach the accountant last week...

[Jace]

Orange owe you money.

You cannot be charged the same fee for an inferior service. The charge must be relative to the service. 1mb from 20mb is 5% of the service you are coughing up your hard earned for. So their logic behind not charging you more is moot in light of the reduction in value for service.

Ask them (innocently) when they started the downgrade. Then tell them they owe you money retrospectively from that date to the value of 95% (or maybe they scaled it on a tier basis over time?) of your monthly subscription.

[Chilli Red]

well said Jace!

[G5 VAR]

Guy's, don't shoot me and perhaps I'm not the right person to ask as I work for them, Virgin are currently by far best the BB provider in terms of published speeds, especisally if your "on net"

[Paul_S]

Here is a timely news article...

[G5 VAR]

Paul_S, on 02 February 2012 - 01:19 PM, said:

Here is a timely news article...

BT and Virgin have completly different way's of delivering the service- VDSL will still be affected by the distance of the copper pairs from the Mux.

[Paul_S]

Yep, I'm really lucky to live in a VM cable area.

[G5 VAR]

Paul_S, on 02 February 2012 - 07:47 PM, said:

Yep, I'm really lucky to live in a VM cable area.

Yeah, how's my luck- 100mb and Tivo in my office, Sky and ADSL with 1.5mb, if i'm lucky, at home!!

[Paul_S]

G5 VAR, on 02 February 2012 - 09:09 PM, said:

Yeah, how's my luck- 100mb and Tivo in my office, Sky and ADSL with 1.5mb, if i'm lucky, at home!!

That's not funny, so why am I laughing?

Sorry mate!!!

You'll have to move to Ashford

[G5 VAR]

Paul_S, on 02 February 2012 - 09:14 PM, said:

That's not funny, so why am I laughing?

Sorry mate!!!

You'll have to move to Ashford

Lol, trust you!!! at least if I did I'd also to closer to KAP

[PaulW]

Virgin stops about 100 meters from my house So I guess the choice is not who is best of the rest but who is least worse Having said that my mobile dongle at £5 per month for 5gb might be the way forward. I'm consistently getting 2mb speed at home with it

[MaDMaXX]

Wow, you just got it in the head

Firstly, yes that's worth complaining about for service, also, what they told you is BS.

Cable is going to be your fastest option in England, but they totally cherry pick where they install their lines, so good luck there.

Other than that, it's ADSL, which is *completely* dependant on distance from your local exchange (not as the crow flies either) and quality of your line, expect between 6 and 10km to be the limit for getting it. Between 6 and 10 it's a bit of a crap shoot though. Most ISP's or BT can give you your line length (attenuation) which is pretty accurate for this purpose.

Depending on your link speed (not the same as your actual through speed) you will get "up to" the advertised speed, it's all based on the above, hence the tardy advertising.

However, ever wondered how most places advertise really great rates? that's due to a massive customer base and an internal network that's not able to serve all that customer base at the same time.
This results in peak time problems, so weekends and evenings, once everyone is online surfing etc, the ISP's network is overloaded, and speeds suffer.

To have an ISP that's able to handle it's whole customer base at the same time *and* still give out the advertised speed, is going to cost you. Start looking for the ISP's that are *not* advertising themselves, but they're gonna cost more.

If anyone's interested, i used Zen internet when i was still in England.

Let me know if you have any more questions, i've probably forgotten a lot here...

[G5 VAR]

MaDMaXX, on 14 February 2012 - 04:44 AM, said:

Wow, you just got it in the head

Firstly, yes that's worth complaining about for service, also, what they told you is BS.

Cable is going to be your fastest option in England, but they totally cherry pick where they install their lines, so good luck there.

Other than that, it's ADSL, which is *completely* dependant on distance from your local exchange (not as the crow flies either) and quality of your line, expect between 6 and 10km to be the limit for getting it. Between 6 and 10 it's a bit of a crap shoot though. Most ISP's or BT can give you your line length (attenuation) which is pretty accurate for this purpose.

Depending on your link speed (not the same as your actual through speed) you will get "up to" the advertised speed, it's all based on the above, hence the tardy advertising.

However, ever wondered how most places advertise really great rates? that's due to a massive customer base and an internal network that's not able to serve all that customer base at the same time.
This results in peak time problems, so weekends and evenings, once everyone is online surfing etc, the ISP's network is overloaded, and speeds suffer.

To have an ISP that's able to handle it's whole customer base at the same time *and* still give out the advertised speed, is going to cost you. Start looking for the ISP's that are *not* advertising themselves, but they're gonna cost more.

If anyone's interested, i used Zen internet when i was still in England.

Let me know if you have any more questions, i've probably forgotten a lot here...

I've been In the cable industry for 18 years and now hold a reasonably senior position within the business (Head of Networks). I'm not sure I agree with all of your points, mainly that "cable cherry pick where they install their lines"

[djtimodj]

Well We have sky BB and the service is crap, router is a load of poo and has poor signal ALL the time. Never go with sky! I now used my 3 mobile sim in my SGS2 and use my phone as a wifi hotspot. Ive been getting about 4.6mB speed for ages! Works great! I only get 1.5-2mB in work but still OK.

[G5 VAR]

djtimodj, on 15 February 2012 - 11:02 PM, said:

Well We have sky BB and the service is crap, router is a load of poo and has poor signal ALL the time. Never go with sky! I now used my 3 mobile sim in my SGS2 and use my phone as a wifi hotspot. Ive been getting about 4.6mB speed for ages! Works great! I only get 1.5-2mB in work but still OK.

It would be unprofessional of me to comment in too much detail on the reasons why other providers do not always provide the QOS that VM do, in terms of both speed and usage allowance. However, when you say "signal" assume you mean wireless? If so, try a different ASDL router. In terms of increasing the speed of an ADSL line, try installing an "Iplate", available from Ebay amoungst other places. No guarantee it will impove the speed as dependant on the quality of the line/internal wiring in the first instance, but cheap as chips so worth a shot. If the router you have doesn't auto select the channel, try changing that as well.