o2 broadband, did your scottish exchange go live 31/1/09 ?

steven_cardwell

wheels5894 wrote: »

Hi there Steven and thanks for the reply. There us a small hiatus with O2 broadband - I got a text today to say they were out of routers? I doubt it will be much of a dely though as my live day is Wednesday, 29th July.

I am over in Canongate area and have been getting over 7Mb connections though this has dropped to around 6Mb recently. I guess I must be more in straight line to the exchange, along Viaduct Walk.

I am only to be paying the lower rate for access too as I am already an O2 monthly pay customer (for nearly 10 years!) and it is a lot cheaper than my old broadband. Well I'll see what happens on Wednesday and report back.

I have a mate that stays in Largo Road, although i think going from the map on Sam Knows, i would say he stays at the other end from the exchange and he gets about 4.5/5.5 meg, it is quite a surprise, to think in a town the size of St Andrews, that just for being at the other end of Lamond Drive looses the customer of anything from 2meg up to 5meg in speed!

You can use your own router (if it isn't another ISP Branded one), O2 can give you the username and password for the account, although things like the Security Suite and Broadband Assistant only works thru' the O2 router, and O2 Support won't help you if there is any problems if the O2 router isn't being used.

From any calls i have had to make to O2, i have found the broadband Customer Services to be pretty good, and they seem to be knowledgeable on the product that they are selling.

thetopcat84

wheels5894 wrote: »

I am over in Canongate area and have been getting over 7Mb connections though this has dropped to around 6Mb recently. I guess I must be more in straight line to the exchange, along Viaduct Walk.

Hey Wheels, is there any chance you can tell me what sort of latency/ping you're getting on O2 Active? Literally round the corner from you and in need of far better ISP...

steven_cardwell

Judging from Wheels posts, i don't believe that his O2 service has gone live yet, so i will post what my stats are, doing a speed test, obviously pings can change depending on time of day, etc, the ones posted below are quite high, other times, i find the ping averages out for myself around the 60/70 mark.







Hope that helps you "thetopcat84" even though, by the sounds of it, i am at the other end of Lamond Drive from you, if you say that you are just around the corner from "wheels5894".

wheels5894

I am still with UKFSN but these are my current results-
Download 4.36Mb
Upload 0.30Mb

I am a new user so i can't post links. I wonder how many posts are needed to post links?

thetopcat84

I'm a Tiscali user; need I add further comment?

wheels5894

OK, guys, I was transferred to O2 Broadband last evening and so far results are a bit mixed. On the plus side the installation disk was great for setting up wireless WEP with my laptop; a trick I never managed on my old router. However, pings and general speed may be a problem.

This morning I got

Ping 78ms Download 4.68Mbs upload 0.31Mbs

BUT last night at about 22:00hrs I was only getting

Ping 168ms Download 0.6Mbs uploads 0.2Mbs

I am hoping that last night wasn't normal congestion and that I was really just waiting for the system to bed in. Other wise, I will have to return to my old supplier. I'll keep monitoring the connection.

wheels5894

Still not really getting there on speed. Today pings have been in and around 150ms which is too slow for online play that my son enjoys.

This afternoon, at 15:01, I used Speed test and found a download rate of just 0.78mbs. It got back later to 2.31 but this really shows a serious lack of bandwidth. I wonder what the contention rate on this service is?

steven_cardwell

My speed at 6.38pm


and then using another server



Not sure how accurate these speed tests are, if i nearly half my speed in 2 minutes, by using the same site but a different server.

To be honest, it would seem that to get the great service that everyone talks about on forums, you need to be on LLU from O2.

wheels5894

My son is definitely unimpressed with the evening slow-down. We go from 5Mb/s down to less than 1 and it means even Youtube movies stop and start. I'm taking this up with O2 and will be leaving their service if they can't fix it.

wheels5894

Ok, the latest Be There and O2 are now offering LLU service in St Andrews according to their web sites! Great!

and now the bad news ....

Existing users are migrated to the LLU service en block (date no know yet) in order of joining O2 so the implication is that, potentially not everyone will get the new service. This may be generic information and may not apply to the numbers in St Andrews but is a little worrying.

Personally, I have been looking at £17.50 for a Be The Unlimited package and wondering if it might be better to go there for a year and then back to O2 when they have this sorted out. Any views?