Up to 20mbps ADSL or up to 10 mbps fibre optic?

Cookiepops

Im currently with Virgine Media on their Large package getting up to 10mbps and paying £18 per month. This is via the cale line which is fibre optic and I have been told is better?

But I am an O2 customer and can get up to 20mbps broadband from them for £9.73 per month. But thats via ADSL.

As I work from home, I cannot afford to have any problems and need it to be quick and efficient.

Not sure whether to stay put and be paying double but have had no problems and good service.

Browntoa

I take it you have a BT landline already as well as the Virgin Line ??

Cookiepops

yep, I currenlty have broadband with Virgin Media but my phone line is with BT.

globalds

Ask Sam

Check whether your line can handle that much data

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php

456789

Check on the O2 website what speed you can get from O2 - as adsl slows down the further you are away from the exchange - if you can get at least 8mbit from O2 I would say switch as it is a better service imo

In theory fibre optic is a better technology as it doesn't degrade with distance but vm's traffic management policies make it a worse service

Also if you sign upto O2 you can get first 3 months free and £70 cashback from quidco

weegie.geek

If the line length checker says you can get that kinda speed, go for O2 definitely. Much faster upload speed and no traffic shaping. I get full speed no matter the time of day, and no matter how much I download.

Also,VM is no more fibre optic than ADSL is, I wish VM would stop lying about that.

penrhyn

Good point, it really get on my nerves too. FYI the entire BT transmission network is optical.
The difference is that with ADSL the 'last mile' from the exchange to the sub is over a copper pair. With cable the optical network extends to the street end cabinet, the cable drop being over co-ax.

weegie.geek

There's certainly less copper 'twixt cab and house than there is between exchange and house, usually, but for them to say it's a fibre optic network is taking liberties really. Didn't ofcom slap them for it, or did I just imagine it/expect too much from ofcom?

Pssst

VMs network isnt 100% fibre optic.

Also,they don t seem to be able to address the issues of people stealing cable services from them. See how many cable modems are on sale on ebay with flashed software.

456789

Internet and TV services - I think it is because they don't disconnect the cables from a house when someone stops their subscription

Mark_In_Hampshire

penrhyn wrote: »

Good point, it really get on my nerves too. FYI the entire BT transmission network is optical.
The difference is that with ADSL the 'last mile' from the exchange to the sub is over a copper pair. With cable the optical network extends to the street end cabinet, the cable drop being over co-ax.

The problem is that most people don't live within a mile of their exchange, so the "last mile" is often two miles or more, so "up to 8MB" in practice is 1Mb to 3Mb for most people. (We're 1.9 miles away and our speed used to be 1.7Mb).

Contention is clearly one possible issue, but then ADSL has that too. For most people who live in a cabled area, cable is the best or only chance of a decent connection which approaches anything like the quoted speed; ADSL is a hit and miss affair thanks to the archaic copper phone network.

To the OP - make sure that ADSL will run at somewhere in the region you expect, or you could find yourself trading a 10MB connection for a 512kbps one or worse.

In addition ref your comments about reliability: Virgin/cable used to be a "managed" service in that they are responsible for the whole thing from end to end. If ADSL packs up you could wait weeks for it to be fixed (from personal experience) and will be told that ADSL is not business grade broadband and has no SLA.

But then neither does cable and isn't meant to be used for business.