Broadband speeds

emmylou69

Hi,
Please can someone explain (in easy simple terms lol) what difference I will notice with a lower speed broadband.
I currently have a max speed of 7megs. It doesn't seem superfast or anything but works ok.
The house we are moving to has a max speed of 0.5meg (it is out in the sticks!).
Will broadband still work ok or will it be too slow to do anything? We use it for email and surfing, online banking etc mainly - very little in the way of music downloads (the occasional itunes track etc) but the kids sometimes play a few games online.
Will pages load slower etc or is that not how it works?
Sorry to be a dimwit but I am so not a techy person!!
Cheers,
Emma

yesiamtom

for general web browsing you wont notice any difference to be honest. Even video streaming such as youtube should be okay, it may be a little slower but quite often it is the sites (not your own connection) that is slow.

For games, what sort of games?
If they play video games such as counterstrike then yes, they will find it slower. However as long as the connection is stable there shouldnt be a problem.
If you mean flash games, ie games from kongregate or newgrounds, they may load slower but the actual game should be completely unnaffected.

emmylou69

Just to add - I have looked on samknows and it says the exchange is LLU enabled but only for Orange and TalkTalk - not BT/AOL/o2 etc etc.

Does this mean I am better off going with orange or talktalk? Will their speed be faster?

Help!!

emmylou69

Thank you yesiamtom, they play flash games AFAIK. Although they play things like Age Of Empires type games - the ones where you set up an army or something, can't remember the name!

macman

What does the BT checker says your line speed will be at the new house?
http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

TT or Orange should be your cheapest options but not necessarily faster unless they offer an ADSL2+ service.
Try the TT line checker to get an indication of your likely speed.
http://www.talktalk.co.uk/broadband/checkavailability
0.5MBps will be fine for everything you list, but some types of gaming will be slow. Remember 0.5MBps is still 10 x faster than dial up.

Tozer

I had exactly the same issue. 9mb with O2 LLU and moved to the countryside where the only LLU is Talk Talk.

We were advised that we would have speeds of "up to 0.5mbs" but are achieving 0.7mbs with TalkTalk. Not used it for gaming just yet but seems generally ok.

emmylou69

It says the exchange is ADSL enabled and we should be able to have a fixed line rate up to 512kbps.
It also indicates that the line currently supports a potential ADSL max broadband line rate of 500kbps or greater.

emmylou69

Talktalk says 512kbps.

emmylou69

Tozer - how do you find talktalk generally? Are they helpful etc?

macman

So from your checks it does look like 0.5MBps is about the best you will get. Are you sure that 02 is not available LLU?-O2 have greater LLU coverage than Orange, so if you can get Orange, I'm surprised that you can't get O2.
It's listed on samknows as '02/Be Unlimited'.
If you can get O2 LLU then it's a no-brainer at £1.34 per month at present with the discounts.
I wouldn't touch Orange BB. TT network is generally OK but the CS and tech support is ropey. If no O2, TT is the best option (Essentials package at £17.74).

emmylou69

I don't know if this will work but this is where I got the info, I think o2 is not enabled.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EAWYM

What happens if I go with a provider other than Talktalk? Say BT? Does it just cost more or is the service worse?