Totally confused

dane-katie

I have a BT LL and BT BB, currently get roughly 4mb speed on BB (but BT think we can only get 2mb).

I go on to samknows and get the following information:

The following services are available in your location:

BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
AOL LLU
TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU

I wouldnt want to go with AOL or TalkTalk, so i ring sky as i am finding BT way too expensive (BB £20 unlimited, LL £13.20 plus £5/6 for unlimited callsn per month)

But they say all they can give me is 1.5Mb, am i missing something here? i thought they used the same line etc?

If i go with Sky it cuts my bill down by £15 a month! but if its going to be slower then i cant change as both me and my OH play World Of Warcraft online.

Any ideas?

dane-katie

BTW LL is out of contract now, BB is out of contract in May.

Every company i look at even the ones not on the list above say they can give me up to 2Mb.

penrhyn

Its because they all use the same database.
If you log on to your router and obtain your line statistics, in particular the downstream attenuation figure we can give you a better estimate.

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

BTW ISPs have long been accused of promising speeds you line can't suppost, so they are more conservative these days.

kwikbreaks

You get what your line can deliver regardless of any estimate you are given.

Sky LLU will be ADSL2+ so you may get a bit more than the 4Mbps you are getting on what I'm guessing is plain ADSL. Unfortunately it won't be vastly more as the major benefits are with shorter lines than yours.

Be aware that the free Sky BB is a low cap (just 2GB I think) which is unlkely to be enough for most people.

dane-katie

kwikbreaks wrote: »

You get what your line can deliver regardless of any estimate you are given.

Sky LLU will be ADSL2+ so you may get a bit more than the 4Mbps you are getting on what I'm guessing is plain ADSL. Unfortunately it won't be vastly more as the major benefits are with shorter lines than yours.

Be aware that the free Sky BB is a low cap (just 2GB I think) which is unlkely to be enough for most people.

Thanks, it would have to be the unlimited package (which i have accounted for in cost) as we used 40Gb in decemeber, but that was mainly due to World Of Warcraft bringing Cataclism out and having to download it on to 2 different computers.

dane-katie

Downstream 4,992 Kbps
Upstream 448 Kbps

ADSL Settings

VPI/VCI 0/38
Type PPPoA
Modulation G.992.1 Annex A
Latency type Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up) 5.3 dB / 24.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up) 51.4 dB / 28.0 dB
Output power (Down/Up) 7.8 dBm / 1.8 dBm

penrhyn

At the moment you are synchronising with the exchange at 4.9Mbps, which is very good.
With your line attenuation of 51db, you would expect to get between 4.5 and 6.5 Mbps.

BT do throttle speed at peak times, so you wont go as fast as that.
Overheads will account for taking around 10% off the sync speed as well.

brewerdave

If Sky are saying that you will only get 1.5Mb then I would suspect that they don't have space available on the exchange for you to be llu'd.....they are presumably quoting for their standard ADSL offering which is generally slagged off for reliability and speed. You also wouldn't make the savings you expect.

kwikbreaks

brewerdave wrote: »

If Sky are saying that you will only get 1.5Mb then I would suspect that they don't have space available on the exchange for you to be llu'd.....they are presumably quoting for their standard ADSL offering which is generally slagged off for reliability and speed. You also wouldn't make the savings you expect.

Possible but unlikley imo. Certainly Sky Connect should be avoided.

There are new Ofcom guidelines that have to be adhered to now concerning speed estimates. The BT database says 2Mbps and my betting is that Sky are just giving a conservative estimate. ADSL2+ won't deliver any more than ADSL on a line that can only manage 2Mbps and in fact is sometimes worse. As this line in reality syncs at close to 5Mbps that is not a concern. All prices (and therefore the package being sold) would have to be revealed when signing up.

dane-katie

penrhyn wrote: »

At the moment you are synchronising with the exchange at 4.9Mbps, which is very good.
With your line attenuation of 51db, you would expect to get between 4.5 and 6.5 Mbps.

BT do throttle speed at peak times, so you wont go as fast as that.
Overheads will account for taking around 10% off the sync speed as well.

Thanks i dont want to risk moving to Sky and only getting 1.5Mb so i think we will stay with BT but try and get them to reduce the amount we pay the difference is £15 a month so if they give me a discount of £10 a month or more ill be happy.

Knowing my luck id move to Sky and then not be able to play WOW lol

kwikbreaks

You asked.

You were told you wouldn't be limited to the estimate.

You decide to stay with the more expensive (and inferior as it happens) service.

Why did you bother asking?