Move to sky?

absolute0

neil40 wrote: »

I would move line rental to sky too.It is £12.25 per month compared to bt at £13.90.You get three months free line rental with sky.As said above-if you move your calls to Sky but keep with Bt for line rental,it will cost around £15 to £16 per month because they will charge for not making enough chargeable calls to get free caller display.

I'm concerned with doing this because if the broadband is pants and I went to get out of contract mid-term, then you have to pay the remaining contract amount, which would be quite a lot as a whole package.

I'm hoping that I can swap over line rental & calls at a later date if the broadband is ok?

MarrowFarmer

absolute0 wrote: »

I'm concerned with doing this because if the broadband is pants and I went to get out of contract mid-term, then you have to pay the remaining contract amount, which would be quite a lot as a whole package.

I'm hoping that I can swap over line rental & calls at a later date if the broadband is ok?

Not only that there is a strong possibilty that BT won't accept the existing line back and will insist on installing a new one at your expense!

absolute0

Ok, so I've finally moved to SKY. These are my stats. I'm hoping that things will get better over the next week.

I've noticed that the Noise Margin has gone done from 13db to 5.1db is this good or bad?

Connection Speed: 2176 kbps (Downstream) / 512 kbps (Upstream)
Line Attenuation: 60.0 dB (Downstream) / 31.5 dB (Upstream)
Noise Margin: 5.1 dB (Downstream) / 14.0 dB (Upstream)

penrhyn

In a word its bad, the router is synchronising at its limit, in fact that normally around 7db.
The noise margin figure is inversly proportional to the sync speed.
You are only a connection of 2 mbps or so.

This looks like a noisy line, you could expect to get around 3mbps, on your 60db line.

have you plugged the router into your master socket?

absolute0

I haven't changed to using a different socket since I was with my previous provider. I remember trying the different sockets in the house some time back and it didn't make much difference, I will try again and re-test.

SKY say that you should keep the router on permanently for the next week to stabilize. I would like to use my old NetGear router but from what I've read you can't use different routers with SKY as its a breach of their terms of use.

macman

You need to use the BT test socket-ths is the socket concealed behind the split faceplate on the master socket.
Testing from that will isolate your extension wiring and show if the problem is on the line (Sky's problem) or on your equipment/extension sockets or wiring/wireless set up (your problem).

qpop

It sounds like you might have an old telephone line system. All this talk of master sockets is well and good if you have one - in my last rental place we didnt! And although all the speed checkers estimated 20mbps I was getting 6-7mbps. On a noisy line!

A couple of things to do:
Make sure you have a microfilter on every used sockets (the things the ISP provide you to split the line) not just the one you have the router plugged into but throughout the house, and if you fancy more extreme(ish) measures and do have an old telephone system, you should try removing the ring wire.

Lots of details here: kitz.co.uk/adsl/socket.htm (I'm not allowed to post links as a new user, just copy and paste into a browser) about halfway down the page. I did this in our last place and the line speed jumped from 7 - 10 mbps with a far better noise profile. Basically ring wires are relics from a bygone era when phones needed extra power to provide rings. Removing it had no negative effect on the phone line as far as I can see but a 40% increase in line speed on ADSL. Well worth the ten minutes it took unscrewing all the phone sockets and snipping all the wires.

maxtweenie

neil40 wrote: »

I would move line rental to sky too.It is £12.25 per month compared to bt at £13.90.You get three months free line rental with sky.As said above-if you move your calls to Sky but keep with Bt for line rental,it will cost around £15 to £16 per month because they will charge for not making enough chargeable calls to get free caller display.

Absolutely agree with this. I have broadband & calls with AOL, and line rental with BT. As BT charge extra for 1571 and caller display, I reckon it's costing me nearer to £18 a month by the time VAT etc is added on. I'm just about to shift everything to Sky, saving me just over £3 a month. I'd rather have that £36 a year in my pocket than let BT have it. I see topcashback are currently paying £50 to switch to Sky broadband and calls so I might be able to get about 9 months free line rental if it tracks and pays.