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From frying pan to fire?

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Right now, the only thing stopping me changing phone and broadband provider is what happens if the promised service turns out to be not fast enough for our needs, despite the would-be new provider's assurance that it will be.

What would my position be?
We're all doomed
«1

Comments

  • JJ_Egan
    JJ_Egan Posts: 20,281 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Depends upon what you mean by fast enough .
    Depends upon the t&c as their will be a figure that ISP will use to say its slower than xxx you can cancel without penalty .
    But this figure is very low anyway and does not mean much to the average user .
    They actually make no promise regarding line speed as so many factors outside of their control apply . See what you see but it states UP TO 8mb / 16 mb etc .

    Unless you change to Virgin all services come down the very same BT line anyway .
  • Si_Clist
    Si_Clist Posts: 1,547 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Well, I've now established that Openreach say that we'll actually get up to 4Mbs here on copper, so the question as to whether or not we jump ship from BT now boils down to buffering. At 4Mbs, am I going to get buffering with Spotify, internet radio or streaming video (standard definition) off YouTube and the news sites?

    I wonder ...
    We're all doomed
  • corf999
    corf999 Posts: 348 Forumite
    In theory you are receiving the maximum speed you line can sync at. Therefore unless you are switching to fibre or virgin your speed is likely to be the same.
  • Si_Clist
    Si_Clist Posts: 1,547 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Many thanks for the replies. I do believe we're sorted now :)
    We're all doomed
  • macman
    macman Posts: 53,129 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 3 September 2015 at 12:00PM
    Switching provider will make no difference. If 4MBps is what your line can support, that's the most you will get, regardless of provider, since the line will not change.
    The question you need to answer is why your present ADSL provider is not giving that-and the answer is invariably down to internal faults in the property, bad extension wiring, poor quality filters, poor wi-fi, etc. All nothing to do with the provider.
    No free lunch, and no free laptop ;)
  • rusty_f
    rusty_f Posts: 119 Forumite
    edited 4 September 2015 at 9:37PM
    macman wrote: »
    Switching provider will make no difference. If 4MBps is what your line can support, that's the most you will get, regardless of provider, since the line will not change.
    The question you need to answer is why your present ADSL provider is not giving that-and the answer is invariably down to internal faults in the property, bad extension wiring, poor quality filters, poor wi-fi, etc. All nothing to do with the provider.

    This isn't strictly true. Line speed can vary depending on the equipment being used by that ISP at the exchange, although it should be negligible.

    Another reason for speed variations between ISPs would be network congestion. My grandparents were on a service provided via BT Wholesale for years and suffered really poor speeds (sub-1Mb when the line could theoretically support 8Mb). It was down to severe congestion at the reseller ISPs handover point. Their exchange recently had TalkTalk move in and because TalkTalk use their own equipment rather than going via the BT Wholesale network, they got a significant performance improvement (now getting virtually top line speeds at all times).
  • JJ_Egan
    JJ_Egan Posts: 20,281 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    I had the opposite experience TT LLU terrible unreliable dropped connections . Moved to BE brilliant no problems .
    TT customer services blamed my bad line .
  • brewerdave
    brewerdave Posts: 8,710 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    TT can suffer from congestion as well; two or three years ago my s-i-l in desperation, was going to cancel over his (barely) 1Mb line.
    Finally got put thru' to 2nd level support who admitted that his line was restricted -within 10 minutes he was up at ~ 6Mb. Left them soon after !!
  • brewerdave wrote: »
    TT can suffer from congestion as well; two or three years ago my s-i-l in desperation, was going to cancel over his (barely) 1Mb line.
    Finally got put thru' to 2nd level support who admitted that his line was restricted -within 10 minutes he was up at ~ 6Mb. Left them soon after !!

    Congestion issues (which affect all mainstream ISPs) cannot be solved in 10 mins...it takes weeks/months to get the additional backhaul links in place. Most likely your SIL had a stuck (capped) profile which can be removed instantly.
  • brewerdave
    brewerdave Posts: 8,710 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Congestion issues (which affect all mainstream ISPs) cannot be solved in 10 mins...it takes weeks/months to get the additional backhaul links in place. Most likely your SIL had a stuck (capped) profile which can be removed instantly.
    I understand that... ....but why was it capped ?? We suspected that they lacked capacity on the exchange due to their "cheap" deals being so successful at that time, so were capping a number of people randomly to keep the overall bandwidth down ...only when he shouted loudly enuf ,did they give him a reasonable connection speed. For all we know, TT customers on that exchange are still suffering:)
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