Broadband: how much of a difference can a provider make?

SouthLondonUser

As per the title. I wonder how much of a difference an internet provider can make to the speed and quality of an internet connection. Unless the provider intentionally throttles or cripples your bandwidth, or provides you with a poor, unreliable router, does the quality of the service largely depend on how distant you are to the switch, the quality of the cables, etc, all things which are beyond the control of both the user and the provider? Or can the provider really make a difference?

I'd appreciate it if someone with technical knowledge could add some colour. In my current property I have not experienced major differences using fibre with BT, TalkTalk and Vodafone. Vodafone's router is terrible, but that's a separate story ( http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5603868 ). However, individual cases are just that: individual cases which are not necessarily significant.

[Deleted User]

The only other variable (that I'm aware of) that you've missed is number of subscribers on each service. That's presuming that each one has a set maximum throughput which has to be shared among it's subscriber list from a particular exchange.

SouthLondonUser

Interesting point. Is congestion determined by the number of users of each provider (BT, TalkTalk, etc), or by the number of users in a given geographical area, regardless of which provider they are on?

kwikbreaks

For phone line based technologies..

For BT based services exchange backhaul is rarely an issue and when it is the capacity will usually be increased reasonably quickly. It probably is the same with non-BT backhaul too.

Certainly where contention used to be an issue was in the number of end point devices each ISP had installed with cheapskate ISPs allocating far too little bandwidth per customer so choice of ISP could make a very big differnce to your experience. From the far fewer complaints you see these days about evening slowdowns I think that issue must have been resolved.

ISPs do vary on how good they are are recognising just what a particular fault is likely to be caused by and how willing they are to call out Openreach.

For cable things are different. The crunch point there is just how many customers are sharing the local optical node which has a far smaller bandwidth than a telephone exchange. That lower bandwidth is shared with far fewer customers than a phone exchange will serve but is less able to cope with bandwidth hogs. Cable networks can deliver high headline speeds but couldn't cope with large numbers using those speeds constantly. It's the upstream where any saturation will normally occur and that is usually down to torrenting where some seed 24x7.

Most people on cable will get good performance. If you are unlucky enough to get congestion in your local area (maybe just a street) VM seem to take an absolute age to sort it out. This was one of the reasons I left them although the real trigger was my annoyance that they asked for a small increase just two months after I had negotiated a deal. The apparent recent intransigence of Plusnet to continue offering decent discounts may see me return to cable when my current Plusnet minimum term runs out. I'm wary of many of the others as some insist on you using their usually dire routers.

SouthLondonUser

@kwikbreaks, that's very useful - thanks a lot!
Virgin Media does not reach my property, however it does reach the one two buildings down the road!

Anyway, given what you have just said, is there anything specific you'd recommend I look into in my comparison of Plusnet vs TalkTalk? I have fibre with speeds of ca 44 Mb/sec. Yes, not real fibre, but fibre to the cabinet, if I'm not mistaken.

kwikbreaks

To be honest I'd base most judgements these days on simple cost. I don't see many complaints about throttling and where I do I suspect it is some other issue - usually WiFi. PN were reasonable when I had a line fault and called out OR to fix it - mind you the BTw speed test said there was a fault so there wasn't really any wriggle room.

If you want to use your own router check that TalkTalk allow it - as I mentioned PN do.

If you are looking at less than full fat FTTC (ie not 76/20) then check what upload is being offered if that matters to you - it doesn't figure in the adverts. Some (possibly PN) only offer 2Mbps up with their 40Mbps down FTTC products others offer 10Mbps.

For the majority of people 10Mbps would actually satisfy most needs with current content offerings unless you are looking at downloading gigabits of data from Steam for gaming. Video downloads are rarely needed instantly and even HD streaming isn't especially demanding.

SouthLondonUser

I moved from TalkTalk to Vodafone because it was cheaper, and I deeply regretted it because the experience was horrible, mainly because of their incredibly poor router. A banal research of online forums does not suggest any particular issue with neither TalkTalk nor Plusnet, other than the Talktalk router not liking the PS4 in some cases (there was a separate thread on this forum). I have verified that they both allow you to use your own router, but it probably shouldn't even be necessary.

Thanks!