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BT Broadband : fair use policy ! (Warning contains moaning)

My quite tip to you is this:

From what I've been told by someone who worked for virgin, most ISP's will only monitor your bandwidth usage during peak times, in virgins case, it's 1pm -11pm, if you do any large downloads/uploads outside of that, your fine, they don't care.
 
Just thought I'd pop back and give my BT connection a speed test.

We're paying for a 2mbps connection. Current speed now? 732kbps*. I'll have a complain with BT later, if they're charging me for 2mbps but giving us less than half of that then I demand a price reduction to match.

This is ridiculous. We're not even heavy broadband users. No big downloads, no streaming. Just email and forums.

* Router says we're at 928kbps.

Out of interest are there any good ISP's out there?
 
remmy said:
Ignore these big providers such as BT and Virgin, I won't go near them. Poor customer service and hidden contracts. Find a smaller provider that gives what you want as soon as the contract ends.
Click to expand...

That is a very good idea.

I is stuck on BT.

Virgin sucks, I would never go near them!!! They have bad service (they used to be NTL, didnt they?) and they cut off your connection for using torrents! :mad:
 
I'm with Homecall who are now owned by Pipex. There not terrible, I usually get around 5mb and it should be 8mb. And I download well over 100gb per month, they don't seem to care.
 
Peterkro said:
Be* and ADSL24 I can recommend there are others I'm sure will be recommended.
Click to expand...

Awesome! ADSL24 says my number will be able to get the full service in March '09 - just in time for when our BT contract expires.
 
I've switched to O2 at 8Mbps. Downloading is good at 700-800 kbps.

Never experienced a cap, and I must have download at least 30-40 GB per month as there's three of us sharing the connection, all from different countries so we d/l our own shows and watch live news.

Support is great and it's a toll-free no. I'd recommend O2 to anyone.

Ps. O2 is actually Be Unlimited.
 
I'm surprised that companies that advertise "unlimited" packages don't get sued more often.

I'd agree with those who suggested going with smaller providers, that's worked well for me too. Now have an excellent 7Mb no-contention, reliable service with no-quibbles over usage; and hope to upgrade to 10 or 12 this month.
 
raggedjimmi said:
Just thought I'd pop back and give my BT connection a speed test.

We're paying for a 2mbps connection. Current speed now? 732kbps*. I'll have a complain with BT later, if they're charging me for 2mbps but giving us less than half of that then I demand a price reduction to match.

This is ridiculous. We're not even heavy broadband users. No big downloads, no streaming. Just email and forums.

* Router says we're at 928kbps.

Out of interest are there any good ISP's out there?
Click to expand...

You're, um, not quite on the money there.

if you're getting a download rate of 732kbps then you're actually surpassing your 2mbps connection somewhat.
 
What I meant was the usually numbers are between 1900-2100kbps (which I thought was 2mbps?), but we're at 700kbps during these hours. I didn't say it was download speed. Just the running speed that our router and speedtest.net says.

Needless to say it'll jump back up again tonight after the 5pm rush.
 
the trouble is no one is really investing in the network (until BT eventually get round to 21CN) but even then you'll still have the same old copper/aluminium cables running to your house.

No company wants to invest in re-pulling cables to every house that wants it. So instead they put you on a heavily contended services and the only way to keep it relatively stable is to stop you usiing it properly!!! Virgin is the same, it's so oversubscribed without increasing capacity, their answer is to put caps in to stop you using it!!!

they really need to get off their asses and pull fibre to the home and increase the backhaul capability.

Best bet is to invest in some very expensive 2 way satellite internet connections with heavy lags :) pointing to Eutelsat's Eurobird 3 :)
 
raggedjimmi said:
What I meant was the usually numbers are between 1900-2100kbps (which I thought was 2mbps?), but we're at 700kbps during these hours. I didn't say it was download speed. Just the running speed that our router and speedtest.net says.

Needless to say it'll jump back up again tonight after the 5pm rush.
Click to expand...
If speedtest says you're getting about 700kbps you are in fact, hitting around 6.7mbps.

1900-2100kbps throughput would put your connection nearer to 20mbps.


garybUK said:
the trouble is no one is really investing in the network (until BT eventually get round to 21CN) but even then you'll still have the same old copper/aluminium cables running to your house.

No company wants to invest in re-pulling cables to every house that wants it. So instead they put you on a heavily contended services and the only way to keep it relatively stable is to stop you usiing it properly!!! Virgin is the same, it's so oversubscribed without increasing capacity, their answer is to put caps in to stop you using it!!!

they really need to get off their asses and pull fibre to the home and increase the backhaul capability.
Click to expand...

21CN is going to be too little, too late. FTH isn't happening, FTK (kerb) is more likely, however they're still not 100% that it's going to be accessible to anyone other than BT. The most likely is ADSL2+, or (fingers crossed) VDSL2+ upgrades at the DSLAMS. Which will still keep us behind the world broadband network.
 
How very odd!
Well I wish my connection could push past the 60-120kbps (time of day depending) download speed.
 
bigandy said:
If speedtest says you're getting about 700kbps you are in fact, hitting around 6.7mbps.

1900-2100kbps throughput would put your connection nearer to 20mbps.
Click to expand...

I'm very confused - are you saying speedtest is very, very inaccurate; or are you mixing up bits per second and bytes per second?
 
bigandy said:
21CN is going to be too little, too late. FTH isn't happening, FTK (kerb) is more likely, however they're still not 100% that it's going to be accessible to anyone other than BT. The most likely is ADSL2+, or (fingers crossed) VDSL2+ upgrades at the DSLAMS. Which will still keep us behind the world broadband network.
Click to expand...

That's easy for you to say...
 
whooleytoo said:
I'm very confused - are you saying speedtest is very, very inaccurate; or are you mixing up bits per second and bytes per second?
Click to expand...

If it helps to clear anything up I'm being told-

Router - 1664kbps / 449kbps up
Speedtest.net - 728kbps / 364kbps up
IE Download - 93kbps
 
raggedjimmi said:
If it helps to clear anything up I'm being told-

Router - 1664kbps / 449kbps up
Speedtest.net - 728kbps / 364kbps up
IE Download - 93kbps
Click to expand...

The speedtest test scores are quite low, less than 40% of the advertised speed; BUT the key is the contention. You might be with an ISP with 12:1 (or even 24:1) contention, which means they're only promising to provide 2Mbps / 12 = 166.66kbps; though it's generally going to be far higher. Depending on what their tech support is like, you might have a tough job getting any improvement, seeing as you're over that figure.

If you had an ISP with no contention, a 2Mbps connection IS a 2Mbps connection. (for instance, our 9Mbps connection is getting 8944kbps/711kbps up during business hours).
 
whooleytoo said:
The speedtest test scores are quite low, less than 40% of the advertised speed; BUT the key is the contention. You might be with an ISP with 12:1 (or even 24:1) contention, which means they're only promising to provide 2Mbps / 12 = 166.66kbps; though it's generally going to be far higher. Depending on what their tech support is like, you might have a tough job getting any improvement, seeing as you're over that figure.

If you had an ISP with no contention, a 2Mbps connection IS a 2Mbps connection. (for instance, our 9Mbps connection is getting 8944kbps/711kbps up during business hours).
Click to expand...

Notice how ISPs advertise their speeds as "up to". They are saying it may or may not go up to 8meg speeds (for example) but it dosent always mean the cables in your area can do it.

Its like saying a car will go up to 200MPH, but if you are on a London road you can only go 5, no matter how good the car is. :D
 
PowerFullMac said:
Notice how ISPs advertise their speeds as "up to". They are saying it may or may not go up to 8meg speeds (for example) but it dosent always mean the cables in your area can do it.

Its like saying a car will go up to 200MPH, but if you are on a London road you can only go 5, no matter how good the car is. :D
Click to expand...

True, though I think they're just covering their bums on the contention issue there.

If someone here signs up for a bargain basement Eircom broadband package, they might be getting a 1Mbps connection with 1:24 contention; which means in the evenings when everyone is online their new broadband package is slower than a dial-up modem. If it's 1:48 contention, it's waaay slower than a dialup modem.

I'm amazed the Eircom site doesn't even list the contention anywhere, even if you delve down into the details. Little wonder they print "up to", indeed! :p
 
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