Does Broadband Supplier Make Any Difference In A Village

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BT seems to have spells or crawling along to the extent that some days it is causing productivity problems for us.

We are about 3 miles from the exchange.

Does it make any difference who we buy our broadband from in terms of speed.

[KM-Tiger]

Quite possibly not if the alternatives are re-sold BT Wholesale connections.

But there might be alternatives. The LLU suppliers like Be/O2 or BT's new 21CN network.

See what's available at your exchange by putting your phone number into the checker here:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php

[Zeal]

Have you tried Virgin (http://allyours.virginmedia.com/)Page?

[My Owl 1]

Hi

The problem with living 3 miles from the exchange or green box is that with any provider the speed reduces from its source exchange or green box. You could ask when Outreach are going to upgrade their system, but it is a supply and demand and expensive to upgrade systems especially if you are living in a small village. LLU also is not the answer to getting quicker speed as this is also dependant on th distance from you to the exchange green box, however if the initial signal strength is faster to begin with then you might get a Mbps faster.

Where are you based. If you would like me to see whether it would be benefical to move to another provider I will let you know. Exchanges are improving daily but it still may be a long process before you receive 24mbps. Hub boxes in my experience do not make any difference if you are so far away. So probably look for a provider that is not going to charge you £££s for a slow service.

Sorry I could not be more positive.

Best wishes

Avril
www.savemoneywithus.co.uk (http://www.savemoneywithus.co.uk)
ps We are LLU suppliers too.

[papverpoppies]

I live 4 miles from the exchange, and 2MB is the most this area can get - irrespective of who our ISPs are!

Most of the time it is not even that!

Many companies will not even entertain rural areas..

Poppy

[KM-Tiger]

LLU also is not the answer to getting quicker speed as this is also dependant on th distance from you to the exchange green box ...

With respect, that's misleading.

Certainly a long line is still a long line, and changing to LLU isn't going to magically increase the speed to the maximum that LLU can offer. Far from it.

But what I've seen with a few long(ish) lines now is that there is a marked speed increase by changing to LLU. 33% of 24 mbps is a lot faster than 33% of 8 mbps, particularly if it can be sustained, and the more than doubled upload will interest some.

[Page]

Have you tried Virgin (http://allyours.virginmedia.com/)Page?

Yep they actually only do domestic but the NTL side does commercial - same set up though.
They are not spending anything on digging up for new cables at the moment.
I offered to get some interest from others but they said forget it.

It can be so bad that we are getting page not available as opposed to slow.

It has been poorly before but then got better.

I shall try and ring BT tomorrow.

I could not pick up these posts until I got home!

[KidsBeeHappy]

I live 4 miles from the exchange, and 2MB is the most this area can get - irrespective of who our ISPs are!

Most of the time it is not even that!

Many companies will not even entertain rural areas..

Poppy

Huh! You're SOooooooo lucky!! Until I moved here we were in a village on 512kps

[My Owl 1]

Huh! You're SOooooooo lucky!! Until I moved here we were in a village on 512kps
OK if you like pm me your numbers and I can check whether there is a service that can be better. NO I am not suggesting UW unless it is clearly better. Just networking.:D

Best wishes
Avril :)
www.savemoneywithus.co.uk (http://www.savemoneywithus.co.uk)

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Turns out we were on residential broadband - we signed up when it first came to the village and before they had 2 sorts i think.

I have been told if I swap to business it should speed up because of something they do so awaiting the call.

[My Owl 1]

Turns out we were on residential broadband - we signed up when it first came to the village and before they had 2 sorts i think.

I have been told if I swap to business it should speed up because of something they do so awaiting the call.

Hi I am not sure how that works!!! Especially if you are on a small village exchange. I would ask another business in the area whether they have got "faster" broadband, or is it all just to keep you as a customer and for a contract period. Uncharted territory for me I must be honest but it will still be the same phone number the same line. Call me a sceptic if you like.:rolleyes:

Best wishes
Avril:)

[KM-Tiger]

I have been told if I swap to business it should speed up because of something they do so awaiting the call.

It's hard to know what that really means. As far as I've ever been able to determine, none of the suppliers have ever been open and transparent about what "business" actually means. It could mean:

Simply a convenient label to justify charging more to businesses than to consumers.

That network traffic on 'business' connections is routed and handled differently. If this is true it will be in the ISP's network beyond the exchange, so will only help if that's where the speed bottleneck is.

Using BT Wholesale ADSLmax Premium rather than ADSLmax. The essential difference between these is actually a doubled upload speed for the Premium product, which may be of interest to those that either upload a lot or use VOIP. Probably combined with different routing as above.

All a bit of a lottery really, changing to 'business' might make a difference, might not.

[jimbob11]

Hi, use www,samknows.co.uk that can tell you about your exchange. Our exchange BT only supply up to 8 meg but opal & talk talk 24 meg.

[My Owl 1]

It's hard to know what that really means. As far as I've ever been able to determine, none of the suppliers have ever been open and transparent about what "business" actually means. It could mean:

Simply a convenient label to justify charging more to businesses than to consumers.

That network traffic on 'business' connections is routed and handled differently. If this is true it will be in the ISP's network beyond the exchange, so will only help if that's where the speed bottleneck is.

Using BT Wholesale ADSLmax Premium rather than ADSLmax. The essential difference between these is actually a doubled upload speed for the Premium product, which may be of interest to those that either upload a lot or use VOIP. Probably combined with different routing as above.

All a bit of a lottery really, changing to 'business' might make a difference, might not.
They are all dependant on the lines and equipment available so probably do not have any impact on the speed.
Sorry.
:(
Avril

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A scam - well that might be my attitude normally - but what I believe happens is that you have a bit at the exchange handing all the traffic coming in and sending out to the recipients.

And what this does is detect who the recipient is and if busy says look after them with more preference than looking after the others.

It used to be that "higher quality" (business broadband) had less users on the same bit of line (contention) but maybe that is all history as the technology marches onwards.

[othellotech]

Does it make any difference who we buy our broadband from in terms of speed.

If they're a "reseller" or "affiliate" of BT or dont operate their own network and L2TP handoff - none at all - you'll be getting Bt just with someone else's name on the bill each month.

In terms of
* the speed your line can sync to a rural exchange - no
* the speed you'll see on a clear day when the rest of the village are all out at work from a speedtest site - no
* the exchange's capabilities and backhaul to the Radius/presentation hardware - no

In terms of
* their support (like do you get any) - yes
* the capacity they have for inbound and outbound connectivity - yes
* the features that may be included - yes
* an IP address that isnt on every mail blacklist - yes

Of course it might be what you're doing that makes you think it's "slow" or omething installed on your machine, or ....
... there are days in London when a 24Mb ADSL2 goes at sub 30kb/s due to weather and contention ...

[DorsetLockDoctor]

I think that BT / whoever should concentrate on getting us rural folk a decent service and start sorting out our exchanges instead of upgrading the places that already get 8Mb +

We pay the same in most cases and dont get any reduction for lack of service.

Just my opinion from my 512kb connection that is mostly slower than my old dial up one . . .

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Feedback

New business broadband in

we now get 6.96 was 1.77 download - yes will vary a bit
0.33 was 0.12 upload

and there should be less contention or whatever else goes on

[paulears]

The entire system (with just a few exceptions) is in the hands of BT, via openreach and BT Wholesale. I'm well versed with BT speed issues, having spent the best part of a year in dispute with BT. My 20 Meg business broadband was running around 5% of that, and best thing was BT tested it, or at least tried to, but the speed was so slow the test failed. As a result, they informed me that they couldn't do anything, and they offered me £60 to keep the slow speed. In the end, I requested a new line, got it fitted, and then added a new internet account to that one. Speed was around 7.5 meg - I was happy, so cancelled the old internet. This of course went wrong, but three months later, I think they've sorted. However, although download speed is still 6.6 - 7, the upload speed is less than 1, and often this brings it to a standstill as it all just comes to a stop.

In the dispute period plenty of people tried to flog me cheaper than BT service, but once they knew about BTs inability to provide good service, they all backed off. Bar a couple, of course, who's telesales people were unable to grasp the problem.

If you have a bad bit of copper, then there's not a lot you can do about it.