Broadband service

[teamsaint]

I am curious to know what level of service people get from their ISP's.

I use John Lewis. I have unlimited broadband and land line calls,which is just under £40 PM..There was a fault on the network this week, and JL would only promise to look at it in " Up to 72 hours", which turns out to be "at the end of the working day in which the 72 hour window ends"..effectively 80 hours. This seems pretty slow, just to look at the problem.

Anybody get better or worse service? I live in a rural area. We get fairly frequent short drop outs, and pretty sluggish download times, I would think, not that this too much of an issue.
All thoughts welcome.

Cheers

TS.

[Dave2002]

Difficult to say. Last year when everything failed round here our JL provider gave the best service, and kept us up to date with progress, and gave compensation. Talk Talk OTOH were fairly hopeless, so we switched the spare line to BT, though they aren't necessarily any better. Trying to get new installations can also be a pain in some areas, and some providers don't service all areas. Virgin seem quite good, where they operate. Where there are several providers all serving the same area, sometime they use the same engineers anyway, so getting speedier installations can be bottlenecked by lack of support staff. Personally I think taking 3-4 weeks to get broadband installed is very poor, but sometimes that seems to be the best which can be done. Latest experiences are with Plus Net. You might find that JL is as good as you can hope for, and if you switch you are quite likely not to get much better service. However, if there's a chance of getting high speed broadband by fibre services, you probably would notice a very significant improvement on downloads, though not necessarily in access times to web pages. In some not so urban areas, and even in some which are urban, fibre is not available, and I'd suggest you are probably better off sticking with what you've got.

[jayne lee wilson]

I've moved up over the last few years from BT Option 1, 2 and now BT Infinity 1. We're about 2 miles from the nearest exchange, and have always had excellent service and good speeds, now very good off Infinity with excellent stability e.g.. on R3 webcasts. I've never yet had a dropout via Infinity streaming... hope it stays that way...

[johnb]

I can't comment on other ISPs but I have been using Eclipse for getting on for 10 years and have found them very reliable indeed. I have no complaints apart from their high prices. Having said that I suspect they use the BT infrastructure anyway.

[Stunsworth]

I've been with Virgin for the last 10 years or so and can't recall having a problem. There's a 'free' upgrade later this year from 60mB to 100mB. By coincidence I ran a speed test this morning and got 59mB, so can't really complain.

That's for unlimited usage, which does seem to be the case, I've downloaded several gigs in the last few days due to Yosemite and iOS updates.

[Dave2002]

I've been with Virgin for the last 10 years or so and can't recall having a problem. There's a 'free' upgrade later this year from 60mB to 100mB. By coincidence I ran a speed test this morning and got 59mB, so can't really complain.

That's for unlimited usage, which does seem to be the case, I've downloaded several gigs in the last few days due to Yosemite and iOS updates.

I'd agree about that, though ts is in a rural-ish area, so may not be able to get Virgin, or any of the fibre systems, such as Infinity n.

[kernelbogey]

Help please!

I am suddenly getting substantial dropouts on sound only (radio and Player and tv) and/or on both sound and vision.

I seem to have noticed lately that websites are loading more slowly, but it wasn't something that had bothered me much. Only 24 hours earlier I had watched a whole film on iPlayer without a problem.

I phoned my provider (Utility Warehouse) last night and the helpline person said that he couldn't see any reason why this was to do with their broadband service.

Tests for download speeds last night and this morning reported 14.39 - 15.75mbps. The helpline man said they deliver 20mbps. A geographical check reported that my service was second best locally only to BT.

My kit is getting a bit elderly: six year old MacBook, running OSX 10.6.8. So I'm wondering if that needs looking at.

Any suggestions please?

BW, kb

[cloughie]

Help please!

I am suddenly getting substantial dropouts on sound only (radio and Player and tv) and/or on both sound and vision.

I seem to have noticed lately that websites are loading more slowly, but it wasn't something that had bothered me much. Only 24 hours earlier I had watched a whole film on iPlayer without a problem.

I phoned my provider (Utility Warehouse) last night and the helpline person said that he couldn't see any reason why this was to do with their broadband service.

Tests for download speeds last night and this morning reported 14.39 - 15.75mbps. The helpline man said they deliver 20mbps. A geographical check reported that my service was second best locally only to BT.

My kit is getting a bit elderly: six year old MacBook, running OSX 10.6.8. So I'm wondering if that needs looking at.

Any suggestions please?

BW, kb

BT email down this morning - anyone else got problems?

[Don Petter]

BT email down this morning - anyone else got problems?

No problems with it here.

[mercia]

from what I've read I'm rather confused whether distance from exchange or distance from the green "junction box" in the street is more important. My limited understanding is that it is the copper wires joining your home to the green box which slow things down, however good the (modernised ?) connection between exchange and green box is.

I've, perhaps rashly, decided to move away from perfectly good BT Infinity basically to save money. It peeves me rather to keep seeing these discount offers all companies have for new customers. The promise of free broadband for 12 months of an 18-month contract and cheaper line rental has lured me.

[Don Petter]

I've, perhaps rashly, decided to move away from perfectly good BT Infinity basically to save money. It peeves me rather to keep seeing these discount offers all companies have for new customers. The promise of free broadband for 12 months of an 18-month contract and cheaper line rental has lured me.

They can be tempting, but wouldn't that involve the hassle of having a new email address, something which seems to permeate everything we do, with not only contacts but so many usernames etc?

[mercia]

They can be tempting, but wouldn't that involve the hassle of having a new email address, something which seems to permeate everything we do, with not only contacts but so many usernames etc?

fortunately (!) I don't use my BT email address but a yahoo address which I'm hoping (!!!) I can use wherever I go

[Stunsworth]

They can be tempting, but wouldn't that involve the hassle of having a new email address, something which seems to permeate everything we do, with not only contacts but so many usernames etc?

I bought my own domain around 15 years ago, so my email address hasn't changed as I've moved ISP. However, that's possibly not practical if lots of people know your existing email address.

[kernelbogey]

Help please!

I am suddenly getting substantial dropouts on sound only (radio and Player and tv) and/or on both sound and vision.

I seem to have noticed lately that websites are loading more slowly, but it wasn't something that had bothered me much. Only 24 hours earlier I had watched a whole film on iPlayer without a problem.

I phoned my provider (Utility Warehouse) last night and the helpline person said that he couldn't see any reason why this was to do with their broadband service.

Tests for download speeds last night and this morning reported 14.39 - 15.75mbps. The helpline man said they deliver 20mbps. A geographical check reported that my service was second best locally only to BT.

My kit is getting a bit elderly: six year old MacBook, running OSX 10.6.8. So I'm wondering if that needs looking at.

Any suggestions please?

BW, kb

I've done a bit more testing after speaking to my broadband supplier again this morning. Currently listening to R3 via iTunes, no problem.

It looks as though the problem may be with the BBC iPlayer site.

Has anyone else had problems with this?

[kernelbogey]

[My post no 7]
Help please!

I am suddenly getting substantial dropouts on sound only (radio and Player and tv) and/or on both sound and vision.[....]

Thought I'd report that I'm now virtually certain this was a problem with BBC iPlayer, which went offline the following day for several hours.