Decent Broadband In Stannington??

[lucasdigital]

Old thred but I need to bump it.

I live on Woodfarm Drive, just up woodlane for those who don't know it.

For years I've only ever been able to get a 1 meg connection from Talk Talk and that's on a good day.

 

Right now my speeds are 672.0 kbps. I've phoned BT about my phone line issues before but apprently the phone line is working fine. My equipment works fine also (aside from my router I bought myself, due to my slow internet at the moment).

 

My contract with Talk Talk is over now and I am open to switching to somewhere that can offer me better speeds if at all possible. I've been thinking about switching to BT but not sure if that would help. It's very frustrating having these slow speeds even when using a modem. Almost more frustrating than knowing Stannington is stuck in the stone age when it comes to broadband speeds it would seem.

 

Any advice or help would be great.

 

Hi,

 

Until this fibre service is more widely available, we're stuffed. Unless there's a cable service, pretty much the only means of getting broadband is over the available phone network (BT's wires and cabinets). In our case there are two factors that result in Stannington's poor speeds. Firstly our local exchange is way over at Wadsley Bridge. Available broadband speeds drop off, the further away you are from your exchange.

 

Secondly, there was a shortage of copper when much of Stannington's phone cabling was laid out, so a fair amount of aluminum was used, which was acceptable for carrying voice signals, but lousy for broadband.

 

Now, because Stannington doesn't have a cable service, if you get broadband from a company that isn't BT you're effectively still getting the same quality of broadband, in terms of maximum available speed (because Talk Talk, Virgin et al still use BT's infrastructure).

 

Where different Internet providers comes in is when you're getting a maximum available speed, but your actual speed is persistently falling below this. Then the cause of the poor speed is usually congestion on the service.

Edited November 11, 2010 by lucasdigital

[wwinterj]

I see..... so what would be your advise on my problem?

I used to get 1.1 mbps speed and as you can now see the speed has dropped a lot and has been like this for a few weeks now.

 

I've phone Talk Talk about this and they say my line can only get 500kbps....

I know this is not the case as I've had speeds of around 1.1 mbps for years.

I can't even use my belkin router with these slow speeds because it needs a high speed connection so I have to use my modem.

 

 

I've put the problem down to the bad weather myself as I've had no joy with phoning Talk Talk or BT.

I see what speeds other isps can provide me on there websites and that says around 1.5 mbps.

 

I can't for the life of me work out this problem and I need to use my router for my network. I've made sure nothing my end is causing any problems also. I can't do nothing when I'm paying £15 a month for a service I don't seem to be getting. The only thing I can think of is to switch my ISP as there is no fault on my BT line.

Edited November 12, 2010 by wwinterj

[jeppers]

Hi,

 

Unfortunately for you, Stannington is on the Wadsley Bridge exchange which is already enabled, but the village itself is currently not live. Drop me a PM and I'll check when you're due to be switched on.

 

Just to confirm what's been said before, the distance you are from the street cabinet you're connected too, and what quality copper line connects you to it, will both influence the speeds you can get, but we reckon that if you're less than 500m away, you should see 20Mbps or more when using Digital Region.

 

Rich

[SUZIFACE]

Im in Rivelin and its crap here too. Does anyone know if you switch broadband provider, can you take your old email address with you. O2 are trying to tell me you can, I aint sure. Any knowledge of this would be appreciated.

Thanks

[evildrneil]

Im in Rivelin and its crap here too. Does anyone know if you switch broadband provider, can you take your old email address with you. O2 are trying to tell me you can, I aint sure. Any knowledge of this would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

If it's an O2 email address then no - they will be hosting your mailboxes and will cease to do so when you close down your account.

[SUZIFACE]

If it's an O2 email address then no - they will be hosting your mailboxes and will cease to do so when you close down your account.

 

Im with Talk Talk formerly Tiscali, O2 are after my business and its them who say I can use my Tiscali email address if I come over to them. I think this is a lie.

[lucasdigital]

I see..... so what would be your advise on my problem?

I used to get 1.1 mbps speed and as you can now see the speed has dropped a lot and has been like this for a few weeks now.

 

 

Ah right. Sorry, I didn't know you'd historically had a faster connection. My mum's on Woodfarm Avenue, during the summer her connection speed was dropped by Plusnet back to about 128kbps. The current version of ADSL automatically adjusts the connection speed to ensure that the connection is stable, occasionally it gets stuck on a slower speed as a result of short lived fault. I disconnected the old router from bedroom extension socket and now run a wireless router from the master socket. The speed quickly retrained to about 1Mbps.

 

You may be right about the bad weather. I'd stick to my guns calling Talk Talk, get them to reset your connection speed back to the speed you were getting and see if that keeps up.

 

Some other points:

BT take a hard line regarding 'line faults'. They still have the mindset that - if you can make phone calls and get connected - you don't have a line fault.

 

The speed checkers that ISPs use isn't a 'live' test, it's based on some guesswork based on your distance from the exchange. There's a good chance that moving to another ISP won't improve matters - although it might just by someone resetting your broadband service - something that I think Talk Talk could do if you tell them you're planning to leave because of the drop in speeds.

 

It sounds like you checked your own setup, I'd say that the most critical check you can do is connecting from your master socket - worth doing, even if you have to set your computer up in the hallway, just to check if internal wiring is having an impact.

 

Good luck!

[max]

I'd go with O2 or another provider who uses ADSL2. I switched to them from Plusnet and my speed doubled overnight. It's not great but I'm getting 1.7 mbps compared to the 600 I was getting before plus there's a discount for O2 mobile users.

[nevillew]

There are areas of Stannington that are now connected to the Digital Region network. We have a customer that is 1.5km away from their DR enabled street cabinet and they still get 15Mb, marginally better than the 0.2Mb they were getting on their BT connection....

Send me a PM or reply to this if you want to know more or want to know how to sign up. Oh we also have someone who gets 66Mb but their cabinet is outside their front door. None the less we believe it to be the fastest broadband connection in the UK!!