BT Broadband and Torrent Speeds - Cancellation Costs

[sexyandy81 10]

No you didn't. That is mathematically impossible.

 

Not impossible just that VM has best broadband out at the moment and not a bad price for it either. 100mb broadband at £45 per month

 

Can't argue with that. no other company will get anywhere near that. As I speak

VM are rolling out 200mb Broadband in testing.

[Greengeek 10]

Not impossible just that VM has best broadband out at the moment and not a bad price for it either. 100mb broadband at £45 per month

 

Can't argue with that. no other company will get anywhere near that. As I speak

VM are rolling out 200mb Broadband in testing.

 

It's no good having the fastest advertised speed, if they've got no clue how to actually manage their network.

 

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html?isp_7=1&isp_86=1&isp_77=1&isp_21=1&isp_84=1&commit=Compare

Edited April 2, 2011 by Greengeek

[sexyandy81 10]

Just looked at the graphs and I don't think they are that bad especially their customer service. I was on XXL package (50 meg Broadband, TV, Phone) £100 per month in total. They upgraded me to VIP Package (100 meg Broadband, TV, Phone) £115 in total on a new 18 month contract.

 

Done a speed test through Virgin Media tech team and im getting speeds around 92 - 98.5 meg with a 4 - 5 meg upload.

[rich5315 10]

bt are the best for download speed been with them 8 years, tried sky last year they were so embaressed at what they could provide they let me out my contract, i get 8meg down this line 24/7 with bt, i got 2meg with sky, they told me that equipment at the exchange is fitted by bt and bt give there own customers all the bandwith, so sky customers loose out. as to torrents there all choked all the time and there servers can only handle so much traffic so its not neccesarily your isp. try usenet, sky wont even let you use it!!! at the end of the day you get what you pay for im on option 3 bt £27.40 a month worth every penny!! download 700mb in 15mins anytime of day. im not in a cable area which is a differant kettle of fish.

Edited April 2, 2011 by rich5315
spelling

[AlexAtkin 10]

Exactly, their bandwidth management is a joke. What good is 200Mbit if real world speeds at peak time are dialup for the protocols you use? (eg NNTP)

 

Incidentally, BT Infinity and Digital Region should be able to offer 100Mbit at least to some people (they probably won't for a while, but they could). Granted, Virgin probably can offer it to more people but with their bandwidth management its worthless.

[sexyandy81 10]

Here is the website http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/5284110/Virgin-launches-200Mb-broadband-customer-pilot-scheme-in-Kent.html

 

Stating that its going to be released around 2012 but won't be fully intergrated around uk untill around 2013.

[Agrajag 10]

bt are the best for download speed been with them 8 years, tried sky last year they were so embaressed at what they could provide they let me out my contract, i get 8meg down this line 24/7 with bt, i got 2meg with sky, they told me that equipment at the exchange is fitted by bt and bt give there own customers all the bandwith, so sky customers loose out. as to torrents there all choked all the time and there servers can only handle so much traffic so its not neccesarily your isp. try usenet, sky wont even let you use it!!! at the end of the day you get what you pay for im on option 3 bt £27.40 a month worth every penny!! download 700mb in 15mins anytime of day. im not in a cable area which is a differant kettle of fish.

 

I doubt OFCOM would let BT get away with practices like that.

 

The truth is, if Sky have none of their equipment installed in an exchange they have to fall back to using BT Wholesale. The problem is that BT's IPStream (ADSL-Max "up to 8mb") pipes are very expensive to rent compared to what Sky pay for their own LLU connections.

 

What Sky do in those circumstances is to severely limit the speed and the amount that customers on these connections can download. I believe they call it their "Connect" package.

 

O2 ran into similar problems with their BT based package and had to introduce strict limits.

 

Here is the website http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/5284110/Virgin-launches-200Mb-broadband-customer-pilot-scheme-in-Kent.html

 

Stating that its going to be released around 2012 but won't be fully intergrated around uk untill around 2013.

 

Virgin will probably do as they have in the past, introduce a higher speed package and make the lower speed packages subject to their traffic managment policy.

 

All their packages of 30mb and below are limited now, when the 100mb package is fully rolled out, the 50mb package will become limited too, and when they roll out 200mb... You see the pattern?

 

Virgin can provide very fast connections, but they can't handle too many at once.

Edited April 3, 2011 by Agrajag

[AlexAtkin 10]

All Virgin packages are managed now during peak time. Worse, its managed on total traffic on their backbone not per customer, so everyone gets an equally slow service regardless of what speed you are paying for.

 

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Fibre-optic-broadband-cable/Usenet-is-too-slow-packet-loss-in-game/td-p/428553

We moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to Peer ("P2P") applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)

 

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

 

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffic.

 

What they fail to factor in is that peer to peer is often used now for video downloads, streaming and large software downloads. In other words, limiting peer to peer will slow down installing World of Warcraft and plenty of other things you might not expect, the very things you are likely to be paying to speed up. Short of big downloads, what is the point of paying for 100Mbit if you will get the same performance out of a 4Mbit connection?

Edited April 3, 2011 by AlexAtkin

[Tony Erikson 10]

Not impossible just that VM has best broadband out at the moment and not a bad price for it either. 100mb broadband at £45 per month

 

Can't argue with that. no other company will get anywhere near that. As I speak

VM are rolling out 200mb Broadband in testing.

 

No, it was mathematically impossible. At the speed you quoted the file would not have downloaded in that time. I'm not saying the bandwidth isn't possible. Just the calculation.

[Bonjon 10]

No, it was mathematically impossible. At the speed you quoted the file would not have downloaded in that time. I'm not saying the bandwidth isn't possible. Just the calculation.

 

1380mb, 9m/s download =2m55s

 

(as it was a torrent it probably fluctuated so 4mins sounds about right).

[Speed Demon 10]

Ofcom = of con

[shaunomercy 10]

My own torrid experience with bt open woe is that I wont ever have a bt product if I can help it ever again. Within weeks of being a bt broadband customer I ended up emailing the director of bt retail broadband to get my issues sorted as the Indian call center just past me from pillar to post.

 

Id love cable broad band if it was in our area. As it isnt after my experience with bt, I went with Be there.

Been with them 4 year now. Not fair use policy. I started with a 3 month contract that just rolls on so not tied to them and my line speeds against bt are massively different. Used to get 3.5meg with bt max, I get 10meg on the same phoneline with be there.

 

If bt and virgin etc are so good, why do they need to lock you in with an 18month contract ? If they are any good, your not going to want to leave.

 

Pipex years ago when broadband first started with 512k was the same. Stayed with them on a 3 month rolling contract till the director/owner Dave Rikards sold out to gx networks a few years down the line and the service went down the pan.

 

Paul