Broadband UK style

[B16Enk]

My ISP is Demon, they used to manage my broadband connection and I got a healthy 529 down and 246 up, consistent and reliable.

Got upgraded to 2Mb down 836Kb up and these are the results, just got to love BT...

It took me nearly six hours of 'phone calls and 'official' speed tests before a technician at my ISP agreed that a 230Kb download was not an upgrade.

He should not have logged it as a fault though, BT (who own and manage the cabling) stipulate that a fault is when there is a variation of more than 30% of the stable download speed.

A speed that is arrived at pro grammatically with some clever software and monitoring at the exchange.

This testing regime had deemed that my connection could only support a maximum download of 230Kbs, yet an upload of 670Kbs was fine.

So the download speed was fixed, and no they would not re-run the testing regime. That was the best I can expect 'sorry sir'.

'Ermm...this is ADSL isn't it?' I asked, 'You know Asynchronous Digital Subscribe Line, as in downloads faster than it uploads'. Silly me, they are after all the telecommunications company, I'm just the stupid git paying £40 inc tax for this service which is, and I quote from the ISP page

'Business grade broadband - there whenever you need it '

Thankfully http://www.speedtester.bt.co.uk logged a download of a whopping 79Kbs this morning. Even BT can't argue that is within limits!

I can't even guarantee being able to pick up emails at them moment, the connection is so sporadic, whilst I was tapping this out (can't really describe it as typing ) my router has re-negotiated to Downstream Rate: 160 Kbps

Upstream Rate: 192 Kbps

I don't think I will be on-line much this week

Ok rant off...

[Blairgowrie]

Bloody hell. I can see why you are pissed off m8. Those were the kind of lies I used to get from my ISP.

Any alternatives from other ISP's or is BT your only option?

[delta7]

demon used to have an excellent rep - hate it when faceless pricks on the phone pass you around like that - :twisted:

dont know of any others you could try when you read the reviews on www.ispreview.co.uk its a mixed bag although firefly were very good when I had problems and tried them out - I started with virgin and moved to a cheaper provider but went back to virgin as service is ok, although expensive as its premium telephone numbers, and servers seem reliable.

edit - posting same time as you god help you if you have to wait on BT engineers to fix the line :roll:

[B16Enk]

In the back woods where I live, a massive 7 miles away from the nearest town, cable is not in place.

Therefore we have no choice but to use copper owned and managed by BT.

Some consider it advantageous to buy their Broadband through BT, following the theory that it is BT's cable therefore they don't have to deal with a 'middle man' when faults arise and will enjoy better service.

Unfortunately that is not the case, BT's call centre (in India of course) will pedantically follow their script for issue resolution and will only defer to technical support when the script branch dictates it.

Using a 'Middle Man', Demon in my case, has distinct advantages.

Whilst they too follow scripts they are at least written in English, and talking to a tech is easier to do.

Also as they are a corporate client of BT's they have much bigger boots than us mere peons.

The latest on my situation is that neighbours have also experienced similar reliability problems, and it has been found that cabling at one of the roadside boxes has been damaged.

It would appear that mine got damaged whilst repairing some-one else's. Or they swapped my line!!

Any UK guys reading this, if you think your ADSL is not up to par run the speedtester link I posted above, this will populate a database with the results against your 'phone number.

BT will only take a look after five such tests are done.

For now I can't run the test, as the 1.7Mb download brings my link down!!

Web site updates from me will have to wait until this is resolved, or I could use my mobile 'phone as a modem I suppose