I'm finished with Sky, who next?

Jamous · 28 Mar 2010 at 22:22

Hi, after the ridiculous throttling with Sky (down to 0.2 meg) during peak times, I have cancelled my broadband with them.
I am not in thier networked area (EH41) so got the "connect" package when we got the TV 18 months ago.
After various call the customer services in Mumbai, I have gave up.
I have disconnected the bell wire, the line comes in from outside to the master socket, I fitted an extension to this which is connected to the router, also shared with the only phone in the house.

just tested now with Speedest and after hovering at 0.3mb, it "shot!!" up to 0.65 mb lol, yet my router is showing:

Connection Speed 4160 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 43 db(down) 23 db(up)
Noise Margin 10 db (down) 22 db(up)

When I do on-line checkers it says I can get 3mb on my line, but I expect it'll be a bit higher.

I'm no expert, but there are no "LLU" operators at my exchange.

So to my question- suggestions please for a new isp that doesn't throttle?
I don't game online much, don't download too much, except the odd game via steam. But I do want better than 0.2mb!!
There is no cable in my area.

thanks

SiriusB · 28 Mar 2010 at 22:27

Before I moved to Sky I was with BE who were very good. I switched to Sky because it was £10 less a month and we got a good deal on the phone by doing the whole lot through Sky. I haven't had a throttling problem with Sky, but then I am not on connect.

Jamous · 28 Mar 2010 at 22:45

Thanks, I'll have a look at BE. I think I only pay £10 per month, but I'd be willing to pay a bit more for a better service.
Seem to be the area/exchange thats the problem, thing is, the town has a 10k plus population and we are 20mins from Edinburgh, it's not as if I'm out in the sticks.

Edit- BE not available in my area.

wij · 29 Mar 2010 at 10:07

Your line is synced at just over 4Mbit/sec so you will get an IP Profile (BT BRAS) of around 3.5Mbit/sec.

Do you know what sort of usage you require, all of the decent ISP's that are likely going to be available at your exchange will have some sort of usage based tariff attached to them.

None of the good ones are cheap though, you're looking at at least £18/month for the likes of IDNet, Zen, AAISP, Goscomb etc.

ADSL24 might be worth a look now they have migrated away from Entanet and onto MurphX for their infrastructure.

Alex h · 29 Mar 2010 at 10:27

a mate of mine is leaving sky due to same problems as op

immortalcloud · 29 Mar 2010 at 10:48

If you are an o2 customer (even if only payg phone and top up once every 3 months) you can get the 20mb unlimited broadband for £9.79 per month and its very very fast. No throttling (trust me i download a lot)

Cant recommend them enough!

Matt

tolien · 29 Mar 2010 at 14:52

immortalcloud said:
If you are an o2 customer (even if only payg phone and top up once every 3 months) you can get the 20mb unlimited broadband for £9.79 per month and its very very fast. No throttling (trust me i download a lot)

Jamous said:
I'm no expert, but there are no "LLU" operators at my exchange.

Although I'm not sure how you need to be an "expert" to know what LLU operators there are; they're listed on Samknows.

You're missing a budget and the sort of normal usage you do. Expect to pay more and have a usage limit of some kind if you're forced to use BT Wholesale.

Jamous · 29 Mar 2010 at 19:23

tolien said:
Although I'm not sure how you need to be an "expert" to know what LLU operators there are; they're listed on Samknows.

Jamous said:
I'm no expert, but there are no "LLU" operators at my exchange.

Was just saying that I don't fully understand what LLU means, I know it's to do with operators having their equipment in the exchange. In fact, I don't understand why you pointed that out.

tolien said:
You're missing a budget and the sort of normal usage you do. Expect to pay more and have a usage limit of some kind if you're forced to use BT Wholesale.

Jamous said:
I don't game online much, don't download too much, except the odd game via steam.

I just get fed up waiting on pages to load, videos to load etc, why pay for a restricted service when I could pay the same or a bit more for a much better one.
I'd like to keep the cost to £15- £20 per month max.

Thanks for the other replies, I am with Vodafone for my mobile, will see what they offer.

wij · 29 Mar 2010 at 19:35

Up your budget or IMO the service you get will probably not change much.

Either that or you'll have to make do with a low monthly usage cap.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html?commit=Compare&isp_2=1&isp_16=1&isp_77=1&isp_6=1

Funny how the more expensive 3 (the three ISP's who I'd happily recommend to anyone) are significantly better than the one that costs £10 a month.

tolien · 29 Mar 2010 at 20:24

Jamous said:
Was just saying that I don't fully understand what LLU means, I know it's to do with operators having their equipment in the exchange.

It sounded like you were unsure whether you had any LLUers available or not. There's an attempt at an explanation in a sticky as well but you've basically got the gist of it anyway.

In fact, I don't understand why you pointed that out.

Because the other post I quoted suggested signing up for O2's LLU service?

I don't game online much, don't download too much, except the odd game via steam.

Click to expand...

That doesn't answer the question though. "The odd game via Steam" would probably put you over the sort of limit you'll get for £20 with, for example, Zen.

Jamous · 29 Mar 2010 at 22:41

Thanks again,
who are you guy's using and what is the monthly charge?
The problem I have it seems is any other isp has to use BT wholesale.

Edit- it seems I am in a "Market 1" area.

wij · 30 Mar 2010 at 00:54

Jamous said:
Thanks again,
who are you guy's using and what is the monthly charge?
The problem I have it seems is any other isp has to use BT wholesale.

Edit- it seems I am in a "Market 1" area.

AAISP using Be LLU, £55/month inc. the phone line.

I get 20Mbit down and 2.4Mbit upstream using Annex M.

Not cheap by a long way but far from the most expensive considering the features I get:

/27 & /30 of public IP's, rDNS delegation, IPv6 natively, decent UK based support (on the phone and via IRC/email with people who actually have more than just a bit of a clue) and no bull**** honesty when it comes to handling any faults.

It also has the advantage that there is no min-term on the Be or BT part of the connection, just 30-days notice. The phone line is also controlled by AAISP so any issues I just raise one support ticket with them and they are very good at getting BT to fix things

Zen are good, but at £25/month + £10 to BT for a line you don't get *that* much usage (25Gb).

IDNet are more generous, though you need to be careful with their peak/off-peak timings (AAISP is at least 9am-5pm, not 09:00-00:00) but their £25 package is pretty generous.

I moved my parents connection to Goscomb when Enta (ADSL24 et. al.) went **** up a few months ago, been home a few times and it's been pretty flawless (again excellent support, and their network supports multicast and IPv6 natively). Pretty decent for £22 a month.

wij · 30 Mar 2010 at 01:02

Oh just because you have to get an ISP provided over BTw doesn't mean it has to be rubbish.

It does mean though that it will just cost more as decent ISP's ensure they have plenty of capacity for their users, that obviously costs money (and if you're still on a 20CN connection you are going to be costing your ISP around double what someone on a 21CN line does) so they can't go around offering it for £5 a month.

Bane · 30 Mar 2010 at 08:01

Will you have to return the Sky router when you leave? As you might have to factor in buying a replacement if Sky demand it back. If you get to keep it you might be able to recycle it depending on what make and model it is.

As for your Sky Connect experience, I've seen it while around a friends house. Was terrible trying to download drivers on a 8128kbps connection limited to <1Mb the whole evening.

I've been impressed with Fast.co.uk, but it could work out pricey for you with the size of modern games and Steam downloads.

Jamous · 30 Mar 2010 at 20:04

Check out my latest speedtest:

And this was connecting the router directly to the internal socket on the master socket.

tolien · 30 Mar 2010 at 23:22

If you're using BT Wholesale, speedtests (especially from that site, which isn't reliable in the slightest) won't immediately follow what speed you're connected at.
The Sky router gives statistics for the speed it's actually connected at and it's those you should look at, i.e. the updated version of

Connection Speed 4160 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 43 db(down) 23 db(up)
Noise Margin 10 db (down) 22 db(up)

anything I don't mind · 31 Mar 2010 at 10:15

The thing i like about ZEN and BE is that they are primarily sell broadband, unlike some other ISPs that seem to sell broadband as a side project and not take their customers very seriously.

I was with ZEN in 2005 back then it was uncapped, i never had any problems with ZEN or BE apart from a few hours of loss of service every so often. But that kind of service costs more money, so if you are serious about the internet then be prepared to pay a bit more than £8 like you do with skys cheapest packages. i think my sister pays about £10 or something haha

Mattus · 1 Apr 2010 at 02:35

Jamous said:
And this was connecting the router directly to the internal socket on the master socket.

Don't bother fiddling about with the wiring or the master socket... your router is connected at 4Mbps, so the physical connection isn't the issue. Nothing you can do there will make a difference - the problem is that the network is over-congested. This seems to be a common problem with the Sky and Virgin non-LLU packages.