Changing ISP o2 or Bethere?

harris1986

harris1986

harris1986

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Joined
4 Aug 2005
Posts
2,676
ok guys i'm going to be changing my isp from Bt 8mb to o2 or bethere which do you guys think would be the better bet? i know o2 own bethere and the prices are fairly similar and from the early reviews i've found reports are fairly good but i've heard too many horror stories about phone companies setting up broadband and it being terrible (e.g. orange).

what are your thoughts?
 
how many words start with be in your paragraph?

a lot, go for be, its there in your own words lol

Bored at work, im with be and their ace. no problems what so ever, live close to the exchange and get around 23mb down and 1.3mb up :D
 
Just because o2 own BE Broadband doesnt make them the same :P


Just look at Pipex and Nildram :/ still miles apart
 
Phal said:
Just because o2 own BE Broadband doesnt make them the same :P


Just look at Pipex and Nildram :/ still miles apart
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Well it is when o2 didn't previously have a broadband product (afaik), and their new service is ostensibly rebadged be* broadband.
 
I moved from ADSL24 to *Be* the other week and so far so good, low pings and high speeds for my exchange distance 2.33km :D

 
I'm with Be* too, very happy with the service and even happier after the little price drop they did last month- just hope it stays this good.

On a fastpath line (basically interleaving turned off) and normally ping around 10-15Ms on good servers, getting pretty much the full 24mbit sync now thanks to some internal wiring jiggery pokery and their customer support has been excellent whenever I've called them up.
 
I'm with o2 Broadband and I'm more than impressed with it (although I'm a bit biased).

You'd be silly to go for Be* if you have an o2 contract phone, it's exactly the same service no matter what else you may hear on the internet.
 
harris1986 said:
what speeds are you getting wicksta? and which service did you choose?
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I'm on the '20mbps' service at the moment (same as the Be* 24mbps one) and currently getting the following:
205528627.png


Ping is normally lower than that, around 30ms, but I'm on a new Mac rather than a PC at the moment so maybe that affects it. I've never seen it anywhere near that high before so I'm guessing it's something to do with Safari.

I'm going to mess around with my phone cabling a bit at some point, as I'm sure with a bit of effort I can squeeze a bit more out. I'm using a Buffalo WBMR-G125 router at the moment but have the O2 Thomson one plus a D-Link one so maybe those will give different results.

I'm really happy though, especially with torrent speeds. 600k/B seems to be about the norm for a decent torrent.

EDIT: I just ran the test using Internet Explorer under VMware Fusion and got the following:

205531672.png


Not sure what happened to my upload there, but as you can see, with the right situation I'm getting 22mbps down, 1.6 up and about 24ms ping.

I'm around 1km away from the exchange as the crow flies.
 
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Tim said:
You what? They're both Tiscali.
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That doesn't mean a great deal really, when I went from Pipex to Freedom2Surf (who had been taken over by Pipex) they were a completely different network, no traffic shaping, completely different IP range etc.

However with the case of o2 broadband it certainly is exactly the same as Be* broadband, even the reverse DNS on o2 shows a bethere.co.uk address.
 
well just got my connection up with Be now, and first reports are ok, according to the bebox i'm getting 14mb down and 1.29mb up, not massive issue would like more but hey i'm not too fussy, speedtest reports back at 11.5mb down and 1.12 up!

the thing that's annoyed me the most is my online ping i'm currently getting around 20-24ping on most uk servers in cs 1.6 now i know this is major or even high but bearing in mind i was getting 7-14ping constant on my old 8mb bt line i wouldn't have hoped for such a high increase?

i have just enabled fastpath on my line so hopefully this will cure some gremlins?
 
I'd give the line a week to two to settle in, I changed my *Be* box for a Netgear D834GT and UberGT firmware and I sync at 13meg where I was only getting 9.5 on the *Be* box?!
 
O2 and BE are seperate companies still, in the same way that ford own volvo.
Be have made a statement amounting to saying there are no plans to disolve the Be packages into the O2 packages.

Using the above analogy, there are some shared apects, eg. the focus ST uses a volvo 2.5 engine, but you wouldnt take a focus to a volvo garage for a service.
Volvos are built and serviced by volvo, not ford, and they will never be rebranded as fords.


I still use the be router, as to be honest for the first time in my life I am actually satisfied with my connection, so I cant justify buying a new router.

Many people do buy new routers and report better speeds/stability, but personally ive got better things to spend my money on, as I can honestly say my connection is plenty good enough for what I use it for.
 
mattyfez said:
Many people do buy new routers and report better speeds/stability, but personally ive got better things to spend my money on, as I can honestly say my connection is plenty good enough for what I use it for.
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The reason I got a new router is because I found the *Be* Speedtouch 585v6 wireless signal to be very poor around my house, I had another ST 585v6 from a previous connection and that was the same, as I do out of hours support for my company I like to have a good strong signal so I can do what I need to do as fast as possible and without dropouts :)

I may pop the ST585v6 back on this weekend just to see what it reports my stats as now my line has been in for a few months, you never know it may out perform the D834GT!!!
 
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