O2 or SKY

peter212693

peter212693

peter212693

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Joined
28 Jan 2005
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1,698
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Southport
Hi all,

Im on orange at the moment and am looking to move provider. Orange has a useless service and have capped me from 8Mbs down to 512kbs peak times for using too much and breeching my fair use. From not that much use.

So my question is who do I go to:

- Who is the best with fair use
- Best router
- Best service.

Thanks

Price is going to be no problem as Im a SKY and O2 customer so it will be the same :)
 
I'm with sky, perfectly happy with them, had a couple of problems when we started but once they were sorted it's been fine. Heard good things about O2 though as well. Can you get LLU on both?
 
I've not used Sky's service so I can't speak from experience there, but they use the easynet network like UKOnline which I can speak from experience there.
peter212693 said:
So my question is who do I go to:

- Who is the best with fair use... Not sure on O²'s FUP but if it is like Be's, then there's no contest.
- Best router... From what I can tell, O² supply a Netgear DG834G and Sky use the DG834GT, the exact same router except the GT supports double the wifi network transfer rate (108Mbps) but doesn't support internal loopback.
- Best service.... O² uses Be's network which isn't plauged by problems, conjestion or downtime unlike the Easynet network. When I was with UKOffline (name gives it away), there was nothing but problems. Mutiple bad hops, excessive ping times (3 thousand to 4 billion milliseconds), extreme network conjestion and unstable DNS servers. Again, no contest :)
Click to expand...

Hope that helps :)
 
Senture said:
I've not used Sky's service so I can't speak from experience there, but they use the easynet network like UKOnline which I can speak from experience there.

***snip***

Hope that helps :)
Click to expand...

They wouldn't even be on Sky's LLU service - Only IPStream available from what they've said (and that's even worse)
 
don't sky enforce download limits though. My girlfriend is on the 2 meg connection and I'm sure she has a download limit per month.
 
I'm with SKY, on LLU, and it's superb. Get a constant ~10Mbit, unlimited (Don't know what there real limit is but I've never had any probs) and only £10 a month. Couldn't be happier.

No idea about O2 I'm afraid.
 
If it's available at your exchange you'll get it automatically - if you can get a service above 8mbits then you know it must be LLU because IPStream doesn't support that currently.
 
If you can get o2, can you get BE?

Technically o2 own BE and resell their network. Of the two though I would pay slightly extra for BE. I have been with them in 3 different properties over the past 2 years and they have never been anything other than excellent. The highest synch I got on them was 20mbit at my last place, and i got 20mbit of bandwidth at all times. They never went down for more than a minute, and if it was going to happen i recieved a txt warning 24 hours in advance.

Their customer support is fast and efficient and you can easily informally talk with them via the forums also.

That said, if you cant get BE then i'd go for o2 over Sky. I know quite a few ppl on Sky and while they dont hate it, most wish they had gone for BE. as o2 are reselling their network, i assume they will be at least somewhere near the quality, albeit with a slower possible top speed.
 
Reading the Be website I seem to be able to get it but it says that connection time is 1-3 weeks. Is this still the period if you transfer with a MAC key?
 
If you have a MAC key and are migrating, then while it may still take upto 2 weeks for BT to allow a BE engineer into the exchange (this is likely to be the case for o2 as well and probably Sky as BT make it a royal pain for them) you will only lose service for an hour or so as its changed over, if that.
 
Excellent :) I was reading other posts before and there was mention of "profiles" and differant speeds? How does this work? Is this only on ADSL2+ ?
 
Well Sky, BE and o2 all offer ADSL2+ services.

With BE, there are 3 choices:

£14 for a 12 month contract and upto 8mbit/1.3mbit with unlimited usage.
£18 for a 3 month contract (then 1 month thereafter) upto 24mbit/1.3mbit and no limit (genuinely as far as i can tell)
£22 for a 3 month contract (then 1 month thereafter) upto 24mbit/2.5mbit and no limit.

The £18 is the sweet spot for me, for most lines gaining extra upload means sacrificing download, whereas 1.3mbit is fine for most ppl for upload.

Also worth noting that the £18 BE accounts come with a static IP as standard. Not a big issue for some, but really handy for me.

Being honest, it may well be that if your line cant do > 16mbit then you mioght well be better off with an o2 service if you are with o2 and get the discount. For me though, access directly to the BE customer service, plus no 12 month contract is a winner for £18, I think its genuinely good VFM at that level!

Its also worth noting that DSL2+ technology generally reaps better synch speeds compared to DSL1 tech. So for example in the worst of the places i have lived we got 4.5Mbit on BT's DSL MAX and with BE we got 10.5Mbit after lowering our SNR down to 4dB or ~9Mbit with it at the standard 6.
 
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