Post by patrick on Aug 2, 2007 10:17:16 GMT
This month’s Which? Magazine has a bit on Broadband suppliers. Their major gripe is the “up to” speed offers. The average speed of a 1meg line was 80% of that advertised. With 2 meg lines this dropped to 65% whilst the 8meg services delivered a pretty shocking 33% of the advertised speed (e.g. a service promising up to 8meg only delivers an actual average 2.7meg). While it does not state this specifically, it does seem that they were only testing those delivering over the BT copper as it talks about service deterioration with distance from the exchange and they point out that this does not impact “proper” broadband over coax or fibre.
For those looking to swap supplier it rates 6 companies as “don’t buy”. These includes Sky, Talktalk (what surprise!), Orange and AOL as the services are just too bad. The top rated Waitrose and Zen internet. BT and Virgin / Telewest / Blueyonder are rated “below average”.
As a late response to Adrian’s bit on costs, our Virgin / Telewest / Blueyonder service costs £45 a month for 20meg broadband with no limits, “free” telephony at any time to UK land lines (not overseas – got Skype for that…) and 125+ channels on the TV. Should get the upgrade on Friday!
Another happy Virgin / Telewest / Blueyonder user. Since this thread started I have been checking my actual line speed to see if it has been upgraded to 20 meg and our current 4meg service has never dropped below a “real” 3.93meg…
For those looking to swap supplier it rates 6 companies as “don’t buy”. These includes Sky, Talktalk (what surprise!), Orange and AOL as the services are just too bad. The top rated Waitrose and Zen internet. BT and Virgin / Telewest / Blueyonder are rated “below average”.
As a late response to Adrian’s bit on costs, our Virgin / Telewest / Blueyonder service costs £45 a month for 20meg broadband with no limits, “free” telephony at any time to UK land lines (not overseas – got Skype for that…) and 125+ channels on the TV. Should get the upgrade on Friday!
Another happy Virgin / Telewest / Blueyonder user. Since this thread started I have been checking my actual line speed to see if it has been upgraded to 20 meg and our current 4meg service has never dropped below a “real” 3.93meg…