guys. this is a bad joke. i've been with telewest for a few years now...
never had any problems !
but now... i can't even watch the bbc news clips using the bbc news player... for information, they all stream at 225 Kbps (bits, NOT Bytes !)...
i keep cheking my speed all the time with
www.speakeasy.net/speedtest...
by the way, i live in london, and i'm in NW1 (Camden Town)...
most of the time, my max. download speed is now around 200 or 300 Kbps (Kilo bits per second)... often it's as low as 160 to 180 Kbps...
for your information, a few days ago i asked telewest to switch me from 4Mbps to 2Mbps, and the speed yo-yo's that i get now are no worse or no better than before...
in other words, if you live in any problem area like my one NW1 (Camden Town), and I've heard that there's a few in the UK, well it probably DON'T matter whether you're on 2Mbps, 4Mbps or 10Mbps...
those in my area are paying £17 more that me for 10 Mbps... and for what ? for NO reason !!!! because until telewest move their bums and get their act together all that any of us with get is not even 1 Mbps in NW1 !!!!!!
and i can't even switch to cable & wireless's bulldog, because 1) it's adsl and i'll have to pay £60 for a new netgear 54 Mbps wireless router with integrated adsl modem and micro-filter, 2) i'll have to also switch my landline to bulldog (when i'm very happy with my telewest one... there's NOTHING wrong with it !!! it's only telewest's internet that i'm having problems with !!), and 3) because we are cable customers and not BT customers, WE CANNOT KEEP OUR PHONE NUMBER !!!! yes, you heard (read !!) it right !!! bulldog don't mind giving us broadband, but they also want to take a landline that we don't need, even though this means that we'll have to have a new phone number !!! oh yeah. and another thing. i don't think it is because they are using traditional landline wires and a traditional landline socket that traditional landline signals have to flow through those wires. i don't see a reason why they can't just feed dsl internet signals in those wires and that's all, if we don't want telephone as well.
anyway... i think i can only do 2 things... and that's exactly what i'm gonna do !!!
1) write to telewest broadband and complain
and write to them again and complain
and again and again and again
until they SOLVE IT !!!
2) and speak to OFCOM about bulldog that should be forced to unbundle the 2 different services they provide, because forcing us to have to take the other one when subscribing to the first one is probably uncompetitive... and if OFCOM can do something aboout this, then i'll switch straightaway to bulldog, but internet only !!!
anyway, please all do like me... as i think that we're all having the same problem up and down the country !!!! and right now we're being short-changed and ripped off and taken for a bunch of idiots big time !!!! especially since, like others have found too, it's also very difficult to get telewest to admit to this very serious issue !!!!!
good luck !!!!