Noticable differences between Cable and phoneline internet?

[Mekes82]

Hey all,

I have just spoken to my pops and he has agreed (upon hearing my complaints and the price differences) that we should scrap all of our Virgin services, which are phone and the internet. What with all of the problems aka changes that Virgin are throwing at their customer base lately, I figure it is the perfect time to leave. I was so happy with the Telewest/Blueyonder service back in the day, Virgin have only gone downhill in my eyes.

So I'll need to be handing our phone number back to BT and I reckon from everything Ive read around here that I stand a great chance of being happy with BE's Pro package.

A few questions tho.

My last internet connection that used BT's phonelines was AOL dial-up, even all of my friends are with Virgin so that was literally the last time I used internet that was not cable. I then moved to Telewest's 512 package and took every improved package as soon as they were released. I live fairly close to my exchange, estimated at about 700m real 'phoneline' distance, its literally a few streets away. But what Id like to know is, how will BE's connection likely compare to my Virgin internet? I mean in regards to loading webpages and more importantly for me, in regards to P2P connections since I play a lot of niche online fighting games!?

I know that BE's connection ought to be fast in terms of actual download and upload speeds, but will it work 'quick' if you catch my drift? (In comparison to what used to be a great service from Telewest)

Im kind of mumbling now, Im not the most technical person you'll find on this site! Hope you understand my questions and thanks for reading

~Mikes

[cimt]

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php

I recommend using that to see what speeds are available for you first. Once you've entered your postcode and it's told you what you can have, click the menus below the summary such as "BT ADSL". It will give you roughly what speed you can have upto.

Cable internet is generally more likely to live up to the speed promises, but if you really are close to your telephone exchange, and the line from you to it is of good quality, then that probably won't be a big consideration for you as ADSL can be very fast as well. Cable is capable of being much faster even than fast ADSL but TBH unless you're a really heavy downloader there's only so much speed you can use.

However if you are a heavy downloader, or if you like to download a new Linux distro every week via BitTorrent, then you should check carefully to see what fair use policy or usage controls your new ISP may impose. Uber-fast broadband isn't much use if it gets throttled after a few minutes' use during 'peak' hours. Mind you, don't VM do that anyway ... ?

[Central]

Plus if a certain isp has there own equipment in a exchange its pretty much guaranteed the price will be so much cheaper.

Isp's like BE also offer a higher upload then cable does to. Plus other features like static ip addresses

[Rackerz]

Just moved from Virgin to BE. I'm 1KM from the exchange and I always download at a constant 1700KB/s. Much better than the crappy 1200KB/s I got on Virgin when it was supposed to be 20mb.

I can't tell the difference but the line quality is my area is fair so it depends on your area.

[Ben B]

doesn't o2 use the bethere structure so if you got one of them free sim cards that they're offering and top up by at least £10 every 3 months then you can get 8meg for £7.50 16meg for £10 and 20meg for £15 which is a pretty good deal.