ADSL : BT or not BT, that is the question

[Kursk]

I've just moved house and no longer have access to cable so I switched to Virgin National.

The adsl I have now was working ok until today when a guy from BT turned up and "reconnected" my phone line to get the phone to work but the net connection is now barely usable.

I expected adsl to be worse than cable but before today and the BT Engineer's visit, the connection wasn't too bad for my type of internet use.

Have I been switched to a dud line because I moved my phone to VM? Anyone know why the BT engineer couldn't use the line that was already working for the net if not the phone?

Do I take up the poor connection issue with BT or VM? Ta.

My "speedtest" result: Overall Average Speed = approx 1240 Kbps, 1.21 Mbps

[djfunkdup]

If you had spent 2 min doing some searching online you would see that VM adsl service is terrible..



what exchange are you connected too : http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

[General Maximus]

can you get BT infinity? It is 40mbit atm which is going to be doubled to 80 so you won't be missing out on VM calbe too much

[Kursk]

Originally Posted by djfunkdup

If you had spent 2 min doing some searching online you would see that VM adsl service is terrible..
what exchange are you connected too : http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

Doh! Trouble is, when you're moving house there's so much to sort out some things slip by and by the time it counted, I wasn't online.

Originally Posted by General Maximus

can you get BT infinity? It is 40mbit atm which is going to be doubled to 80 so you won't be missing out on VM calbe too much

BT Infinity is scheduled for December (but it's already been put back 3 months from September so who knows when it will actually be available) and I needed something in the meantime.

But this connection is like stirring treacle

[General Maximus]

i know it if of no comfort now the nice thing about having a ****** connection now is that when you do go back to fibre (when BT get round to it) the difference is going to be amazing you are going to think you have died and gone to heaven. It is probably going to be analagous to going from dialup to BB; what a day that was

[Nopanic]

Originally Posted by djfunkdup

If you had spent 2 min doing some searching online you would see that VM adsl service is terrible..

What an awesome post ..

BUT if you search online for any ISP youll fine shocking reports ..

ADSL from VM isn't as bad as everyone makes out, ADSL in general is crap.

[kwikbreaks]

ADSL from a decent LLU provider such as Be on a good line can be pretty good. For gamers it would probably beat most cable connections.

The only reason I moved to cable despite the numerous horror stories I'd seen of poor support and allowing areas to stay massively congested for months on end was a duff line that OpenReach failed to fix after 5 visits. Even with the fault it was delivering 16Mbps but the phone was unusable. I wish I'd thought of VOIP at the time instead of jumping to cable because guess what - I'm now seeing massive congestion on cable. Of course that problem may get fixed in a reasonable time but I'm not holding my breath.

[Kursk]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

i know it if of no comfort now the nice thing about having a ****** connection now is that when you do go back to fibre (when BT get round to it) the difference is going to be amazing you are going to think you have died and gone to heaven. It is probably going to be analagous to going from dialup to BB; what a day that was

Yeah, I kind of get your point. The trouble is at the moment I've gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. I've seen reports of leaving the new router on for at least 10 days so that VM can check the line and deliver the best speed - is that just a load of balls?

If this does carry on the way it is I'll have no choice but to go with Buzz Lightyear's advice

[General Maximus]

i really need to start proof reading my posts. Anyways, i don't believe that VM take the time to make a baseline for each connection to their network. At most I would expect them to do it per area so they have got an idea of what is going on but there are so many factors which contribute to your speed on dsl connections which makes everyone different anyway.

I would have a look here and see what it says.

http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/pos...s=advanced%3D1

There was a site i found a couple of years ago which told you what the max speed was you could expect based on your distance from the exchange but i can't find it now. Things are looking up though, before the most i could have gotten on adsl was 3.2mbit, now it is saying i can get 8mbit on a 24mbit connection.

Despite their short comings, this is where I have got to give VM credit. I know we all flap about advertised speed but if i signed up for a 24mbit connection and found out that the most i could get was one third of that, I would flip my lid. With VM, even at the worst of times, I get at least half my speed (25+). It is a shame we can't cable the whole of the UK and get rid of phone lines altogether. We could all use voip

[Kursk]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

i really need to start proof reading my posts. Anyways, i don't believe that VM take the time to make a baseline for each connection to their network. At most I would expect them to do it per area so they have got an idea of what is going on but there are so many factors which contribute to your speed on dsl connections which makes everyone different anyway.

I would have a look here and see what it says.

http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/pos...s=advanced%3D1

There was a site i found a couple of years ago which told you what the max speed was you could expect based on your distance from the exchange but i can't find it now. Things are looking up though, before the most i could have gotten on adsl was 3.2mbit, now it is saying i can get 8mbit on a 24mbit connection.

Despite their short comings, this is where I have got to give VM credit. I know we all flap about advertised speed but if i signed up for a 24mbit connection and found out that the most i could get was one third of that, I would flip my lid. With VM, even at the worst of times, I get at least half my speed (25+). It is a shame we can't cable the whole of the UK and get rid of phone lines altogether. We could all use voip

Tried the link and it says I can get cable - I can't, so I think the internet has started to take the **** out of me . I even asked VM to cablemystreet but it was a no-goer.

Incidentally, as an insight for those who moan that cable isn't any good, I clicked your link 8 times before I could connect and I've seen more time-outs in a week than I've ever seen - this phone line lark is really trash. Can't see me paying for it much longer, it's just not worth the frustration.

Originally Posted by Nopanic

What an awesome post ..

BUT if you search online for any ISP youll fine shocking reports ..

ADSL from VM isn't as bad as everyone makes out, ADSL in general is crap.

In many (most?) places, ADSL from Virgin is just re-sold BT wholesale product, so there's little scope for it to be any different.

I always found it to be good value though, and reliable once they dealt with some nasty, persistent capacity issues back in the early days. I only jumped ship when they terminated the legacy package I was on and made it just too expensive to justify.

I now have BT with a nice, shiny Homehub v3. Having been on BT for about 6 weeks now, I'm finding that they are more prone to peak-time congestion and downtime than VM ADSL was.

Obviously there's no difference in my sync speed as I'm still using the same physical copper wires. The sync speed has steadily improved over the past 5 years but i think that's because the local BT engineers seem to lavish a lot of loving care on the 4 miles of highly exposed, pole-mounted cable between my house and the exchange.

[dilli-theclaw]

The only real problem I've had with having VM on ADSL is that when I've had major isues it took ages for them to get BT openreach out to deal with it.

Would it be any quicker if it wasn't a VM problem? - I don't know as I /think/ openreach isn't supposed to discriminate based on the isp.

But in all the cases they (openreach) have sorted it out really quickly when they got here.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by Kursk

this phone line lark is really trash. Can't see me paying for it much longer, it's just not worth the frustration.

I know how you feel dude, I went from being on dialup in the early days of the internet straight onto ntl BB and have always been on the highest tier since. I am going to be getting a new job at some point in the next year which will involve moving house and I am going to make sure that wherever i move to is cabled because there is no chance I am going to even try adsl. The only other thing i can hope for is if it is a non-cabled area, that Buzz is around and it has been doubled to 80mbit, I wouldn't mind that.

Originally Posted by dilligaf1701

The only real problem I've had with having VM on ADSL is that when I've had major isues it took ages for them to get BT openreach out to deal with it.

Would it be any quicker if it wasn't a VM problem? - I don't know as I /think/ openreach isn't supposed to discriminate based on the isp.

But in all the cases they (openreach) have sorted it out really quickly when they got here.

I think the reluctance may have been on VM's part, as they would have to pay Openreach for the call-out.

In the past, with BT for phone and VM for ADSL, I would always resolve ADSL issues by calling BT and complaining about crackle on the line during voice calls, seeing as the two always go hand in hand around here anyway.

BT would send someone out very quickly and once they got to work on the line, any audible crackle and ADSL issues would get dealt with at the same time.

[djfunkdup]

Originally Posted by Nopanic

What an awesome post ..

BUT if you search online for any ISP youll fine shocking reports ..

ADSL from VM isn't as bad as everyone makes out, ADSL in general is crap.

Thanks for pointing out how awesome my post is unlike your effort which is actually a load of pants

their are plenty of good ADSL suppliers..AAISP ,ZEN ,BE* but to name a few.

virginmedia ADSL is just resold BT IPSTREAM and actually is carp unlike their CABLE service....