Other Broadband experts in here?

the fair usage policy was recently, as in june/july time upgraded to something like 320GB before traffic shaping

 

BT employ Ellacoya's accross their network, regardless of how it's delivered, fibre or copper.

The only thing it really limits it's torrents and p2p during the day, to give a decent QoS to their bandwidth critical traffic. Video on Demand etc etc.

So, if you don't use bit-torrents, or p2p, the BT Affinity will be great.
HTTP downloads will be at full tilt, as well as streaming and browsing etc etc.

Pretty much every other non LLU'd service will have a cap of some sort.

 

Regardless of usage, they still heavily limit the above mentioned during peak times.

 

His road is over 1800m away from the exchange in College Lane so I think the fastest service is going to be BT Infinity. ADSL isn't going to get anywhere near it for speed I reckon.

 

+1 if your reluctant to get a package with sky, affinity would be the way to go. If you use torrents or file sharing, you can do it at night when it isnt throttled

 

What does 'night' mean in terms of throttling nowadays - not too keen on leaving pc on overnight and schedulers represent that extra bit of hassle you don't want.

My policy has always been, "the more speed I pay for the more disappointed I'll be when I don't achieve it". Infinity would be nice if its quoted speeds are reliable, but I have no real need for it - my current connection is 2.5Mb/s and certainly doesn't give me any problems (not until the Steam sales anyway - GTAIV is still downloading )

I'll put it on the table for the other half to consider but I guess things are erring towards Sky - I don't like the idea that they try to control what router I use, but it shouldn't really be an issue.

 

I don't agree with it either, but I can see why sky do it. From a tech support point of view, it's so much easier to troubleshoot when all of your customers are using the same equipment.

As RichCreedy has pointed out, there are ways to circumvent this. I for one, have been using a Netgear DGN3500 from the day the DLM finished testing my line (First 14 days, sky run tests on the line to determine your fastest speed, so you need to use their router.). Theroretically, they could find i'm not using their kit and as it's part of their T's & C's I could find myself in the mire. But realistically, I have never heard one case of somebody getting in the sh*te for using their own equipment.

Having said that, Sky have recently started shipping D-Link DSL-2640S as their router of choice. I set my dads up a few months ago, and it's not a bad piece of kit at all. No problems reported so far with wireless dropouts or speed issues.

As for BT, IIRC, their "off peak" hours are from midnight to 7am.

 

Thanks once more Fazed, that probably seals the deal for Sky then. I can't see the point in paying what I would call a premium for fibre optic internet if they're going to throttle it for 70% of the day - you don't want to have to plan your internet usage if you can help it.

 

I've got Sky, with +/HD for £10, three of the packages for £18 and 16Mb llu bb for £7.50. Broadband's excellent and truly unlimited. The TV packages cover a broad range of channels and there are quite a few HD channels now. The only dealbreaker is whether you get a reliable Sky box. I've just had my 3 year old Thomson box replaced with an Amstrad box and I've had to power it off once already, together with the planner playing catchup sometimes - I might get it replaced again, depends how long it'll last 'til I have to turn it off and give it 10 mins again.

 

i want my sky box replaced but they wont unless i spend £65 on an engineers visit, we loose 1 of the tuners on a regular basis, i have repaired the power supply at my expense, due to faulty caps.

 

How much left to run on your contract?

I've experienced many times, if you've got a problem, and your close to the end of your contract, or no longer contractually bound, a call to customer relations with the threat of "i've been a loyal customer, paying you every month, I'm disgusted that I have to pay, I'm just going to jack it in and go elsewhere", normally has them jumping through hoops to help you.

 

Which Amstrad box do you have?

I've got the 500GB Amstrad DRX890 Sky+HD, although i don't have the HD pack.
I've never had a problem with this box, not one reboot as far as i'm aware.

 

the wife tried that, the person wouldn't budge, they know full well the area we are in it's sky tv or bt vision, bt vision doesn't have the channels we watch

 

Really? The mere mention of jumping ship and leaving, even if it is only with BT vision, normally gets them to budge, I've found you have to hold your ground until the dying seconds tho, when they're certain you going to quit, they reneg.

Failing that, you could always cancel and get a fresh install in the wife's name?
Brand spanking new Sky+HD box, even if you don't take the HD pack.

 

I got given the previous version (the DRX780 - fat version I guess?) with a 320GB drive and it looked like a refurb. The chap that changed it said, 'Er, I'll want your old box btw to send back'. Pfft, 'I've put a 1TB drive there and an uprated PSU board as several of the capacitors went and I'd like to see if I can at least transfer several of the recorded programs' I said. He replied, 'Well, Sky'll phone you up about it'.. 'I'll deal with them phoning me up, thanks'. No phone call as yet. It would've been a miracle if I'd ended up with a brand new smaller box.

With the uprated capacitors, the Thomson was fine at first then I started getting failed recordings about a year ago and I'd end up having to fully power cycle the box to get any signal (i.e. off for about 10 minutes). It'd be alright for a while before having to do it again. The last 3 months or so it was getting ridiculous though so I phoned Sky up to cancel and they agreed to send an engineer out and replace anything for free (usually £65) as I've been a customer for 9 years. Pretty darned good of them, I thought. I just hope I haven't ended up with someone elses previously failing box.

I have a portable kit with a Comag receiver and plugged that into each of the coax feeds and the signal was 90-odd% on both, so I could rule out the dish, lnb and wiring. I also bought a Foxsat HDR box in anticipation of cancelling Sky which picked up a signal strength of 95% (the HD channels also seemed a bit sharper, for the 15 minutes I had it plugged in).

It seems if you get a Pace or one of the new Amstrad boxes they are far more reliable than previous versions. The Thomson is said to be rock solid with the uprated capacitors but mine was obviously designed to fail after so long The old Amstrad and Samsung boxes are said to be better than the Thomson but still suffer now and again.

So make sure, if you do go for the Sky package, get them to supply a good digibox!

 

thats what happens to ours. i have read that if you dont get the capacitors done soon enough it may damage other parts, HD, and Tuners, my particular box you cant get replacement tuners anymore. oh and it's always the second tuner that goes on mine, even when changing the cables around.

sorry i hijacked the thread :-S


FAZED i might try your suggestion, although it's in wifes name at mo so would get in mine, lol

 

If only it had been as easy as to have a straight choice...

It turned out, unbeknownst to me, my girlfriend had verbally extended our contract for line rental with BT at our old place just recently, so to avoid cancellation charges I decided to go for BT Infinity for an initial 18 months to see what it was like.

Put an order in on 16th Jan for a 1st Feb installation and then heard nothing so on Tuesday I rang them and ended up spending 2.5hrs on the phone being told my order had 'partially failed' etc. etc. on the day I placed the order (so it must just be an oversight that they never informed me or took £120 out of my account for line-rental pre-payment - incompetent B@$+@£¦)$) and that going by their systems the earliest I could expect it to get sorted would be 2nd March!!!

So I'm broadband-less and deserted, trusting the word of a BT technical advisor that he will get it sorted more quickly.

Now, there's no telling whether I'd have experienced the same issues with another ISP, but the hours I've spent on the phone talking to countless different people, with an ever-extending deadline for activation, have not left me pleased I went with BT. And that's before any of the infamous traffic-shaping begins!

 

you try posting here they normally get thing shifted a bit faster, but be polite, and don't get arsey with the forum mods.

 

total agree with this, when we moved in the speed was something like 50kbps, spent countless hours on the phone to india (i think), got told every time it would be sorted, three months later still calling them, posted one message on there and within a week/two bt/openreach were digging the road up to relay a new cable for me, speed know about 1.6 Meg, not brillient but better than 50kbps!!

 

wow so much hate our highspeed here in canada is terrible by comparison. the best i can get is

50MB D/ 2MB up
175GB Cap

for $113 CDN (around 71.00 GBP for you guys). PLus once you go over the 175GB allotment they charge for the overages up to a max of an additional $50 CDN. Yaay welcome to Canada, eh. And then there is UBB that is starting to come out which is going to kill the internet industry in Canada single handed.