News - Almost half of Brits 'unhappy' with their broadband provider

[Acute]

I just wish we had good upload speeds for a change. I mean our upload speeds are pathetic. I have 10mb Virgin and can only upload at 45k/s in ideal conditions which is just barely enough for a webcam let alone doing more then one thing at a time which uses uploads.

And Virgin have moved there customer services to India it seems and they are truely **** at there job beyond belief.

[crossy]

I just wish we had good upload speeds for a change. I mean our upload speeds are pathetic. I have 10mb Virgin and can only upload at 45k/s in ideal conditions which is just barely enough for a webcam let alone doing more then one thing at a time which uses uploads.

That sounds like either your connection isn't configured right (no insult intended - it's more than likely their fault) or it's over-stressed. I've also got the 10Mb/s service and I'm sure last time I did a transfer upstream it was 200-300KB/s+ being reported.

But I agree with you that more symmetry in the speeds would be nice - someone said to me that the higher up you go the better these get - so presumably the 50Mb/s service has download:upload ratio closer to 1:1 than we get.

And Virgin have moved there customer services to India it seems and they are truely **** at there job beyond belief.

Technical services seem to have entirely gone to India (not that I've had to make much use of them - thankfully). Customer services (billing, etc) you can still talk to a real human (as opposed to a dollar-an-hour helldesker). Last time I inquired about my bill, I got some very helpful Scouse-sounding lassie. Time before (which was outside office hours) I got a helldesker.

Cheer up - I just went to VM's site to check what they're currently calling the 10Mb/s service and got "Service Temporarily Unavailable. The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.". Sounds like they need more bandwidth on their shop site.

[razer121]

Question is how many of that 50% are actually unhappy with their shyte 25 quid router?

Very true, i was considering leaving O2 untill i went out and spent £80 on an ASUS router, which has made my connection perfect, no drop outs a great ping and my connection is now able to reach 3mb compared to its rubbish 1.8-2.3mb i was getting on that awefull thomson they provide.

This probs has alot to do with why people dont like there unreliable connection, alot of the time it is down to a crap router...as i can easily prove with my end, but then i suppose it would need a world wide test to prove this.

[Gerrard]

I'm quite happy with my ISP (ADSL24). The line desynched one morning last month, but after checking it wasn't my end (filter change and router reboot), I called them up and got through straight away. They even explained the problem (fire in an exchange in Reading I think) and said the problem would be sorted within the hour; which it was.

The biggest problem I have is with the quality of the line (<1Mbs), and thanks to history getting in the way of progress (listed bridge), BT aren't able (or just CBA) to update the lines to fibre optic.

[usxhe190]

TBH, I think we are not the best when compared to our Far East friends but then not the worst.

I think our Antipodeans friends have it even worst as there is only one underground cable line that links Australia to the rest of the world!

[aidanjt]

Compared to your Scandinavian friends, British internet is a sorry sight, indeed.

[GeeZee]

I just want reliability/consistancy, there's too much talk of speed in general imo. I'd happily pay more for a lower latency, more reliably, but lower bandwidth connection. Obviously not going to happen though.

[Barrichello]

Compared to your Scandinavian friends, British internet is a sorry sight, indeed.

Not based on price at least, unless you think paying approx £45 a month is good for a 5mb service which my brother in law in Norway gets, he cant believe how much lower our costs are.

Personally happy with my 10mb Virgin service, damn cheap and reliable overall

[aidanjt]

In Sweden, 100mbps is what? £20? In the Netherlands, about £40 for 120mbps. Denmark, £30 for 20mbps. Finland, £40 for 100mbps. Norway is the exception, rather than the rule, and I'm sure better deals can be had even there.

[capt_cornflake]

Can you provide links to back that up?
I may be wrong but £20 seems stupidly cheap for 100mbps...

And also I was under the impression that these fast speeds are only available in certain areas of large cities, not the norm.

[aidanjt]

Can you provide links to back that up?

http://www.comhem.se/comhem/bredband...8/-/index.html

I may be wrong but £20 seems stupidly cheap for 100mbps...

It is, compared to the UK, that's the point.

And also I was under the impression that these fast speeds are only available in certain areas of large cities, not the norm.

Nope, that's just regular cable. The highly populated cities have MAN-wide Ethernet, and Fibre. As well as FttH deployments. They get much faster interwebs, obviously.

[capt_cornflake]

http://www.comhem.se/comhem/bredband...8/-/index.html


It is, compared to the UK, that's the point.


Nope, that's just regular cable. The highly populated cities have MAN-wide Ethernet, and Fibre. As well as FttH deployments. They get much faster interwebs, obviously.

£20 is a discounted rate though for 6 months on a £12 month contract, then it reverts to £40 which is more what I would expect. It's also sold as 50-100 Mbps.
There basic package (which is actually £20pm) seems to be only 3-5Mbps.

from the little Googling I did:

from wikipedia (I know not the most reliable):

In Sweden, household broadband is mainly available through cable (in speeds of 128 kbit/s to 100 Mbit/s) and ADSL (256 kbit/s to 60 Mbit/s), but in many places also through copper Ethernet LAN networked via fibre MANs connecting buildings.

and a news story from about a year ago, which lists sweden as having the 2nd fastest average speed in Europe (at 5.7 Mbps - the fastest being Romania at 6.2 Mbps) and which reports the fastest average in the world (South Korea) at 14.6 Mbps.

There are more recent figures here which lists Sweden at 21Mbps, the UK at 9.8Mbps and South Korea at 37.1Mbps.

Of course I've no idea where any of these pages got their data from, but those were the first pages I found, and although other pages had different figures, the pattern was fairly similar.

Claiming that everyone in Sweden can get 100Mbps from that link is like claiming that everyone in the UK can get 50 Mbps from Virgin, and that's simply not the case, it's much more complicated than that.

And one other thing to bear in mind: OECD placesUK 5th in broadband penetration/. We may not be best in terms of speed, but we're doing pretty good in terms of coverage.

[I3r0k3N7FEET]

virgin is terrible tbf but they are the best of the bunch at least. though personally im sick of 1mb dl when im meant to have 10 and even my friend on 50mb which isnt meant to be 'traffic managed' is being slowed down too..

what i find hilarious and something most people dont even know is that ISPs can curb your 'streaming' speeds seperately to download speeds. i have often sat waiting minutes for short videos to stream and when ive done a speed test my DL is as it should be.. but when i used the bbc iplayer diagnosticsi get some hella random results.