Sky and NowTV broadband - same network, so why is it better???

[maverick77_uk]

Hi all,

OK, slightly confused by this one. We live a fair distance from the phone exchange, so standard broadband speed has always been pretty slow for us - but fine for our purposes. We could go fibre, and Virgin has only just installed in our area in the past couple of months, so that has only recently become an option anyway, but as said given our uses, standard ADSL has been fine.

Originally, when were were with Talk Talk, we were getting 2.5Mbit, due to the distance from the exchange - fine. A few years ago, due to price hikes, new customer offers etc, we switched to Sky and again got 2.5Mbit as it is over the same line etc - probably plugged into a different socket at the exchange, but pretty much confirmed the max 2.5Mbit speed due to our line - fine.

Earlier this week, again due to price hikes, new customer offers etc, we "switched" to NowTV broadband - I say switched, but in reality NowTV broadband is owned by, and runs off the Sky network. This is now all up and running fine - and as expected, there wasn't any downtime as I guess nothing needed changing at the exchange, it was purely a paper exchanging exercise between two offices, probably in the same building!

So therefore, why are we now getting 3.5Mbit?? Which is great, but why? OK, we have a new router, which is a NowTV branded Sky Router -the new Hub2 (flat with Wifi AC etc), as opposed to the vertical mounted "smiley face" one we had before (wifi G only), but given our low speeds, I wouldn't of expected the older router to be fully loaded as it is, let alone the new one, and we are way lower than Wifi G speed, so we weren't maxing that out, so not sure that would change anything?

As we are on the Sky network, I'd have thought traffic would be identical? Unless then have sectioned off a certain bandwidth for NowTV broadband customers which has a relatively low uptake at the moment? But that would suggest our line has always been able to support at least 3.5Mbit, which we never got - and can't believe that for all these years Talk Talk and Sky have limited us to 2.5Mbit due to traffic when the national average for ADSL broadband is universally 11Mbit.....

Any ideas?

I mean it's good - I'm not complaining at all! I just don't understand HOW we are now getting 3.5Mbit, when we have been on identical 2.5Mbit for years through multiple providers.

Also strange as NowTV is supposed to be the "budget" provider out of itself and Sky, and we are now getting better broadband, and free anytime calls for less than Sky were willing to give me on broadband and pay per use phone with 3 years of loyalty

Cheers all!

[Kylzer]

My first thought would be that your line settled at 6db snr while on Sky and it just never changed, While your new service applies an aggressive DLM profile pushing your Snr down to 3 hence the higher speed.

My 2nd more unlikely idea would be that while you were on Sky you may have been using ADSL 2+ while this new service has synced you onto ADSL2 that may help for a longer lines.

[DanceswithUnix]

An old thread, but how did this pan out? I did wonder if the line speed would drop back down after a few weeks settling time.

With my old ADSL router in the last house I got an extra half a megabit just by changing the power supply to the existing router, they really are that sensitive. The cheap switch mode that it came with must have been injecting all sorts of noise into the line before it failed. I was getting around the 1.5Mbit to start with, after removing some old phone wiring, replacing some extension cables with cat5, moving the router as close to the master socket as possible and removing the bell wire from the circuit I ended up with 3.5Mbit.

[peterb]

Cabling is certainly a 'component' that often gets overlooked. At my last house where I was on ADSL, (and before that, 'Home highway') BT replaced the drop cable from the pole with cat5 which made a significant improvement to both telephony and ADSL quality.