FasterBB.info
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| Not everyone can get the fastest broadband services. Virgin Media (cable) is only available to around 50% of the UK (mostly cities). BT Broadband has been promoting the "BT Infinity" fibre service - in most cases there is the same phone wiring from the street cabinet (the green BT boxes) to your property, but from the exchange to that cabinet is a fibre optic cable. Fibre to the cabinet should improve speeds in all cases and offers "up to 40 Mbps" download speeds. That's a lot faster than the "up to 8 Mbps" services (where some people don't even get 3 Mbps). On my estate, it seems a lot of people get less than that! The biggest reason for slow speeds at present is where the length of the phone line runs to thousands of metres to get back to the exchange. If you cut the distance from, say, 5000 metres to 500 metres (or for those living close to the cabinet, 50 or even 5 metres) the speeds for internet download go up and Openreach (the BT Engineering section) now allows most of the longer lines (where the speed is "only" 5 Mbps) to use this new service. If you are getting slow internet access and would like fibre optic speed, the first thing to do is to register interest (and if you have ever discussed poor internet speeds with neighbours or friends, ask them to do so too). When you register interest, the web form will ask for your name and address details. This is simply to prevent excessive requests from some over enthusiastic teenagers. You can register an interest without committing to using the service from BT Broadband. You can decide later which ISP to use, and while this is a survey of demand by BT Broadband, the real issue is to get enough demand from internet users served by your exchange - BT has been shown to be a bit slow in some parts of the UK, and Ofcom has recently produced a map with details of the (poor) speeds in areas outside big (mostly English) cities.
As an internet and e-mail user for many years (I was using e-mail in the mid-80s when I worked in education) I have tried a number of ISPs, including Freeserve (now Orange), Plusnet, Eclipse, UKFSN and Three mobile (as I depend on the internet for work, I have usually used 2 services in case of technical problems, and to do testing). The service I have used since 2003, however, is Plusnet, with their call centre in Sheffield. Plusnet has won awards for customer service over the years, and while they are not perfect (I doubt any ISP achieves perfection) they do try to accommodate customer requests and are fairly open about any problems. They have a number of staff whose task is to resolve customer problems mentioned online (on ThinkBroadband forum, for example). Currently using Three mobile and Plusnet Extra, I am happy to recommend both services for reliability and low cost. For anyone with a growing family, using a few computers or wireless from mobile phones, to share their internet connection, the EXTRA package (costing 11.49 to 17.99 a month) gives a generous 60 GB of 'peak time' traffic and all their broadband accounts offer unmetered usage during the night (so those who download massive games or TV shows using iPlayer, etc, can download without worrying). Broadband accounts can be used (with or without Phone line rental). Here are the current range of accounts: 
 and the facilities offered for all accounts are: 
Just using the broadband facility on your phone line :
No guarantee you will get the upper speed - I get 2.5 Mbps !! As explained earlier, speed depends on the length of your line. It also depends on the equipment at the exchange. BT is still upgrading rural exchanges. These accounts can be used in areas served by Fibre:
If you are having
problems with your current ISP, or want to try mobile
internet with a Laptop,
just use the Contact Form and if there is some way I can help, I will. |
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