UK Broadband Hits New Low July 04, 2007

I've been with Orange for years and have no problems. I use their cheapest package and as they don't (seemingly can't) track how much I download per month, they never enforce the supposed limit, giving me unlimited downloads at 8Mb for a pittance.

What a co-incidence, just yesterday I phoned Orange to complain about their very slow broadband speed here in London SW6. This is the second time I have phoned and the whole telephone call in experience is beyond unprofessional. a) Their status recording sounds most unprofessional and is unclear and full of excuses. b) You eventually reach overseas call centers that demand all kinds of iD which should not be required when the call is about quality of service NOT a billing enquiry. c) The service is constantly suffering from outages and the connection is considerably slower than others I have used at other people's homes or in offices. Orange need to stop all their poncy advertising and get their act together. They should follow Apple's approach, create a great product, and then do the advertising.

I have broadband with SKY and my connection keeps going down. I've called their technical support up a number of times and although I keep telling them the problem has nothing to do with the router they supplied or the wiring in my house they just won't listen. The only people who hear you out are at Tier 3 the highest level of support but to get there you have to deal with someone in India who doesn't even want to help you. Once you get through to Tier 3 they still don't listen. As long as you have no problems with the broadband Sky are fine but as soon as you have a problem good luck getting it resolved.

I have broadband with SKY and my connection keeps going down. I've called their technical support up a number of times and although I keep telling them the problem has nothing to do with the router they supplied or the wiring in my house they just won't listen. The only people who hear you out are at Tier 3 the highest level of support but to get there you have to deal with someone in India who doesn't even want to help you. Once you get through to Tier 3 they still don't listen. As long as you have no problems with the broadband Sky are fine but as soon as you have a problem good luck getting it resolved.

I am with BE UNLIMITED (BETHERE.CO.UK) and it has got to be the BEST broadband company i have ever come across!

I pay £24/month for a 24MB line with the option to cancel at any 3 month interval. I know they currently dont offer their service to ALL areas of the UK just yet and that speed DOES vary depending how close you are to the exchange.

MY average download speed is around 1200kb/sec and as far as i am concerned is BRILLIANT! (On average a single mp3 takes only 1-3 seconds on average to download)

In the 10 months i have been with them i have only had 3 seperate days where i had lost connection or had any down time for maintenance etc - 3DAYS!!

Their support line is 24hours and are ALWAYS helpfull. For the price you really cant go wrong - just be sure to check that your area is covered!!

Pipex has to be worst. I hate it.

I have been with BE* for a couple of months and they are great. They have a really good support team and a good ticket system were you can log problems one to one with BE* also they have a helpful forum directly on the member centre. I get between 11 and 22mbps on the 14gbp be lite package

Virgin media (ntl/telewest) are a load of old crap. Sure they've got 10/20meg lines but they're trigger happy with the old "disconnect". I was set to move house- when it fell through i 'phoned branson-internet and the nice idiot said "no problem, we won't cut you off"- guess what, they did. The best bit is that it took FIVE days to get reconnected- i have to take my hat off to such utterly rubbish performance.

I'm with Orange, Before that it was Wanadoo, and before that, Freeserve, yes, I've been with the company a long time. Service has been good up until the beginning of this year when all of a sudden my server staus would show up as being 'Down'!! The 1st call to chimp support would be in India; whom would spell out sentences in their version of the phonetic alphabet - "D for Mike, N for Sierra!" The 2nd call would get me Hemel Hempstead, provided their centre wasn't 'Down!' too, lol. Either way, I know that 'PPP Sever down' means it's their server, not my router, PC, firewall, settings, phoneline, the weather outside, yes that's what I get told. Eventually after the 3rd call to chimp support shall I get the confirmation that the server is down and they can't tell me when it will be back up, yet they'll still run a 'line check', lol.

I'm with BE There (bethere.co.uk). fantastic ISP and i've been with almost all of them, demon, plus.net, pipex, uk online, eclipse etc..etc.. compared to BE they all suck. Its not just that I get a 24500mbps connection its the fact they have ZERO contention (I get 2600kbytes/sec 24/7), unmetered downloads, but above all its that their customer support staff are imho efficient and honest a rare thing indeed.

BE should be the yard stick all other ISPs use for reference.

10 of out 10 for BE!!

Well, I'm with Virgin Media, pretty satisfied. It's been a tad slow recently, but I can put up with that. It's not gone down in 9 months. The staff are efficient and helpful whenever i've needed to call, which is rare!

Just thought I'd add Tiscali to the crap list. Connection is currently dropping every 5 minutes, and it takes them 15 days to change address. Thanks to them I'm typing this on 56k. I feel like I'm in 1995.

I've been with Be since the start so I'm paying £20 a month for unlimited 24Mbs, I get about 18Mbs download, 1-2Mbs up. Their customer service has always been fantastic, even when it was in Bangalore. Whenever you need help you get through to a person right away, support tickets on the website always get a 4 hour response. All round, very happy. Then again, even at £20 it's more than many other ISPs - do you want good service or cheap broadband?

I'd like to jump on the BE* is great thread too, I went with them about 6 months ago after suffering at the hands of some appalling ISP's.. it was the best move I could have made - ok, it's more expensive than other services but I find that its worth it for a stable and fast connection.

As much as I hate Virgin Media for their TV service (overpriced, stealing channels from us, abyssmal picture qulaity, screen freezes on pay per view movies) I can't complain about broadband. Usually get good speeds and though it often slows at peak time I can't remember it ever disconnecting completely without it being a hardware fault. Mind you they're now introducing bandwidth caps so my opinion may change pretty sharpish...

I've got Virgin Media because it's full cable broadband, not shitty DSL. It's always on, no need for phone filters and all that nonsense. I've had it for 5 months and have had no problems ... I'm regularly getting 9mb speeds, which isn't bad.

I've been with Virgin since about 200 0 and whilst the dial-up was terrible, the broadband has mostly been good. Only been down for about a day in 2+ years of having it, which isn't bad. However, the suppled modem was awful, although I have now replaced it with a £12 ebuyer one that works great!

Im another Be There costumer and i get no where near the speeds that the others have stated (i donno maybe i live far from an exchange.) BUT they are still the best ISP ive had. The few times they need stop my connection to do some maintenance they give me plenty of warning and do it during times that i wont likely to be effected by. The customer care is over seas but they do actually give correct advice unlike other isp's ive been with. Oh! and about the speeds i get, they are still faster them everyone else i know and do me just fine :)

I was with NTL cable for a year. A 4Mb connection with a max theoretical of 512KB/s download would give me 480 KB/s. That is 93.75% of what I was paying for but fairly good. Not a single drop in service for a year.
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Virgin Media takes over: the offer changed to "up to 4 MB" so theoretically I could receive just 2Mb...
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Anyway check this lovely new term:

"We reserve the right to monitor and control data volume and/or types of traffic transmitted via the interactive services on your Virgin TV and/or Internet access. In the event that you exceed any usage allowance applicable to your Internet access or your use does not comply with the 'acceptable use policy' which you can read on the Virgin Media website, we reserve the right (at our sole discretion) to reduce, suspend or terminate your Internet access. During any time of reduction or suspension, you will remain liable for the payment of your original level of Internet access charge. We also reserve the right (at our sole discretion) to re-grade your Internet access to a different speed and/or usage allowance at the appropriate charge. If we make such changes we will notify you as soon as possible.
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http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/legal/oncable/terms.html
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and the "fair use" terms:

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/legal/oncable/acceptableuse.html
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To cut a long story short:
Between 4pm-12pm is peak hour so as soon as I exceed 1GB on my unlimited downloads package they cut my speed to half (2Mb) for the next 4 hours!!!
Unbelievable...
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This applies to all customers so I have filed a complain with Consumer Direct and I'm waiting for a response. Surely this must be illegal. If this is not resolved I am dropping them and will have to go for DSL.

Let me understand this.

uSwitch, which is a company that assists customers on who the best is to switch their broadband too has done a survey. This survey is about how happy customer's are with their current supplier.

It does not make sense! The figures will be skewed dramatically - it stands to reason that most of the people who will be visiting uSwitch are not happy and looking to switch to another service provider.

That is like doing a survey outside a shopping complex asking people why they are visiting the complex. The natural answer would be, "To buy something."

Do a proper survey, like the recent BBC Watchdog survey. What do those results say?

Do you really have the facts?

Let me understand this.

uSwitch, which is a company that assists customers on who the best provider is to switch their broadband. uSwitch is the company who did the survey? This survey is about how happy customer's are with their current supplier.

It does not make sense! The figures will be skewed dramatically - it stands to reason that most of the people who will be visiting the uSwitch website looking for advice are not happy and are looking to switch to another service provider. What are the chances of a really happy person visiting uSwitch otherwise?

That is like doing a survey outside a shopping complex asking people why they are visiting the complex. The natural answer would be, "To buy something."

Do a proper survey, like the recent BBC Watchdog survey. What do those results say?

Do you really have the facts?

To update my previous post, here is the page Virgin basically states that they will limit your service if you use it fully:

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
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and this is an extract:
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Broadband Size: L
During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: L package download at least 750MB of traffic each.Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 2Mb, with their upload speed set to 192Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied. Even if a Broadband: Size L user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 1,500 music files per day."
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So, essentially, when I come back home from work I have the right to download 750mb until I go to bed round 11pm.
Otherwise, even though I have an unlimited downloads pagkage, I am considered a "heavy user" who needs to be limited...
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I will be contacting OTELO, which is the organisation for telecomunications complaints in the UK.

I often use sky broadband at a friends house which is supposed to be 2Mb. but i did a speedtest (http://www.speedtest.net/result/154815624.png) and found out the copper wire could only max out at 106kb/s. 18 times slower than it should be. and thats before i mention the awful belkin wireless router which i think features autodisconnect.

EVERYBODY READ MY COMMENT

i have been with wanadoo for 2 years 10 weeks ago for the first time ever i have a PPP server down notice for 5 weeks after this error calling EVERYDAY!! i said for 5 weeks nothing happened at all whatsoever. so i stopped calling. a week later we got internet you can be sure i thanked god for that. and yesterday i had the same problem i hope im not gonna get another 5 weeks of shit from the call centre in india. I once spoke to a michael who told me that i had 11 digits in my number and that theres supposed to be ten i then asked him how long he had been working there he said 5 months. i have now done my 15th FIFTEENTH line test and factory reset to the box. orange have made wanadoo a nightmare and im sure of it. there are countless annoyances like for instance im paying for the 8meg broadband and im getting less than 1 honest i feel like swearing. If someone wants a reccomendation i dont know but wot ill say is dont chooosssee WANDOOOO

I am supposed to have max of 8mb on my Sky Broadband. The router is downstairs, at the end of the house, the computer i use is in the upstairs room, complete opposite side(start of house but up)

I am really pissed, I did a speed check, Download speed is at roughly 500kb/s...my downloads sometimes go at 2kb/s

This is REALLY annoying. My internet goes off a lot too.

If anyone can help, i would appreciate it so much with good detail please.

My email: swo_d@hotmail.co.uk or swornimd@fsmail.net

Thanks to anyone who helps.

Actually the call centre of Be* Unlimited is in Bulgaria. I used to work there and then I came to the UK to see that nobody of my family friends had heard of them.
What I can tell you is that the bloody Sky Broadband is giving Be*'s number occasionally in stead of theirs. In that way Be* have queues and Sky have less.
Just do not choose Sky cos if you have a problem you might get through to Be* :(

Actually the call centre of Be* Unlimited is in Bulgaria. I used to work there and then I came to the UK to see that nobody of my family friends had heard of them.
What I can tell you is that the bloody Sky Broadband is giving Be*'s number occasionally in stead of theirs. In that way Be* have queues and Sky have less.
Just do not choose Sky cos if you have a problem you might get through to Be* :(

I have Orange which was Freeserve. I find the call centres absolutely useless to call. Their only aim in life seems to be to keep you on the line as long as possible. Preferably not giving any useful advice in case you hang up. I have a Belkin Modem with Wireless Router and because this is not provided by Orange they tell me to contact Belkin. However, the problem is slow download speeds and loss of connection at times over the last 3 or 4 days or more. It took me ages to find an email to contact them and am trying that but I think I am going to have a long hard journey to 'SPEED' heaven. My difficulty is that I am 3 miles from the exchange and so speed is bad anyway. But my download speed was 143 Kb with upload of 243. Which seems strange, I dont know why the upload would differ so much from download. It has also tested at 22 KBPS!! I am losing the will to live! But will changing provider get me a faster speed, I dont understand. Can someone please tell me in plain English? Thanks.

I have been with sky broadband for 1 year now on there mid package (up to 8mb) I have NEVER received speeds higher than 1mb and my ping time(lag) is around 300ms how the fuck am i supposed to play online games on my xbox 360 or download anything but web pages. SKY BROADBAND SUCK DON'T BUY IT

I'm glad I'm not the only Orange Bband user with the PPP server issue, although I know what you are all going through!! I love the message they play on the 0845 number when you call to request the line-check. "If you have a Livebox account you can contact Technical Support free, for up to an hour." Explain how you do that when you have 'PPP - Server Down' displayed on the Bband login page.

The reset option is fun too. When you hit the reset button you have to remember to re-validate your account, otherwise you could be sat there for weeks wondering why the red light is flashing slowly on and off. Tech Support don't tell you about this, I found it via reading a tutorial on the Orange site!

For a French company with a part-time UK call centre were the majority of calls are forwarded to India, I'd love to know who trains the staff in India, because they really don't have a clue what you ask them. I had one woman tell me she could only tell me what was on her screen "There a downage in the London Area." I live in Liverpool, UK, how's that supposed to affect me, surely not everything is run through London??!!

I recently had my phone line (BT) replaced, as I thought that may be contributing to the 'PPP server down' message, guess not, considering my connection went down for 9 hours last week.

Like almost everything else in the UK, broadband is inferior to that of the US. I have Sky and it is absolute shit. They have sent me my 3rd router and still my service just stops at random. I also tried to bump up to their midlevel package to get faster, but I had to call them 3 times to finally get them to allow me to pay more money for their still crappy service. Customer service here sucks - the employees have no interest in helping you. In the US, if you should ever have trouble with your broadband, because they want to keep you as a customer, and because there is so much competition, they will usually send someone out to your house within 24 hours to fix the problem, no charge. Like that would ever happen here. Try finding someone who speaks english or is sober enough to help you.