Comments on: Broadband blog - have your say!

By: rturvey

rturvey — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:13:44 +0000

I demonstrated the broadband speed checker to a friend today and achieved download 1224kbps and upload 367kbps.

By: rturvey

rturvey — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:42:03 +0000

Now we have been upgraded download is 736kbps and upload 365kbps. Still not fantastic but a huge improvement. It was done in one day including a BT upgrade of the Croxton Exchange. Not sure if that means the whole of the Croxton Exchange was upgraded or just our link following the request from Zen.
Our weekend skype to Australia was a huge improvement.
Bob & Penny T

By: rturvey

rturvey — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:25:15 +0000

One more thing for the broadband blog! ZEN has just offered a free upgrade. By changing to Zen 8000 Active you will benefit from download speeds of “up to 8Mbps”. Based on our customers current performance on this product you are likely to achieve a download speed increase of 8 - 10 times faster than you currently get and your upload speeds will almost double. Will let you know the outcome in a month or so.

By: rturvey

rturvey — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:33:57 +0000

We are now regularly use Skype. It has become hit and miss whether we get a good connection. We put it down to the fact we are furthest away from the exchange.

Bob & Penny T

By: rturvey

rturvey — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:10:58 +0000

Our ISP is ‘Zen’ which always come top of the comparisons but are expensive. There customer service, when we have had to use it, is second to none. We chose it for business use with a northern office in York. We Skype a lot Having family in Australia and reception is not bad.
Download is 480Kps and upload 235Kps - not bad when you consider we are at the end of the line! Comparing actual download speeds with average the comparisons on regularly used sites are:
Google 0.4 sec where average is 1.7, BBC 17,2 sec /Av 8.4, Amazon 7.8/7.5, ebay 3.7/Av 6.2, face book 1.7/Av 3.3.
So in comparison with the average not too bad. But in comparison with some European countries and particularly compared to even USA hotel lobbies speeds are woeful. We need fibre optics! However we have been in the village 4 years and we remember being told that internet would be installed by the time we built our house. So no complaints just encouragement for the government to recognise that speed is everything for future competitiveness.

Bob & Penny T

By: Mike B

Mike B — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:13:47 +0000

I’m currently getting 312kpbs download and 238 upload with occasional variations.
I had about 6 years with Reach which changed through several names to eventually becoming Homecall. Who were quite satisfactory and initially very helpful with the usual teething problems we all seem to get with Broadband (or should it be very narrow band? ) This deteriorated about a year ago with overseas call centres and inability to make contact and rumours of absortion into Tiscali and as I was also having pc problems with even less satisfaction a decision was made to have a big change!
So early in the year we went for a Mac got a good package deal with Greenbee (John Lewis) and have had faith restored more than somewhat.
How much of the improvement is due to the Hardware, Mac software, or ISP is beyond me - but most people tell me that upgrading of any of these seems to lead to some improvement.
I can say that we have found the switch to Mac a very fruitful change.

By: Tony

Tony — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:09:11 +0000

I am with aol, £15.77 a month which also covers the phone except BT rental. I get 290 Kbps down and 365 up as tested on TBB which is OK for me if it was reliable. The big problem is that I lose connection frequently, and I won’t get on at all if you lot are all awake! I have reworked my phone line as far as I can. I have aways seen the bottleneck as the local phone lines, and I can’t see how a different provider can make a large difference. Your reports prove that theory to be wrong. Please let me know about the engineer you used.

By: gordon ascroft

gordon ascroft — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:19:05 +0000

I am with BT and have an all in one business tariff. The service is ok, but the speed could be a lot faster.

By: chrisw

chrisw — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:15:26 +0000

We are with btinternet and all seems to work well, use the internet 24/7 with virtually no problems, it is as quick as the office we use in Cambridge! Again, like John, we asked an engineer to check our line when we first moved in and after a few checks and alterations it was speedier and has remained that way.
However we used to be with aol and at the bottom of the hill and that was very much a “hit and miss” situation.

By: psychosibes

psychosibes — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:23:47 +0000

We subscribe to Orange. I have just done a check on our broadband speed (http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/) and our download rate is 2392 Kbps and upload rate is 217Kbps. I have to say at peak times we sometimes struggle to reach dial up speeds though. The lowest download rate I have seen is 13 b/s and the music file was going to take something like 11 hours more to download! Luckily it didn’t.
The connection seems to be reliable as I can’t remember the last time we got cut off.
Overall, i would give them a good rating.