Another ISP thread - BT vs. O2

[eksdee]

So I just canceled my Virgin 50mb service as it's utter dogshit. My pings/jitter are a joke and they keep telling me the ongoing 'contention/utilisation' (i.e. they're greedy and over-sold) issues in my area are 'due for an imininent fix', but the truth of the matter upon some investigation is these problems have existed for well over 6 months. Called up, complained, argued they weren't honouring their contract so I should get out of it for free and they agreed.

Good stuff, but now I need a new ISP.

After some shopping around in my area it seems my best options are BT Infinity or O2's 'the works'. I'm an O2 customer so I'd get money off, but I'd have to pay £43 to get the BT line connected. BT will do it for free, but I'll be paying around £7 a month more for their services than I would O2. I'll get between 6mb-10mb with either provider, so speed isn't the issue. However, I do lots of online gaming and so I'm looking for the most consistent and stable provider.

I'm happy to consider other ISPs also, if someone has a better suggestion. Postcode: E17; Nearest exchange: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LNHPK and my budget per month is £35. I'm willing to pay a connection fee, but not more than £50.

Any help would be highly appreciated. Right now I'm leaning towards O2 due to it being cheaper per month and that generally from what I can find out online there are more complaints from gamers using BT than there are from those using O2.

 

[Clown]

o2 uses Be* and they were pretty solid when I used them.

There are rumours going around that my 50Mb Virgin Media connection is going to get upgraded to 100Mb for free. That's fine by me!

 

[Sar]

6-10Mb with Fibre Optic?

 

[Raven]

I wouldn't touch BT with a very long barge pole. They are verging on the comical, they are so bad. If anything goes wrong you have to speak to an over seas call centre, one that is worse than your average call centre, they barely understand English, up to the point where you sit there trying to think of other names for something that they might understand. A 5 minute fix can take hours of phone calls, every time having to go through the exact same set of tests, unplug this, unplug that. The sad thing is that it is often quicker to just let them go through their test cycle than it is to explain that the last time the test was run there was no problems.

 

[Killswitch]

How about Andrews and Arnold (http://aaisp.net.uk)? They have amazing tech support (including a very active IRC channel) and offer lots of cool things like static IP addresses. They support ADSL2+ over BT and Be AND if you go with Be then you get "Annex M." for free, which gives you much better upload speed (you can get it with BT in some exchanges, but it costs extra).

I've used them for various business stuff for the last 10 years and have never heard a bad word about them. I expect they'll cost a bit more than an equivalent service from a more mainstream ISP, but if you want the best latency, uptime and support I reckon they'll offer better value.

I'm currently on Sky Broadband (coz it's cheap) but now I need a static IP address, I'll be moving to AAISP in the next few weeks and I didn't even bother to look at alternatives.

 

[soze]

I have heard very good things about BE, I never want to go back to BT due to the overselling and traffic shaping. I will make a choice when and if FTTC comes out but until then I will stick with SKY where i get the bandwidth i pay for 24/7. Out of your 2 I would say BE.

We resold a lot of Annex M and one thing to point out is you lose a bit of download speed for your extra upload. As in from 8m down 700k up to 6m down 1m up.

 

[Raven]

I'm very happy with Sky. Not sure if they offer fibre yet...not that I can get fibre in the village from anyone!

 

[soze]

*OT* Sky do not currently resell Fibre Optic although they are trialling it. I am not sure if BT are letting people resell the Fibre they are rolling out yet but like broadband eventually they will be made to share.

 

[GReaper]

I've used them for various business stuff for the last 10 years and have never heard a bad word about them. I expect they'll cost a bit more than an equivalent service from a more mainstream ISP, but if you want the best latency, uptime and support I reckon they'll offer better value.

A bit more?

I'd love to support an ISP which actually has a clue instead of providing a dumb connection to the masses, and AAISP does this. However the cost of bandwidth from them is extortionate, sadly.

To use AAISP I'd have to watch every single byte and be careful of what I use, to me this reminds me of the dialup days when you had to watch the clock incase you stayed on too long and ended up with a large phone bill.

 

[soze]

Yeah AAISP looks cost prohibitive if you want to use bandwidth during 9-6 for my 20 quid a month I can only get 1gb a month between 9-6 Monday to Friday and 50gb off peak.

 

[Krazeh]

I'm currently on Sky Broadband (coz it's cheap) but now I need a static IP address, I'll be moving to AAISP in the next few weeks and I didn't even bother to look at alternatives.

Why not just go with Be directly?

 

[eksdee]

AAISP's prices are just obscene, to be honest. Looks like I'll be going with O2. Thanks for the advice. o:

 

[GReaper]

Why not just go with Be directly?

This is something to consider if you're using your connection primarily for gaming.

BE allows you to tweak the settings for your connection, so you can change SNR margin and turn interleaving on or off. If you've got a stable line, turning off interleaving and having fastpath will reduce your latency by about 10ms - but it's likely to give you more disconnects at random times. Personally I don't mind the occasional disconnect for a better ping!

O2 doesn't allow you to do this with their service, it's a BE feature. How useful it is depends on your line length and stability.

 

[Raven]

Yeah AAISP looks cost prohibitive if you want to use bandwidth during 9-6 for my 20 quid a month I can only get 1gb a month between 9-6 Monday to Friday and 50gb off peak.

50g off peak a month? I probably download close to that every week!

 

[eksdee]

This is something to consider if you're using your connection primarily for gaming.

BE allows you to tweak the settings for your connection, so you can change SNR margin and turn interleaving on or off. If you've got a stable line, turning off interleaving and having fastpath will reduce your latency by about 10ms - but it's likely to give you more disconnects at random times. Personally I don't mind the occasional disconnect for a better ping!

O2 doesn't allow you to do this with their service, it's a BE feature. How useful it is depends on your line length and stability.

Big difference here is that O2 are quoting me £43 to get my BT line reconnected (didn't need it with VM obviously) while BE want £90 off me for it, as well as charging more per month.

 

[Zenith.UK]

Damn, I didn't see this thread until just now.

I recommend my ISP, Aquiss Internet.
<< That's a referral link.

They've got clearly defined bandwidth terms, no throttling that I can tell and while the price is a bit more than mainstream ISPs like BT, TalkTalk or Sky, they're not silly prices like AAISP. I'm on Business 45 which means I have 45GB daytime allowance (8am-8pm) and unlimited off-peak (8pm-8am) for £34.80 a month. Sure, it's more than some people are prepared to pay, but the support is amazing. Seriously, every time I need to speak with them (which isn't that often), I get someone who knows their stuff.

Let's just say that I've been with them for more than 5 years, the longest I've been with one ISP.
They don't do badly. ISP Review have consistently had them in the Top 10 ISPs for some time.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php

 

[Moriath]

o2 uses Be* and they were pretty solid when I used them.

There are rumours going around that my 50Mb Virgin Media connection is going to get upgraded to 100Mb for free. That's fine by me!

Oo hope they do mine too where r these rumours ?

 

[MYstIC G]

Why not just go with Be directly?

No point, Be == O2 and with O2 if you're on a mobile contract you can get a discount.

My O2 Broadband is 20mb and currently costs me £6 a month, never been capped, restricted, etc, etc.

 

[GReaper]

There are differences, you probably don't have it as an older customer.

The new O2 packages have certain levels of traffic management, existing O2 customers on other older packages won't have it. All of BE's packages have no traffic management, but you'll obviously pay more for it.

 

[MYstIC G]

In that case, avoid.

I'm dead against any ISP that now wants to charge by the unit.

 

[eksdee]

God that traffic management looks awful. No idea what to do. I really can't afford the £90 BE want to charge to install a BT line. Guh.

 

[MYstIC G]

Have you got Virgin TV? You might consider a Sky package. I only swapped away from them because they wanted to ramp up my broadband cost because I didn't want a Sky phone line. Plus if you order online you can get cashback (dirty referral link).

 

[Moriath]

cant you get bt to reconnect your line .. then get BE to give you adsl .. or doesnt it work like that

 

[GReaper]

"The All Rounder" traffic management seems fairly reasonable? Some of the P2P and file download sites will be limited to 0.25Mbit/s, but for a total of £20/month (broadband AND phone line) - what do you expect? Just as long as you're aware of it before signing up, instead of assuming it's fully unlimited.

One other thing to remember, you can get either £100 or £120 cashback from Quidco for O2 as well, which will help a bit.

Assuming you're an existing O2 customer - total 12 month cost for "The All Rounder" is £165 (half of £12.50/month for broadband, £7.50/month rental), total 12 month cost for "The Works" is £216 (half of £21/month for broadband, same line rental). Knock off £100 or £120 (though don't forget the £5 Quidco annual fee), and you'll be paying either a total £65 or £96 for the first 12 months.

Although the Quidco cashback obviously isn't instant, it's still a damn good deal. So around £8/month for the first 12 months on the top package.

 

[MYstIC G]

£101 & £121 on Topcashback plus Quidco carve you for a membership fee.

The math however is similar to how I decided on O2 in the first place.

That said my sky package (2 boxes + all channels except movies/sports) was only £35 quid a month or there abouts when I had it.

 

[eksdee]

Cheers for the advice GR. Sensible learnings!

 

[Sar]

I use BT FTTC atm, and have been on it about 5 months. I download a lot over the course of a month - the first month I think I hit 130Gb or somewhere around that. Usage spikes up generally when Steam have a sale on too

Completely unlimited, so I can download as much as I like, at 37.4Mbs and 8.2Mbs upload.

By far the best connection I've ever had - previously my bests were 5.5mb (Be ADSL2+), 2Mb (BT RADSL) and 1Mb (BT ADSL), so somewhat of a jump.

I've had few problems, the odd disconnection while playing wow, but outside of the first month nothing at all to complain about. Haven't had to use Customer Services though

Oh and if you use Torrents, they chop the speed of those right down. But everyone should be using newsgroups these days - Astraweb rocks

If Be's FTTC solution is cheap enough when it eventually comes out, I'll likely go back to them, but atm, for phone & net, I'm paying £41 p/m including all calls.

 

[Krazeh]

Dunno if you've had a BT line installed yet but if you haven't then you might want to look at the Post Office who are currently offering free connections.

 

[Deebs]

I use BT FTTC atm, and have been on it about 5 months. I download a lot over the course of a month - the first month I think I hit 130Gb or somewhere around that. Usage spikes up generally when Steam have a sale on too

Completely unlimited, so I can download as much as I like, at 37.4Mbs and 8.2Mbs upload.

By far the best connection I've ever had - previously my bests were 5.5mb (Be ADSL2+), 2Mb (BT RADSL) and 1Mb (BT ADSL), so somewhat of a jump.

I've had few problems, the odd disconnection while playing wow, but outside of the first month nothing at all to complain about. Haven't had to use Customer Services though

Oh and if you use Torrents, they chop the speed of those right down. But everyone should be using newsgroups these days - Astraweb rocks

If Be's FTTC solution is cheap enough when it eventually comes out, I'll likely go back to them, but atm, for phone & net, I'm paying £41 p/m including all calls.

Likewise, I have BT Infinity and love it. Rock solid, no problems whatsoever. I also have a BT 21CN ADSL2+ connection which work pays for. Only work traffic goes out over the 21CN network, the rest goes out over BT Infinity. My plan is unlimited and my record for a month is 1.2TB downloaded and I have never been throttled. Love it.

My aim for this year is to achieve the downloading of at least 2TB in a billing cycle (ie monthly).

 

[Embattle]

All such questions are always area related and to some degree person related.