Be Excellent To Each Other

So BE are getting worse, general website speed is slowing down and has been for a while, support is less helpful than it used to be, and people are asking if they have enough bandwidth for their current users. Which if that is the cause, then I can't see a proper fix coming soon.

If I was to leave, who would I go to?

I'm after no throttling and proper unlimited (or at least an ISP that won't get pissed off if I download 400Gb on a random month).

Virgin? No cable at my gaff.
BT Infinity? No fibre at my gaff.

That just leaves Sky and their top range product doesn't it? Is there any other ISP that can provide a proper service? Anybody on Sky? What are they like?

I'm on SKY unlimited. It seems to work well, no apparent downtime. The username and password is ahrd coded into the router though. There is a work around, apparently. Router provided seems fine, although a bit more oomph for the wireless would be nice. Customer service generally quite good.

I'm with Talktalk. Could be better but can't be arsed shifting. All ISPs seem to twat things up at some point anyway.

Sky Unlimited customer here - best ISP I've ever used. I can't remember a single problem in the last four or five years I've been using them. I had to replace the original router last year, but that was about it.

Another one for sky unlimited here, by far the best ISP I've ever had, the one thing I'd like to sort out is the router, it is occasionaly flakey for wifi (maybe once a month), but a quick reboot usually fixes it when it goes wrong.

Malc

I've been with Zen since forever. They're not the cheapest, but I've never had any problems at all and they've recently upped their bandwidth cap to 100GB for the package I'm on.

No throttling, traffic shaping or anything of any kind.

Plusnet here. There is a limit - though I've never hit it because after midnight it's unrestricted and doesn't count.

I don't know about that, coincidentally I've just posted a thread in their forum talking about how the BeBox router we've had for a few years now is getting a bit flakey (wireless interface dropping randomly and entire router needing rebooted increasingly frequently) and I got a post back about two minutes later asking for a delivery address so they could ship me out a new router. The guy even said that they couldn't guarantee the router was the cause of all our issues but it's easier just to replace the hardware initially than bugger about troubleshooting which is pretty good customer service to my mind.

All that said, I do feel like the connection's been getting slower over the years but it's still plenty fast enough (just over 1MBps usually when downloading from decent sources like XBL or Steam) and I'm reserving judgement until I see whether a new router has a positive effect on that or not. It does seem to be difficult to find a decent (uncapped unthrottled) alternative ISP these days though if you're not in a Virgin cabled area so I'll be curious to see who you end up deciding to go with.

Have the fibre, getting good speeds, all good so far

Just moved from 02 (rubbish customer service, slow, incompetent in handling move (sent things to address already moved from) to Sky (fast speeds, no problems and quick to answer phone). Thumbs up.

Sky were fine when I was last with them (August 2010).

Have you checked to see if your exchange has any LLU unbundled providers ?

I've been with O2 on LLU unbundled for a while and no limits (there is a fair use policy but i have on occasion kicked the **** out of it) although I have also heard horror stories about their standard dialup limits - i currently get about 16meg down / 1.5 up

The only time i've had to contact them about anything was a recent house move and although BT gave me 3 weeks without even a phone the day the phone was connected O2 had the internet service working (it was quoted as 3 - 4 working days but they managed it within a few hours)

Before that I was on Zen's advanced setting which did have a cap but no throttling (however i could only get about 7mb down / 0.5up)

To check go to http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search stick your postcode in and see what the result for your local exchange is

Aye, lots of LLU providers on my exchange, my current ISP is one of them. O2 are the same as BE by the way

Decided on switching to Sky, as with the offers they have on at the moment it'll cost me something like an extra £100 over the year to get my phone and broadband from them compared to BE and BT, and get their HD TV too.

However, it seems I can't get them to just come and give me a sky box to plug in to my sockets that I already have. As I live in a block of flats I have to go though an external installer, which will cost me an extra £180 or so (£30 extra install fee + lost £150 in cashback by not going through sky)

Arse. I'm tempted to lie to them and and say it is bog standard install for a house, and when the dude turns up just get him to plug the box into the cables that are already there.

Screw it, I have lied. Lets see what happens when the dude turns up on Thursday.

Tsk - just tell him you'll remember his credit card number in case he ever loses it in the future :-)

Was on UKOnline (closed by SKY) for years, so I guess that SKY are good now thanks to the people behind UKOnline

Moved from O2 as they suck ass these days, at both products and customer service

On BT Infinity now, get 60mb from a max of 76 and 15mb uploads.

BT Customer service is shite but if the product is ok you never need call them

So far its all been good, a rock solid 7.4mb DL speed

I would love to go on cable or fibre, but my exchange isnt even on the list for being done in the future...

Is anybody else on BE finding their torrents are being capped?

Usenet is fine at the moment, but i've not used torrents in ages.

Hmm. New episode of Deadliest Catch has been crawling down my wire all day. Normally it takes 20 mins at most. I'm beginning to suspect.

Not having any problems here on Be at the moment, they had a dodgy day last week with everything crawling or failing to load but other than that speeds seem same as they've always been.

I'm with O2 and the bloke there was telling me that they have traffic shaping on some tariffs but not others. I don't know if this is bollocks or not but he was telling me that I was on one of the older tariffs with no shaping on it and that's the one he was on too and not to change.

All done and dusted in 15 minutes, just plugged in the box and waited for it to sort itself out.
I forgot how crappy the sky boxes are though, no 5.1 over HDMI and an epg designed 15 years ago. Still it's all working and that, and i'm back to having a million HD channels I'll never watch.

Logitech remote reprogrammed using their abortion of an app, fo some reason it won't let me allocate the Guide button on the remote to the Guide button on the sky remote in an activity It works when in device mode. Ho hum, i've set the menu button to be the guide button for now and that works fine.

In other news, Sky dude said my exchange is up and running for fibre and it should be announced in the next few weeks. Which would be nice. Checking openreach it says that it is, yet checking bt infinity it says that I can't get it?

FTTC is Fibre To The Cabinet, don't forget. Just because your exchange is good to go, doesn't mean your cabinet is fibre'd up.

Good point. Hopefully it should be soon though, as the same cabinet serves the local college.

Sky broadband switchover happened today, came home from work, plugged the relevant details into my draytek and bish bash bosh, all is up and running again.
Only at 4mbit at the moment, but that should go up over the next 10 days as the renegotiating business happens.

Up to 6.5mbit, which pretty much the same as I was on BE, however whatever the fuck they have done overnight has caused my line to drop every 10 minutes today, which is a trifle annoying, to say the least...

Hopefully the DLM business will settle down soon.

Sky? Draytek? I thought you had to use their own router?

They won't support any other router, nor tell you the password for your connection, but it's easy enough to get it online and then you can use whatever router you like.

destructions please.

Here you go.

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-broa ... 830-a.html

Cheers. Should come in useful as the Sky supplied one made a pop noise today, so will be handy to know how to set up a backup if it dies unexpectedly.

You can get the passwords out of the newer routers? Last I read, that was doubtful. But that was some time ago.

You can, my router is the latest Sagem one, and the site below worked fine.

https://www.cm9.net/skypass/

Today it is back to being rock solid (so far), and at a slightly higher speed than yesterday.