Are all internet providers a much of a muchness when it comes to download speed? Ive bought a house in a rural town so there is no cable and internet speeds are still a max of 8 meg. I presume that they wont have all installed there own equipment in the exchange as its rural i.e not profitable for them so would it be best to just go by price, quality of customer service etc. Ive heard that some providers throtle speeds at peak times? is this true and who are the worst offenders?

I heartily recommend Zen.

Not the cheapest by far but very, very reliable, good customer service and no throttling that I've been aware of.

You'll still be limited to 8Mbps ADSL if that's the best your local exchange can manage.

Only way to improve on that is go for cable.

no cable either. only people living in large towns and cities are deserving of fast internet speeds it seems. 😐

Move out of the sticks ya bumkin.

😉

find out which companys are dominant in your exchange,

something like samknows i think the website is ….

for me its bt internet – anything else will givee me a lesserr service – btw you aint out in the stick on 8meg …… i only get 1.5 ! — i dont even get the luxury of a road to my house

NOT BT

Lol at the Local loop unbundling operators from that sam knows site(none). That will be BT then.

I think that most broadband providers would benefit from a wrap or two of speed.

most companies do a line test first to see what speeds are acheivable. I have O2 broadband who are very good. Cheap too esp. if you are O2 mobile customer! 8Mb is £7.50 for O2 mobile customers!

Adsl24 not cheap but fast and very reliable.

O2 could be a possible as im looking to change my mobile to them when they get the iphone4 available to new customers. Im also going to be getting sky when i move in as well and will need a new phone line as its a new build, which brings BT into the picture. Its getting quite complicated really.

I take it then from the above posts that as its a BT only exchange im not really going to get any speed advantage from choosing one company over another?

only go with o2 IF your not getting the o2 access service. ie your exchange is set up to deal with o2 as the access service is truely shocking !

i had it for 8 months – in the end i used the shocking service and my string of complaints as grounds to get out of contract when i moved house 😀 never more than 512kb except for 3 or 4 days after a complaint was lodged it would shoot up to 8 !

Who are you with now trail rat?

No Adam poor provider means crap speeds caused by problems at their end not the exchange. They're bargains for a reason.

living aat my parents at the moment on orange – been with them since they were freeserve on 56k – always been excellent for me. i know friends in other areas have had bad experiances with them though.