Please excuse my electronic device ignorance in advance 😳 I’m still in the 70’s with a lot of electronics, so am trying to drag myself into the 21st century – and badly need some advice.

I recently replaced my ancient hifi separates with a Denon ‘box that plays music’ object, which has internet radio and the ability to stream music (if that’s the right term!) via my phone, Last.fm and Spotify. Only issue is that I gather I need unlimited broadband and a decent internet speed and router to really make use of this thing(?) – this is where it gets a bit hazy for me!

We’re currently have a free limited Broadband deal from Sky, that has 2Gb limit. I keep getting messages from Sky saying that we’ve exceeded our limit and need to upgrade to Sky Unlimited. Personally, I think this my be B.S. from Sky, as I haven’t used the music streaming or internet radio yet (have also stopped phone from connecting to broadband).

A relative mentioned to us that if we have to pay for Broadband, we’d be better off going with BT, as their Internet speed is faster and routers are much better. (dunno how true this is, or if there are viable cheaper alternatives?)

Can anyone offer some advice please?

TIA

Spotify uses 160kbps, which is 70Mb per hour. How long are you going to spend listening to music in a month ?

Audio streaming is pretty small, video streaming from iplayer, sky etc. is much more significant. Downloading updates to software, playing online games, Skype etc. are the normal big download contributors.

2Gb is really small, if all you were going to do is browse the web and do emails it would work out just fine, but it’ll soon run out for anything much more than that. By comparison I downloaded 101Gb during November.

Do you use iplayer at all? Or youtube? etc.

Basically if you watch any video at all online or do anything other than basic web/email 2gb is nothing (few 100mb a month on software updates too). I do 2gig on my phone some months…

If you have iphones/ipads they will be blowing through that backing up to icloud I suspect?

BT do indeed currently provide the best routers, you get 5Ghz as well as 2.4Ghz – a different radio frequency which is less common so if you’re somewhere with a lot of wifi (flats, busy street) it’s *much* better. But only if your devices can do 5Ghz too, not just the router.

2Gb is really small

^ This.
We had a PAYGO broadband service at my mums holiday house that gave us 500mb for the basic £10/month. It actually worked OK for the first few years when I was doing a little browsing and email stuff, but once my kids got older and had ipods/phones the usage went through the roof and we’d exceed the 500mb in just one weekend visit, so I’ve changed to BT infinity with 40gb allowance which is actually costing me less than the PAYGO + extra data charges did!

2Gb is a tiny data allowance. If you have any computers of phones connected as well they can easily go through that just with updates!

I have just recently started to use my Sky wifi on demand thing and a 42 minute episode of Hannibal on Sky Living HD is roughly 2Gb, so, yeah, 2 Gb is tiny.

Ah, cheers for the info, it all makes sense now. I’ve got a feeling that even if I’m just listening to a CD on my new music box, it might still be connecting itself to the internet in the background – maybe to check for software updates etc? I’ve also experimented playing music tracks on Youtube through the music box (which is does a treat), so from what you guys have said, this is probably how I’ve blown the 2Gb.

I’ll check the spec of the device, and if it’s 5Ghz, I think I’ll go with BT.

Thanks again for feedback.

If you listen to an hour of music a day that’ll be your 2Gb allowance done. Any Youtube, websurfing, softawre updates etc will obviously add to that.

The spec of the device won’t matter, it’s your data consumption and the data plan you are on that will.
On your computer that is connected to your wifi, run a Speedtest at http://www.speedtest.net. This will tell you the Download and Upload speed of your connection. You haven’t mentioned that your music listening is stuttering or anything so I assume you’ve got a reasonable speed. Which is good!

Before you cancel with Sky speak to BT and see what the best deal is they can offer. Then speak to Sky and ask/haggle for them to improve on the BT deal. Try and get an Unlimited data plan or at least 20Gb of data.

dunno how true this is

Not very.

If you’re already with Sky for TV then you’ll be hard pressed to beat them on price I’d expect. If you only have Sky’s ‘free’ broadband and nothing else then the world’s your mollusc.

Ignoring fibre / cable for a moment, the vast majority of ADSL broadband is just BT Wholesale resold, so the only difference is who you pay money to.

Some operators run their own kit in BT’s exchanges. This is known as “LLU” and tends to be faster / cheaper than BT Wholesale. Plug your details into SamKnows and it’ll tell you what’s available to you. If price is your main consideration, one of these will be your best bet.

Virgin Cable, BT Infinity and the like are different technologies. They’ll be an order of magnitude faster, but you’ll pay a lot more for the privilege.

Virgin Cable, BT Infinity and the like are different technologies. They’ll be an order of magnitude faster, but you’ll pay a lot more for the privilege.

BT Infinity II unlimited is the same price as their unlimited ADSL broadband package.

Crikey, I’m glad I asked – it’s a bit of a minefield. I’ve just done the speedcheck and it’s come up with 3.13Mbps download and 0.67Mbps upload (I’m guessing the latter is pretty s***e?).

According to the comparison stuff on Cable.co.uk, they reckon Sky unlimited has an up to16Mb speed, whilst BT Infinity is something like 70Mb (the latter is available in our area, but yeah, it’s more costly than Sky unlimited). The fella at Sky did mention that the price of their deal may be negotiotable, so I’ll see what transpires when he calls back this eve.

I’m on Sky Unlimited, I get about 13-14Mbps. It’s sufficient, I don’t think I’ve ever bemoaned its performance unless there’s actually a fault on it.

(I’m guessing the latter is pretty s***e?).

It’s actually standard upload speed for normal broadband. Infinity is about 6-8mbps upload speed – but you don’t normally require a fast upload speed.

3.13Mbps is pretty sh*te tho. I’m sitting here with the cheapest Virgin option at 30mbs, if I paid more I could have 120mbs!

Ewan – Member
3.13Mbps is pretty sh*te tho. I’m sitting here with the cheapest Virgin option at 30mbs, if I paid more I could have 120mbs!

and comparing speeds between random house is pointless, there will still be a max speed your line can handle. As most of the UK doesn’t have anything other than copper connection it’s worth checking with your neighbors to see what they have before paying for Up to XXXMb and getting the same.

I was running spotify and plenty of other stuff on 2mb until recently, got a bit sticky on HD you tube and vimeo though.

We currently have a 200gb limit (next one down is 50) which we don’t touch but we were hitting the 50 fairly easy.

62 and 2.6 for me on virgin and wireless not plugged in. On virgin but is late

Plusnet does unlimited for £20 a month & 40megs per second

Plusnet does unlimited for £20 a month & UP TO 40megs per second

Crikey, I’m glad I asked – it’s a bit of a minefield. I’ve just done the speedcheck and it’s come up with 3.13Mbps download and 0.67Mbps upload (I’m guessing the latter is pretty s***e?).

Not much different to me so don’t worry about it, there’s not much you can do until the line is improved. I’m with Sky and and they do have a fibre option for an extra tenner but this does not offer the super speeds one would expect either.

and comparing speeds between random house is pointless, there will still be a max speed your line can handle

This is very true, changing provider won’t make any difference so IMO not worth the bother. Sky offer a very good deal if you have their TV so might as well stick with it.

If you pop your telephone number in this search it’ll tell you what you should be expecting. On the summary page click on the ADSL tab for your estimate. Mine says 2Mb and I get a bit more than this.

SamKnows

Cheers for all the info folks. We’ve (or rather Mrs B has 🙄 ), decided to go with Sky Unlimited, as their price and package seemed to offer the best compromise – I guess ‘cos we’ve already got Sky TV. We’ll be paying £15/month, which includes a new router. According to Sky and looking at the BT exchange etc., we should be able to get up to 16Mb. Our current router is ancient, which I guess might not be helping the speed at the mo, so am hoping that the new router will help with the wireless stuff.

I’d ask our neighbour about his internet speed, but he’s currently got his hands full with his dogs balls! 😆

The speed is dictated more by the distance too the exchange, the equipment within the exchange, the condition of the wiring from the exchange to you and also the condition of your homes telephone wiring.

If your next door to the exchange with perfect wiring everywhere you may get 16MB otherwise it will be lower depending upon all the above.

Your router may make a small difference but if you were previously getting around 3+MB chances are it will not increase dramatically even with a new router.

When you get your new router do not unplug/switch it off at night, reason being Sky will try to get you upto the max speed your line can support but if you turn your router off it will keep resetting the training period for the Line management.

On a side not the Sky Hub/Router only operates on 2.4Ghz but is N rated for Wifi, there are ways of using your own router but you need to get a passcode from the Sky router ,its a bit of a faff but possible.