Broadband speeds

BT Fibre via Plusnet.

Think I pay for “up to 60 Mbps” , get a rock solid 50-55 Mpbs.

Virgin is different because it’s cable. It doesn’t suffer from the many of the shortcomings of DSL and it isn’t reliant on shoving 21st Century signalling down 19th Century cabling.

I know “anecdotes” and all that but that made be laugh considering how unreliable Virgin seems to be for people I know compared to DSL. They are also the only provider I ever hear about nowadays as having contention slow downs at peak times. There just generally seems to be something very cheap and cheerful about their network architecture – I remember when the BBC were doing they live broadcast UHD tests that required 40 Mbps – it was overwhelming the Virgin users on their 100-300 Mbps connections that had buffering issues versus the 19th century lot on their 50-60 Mbps DSL connections.

This used to be useful, no idea if they still keep it updated. You can search for your exchange and see who actually has equipment in there, rather than selling you a service over the same infrastructure.

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

Very reliable 72 Mbps here, but we have a short copper run straight into the exchange, bypassing the street cabinet. FTTP is on the way later this year.

I’ve just swapped this week from BT to John Lewis (I think they use PlusNet?) same speed of 74mb but a half the price and seems more stable but that might be because the router is new.

Until last month I was VPNing to work and the kids doing doing Teams and Netflix on a 15mpbs ADSL2 line, so I wouldn’t get upset about going from 110mbps to 60mbps.

I’m now on FTTC and get 50mbps but more importantly there’s a bit of physical wire joining the study to the router instead of two hops of wifi…

Are you trying to sell us VM leased lines by any chance? :p

I’m using VM (Ireland) and using a wired connection to my PC I get exactly what I pay for: 500MB download, 50MB upload and 5-6ms latency for €71 per month (normally the speeds are always a bit higher).
However, doing the same speed check on my phone using wifi, I can only get 87MB down and 49MB up with a latency of 13ms. They also offer a 1GB connection but I don’t think I really need it!
BTW I stopped using the Virgin Media hub for wifi and now use Google Nest wifi. I’ve found the wifi speeds and overall reliability throughout the house have improved dramatically.

Just head an email from Post Office Broadband we’ve been with for just over a year, been meaning to look for new contract or ditch landline/broadband altogether and get two Three Unlimited calls/texts/data SIMs for ~£11pcm each including cashback, but just been told PO are leaving the market and we will automatically be transferred to Shell Broadband in the middle of March!

If Shell happens to be a good deal, I’d rather sign up for it myself and get the ~£60 cashback, not sure at mo if automatic transfer ties us into a new contract.

Funny isnt it, we’ve all been conned into buying much more speed than we’ll need. In reality things that tend to have a bigger impact are latency and how they deal with problems when they occur. A couple of days ago we were watching netflix, with a tablet gaming and a mac pulling down some updates, totalling peak traffic of just under 18Mbit/s.

This all reminds me of the great wheel size debate, where the bike industry tried to convince us that anything other than a 29 couldn’t possibly roll over a twig.

Don’t forget speed and bandwidth are two different things. I buy the very fastest package I can get my hands on regardless of how many concurrent connections I may have as when I start to download something I want it to happen as quickly as possible. I may only download 2 or 3 large files a month but when I do I don’t want to be tied up on a low speed line.

When FTTP becomes available (they are digging up the pavement outside my house and laying the master cables as we speak) I will sign up for that as well. There is no way on God’s earth I will ever use all the bandwidth that can deliver me however I will certainly make use of the speed it provides as and when I need it.

Even on the current FTTC connection I comfortably exceed the maximum speed Zen think I can get – they quote me 63Mbps and I usually hit 70-80Mbps. Again, even when FBG is gaming and Mrs D is Netflixing and I am working or faffing around we don’t use the bandwidth but we all benefit from the speed…