BT Broadband - Hows much should I be paying?

In message , tony sayer writes

Agreed. We pay around 50 a month for unlimited phone and FTTC broadband, and it just works. In the event of any sort of problem, help line is UK, and they actually listen rather than read from a script. Yes, I could get it cheaper, but it works, is fast and unlimited certainly seems to mean just that. With a teenager in the house, our downloads are 4-500 GB per month.

The cabinet [1] here is against our garden wall. From there to the pole, and straight across to the house. Perfect.

This is the wording, with no small print:

Minimum Guaranteed speed 59Mb Download speed 66Mb to 80Mb Upload speed 20Mb

I thionk DSLAM is still the term for VDSL termination

So just the line speed. If it syncs they have meet what they say.

I see the word "yet".

How about having a 96 core fibre cable feeding a VDSL cabinet passing under your drive 10' from the front door. That cabinet doesn't serve our line. Our line goes through a jumpering cabinet at the exchnage 2

I thought that applied to all "bundled" calls. ie in bundle for the first 60 mins then charged. Hang up at 59m 59s and redial is allowed.

Is that the sync to the local exchange and not the sustained download speed? The sync speed is unlikely to change because its your connection to something fairly local and not to anything else on the Web.

You can check at

If you ISP hasn't got LLU at the exchange then they just purchase bandwidth from someone else - probably BT wholesale.

and

Try phoning their customer service. Every single one is not speaking En= glish ok?

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Why do the Scots wear kilts? Sheep can hear a zipper at 500 yds....

Funny, same thing happened with my neighbour's ones. And her neighbour. And both had me phone tech support because they couldn't understand the bloody foreigners they employ.

Use Plusnet. Everyone is English, from the north of England, they speak clearly and know what they're talking about.

Plusnet does not traffic shape at all. I can P2P 24/7 at full 53Mbit line speed.

I avoided phoning them for the very reason you mention. I just emailed them with my problems, which was 2 dodgey modems. They sent replacements within 3 to 4 days. ps; just remembered another problem years ago which was no broadband. They sent an engineer out in about 7 days and he fixed my connection in an underground terminal box which happened to be in a neighbour's front garden across the road. Some sort of poor connection. So I call that a good service.

Why would I change when I've had a good service from TT?

I get a steady 54Mbps down and 18 up, 8ms ping on average.

The normal 3 working days minimum for BT Openreach is too slow for me, so I pay an extra £4.00/month to have faults repaired by the end of the next day. Note: "next day" (as in 365 days/year) not "next working day".

I've never replaced a router for a start. You've broken them TWICE.

When I was with BT I was lucky to get anything sorted in TWO WEEKS! One= problem continued for SIX MONTHS, including many engineers all blaming = each other for shoddy work.

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Two blondes are racing down a bumpy back road in a pretty beat up car do= wn to a bank they're going to rob. "Drive slower" pleads the one in the passenger seat, "I don't want all t= he nitro in the boot to explode." "Relax," the driver replies, "even if it did, I've got a spare box under= the seat . . . "

Hmm, that's very different to the stories I've heard about BT and Openreach. I've been told by several people and also read many reports that it's hard work to convince them to send an engineer and they often miss appointments without even telling you.

The last time I reported a fault, the Openreach engineer reached me within