Actual BB speed by area/postcode

[Turkish]

Currently with Sky but my contract is due to end soon and seeing as I'm not covered by their free 2mb net offer I had to pay for the £10 a month 8mb.

I'm about a mile from the nearest exchange and in the middle of the night I can see 6mb so I know there is no issue with the line. However the times I actually want to use it I see between .5 and 1.2 of a mb. Piss poor to say the least and even low quality YT clips take an age to buffer before I can play them back. I suspect sky are either throttling or oversubscribed and I'm fucked if I'm paying them a tenner a month to get that speed.

Is there any website that show actual speeds experienced by customers by area and by provider? I don't want to jump ship to another provider only to find them just as slow and another year wasted before I can switch to another.

 

[UncleGrumpy]

Yeah there is mate, go to broadband speed checker, do the test and then click compare results in my area, if anyone has done tests near you and submitted them you can see on a map what speeds people are getting and who the isp is.

 

[swbroadband]

Trick to getting a consistent service is setting your budget a little higher - if you're willing to pay a bit more for your service, you'll get a hell of a lot more for your money. Peak hours of the day most mainstream providers (unless you're on LLU with some providers) will enforce some form of traffic shaping / speed throttling, which will restrict your speed down on certain downloads e.g. video streaming, P2P and so on - anything that is 'heavy'.

We've really opened peoples eyes to the kind of service you can receive if you spend a little more - with customers migrating from services like TalkTalk and Sky and they're blown away with the difference. If you provide your exchange results, I'll happily break down each potential ISP/option for you with advantages and disadvantages to both.

All the best,
Ryan

 

[Turkish]

I don't really want to be paying out more than I am, just feel for the £10 a month I'm paying there must be a provider out there offering more consistant/faster speeds.

 

[swbroadband]

I don't really want to be paying out more than I am, just feel for the £10 a month I'm paying there must be a provider out there offering more consistant/faster speeds.

Depends on which exchange you're on; but very unlikely if you're in an area which doesn't have many LLU operators.

 

[Vish]

O2 have been great for us, faster speeds than any previous provider and the never a big drop in line speeds at any point during the day.

£7.50/month if you've got o2 phone or it's £10-15 otherwise IIRC.