Be Broadband, Have You Got It?

[Saraj]

Hi,

With my virgin contract coming to renewal, I'm looking at switching,

I've seen alot of claims about Be Broadband and there Be Unlimited, Be Pro, packages offering upto 24mb,

Is anyone with them and if so, in reality how good is it?

After my experianced with both Tiscali and BT, having broadband down my phone line has always been rubbish,

Now im paying for upto 10 mbs with virgin and actually getting 9.7mbs which is pretty good

Where as when I was with BT, I was paying for upto 8mb and getting about 1-2mbs, which was rubbish

What do you think?? Of Be?

[Hando]

Hi,

With my virgin contract coming to renewal, I'm looking at switching,

I've seen alot of claims about Be Broadband and there Be Unlimited, Be Pro, packages offering upto 24mb,

Is anyone with them and if so, in reality how good is it?

After my experianced with both Tiscali and BT, having broadband down my phone line has always been rubbish,

Now im paying for upto 10 mbs with virgin and actually getting 9.7mbs which is pretty good

Where as when I was with BT, I was paying for upto 8mb and getting about 1-2mbs, which was rubbish

What do you think?? Of Be?

I'm with Be and for me it's been awesome (have been with BT, Demon, Zen in the past). Good support and great great line speeds. But with any ADSL it all depends on how far physically from the exchange you are - I live literally next door to our exchange so I'm good

[Parthiban]

I don't think you'll ever be able to get the constant high speed that you do with cable with adsl. Nor can you really beat the price........

However, was the poor performance with the other providers due to them or due to the fact you're too far from an exchange?

[Saraj]

Thanks for the replies,

the problem I had with BT was with them, as it was working at around 6-7mbs originally and then dropped, there sent out three engineers who could not find a fault,(and then tried to charge me 99 for each visit lol) at the end of the day I had prove that i was getting 6-7mbs using thinkbroadband.com and providing the links and had proof that it had gone slow, and this is the website BT recommend using.

So I managed to get them to cancel my 12 month contract and pay back what I had paid previously to them for the service, as there werent meeting t&c's

Tiscali was just rubbish, always problems.

Whats the best way in testing how far you from the exchange, I would be interested in Be and would be happy if I got between 15-18mbs on there 24mb, but I know if i ring them up there'll promise something which I probally cant get.

[MacRS200]

As said above, how it will perform is depandant on the line you have.

BT Openzone provide the line from the exchange so all providers will use the same connection apart from your local cable company. So in all likely hood if speed was bad with BT and Tiscali it will be with any other ISP using the Openzone line.

Also I can offer up to 100Gb and if you only get 56K I didn't lie :D

[Saraj]

True true, Ill stick with Virgin then, dont want to get myself into a 12 month contract and then fight to get out it,

I am looking forward to Virgin's 50mb service, Im going to see whether there will let me trial it. at the moment I get about 1.2mbs literal download speed for files from rapidshare,

when i was on the up 20mb, i was getting about 1.6-1.9mb literal download speeds, i can remeber getting 6mbs at one point for about 10 secs lol

Also it does state in many t&c's that if the speed you get is not near the "upto" as advertised, you can claim against the company, something which ofcom bought in

[Parthiban]

If your contracts up, might be worth trying to haggle for a better price, unless you've already got all the discounts applied? How much are they charging you? I'm guessing you're on L BB, and you've had the upgrade up to 10meg? (haven't got it here in London yet )

[Hando]

I'm getting 22mbs with Be but as I said I'm literally next to the exchange. Real download speeds of just under 3mb/s

You should be able to get an idea of your distance from exchange here

[Parthiban]

You should be able to get an idea of your distance from exchange here

Nice link, seems I have an exchange about half a mile away which is good to know if I ever decided to switch :)

[ColinBarber]

True true, Ill stick with Virgin then, dont want to get myself into a 12 month contract and then fight to get out it,

I am looking forward to Virgin's 50mb service, Im going to see whether there will let me trial it. at the moment I get about 1.2mbs literal download speed for files from rapidshare,

when i was on the up 20mb, i was getting about 1.6-1.9mb literal download speeds, i can remeber getting 6mbs at one point for about 10 secs lol

Also it does state in many t&c's that if the speed you get is not near the "upto" as advertised, you can claim against the company, something which ofcom bought in

The poor speed is probably the rapidshare servers. They are anything but rapid!

However when you say 1.2mbs do you mean 1.2MB per second? That is around 10Mbps.

[Saraj]

From that link mine is literally about 0.4 mile away, is that class as near?

Im confused now on what literal download speed im getting, i get around according to download accelerator 1200 kb/s, is that 1.2mbs??

With virgin i currently got L BB, XL TV, XL Phone, and there got a discount already on it for about 22.50,

But with having sky, and BT fitted today, im getting rid of the tv and phone with virgin and thining about the BB, may be able to haggle that as its on its own,

I think i can get more out of rapidshare then i am, once with virgin i had about 6000 kb/s for about 10 secs, downloading which downloaded alot in 10 secs

Not sure whether 0.4 mile away exchange is classed as near or not?

[Parthiban]

Right, you've got the same package I've got then - if you end your TV and phone you'll lose your discount too as that's all combined. Therefore your BB is going to get a lot more expensive now if you stay with Virgin........

I think what Colin was getting at was is your download speed 1200 Kb/s (kilobits) or 1200 KB/s (kilobytes)?

1200KB/s equates to a 10meg connection (multiply by 8 to convert the bytes to bits, gives you 9600Kb/s or 9.6Mb/s)

[Saraj]

Lol even confused, the reading on Download accerlator which tells me the speed the download is going at is KB/s not Kb/s

so what does 1200 KB/s mean in terms of an upto 10 mb service?

[Parthiban]

When service providers quote 10meg, they are saying up to 10Mb/s (megabits), which is 10,000,000 bits per second.

This is the same as 1,250,000 bytes per second, which is 1250KB/s - which is why when you quoted 1200KB/s Colin said that was correct for a 10meg connection.

I hope that makes sense, and yes if your download manager is quoting 1200KB/s then that is correct for a 10meg connection (you're getting an effective download speed of 9.6Mb/s)

[Saraj]

Right ok, think im getting there,

just done a speed test on speedtest.net and got 7401 Kb/s which means its 7.2 megabits,

if i get a download speek of 1200 KB/s does that mean i am getting 1.17 megabyte??

to download a 100mb file, im looking at around 1minute 20 seconds to download at 1200 KB/s

[ColinBarber]

if you are getting a download speed of 1200KB/s that is the same as 9.6Mbps. If you have a 10Mbps Internet connect then that is basically running at almost 100% utilisation which is excellent. (There is a slight transmission overhead so you will never get 100%)

[Parthiban]

If you got 7401Kb/s that sounds ok for a 10meg connection. You're confusing your bs and Bs there but as long as you meant 100MB, then yes 1 min 20 seconds equates to roughly 1200KB/s which is 10Mb/s

100MB = 100,000,000B = 800,000,000b

800,000,000b in 80 seconds is 10,000,000b/s = 1,250,000B/s = 1250KB/s

Hope that's a bit clearer now :)

[Saraj]

excellent yh getting confused, do you think 0.4 miles away from the exchange is far? so a fast speed? im tempted to go with Be as its not a contract ethier if you give them 3 months notice therell cancel it

[ColinBarber]

A distance of 0.4 miles should be able to support 20Mbps but other factors also come into play. Contact BE, they should be able to do a line test to get a semi accurate figure.

[Saraj]

thanks for the advice, im going to ring them tomorrow see what there say, and will post

[ColinBarber]

why not just go with O2? I believe their packages are cheaper and it's the same company.

I'm with O2, their customer service is excellent.

[Yeldarb]

FWIW

O2 get the Best buys from Which? mag.

[Saraj]

o2 up to 20meg for 22

be upto 24meg for 17.50

i rang BE and because BT have not updated there databases there cant check what speed i can get as my BT line was only installed yesterday.

But using my postcode he said 15-16meg, which is good, i might try it, and then if i only get about 8-9 meg cancel with 3 months notice and switch back to virgin which ive never had problems with

[Parthiban]

o2 up to 20meg for 22

But it says £14.68 for up to 20meg, £9.79 if an O2 customer (only £22 for the pro service which is more expensive from Be as well)

That's actually quite cheap, especially if the service is good as well :)

[Saraj]

my mistake sorry i was looking at the pro, that is cheaper, and you say its owned by Be?? ummmm.......