Where the streets have slow broadband

Here here. We get a rubbish service, so why should we have to pay for it? Perhaps if those who regularly get less than 1Mbps (or perhaps even half that) couldn’t be charged for it then more resources would be put into improving these very low speeds?

My provider is utility warehouse, who have a pretty good reputation and I started with them because of Which? Recommendations. I live in London and, when I checked, was getting 4 Mbps. I contacted UW about this and they improved it to 6 Mbps. It seems fast enough for what I use it for, but, from what you say in this article, nowhere near what it should be, especially in London.

I also obtain around 0.5mb download at evenings from 5pm onwards as the locals get home an fire up the internet.I am rural and as other pay full whack for an inferior service.Can we get this to stop somehow

I live in a rural area some 5 kilometers from our exchange. I signed up with talktalk in 2012 and for over 18 months did battle with them over my download speeds, at most 1mb and often below. I signed up for a second year when told that fibre optics would soon be available. However that did not happen and I said I wanted to be released from my contract. This was a long and painful process, but with persistence and hours on the phone I succeeded in leaving talktalk and received a refund for 5 unused months of my contract.
On advice given by an independent organisation on line I signed up with Sky who guaranteed a download speed of at least 3.5mbs. They took a lot of trouble setting up my broadband and achieved a speed of 4.3 mbs. I can now watch videos and use BBC iplayer. Sky costs me a bit more than talktalk but it is worth it as I avoid all the frustration.

It’s the drop-offs that annoy me. I can’t use VOIP, and many downloads restart from the beginning so that a large one can use eight to ten times its size from my allowance because it had to try ten or fifteen times before I was successful. There are no refunds for data lost by drop-offs.

BT have performed brilliantly.
Recently moving to a rural Essex village is a lovely lifestyle so I accept I might have poor connections. We are a long way from the exchange and someone has to pay for the several miles of connection.
BT were polite but said that we would not be having fibre optics in the foreseeable future.
However, I went ahead with BT and actually the connection was good enough for me but films and catch up TV were not on. Within weeks of signing up BT improved the speed for the village which moved me from about 0.6 to 1.9 what a nice difference ! BT then opted to connect us to fibre optics and now I have plenty of speed for films, TV catch up and anything else. So well done BT, I am one very happy customer.

Earlier this year I needed a new router to connect to AOL. Afterwards big problems with drop-outs, sometimes every few minutes. Helpline contacted and they tweaked the system, etc and advised me to keep a log of use and any problems. Did this and called back a couple of weeks later. Engineer visit booked and after some work and another new router, I now seem to have an AOL system that works. Faster too at 3.9mb compared with a previous 1.0mb. Its fast enough for my use – I do not download films, etc. Interested to find out that it was a Talk-Talk engineer who came to sort the problem, seems to be part of the same company.

I manage to get 0.25 speed if I am lucky. Recently when speaking to BT again about the lack of speed or indeed the lack of internet, I am always told that it is due to traffic and that I am at the end of the line and far from the exchange. The customer service agent on the last call said that there way nothing more that they can do for me, except forego the cancellation fee so that I could cancel broadband. This would leave me with nothing. In the last year I have engineers out to check the line and each time they have said I should get at least one speed, and that there is nothing wrong with my line. I agree with others who have said why should we pay the same as others who enjoy exceptional speed. Oh and infinity is across the street but will not be coming my way. Oh happy internet days.

I echo every post here: 1mbs on a good day, 0.6 on a bad day and constant line faults BT are not interested because it isn’t financially attractive after they took the rural broadband money for bubbly at the shareholders meeting.

Our local exchange in the Yorkshire Dales is a BT only exchange. They have been bullied into providing ‘super fast broadband’ by the government and the centre of the town should now get 25Mbs. But outside the centre it is 2Mbs. (My son gets 100Mbs in Middlesborough). Proper competition is the only way to solve this. Whilst the exchange is BT only, nothing will change.