Anyone here using O2's 20meg broadband? I'm thinking about switching over as BT are starting to get on my nerves. I recently switched to their unlimited package, a package which isn't quite as unlimited as they make it sound. All weekend i was throttled down from 18mb/s to 900kbps and still appear to be throttled during peak times today as apparently i'm over using. Upload speeds on it are dire i get about 70kb/s if i'm lucky.

What kind of consistency are people getting from O2 on up and down rates, and more importantly what kind of up rates are you getting? My line is good and the exchange is right outside of my house so it should be able to get near the top end.

Edit - I see it offers up to 1.3meg uploads which is more than 3 times what i get from BT, how close to the truth is that?

BT did the same with me until i got on the phone and explained how i would be changing provider if it happend again.

Hey presto i've not been throttled once and that was over a year ago,phone them and do the same but start by saying you think your connection's having trouble as they cannot sort the problem out unless they restore your speed.

I was on the phone with them on Saturday after i'd put up with it since Friday, a nice Indian girl politely read off a script to explain to me i was exceeding their "fair usage" policy and that the throttling would be in place for the next 30 days or as long as the excessive use continues.

I've been throttled in the past but not for such long periods and not by such amounts. O2 are cheaper and offer faster upload speeds hence why i want to know how consistent they are as apparently they don't throttle.

That's exactly what they said to me mate but i turned up the heat & everything has been sound eversince

Hmm, i'll try billing tomorrow as i usually end up with a Scottish lass there and ask for the MAC code, explain why and hope they offer to get it fixed, get on the arses of the people who can and get results.

If they don't quit all their BS BT are going to lose so many people in the next few years as exchanges get upgraded. They've more than likely lost me through this even if they remove the throttling now that i know i can go elsewhere cheaper and faster.

Dunno if this is any help, but here's a site where you can compare the pros and cons of pretty much all the ISP packages available to you: http://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/
Just enter your postcode and phone number and it returns the ISPs and packages available for that line. Seems pretty handy being able to compare all the details side-by-side, rather than scurrying from one site to another.

I've heard that O2, BE Broadband, and some other ISP I can't remember, have Fair Usage/capping policies that are rarely used; usually only in the case of serious illegal activities. A quick glance at the terms and conditions on the BE website seems to indicate it may be true for that company (couldn't find O2's T&C). Unfortunately wading through the small print remains the only way to get a definitive answer.

Best of luck man, hope all goes well.

Hi Kabaal,

When it says it's 20meg - that's 20 megabit, not megabyte (divide by 8) this gives your max download / downstream speed (which would be 2.5megabyte per second) but then not many servers have a connection which has this amount of upstream (ie they can't upload at 2.5megabyte per second) and many that do will cap on their end to keep bandwidth bills to a minimum and allow them to handle high loads.

Upstream is always a lot less than Downstream, ie- your down stream maybe 20megabit (2.5 megabyte) but your upstream would be a ratio of this to stop home users creating large scale servers from their own system but also bandwidth and cabling is expensive especially to offer a 1:1 contention ratio.

Hope that makes sense

Also to note, all Broadband providers are the same unless you pay for an expensive line the figures quoted are megabit and quite frankly for
the average user anything over 2/4mbit is more than you need because the servers don't have that level of upstream to match it.

So Telewest 50meg is MAX 6.4megabyte a second download but would probably only experience anything over 1.2/1.3 megabyte a second on rare occasions

All done, got my MAC Key from BT earlier and signed up for O2 and should get switched over within 2 weeks. They reckon i'll get the same download speed but uploads of up to 2.5mb, quite a bit cheaper than BT too.

@hellzone aye i'm aware that everything is divided by 8 to get actual speeds, i have no confusion when it comes to that.
I'm not really interested in download speeds anyway as the line i have gives me actual down speeds of over 2mb/s which is more than enough but the switchover should jump my uploads from 70kb/s to around 300k/s and i wont be constantly throttled like now which were the 2 issues.