Choosing the best Broadband Provider

[Jam_Man]

I'd suggest contacting BT as they are under an obligation to provide an adequate broadband and OFFCOM deems 'adequate' to be a minimum of 2meg for residential properties. As a group (your community) you can apply to BT to have your particular area designated as one of special needs as it falls below the minimum recommended residential line speed (that's assuming everyone in your immediate vicinity is getting the same speed)

Incidentally to the person that said there are only two exchanges in Southend. I don't know where you got that information from because BT themselves told me when they installed Infinity at my place I'm approximately 1.5 miles from my nearest exchange which is situated at the bottom of Bell House Road at the junction with the A127 opposite the MINI dealers. There are many exchanges scattered around the Southend/Leigh/Westcliff/Chalkwell/Eastwood etc etc, with many of them already upgraded to fibre optic to the cabinet.

Bell house road is in Leigh/Eastwood not Southend. Hence I said Southend only has 2. (Incidentally I used to live about 100 yards from that exchange and got a fantastic connection!)

Southend has Southend Town (up by the cricketers somewhere, and Southend East. Im near the bell, which is serviced by the Southend Town exchange,1800m as the crow flies, but would actually be much longer as the cable lies...

Leigh also only has two, one by the broadway and one in Bellhouse Lane.

The Southend Town does have infinity now which is 56mb to where I am so actually decent, although I use Virgin Media and get nearly double that.

 

[Bielzibubz]

Bell house road is in Leigh/Eastwood not Southend. Hence I said Southend only has 2. (Incidentally I used to live about 100 yards from that exchange and got a fantastic connection!)

Southend has Southend Town (up by the cricketers somewhere, and Southend East. Im near the bell, which is serviced by the Southend Town exchange,1800m as the crow flies, but would actually be much longer as the cable lies...

Leigh also only has two, one by the broadway and one in Bellhouse Lane.

The Southend Town does have infinity now which is 56mb to where I am so actually decent, although I use Virgin Media and get nearly double that.

My apologies JM. I thought you meant Southend as a whole, ie the borough. ;)

 

[jstallan]

Before you change provider, I'd look at what problems there could be with the actual phone line itself as new builds have a reputation for poor internal phone wiring.

Is the router connected via an extension socket or does it 'hang' off the master socket ? http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/master-socket-guide.shtml

Try removing the front plate from the master socket, then plug the router into the test socket and try another speed test.This eliminates the internal phone wiring in the house.

Can you access the router interface itself ? If so worthwhile doing to get the stats of the line (up and down speed plus attenuation).

Always worthwhile doing the speed tests over a wired connection and not wireless.

ISP wise, I'm with www.plus.net and have been since 2002. I've just moved to their Unlimited Broadband package with has no download limits and costs £9.99