Im a bit confused!

Hello All

I enquired to BT about availability of Broadband in my area, when BT did a test on my line they told me that the best speed I could get it 256k! I have used the BT line testing tool and it says that I should be ok for 6.5mbs

So now im royally confused! who do i believe? the Software (that could be flakey) or the person i spoke to on the phone (who could also be flakey!)

Any ideas?

[Admin]

What's your postcode?

Hello! and thanks for the reply!

My Postcode is SP11 9QN

Good news or bad news??

[Admin]

You are very close to your exchange, so you should be able to get around 6Mbps if your line was OK. So there must be a fault on your line or BT's database is messed up.

Have you recently had the phone line connected?

You could always take a broadband only connection from Virgin Broadband. They are in your area and you can get up to 20Mbps from them.

Hope this helps
Admin

admin you could live next door to the exchange but is your eside cable goes out to a pcp then comes back on a dside to dp that could be 3km on its own so people living next to the exchange means nothing its if your direct fed from exchange to dp ok

[Admin]

Yep unregistered, you are correct, straight line distance is not a guarantee.

However we've found several cases recently where people have moved house and taken a new phone contract with BT and been allocated a recycled phone number.

What has happened is that BT Wholesales database has not been updated with the new line length for the phone number, so when a user tries to sign up they are told they can't as line length is many km's.

When we spoke to BT wholesale they did a check and found the actual new line length was only a few hundred metres and so they update the database and everybody is happy.

So it's always worth querying if a line number check and a postcode check give vastly different speed estimates and you have just taken the phone number on.

Thanks
Admin

mate im openreach engineer and also working with bt broadband sales and wholesale so i know the score

Ok then, so it looks like I may well be able to get "proper" broadband after all? Hmmm, BT or Virgin? Now I don't want to open a huge can of worms, but which do people prefer?

With the Virgin Broadband I presume I still have to pay my line rental? I wonder which represents better VFM? I am not a massive downloader - though if i had 20mb at my disposal that might change!!

[Admin]

Hi

If you go with Virgin you can get broadband only, no phone, so no extra line rental.

Thanks
Admin

Thanks for all the help Admin, its much appreciated! By the way, i went on the virgin website and put my postcode in but my house number did not come up? Which i thought was a bit odd. I have sent an e-mail to virgin asking them if its avaialble at my house but you would have thought that if there are other houses in my close connected to Virgin, then I should be able to get it myself? Hopefully they will get back in touch soon to clear things up for me!

Oh and another question, how do you know how close i am to my BT exchange? if i call Bt it might be better to be armed with some numbers incase they tell me im too far away!