BT Broadband Users Beware

daveco23

Signed up for Option 2 BT Broadband in October, which included 2mbsec download speed. Thought it a bit slow recently so used speedtest.ie to check and found I was only getting 1mbsec download speed. Called BT Tech support who said that although I was being charged for 2mb, they had only hooked me up for 1 mb, ergo I have been overcharged €100 over the past 6 months. This has been credited back, but had I not checked I would have continued to be fleeced.
Moral of the story is check that whatever download speed you have signed up to is actually what is provided...

The Fog

Did it take long for them to instal in the first place?

daveco23

The Fog wrote:

Did it take long for them to instal in the first place?

Nope - 5 days from signing up to receiving router and passwords.

Mullie

Heres a speed test -
http://www.irishisptest.com/login.php?id=%2Fmyspeed.php

ChickenBalls

You can also check for the speed of your ISP by logging into your router.

192.168.x.x

This tells you too.
The ISP test isn't as acurrate because there is high and low peaks depending on the time of day you run this. Evening time being the high peak usage.

Yorky

Just did the test and I'm only getting 1.6MB but I'm on Option 2 - is this acceptable?

steve-hosting36

www.speedtest.ie

No registration, quick and simple.

Creamy Goodness

Just did the test and I'm only getting 1.6MB but I'm on Option 2 - is this acceptable?

yes, 1.6mbps is acceptable on a 2mbit line.

you got to remember that they advertise the line as a 2048kilobit to which you divide by 8 to get the kilobytes which is 256KB - notice the big k and b.

that's technically the max speed you can download at, but there are factors that will determine how much of that 2048 (or 256KB) you'll get.

such as...

* distance from exchange
* quality of copper phone wire to your house
* how many people you are sharing your adsl with - contention ratio - can be as high as 48:1 or as low as 24:1 for BT i'm not sure which one the 2mbit line has.

GAN

Be very, very wary of any billing errors with BT and get onto them on it straight away. When we moved to greystones four years ago we got broadband with BT. We had nothing but trouble with their billing department and were always being charge the wrong amounts, despite repeated phone calls we were always given different stories and the situation was never remedied. The upshot was that they issued legal proceedings against us for money we never owed them, and only backed down a few days before the court case was due to happen. It was incredibly stressful, despite the fact that we knew we didn't owe them this money.

We haven't been customers in around a year and a half, yet we still get bills from them either telling us we owe them zero, or something like three euro. To anyone thinking of getting broadband with BT I would say don't even consider it -- to anyone who already has it, keep a very close eye on your bill, keep all your correspondence and get onto them at the first sign of a problem.

Yorky

Did a test today using speedtest.ie and the download speed is 1.62MB and upload 135KBps. I got onto BT support and they said that as low as 1.2MB is acceptable and that is in their t&c's, but I have not been able to find them since. They also got me to carry out an upload test by going to http://url.ie/qv and clicking on 'save this to disc' - is this an accurate way of assessing upload speed? It seems like a download to me?? It stabilized at about 221Kbps which they say is acceptable. BT said that the up and download speeds are 'theoretical maximums' with many factors affecting the speeds.