o2 broadband - Thumbs up

Xcellor

Hi All.

After migrating from Three, refund pending I decided to bite the bullet and goto o2 being the only provider other than Three to offer mobile broadband (fixed line not possible). My experience thus far day 2 has been very positive.

Pings have been surprisingly good. To irish servers 80ms-100 which makes it suitable for some online gaming apart from FPS.

Max speed achieved is 2.2 mbs with download manager, without a manager the speed tends to be .6 but can vary. Upload .3 mbps.

Download? Well they say 10 gigs but its subject to fair usage so you wont get charged for going over but may get a letter or knocked off for excessive usage.

So far all is very positive. I just wanted to share my experience because I know many will be put off by Threes awful attempt at providing a similar service.

It's more expensive but it's not half arsed like Three and you actually feel like you are paying for a service.

Well done o2. I just hope you keep it up !

X

Tiesto

yeah its only since the last few days that its been this good.
The week previous to this it was a nightmare.
I couldn't get a connection but now its just super.
Downloading at 120 KB/sec

Slutmonkey57b

are you torrenting off this connectiong at all?

Tiesto

using Ares
No torrenting

AlmightyCushion

Where did you hear that they won't charge you for going over?

smellslikeshoes

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Where did you hear that they won't charge you for going over?

Was one of their selling points when they first came out with it. In my opinion they should have made a bigger noise about it because it would be a big factor in a lot of peoples decision as to get 02 or one of the other providers, especially with the ridiculous rates the other providers charge for going of limit.

superweld

cool it's great to hear positive things, i cannot get BB with a landline myself so will have to go wireless. i'll be checking out o2 so.

anyone know if they are ok for ps3 online? you mentioned it's ok in ireland and i only got my ps3 over the weekend so not sure about online play.

Xcellor

On their T&C

Fair Usage policy?
The Fair Usage policy for O2 'Broadband on the Move' is designed to ensure customers have a good broadband experience. The policy enables O2 to manage excessive use by individual customers as this can impact the general speed and reliability of the Broadband service. The fair usage threshold/limit for O2 Broadband customers is 10GB per month. If you exceed this threshold/limit then O2 reserve the right to introduce an excess usage charge of 10c per MB. We will notify you in advance as to when the excess usage charge that will be applied. If you then continure to exceed the fair usage threshold then O2 reserve the right to modify, suspend or terminate your service.


They have the right to introduce but they can't automatically just charge you for going over the first time. I'm gonna see if I can test the upper limit. Already downloaded 1.5 gigs in 1 evening (more than I could in a whole month with 3!)

X

cormie

Roaming isn't as friendly as three though last time I checked.*

*But there is of course the important fact that three is useless anyway so roaming is just as useless, or it was when I was in the UK with it anyway.

Xcellor

superweld wrote: »

cool it's great to hear positive things, i cannot get BB with a landline myself so will have to go wireless. i'll be checking out o2 so.

anyone know if they are ok for ps3 online? you mentioned it's ok in ireland and i only got my ps3 over the weekend so not sure about online play.

Not sure how it would work with PS3, im not a console guy myself. It's USB interface and does require drivers. I don't know how the PS3 would handle that. You could of course if you have another PC share the USB connection on that and then run a cabled connection through a router to your PS3 if it doesn't directly allow USB modems to be connected.

The latency i.e. how long it takes the server to respond to a request is about 80-150ms. This is better than 3 which would NEVER get below 100ms.

I played Castlewolfenstein ET yesterday and was quite surprised that I could kill a few people

superweld

just checked the O2 website and they do not seem to have coverage in my area.

vodafone do though i think (just about)


anyone know if they are good also?

arseagon

I think I recall someone saying that O2 give a static IP? Is this true?

Xcellor

zippy28 wrote: »

I think I recall someone saying that O2 give a static IP? Is this true?

You get an external IP I know that for sure (so you can host servers etc)

I haven't checked to see if the IP changes each time I redial (can check this evening)

The External IP is a huge step forward from Three's one for all approach. You wont get blocked from websites that monitor how many from one IP are accessing it.

Roaming is going to cost with o2 however but since I won't be roaming (no laptop) it makes little difference to me.

Another advantage of o2 is that it works in 2G GSM also so you are almost guranteed internet (albeit slow, however their EDGE on 2G is much faster than 2G GPRS) as long as you have o2 signal. With Three you need to be in a 3G area always which is crap for roaming IMO since their coverage with 3g is very flakey even more so since they redid their coverage maps. I moved from being in a very good signal to being marginal. I never got more than 2 bars the entire the time I was with Three.

What lead me to cancel was that even though I had signal I Could never connect, Error 619 the whole time.

X

arseagon

Xcellor wrote: »

You get an external IP I know that for sure (so you can host servers etc)

Well that's something anyway, I can always use dyndns or one of the others to handle the IP changing.

watty

zippy28 wrote: »

I think I recall someone saying that O2 give a static IP? Is this true?

No. Dynamic, But it does appear to be usually a Public IP (not shared).

You would be mad to host a server on Mobile Internet though.

Xcellor

watty wrote: »

No. Dynamic, But it does appear to be usually a Public IP (not shared).

You would be mad to host a server on Mobile Internet though.

Quite mad but yet the option is there. Sometimes its nice to be able to access files from your home network from work. This is something that could never be achieved with Three. o2 broadband feels more like a real connection.

Where 100% reliability is not required I don't see a problem with hosting on this type of connection, as long as the weather forecast is clear skies I'd say hosting on this would be better than dial up that's for sure!

Of course it means you have to set up a firewall of some description because you are available to the world.
:eek:

watty

Ah ... *PERSONAL* use is not really the same thing as hosting a public server. I do use VPN.

Big random password. Your security is as good as that no matter how good the password.