UKC

I'm on hold to the Sky helpline.

Any thoughts as to why they can't quote a likely upload speed. They are telling me up to 9.5 but when I ask them what the minimum is they can't tell me. I want to be sure it'll be better than it is from my normal line. They tell me I can end the contract if I take it on and the upload speed isn't what "it should be". I've asked them to define what "it should be" because it seems slightly weird entering into a contract when they aren't able to tell me what the contract is for in numbers.

I don't understand. I am a luddite. Any brains in who understand this kind of stuff. My fella uses the internet to upload stuff as part of his job so it is important for him.

In reply to AlisonSmiles:

I don't know about Sky but BT offer "BT Infinity" at either 38Mb or 76Mb. The reason they cannot quote speeds accurately is because there are many factors that come into play, critically, the distance you are from the Switch and the quality of the "local loop", i.e. the wires to your home from the switch/exchange. A fibre connection will seem blisteringly fast compared to a wholly copper connection.

If you Google "Speedcheck" it will take you to a choice of services that allow you to test your current upload and download speeds.

In reply to GridNorth:

They'll happily quote me a download speed - between 21 and 29. Upload though another matter!

I managed to google something to see a map showing various folk around here's download and upload speeds. BT do look kind of best, but I think I'd be having to get out of my existing Sky contract early, possibly with a charge for doing that if I swapped to them any time soon.

In reply to AlisonSmiles:

It's bound to be significantly better. The other thing to be aware of is that suppliers other than BT "manage" the bandwidth so at peak times you may not get all you are paying for as it needs to be shared out with others. I don't know how noticeable this is with fibre but when I was ALL copper my speeds slowed down significantly in the evenings before I changed to BT.

In reply to GridNorth:

We have BT infinity. It downloads at 75Mb but uploads at only 9Mb. although BT say it can upload to 20Mb.

In reply to AlisonSmiles:

Got Virgin Media. Just shy of 100 down and 11 up. They even tripled our speed for free as a national roll out. Thanks VM!

In reply to AlisonSmiles:

Does anyone know why upload speeds are slower than download? Ours are 75 down 9 up, but all the same hardware is used for both, copper cable to the street cabinet then fibre optic to the exchange. Our PC is the same, obviously, to handle up and down, so I doubt that the PC hardware is responsible for slow up speeds (with 3.4gb processor and 16gb of 1666 RAM). So why the difference?

In reply to AlisonSmiles:

There is only so much capacity available and the amount you upload pales into insignificance compared to what you download so it's a traffic management/balancing measure to optimise the bandwidth. As an unrealistic extreme imagine that you are downloading video, which contains a huge amount of information, in order to do this you only need to "upload" a few key presses.

In reply to mockerkin:
because bandwidth is still limited by the final section of copper cable, the reason upload speeds are slower is that most but not all people spend nearly all the time downloading not uploading.
you can get lines which share it more evenly , I think it might be sdsl as opposed to adsl or vdsl.

In reply to AlisonSmiles:

hi Alsion, when you say normal line I take it you are currently on copper in which case both upload speed and download speed will normally be much better on fibre but not always.
it depends on a lot of factors, how far you currently are from your exchange at the moment will determine your speed on copper.
how far you are from the street fibre cabinet will mostly determine your fibre speed as it still runs on existing copper from the fibre cab.
how its set up in the house becomes even more important with fibre so ask for an installer to visit if they will do it as recently they are now providing a set it up yourself service with an engineer only visiting the cabinet and not your house.
if you have only 1 socket and no extensions and you router plugs in where the main socket is with nothing teed off then that's the best set up. if it doesn't you can lose significant speeds through the house. ive seen lines lose over 20 meg in a house alone due to teed extension and unfiltered equipment like sky boxes.
sky should also be able to increase your upload speed but it will reduce your download speed to compensate but that may not be an issue depending on how much speed you end up with overall.

In reply to AlisonSmiles:

Also be aware they will offer you close to 40 or 80 meg services, be aware renting the 80 meg will not double up your speed at the house end and may in fact be no faster than the 40 depending on some of the factors I mentioned above.