Choose the best ISP to maximise speed
Not all ISPs and broadband services are the same! Choosing one of the best ISPs will ensure that you maximise your actual throughput speeds and stand the best possible chance of fixing any faults that you have (or may have in the future) on your line.
Please exercise your choice
There is currently a huge, confusing choice of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and broadband services in the market, and it is often difficult to gauge which is the best broadband service and provider. Consumer magazines such as Which often undertake incomplete assessments of broadband services, which fail to provide accurate insight. This page is dedicated to outlining the choices you have and it provides our recommendations for ISP and broadband service.
We are amazed at how many people we speak to that stay with BT Broadband out of apathy or a misguided view that BT Broadband is best because BT has been providing phone services for many years! As we will show, there are many options currently available that outstrip BT Broadband in terms of performance, the quality of customer care and price. It’s now very easy to change ISP and, in most cases, there will be no disruption to service.
Beware of traffic shaping!
In recent years, a new problem has surfaced concerning broadband services, and is a key reason why you should choose your ISP with great care. That problem is known as ‘traffic shaping’ , which is also termed ‘traffic management’ or ‘bandwidth throttling’. It can be applied to selected types of traffic, such as P2P (peer-to-peer), or to all types of traffic.
Traffic shaping is the deliberate slowing down of your broadband connection by your ISP, usually performed at peak times. Its fundamental purpose is to save the ISP money, so that it doesn’t have to invest in substantial core network capacity in order to cope with the peaks in traffic demand. The downside for broadband users is that their broadband throughput speeds can be substantially reduced in peak times.
Sadly, many ISPs now apply traffic shaping, including BT Broadband. Thankfully, a small number of high-quality ISPs do not, including:
You should check whether your ISP applies traffic shaping. Using a high-quality ISP will ensure that you get the maximum throughput that your broadband connection is capable of, at all times of day.
Your choice of service depend on your location
The broadband choices available to you will depend on where you are located. In general, if you live in a town or city, you will have many more choices available to you than if you live in a rural location.
In general, the following broadband services may be available to you in your location:
- basic ADSL services delivered via BT’s ADSL network and offered by BT Broadband
- basic ADSL services, which use BT’s ADSL network, offered by a raft of ISPs
- more advanced ADSL2+ services delivered by BT’s network and offered by BT Broadband
- more advanced ADSL2+ services, delivered by BT’s network, offered by a broad range of ISPs
- Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) services using ADSL2+, offered by a range of ISPs
- superfast broadband services, delivered by BT’s latest fibre optic network and offered by BT Broadband (and called BT Infinity)
- superfast broadband services, delivered by BT’s latest fibre optic network, offered by other ISPs (such Fast.co.uk, Zen, Aquiss and IDNET)
- superfast broadband services delivered by Virgin Media’s cable network.
As a first step, we recommend that you identify which services are available to you at your location. For this purpose, SamKnows provides its very useful UK Broadband Availability Checker. All you need to enter is your phone number and postcode.
If you’re able to access superfast broadband services, consider yourself lucky
You are very fortunate if you are able to access superfast broadband services, for example, from Virgin Media, BT Infinity or a range of other ISPs that offer superfast broadband services through BT’s latest fibre optic network. Many broadband users in rural areas will be very jealous!
With Virgin Media, depending upon your location and the amount that you are prepared to pay, you may be able to access downlink speeds of between 10Mbps and 100Mbps (upgraded to 120Mbps during 2012). Virgin Media offers substantially faster peak speeds than the BT Infinity service and is currently our recommended choice for superfast broadband services.
The BT Infinity service offers downlink connection speeds of up to 40Mbps, using a technology called Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC). BT hopes to increase its maximum downlink speeds to 80Mbps during 2012. Please note that speeds with BT Infinity can be significantly slower than the maximum speeds if you are located a considerable distance from your BT street cabinet.
Bear in mind that a number high-quality ISPs offer superfast broadband services using BT’s fibre optic network (which we would recommend over BT), including:
ADSL2+ can provide significantly greater speeds than ADSL, with LLU services offering the best performance
In the absence of superfast broadband services, you will generally be reliant upon ADSL technology (or the more more modern ADSL2+ technology) for the delivery of your broadband service, with a large range of ISP options.
ADSL2+ is an enhancement to the original ADSL technology that is widely in use, and will provide higher speeds, particularly for those that live close to the BT exchange. There may be a number of way in which you can get ADSL2+ services, which are now described.
BT is rolling out ADSL2+ services, which may provide modest speed improvements
Many ISPs offer broadband services that use BT’s network and exchange equipment. BT is currently in the process of upgrading its exchange equipment from ADSL to ADSL2+.
In July 2011, BT Wholesale announced that it planned to significantly extend the availability of ADSL2+ to around 90% of UK premises during spring 2013. The ‘up to 90%’ rollout plan is set to include more than 400 additional rural exchanges, serving more than 900,000 rural premises. So, ADSL2+ will be available from a total of 2,604 exchanges. You can view BT’s latest plans by clicking on the following link to see if your particular BT exchange is on the list. This is in Excel format.
BT Wholesale 21CN Broadband Availability
Just because you are connected to a BT exchange that has ADSL2+ capability does not mean that you are automatically connected to the ADSL2+ equipment, so you should contact your ISP to check. We recommend that you migrate to an ADSL2+ service if possible to maximise your connection speeds. Migration from ADSL to ADSL2+ may incur a small charge.
Local Loop Unbundled (LLU) services offer significant advantages
Local Loop Unbundling is the process whereby other operators (such as TalkTalk and Sky) place their own equipment in BT exchanges so that they can offer their own services with more control. LLU services use ADSL2+ technology so can offer superior speeds in exchanges where BT-based services only use ADSL technology. We strongly recommend that you opt for LLU services if you have the opportunity, since in general these will offer, in comparison with BT-based services:
- lower pricing
- higher connection speeds (through the use of ADSL2+ technology)
- higher actual throughputs (through the absence of BT’s outdated bRAS profiling system, as described in our Increase Broadband Speed Guide).
Which ISP should I choose that offers ADSL2+?
Given the technical advantage of ADSL2+ compared with ADSL, we strongly recommend that you identify if you have an ADSL2+ option, either from:
- BT having upgraded your exchange to ADSL2+
- your exchange having already been unbundled.
Once you have decided upon the best technology route (unbundled ADSL2+, BT-based ADSL2+ or BT-based ADSL), you have to choose an appropriate ISP.
If you opt for unbundled ADSL2+, do not make the assumption that you have to go with the available provider, as there may be a number of additonal options available. For example, Talk Talk offers very cheap consumer broadband services, which combine line rental and broadband. However, Talk Talk has received a lot of criticism about its cheap consumer services, particularly in terms of the quality of customer care. Less well known is the fact that Talk Talk also provides wholesale services (just as BT does) to a number of ISPs. These ISPs benefit from access to Talk Talk’s highly-advanced network and yet can provide superior customer care. While these services are not as cheap as Talk Talk’s direct services, they do allow you to get the best of all worlds – broadband and phone services that are still significantly cheaper than BT services, excellent customer support and superior broadband performance and data rates.
The following ISPs offer broadband and/or phone services using the Talk Talk network:
Some of these offer combined phone and broadband deals (which tend to offer greater savings compared with BT) and some offer broadband only services (where you keep your existing phone contract with BT). All of these ISPs have an excellent reputation (and are rated in consumer satisfaction surveys above BT).
If we were asked to pick one, we would currently opt for Xilo, as customer service is particularly outstanding, with a call centre based in the UK.
If your exchange is not unbundled, but BT has upgraded it to ADSL2+, you can also get BT-based broadband ADSL2+ services through Xilo.
Which ISP should I choose for ADSL services based on BT’s network?
If only BT-based ADSL services are available from your exchange, then you still have to make a choice of ISP, to get high-quality customer care and the fastest throughputs possible for your broadband connection.
Even though ISPs use the same BT ADSL equipment in the BT exchange, there are significant differences between ISPs in terms of:
- the quality of customer care
- the extent of traffic shaping (described previously)
- the BT wholesale service on which the ISP’s service is based.
When you have a fault on your line, it can be very frustrating getting many ISPs to take proactive actions (for example, sending out a BT Openreach engineer to your premises) to resolve the fault. If you don’t use one of the best ISPs, you may spend many hours trying to communicate with a call centre in India, and then find you are given incorrect advice. Since ISPs can be charged by BT Openreach (including BT Broadband) to investigate faults on their behalf, it is no surprise that so many ISPs will do whatever they can to close down an issue without proper investigation.
As discussed above, traffic shaping is now rife among UK ISPs, which are trying to maximise profitability while trying to tempt broadband users with cheap pricing. Fortunately, we have found that ISPs that do not apply traffic shaping are not necessarily more expensive than ISPs that do perform traffic shaping.
The ADSL services offered by ISPs can be based upon two different services provided to them by BT Wholesale, which are called:
- IPStream Max
- IPStream Max Premium.
While IPStream Max is the ‘standard’ service (used by the vast majority of broadband services on offer), IPStream Max Premium offers two significant enhancements:
- a faster maximum uplink connection of 832kbps (compared with 448kbps with IPStream Max)
- higher priority on BT’s network than IPStream Max connections, to maximise throughput speeds in busy periods.
Taking account of all these factors, our current recommendation is to opt for one of the Office Broadband services offered by Xilo, which are based upon IP Stream Max Premium. Xilo will provide fantastic UK-based customer services, 832kbps uplink connection speed, no traffic shaping and priority through BT’s network.
View more information on Xilo’s Office Broadband services.
