NEVER go with BT broadband!

want to have a mini rant to vent my anger...

i tend to get 2-3weeks of faultless internet followed by 2-3 weeks of hell

my internet is never that speedy and around 1700kbps

it is currently 200kbps

i ring BT and they ask me if im using a wired or wireless connection blah blah blah

I interrupt the operator and in form him its the connection speed TO my router.. not out of it.

after 2 hours of call centers i get told theres an issue with my line.. today a guy came out to my house to fix a line problem.

Internet went quick again woo... hour later.. back to 200kbps..

i changed from orange to bt about 5 months ago.. i had 8 years of faultless internet with orange.. bt.. well ive had about 5 days lol

rant over.. stuck in a 12 month contract more rant gahhh! online games are a no no

my speed has never been that good as we are situated a little away from the exchange, however in a few more weeks we are due to be switched over to fibre optics and have a 40meg speed, cant wait ,thats with bt also.i cant help feel there will be some extra charge for that,

oh rub it in why dont you! lol, my exchange wasnt in the list of the infinity role out
I only live like 5-6 miles form the exchange but still poop speeds! rural life has many downfalls and internet speed is one of them!

...

BT are usually reliable but expensive, I am using a home hub myself (nice piece of hardware) but my ISP is sky. I used to live in the welsh mountains about 2 miles from the exchange and averaged 7600kbps regardless of ISP. I currently get 11200Kbps in a town, about a mile from the exchange.

For the past few years BT have allowed ISP's to use thei own equipment within the telephone exchange where as previously it was all BT's equipment and the ISP's basically bought bulk bandwidth from them. So the ISP has lot more influence over the speed than they used to.

EDIT:
You may be able to get results by threatening to break the contract on the grounds that they are not keeping up their half of the contract by providing you with a less than acceptable service.

EDIT2:

What speed did they estimate you would receive when you switched? You can check this by putting your postcode into their website.

They may try and say that it's "UPTO 8mb" or whatever the maximum advertised speed is and this is not available in all areas. However 200Kbps is not just a bit less, it's significantly less and as far as i'm concerned does not constitute a "broadband" connection as yo can achieve these speeds with an ISDN phone line.

Fingers crossed but so far going back to BT has worked out quite well for me. OK I'll never get brilliant speeds because I live in a rural coastal area and there's not chance of cable or fibre optic lines around here. I'm about 1.37 km away from the exchange and get just under 4 mb speed sometimes it's just over 4. I think there have only been a couple of times that the service has dropped and each time it has been fixed fairly quickly, they were faults on BT's side.
Just renewed my broadband and got the price down so all in all I'm happy at present, although I know this can all change at any time.

well my connection is now 2200kbps.. but come this evening i bet it will drop back down.. so its basically throttling.

yet they are still adiment there is a fault.

i just wish i could speak to somebody that actually has a concept of the issue and not just a handbook they read from!