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[UncleUB]

Some price alterations from various isp's have come into force.


http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3920-price-rises-and-price-cuts.html

[tuftedduck]

TD is stuck on the Virgin M scheme...........going up in price...

My speed is fixed at 2Mgb.........and the exchange will not be maxed until next year.....

2Mgb..........and my line is only 185 metres long......

[UncleUB]

TD is stuck on the Virgin M scheme...........going up in price...

My speed is fixed at 2Mgb.........and the exchange will not be maxed until next year.....

2Mgb..........and my line is only 185 metres long......

Are you the exchange caretaker. 

[mr_chris]

TD... which exchange are you on? I rather suspect this sounds like Virgin telling porkies rather than your exchange actually not being Maxed.

In fact, have a look on Kitz's ADSL Checker - it will tell you what date ADSL Max is/was available from.

[tuftedduck]

Mr_Chris.............yes, Virgin are being economical with the truth...........the exchange was maxed in 2006.....

Have been looking around at different isps and checking on their webbies..........from this I understand that my line has a contention ratio of 50:1............is that not very high, and can anything be done about that...? 

[mr_chris]

First of all, anyone still quoting 50:1 contention ratio is also being economical with the truth. ISPs shouldn't really be quoting contention ratios at all now as it's almost impossible for them to determine the ratio.

In a nutshell, contention ratio is a calculation of number of users versus available total bandwidth, to see how many you are effectively 'sharing' your 2Mb (or whatever) with. Because of the factors e.g. exchange traffic, ISP traffic etc, it's very difficult to tell true contention ratios nowadays in normal consumer broadband. Most of the 'mass-market' ISPs (i.e. pretty much all of them) are probably well exceeding 100:1 nowadays.

BT Wholesale abolished the publication of 50:1 and 20:1 contention ratios a few years ago - expecting ISPs to follow suit, shortly after the introduction of MaxDSL, funnily enough

So basically, I'd go on an ISP's reputation, rather than any quoted 'statistics' ... after all, 74.9% of statistics are made up on the spot, you know

[tuftedduck]

Thank you for your advices, Mr_Chris............will continue to sniff around with a view to a change.

[kitz]

Thanks for the update UB.
It was expected that quite a few Telco's would be increasing their telephone line rentral costs this month due to the increase in wholesale costs.

@ TD

>> and the exchange will not be maxed until next year

Thats sounds like a typical porkie you'd hear from AOL!  As already mentioned BTw dslMaxed 99.9% of all exchanges by the end of March 2006.  VirginDSL do and have been providing "up to 8Mb" since 2006.. any delays have been down to Virgin themselves since the technology is there.

Re the comments on contention - as Chris says - it means nothing these days.  You could have someone on 5:1 which is performing very badly.. or you could have a line at 100:1 that could be running fine.  It all depends on the state of the ISP Centrals.. and unfortunately Virgin wasnt managing them pretty well particularly last year and their customers were very heavily contended.  Its probably why they unfortunately are at the bottom of the ISP ratings :/

I am very surprised about "only 2Mb", since afaik most of their customers should have now been moved over to max.  It would be interesting to see your line stats to see what speeds you could really get.  If you want any help just yell.