Currently have clearewire which is pure sh!te, no p2p, no torrents and only slightly faster than dial up at peak times. Got a letter today to say that ntl is available at my address so I’m gonna change to them as I hear the service is quite good.
Only question I have and the more technically minded out there may be able to help me, should I go for the 3mb or 6mb service? 3mb costs 30 and 6mb costs 40. Basically I want it for downloading from iTunes and streaming BCFC matches and other games I have bet on, as I like to be able to watch what I have bet on. Get most of my streams from here http://livefooty.doctor-serv.com/index.html
Will the 3mb allow me to stream football without the match constantly stopping for buffering? Also what sort of speeds would I get downloading on 3mb? Currently best I get is about 50kps with Clearwire.
I have Meto broadband which is 3MB and it’s pretty fast. I don’t pay too much attention to download speeds but they go from 50 to about 200kbps or so I would have thought. Obviously it depends on where you are downloading from, and as most of my downloads are torrents then you’re very dependent on other upload speeds. Still the faster the connection the faster you will ultimately go obviously.
I would say that 40 isn’t a lot to pay for 6MB at all, and NTL probably have the most reliabile service out there so you’d be getting a really slick connection for 40. Downloading from itunes will be fine with either because it’s dedicated servers. If I’m downloading from heanet or anywhere then 3MB rips along.
The streaming is again dependent on the server load and whether they limit connections to the game you are watching. I used to watch Celtic online every week (until they decided Ireland was in the UK) and it was pretty decent on 3MB. Other people had better connections but they might not have had any better pictures because they’re sharing hte bandwidth with everyone else.
In summary: 3MB will be fine for downloading and decent for streaming, but not perfect. 6MB will download quicker (but won’t be noticable much of the time) and better for streaming. I’d pay the extra 10 for it I think - though maybe you could get 3MB first, see how it is, and then upgrade. Always easier to upgrade a contract then downgrade.