When is ADSL not broadband? When it’s being provided by O2.
My experience with O2 has been exceptionally poor. I was originally given an install date of the 5th of March, but when this date came, and went, I called up to be told that my install date was actually the 3rd of May. Given that I ordered the service at the end of January, neither of these dates is what you might call “a quick turnaround”. I was given all sorts of excuses ranging from the snow disabling the engineers, to just outright blaming it on BT.
It was finally switched on mid-March. I plugged in the provided router and noticed with some dismay that the wireless only runs at 11Mbps, which would have been fine 5 years ago, but these days I would expect at least 56Mbps support. None of this mattered though because my Internet connection never ventured north of 200Kbps, and only then during the early hours of the morning. In the evening, it sank to speeds slower than a 56K modem.
A few complaints later revealed that O2 (or the providing company Be) was short on bandwidth and were upgrading the service, after which all would be fine. I decided to stick with for the three weeks they told me it would take to upgrade. This has now happened, and whilst speed has improved a bit (I can now get 2Mbps on a good day), it is still much slower than any broadband I have experienced and frequently runs at speeds below 100Kbps. Add to this the fact that O2’s DNS servers seem to fail or stall several times per day and you have a pretty useless connection. On top of this, it now disconnects repeatedly, and by that I mean every hour. And then the final straw to break the proverbial camel’s back: the wireless drops out every 30 minutes or so.
I can rarely watch video. I certainly cannot do any work. The connection is utterly useless and I am sick of it. No doubt I will now have a battle on my hands to get out of the contract, but battle I shall.
I strongly recommend that you do not bother with O2 Home Broadband.
#1 by amit at August 1st, 2009
the reason for o2’s slow turn around is probably because your old internet provider caused o2 problems with regards to the MAC code, or, BT has failed to inform o2 that your line is clear. it isnt o2’s fault for you long connection time!!! i bought o2 home broadband 20meg on the 23rd of july 09, i was connected yesterday and getting 100mbps and a wopping 14.5meg download and a 3.5meg upload!!!
It is BT’s fault for your late connection!!! If your phone line is BT, then its BT’s fault
#2 by David Hurst at August 2nd, 2009
Amit you don’t know any of the facts, and your assertions are quite wrong.
The service was a fresh install after moving home, so no MAC code required.
Nothing to do with BT failing to inform O2 my line is clear.
You are on a completely different exchange to me, and if you are getting ADSL2 then it’s because you are going straight onto the O2 (or Be in this case) network. Our exchange is LLU, but O2/Be haven’t bothered upgrading us.
It had nothing to do with BT, whose broadband I will be moving to when I can escape O2’s contract. All of my neighbours (none with O2) get 5 or 6 Mbps here. I regularly get speeds of about 100Kbps due to ridiculous contention.
O2 take my money and completely fail to deliver anything approaching usable service.
I am an experienced network engineer and used to re-sell ADSL. I know a hell of a lot more about it than most people and I certainly know who is at fault in this case and it’s not BT.