I recently switched from Sky to O2 for my broadband provider. I had been on Sky Mid package for a few years and it was good value and worked well (Don’t get me started on Pipex!!). Earlier this year Sky informed me they were doubling their rates (unless I took their Talk package too). Around this time I felt that their connection was becoming more unreliable.
I decided to switch to O2 Broadband as they use ADSL2, had good rates for O2 mobile customers and got consistently good reviews on thinkbroadband.com. The switch took a couple of weeks and was pretty seamless. However, I noticed that my new connection was significantly slower. Speed tests confirmed that I was only getting 300-400Kbps for both up and downstream.
The main suspect for this was my setup at home. I have an extension lead from the hallway master phone socket to an extension socket under the stairs, and another upstairs to the office where an adsl/phone extension socket connected to my router. I connected my router directly to the master socket and did a speed test. Sure enough, the speed jumped to 2.7Mbps/1Mbps downstream/upstream.
While this may seem obvious, I had been getting 1.5-2Mbps with Sky with the exact same setup. I did know that extensions add interference but it didn’t seem to impact the speed that much and I preferred to have the router upstairs out of the way. Though for some reason it has a much bigger impact with O2. It could be something to do with their modem or ADSL2. To their credit, their instructions do say that extensions may affect performance.
Anyway, the moral of the story is to connect your router to your master socket or at least be aware of the effect extensions may be having on your Internet speed (BroadbandSpeedChecker.co.uk).
