I use Sky Broadband; whilst Sky have installed their own equipment in local exchanges (as allowed by LLU [Local Loop Unbundling], giving third parties access to the exchange), they still rely on the antiquated BT copper landlines to deliver the service.
I was told by Sky that I could receive a maximum of 1Mbps, due to my distance from the local exchange.  This is because I am connected to the main Basingstoke exchange, which (as the crow flies) is 6½km from my address - and the line length is actually closer to 10km.
In reality, whilst the connection is reliable (I can always connect to the internet) the connection speed is painfully slow; my download speed is around 600kbps, with no possibility of increase, again due to the line length.  
Whilst there is another exchange closer to my address (in Chineham), to connect to that exchange would involve my paying for BT to dig up the roads and install a new line; plus the Chineham exchange has not been unbundled, so Sky Broadband would not be an option; I would have to pay £20/month for a BT-based service.
In a town like Basingstoke which is expanding as quickly as it is, I'm staggered that no consideration has been given to additional exchanges in Basingstoke's suburbs, as the existing infrastructure can clearly not cope.  I am aware of people on the other side of town (Hatch Warren) who suffer from exactly the same predicament.  Virgin Media have not cabled my area (and indeed have no plans to) meaning that, until BT get round to laying fibre-optic cables, my internet connection will remain in the 20th century.

I used to be on fixed ADSL from BT at 1 mbps no problem. I was encouraged by BT to upgrade to up to 8 mbps variable on the basis I would get double for the same price. I actually got 2.4 mbps for a while then 1.8 mbps for 5 or 6 months now this has progressively reduced to 0.96 mbps. My signal to noise ratio and attenuation have remained much the same. Consequently I put the decrease down to BT throttling bandwidth due to the increase usage of IPlayer and similar by internet users despite my service being uncapped. I am 3.5 kms from the exchange as the crow flies probably 5 or 6 kms by copper wire. As other correspondents have noted in-house wiring can have an effect. Good advice on improving this aspect can be found on the ThinkBroadband website
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.html#235
The usual recommended solution is to change the faceplate to one that filters the ADSL thus obviating the need for microfilters all over the house. Companies such as Clarity sell these faceplates and provide wiring guidance see:-
http://www.clarity.it/telecoms/adsl_wiring.htm
For the more technically minded this BT article explains the technology and some of its weaknesses.
 www.thinkbroadband.com/files/broadband-max-myths-and-legends.pdf
I am waiting to move to an LLU provider when I can find one that fibres to the local junction box in Lychpit. This would improve my speed by an order of magnitude.

I get a very meagre 125-250k with my BT Broadband,  whilst this remains an expensive solution I am not prepared to risk another supplier given serious problems I had when I tried this last time.  Usually this is sufficient for most things I need to do but trying to watch even a modest sized youtube video at these speeds is absolutely wonderful for any nostalgia buffs pining for the days of dial up access (but not for anyone trying to use broadband in the 21st century).

Oh, I forgot to say Mobile Broadband might be the answer but we are right in the middle of a signal blind spot (on Vodafone, T-mobile and 3!!!)  D'oh!

We live in Heron Park and the Bandwidth is circa 370kbs.  We have discussed this with neighbours to check and conclude that it is common to the estate.  We did change to Talk Talk in early 2007, we then discovered that they were unable to provide the service due to the low bandwidth.  This caused a long dispute with TT and a change back to BT.  At that point in desperation we went for an integrated BT package including BT Vision.  To our amazement BT then advised that with the bandwidth available they could not provide Vision.  (Too slow to download).  They visited and tried a few tests,  and changes, but failed to improve performance.

We would welcome action to get some change made to servers in exchanges to up the rate.  We understand this has been achieved by other groups in the UK in similar circumstances.  A point to make to those getting high speeds is that to and from our BT hub in the house we do get Mbs but not on the external copper!   If we can contribute in collecting data or writing letters please tell us.

We are with BT Broadband and signed up to 8MB but in practice we get less than 512KB, in fact with your speed test it said a miserly 185Kbps.
We are supposed to be able to get at least 1MB according to other test sites. We have had some very unreliable service from BT and back in the usmmer it took a month to get sorted, the engineer who came out a few times said for some reason it was capped at 512KB at the exchange. Now it is working again (new hub finally sent to us) we are loathe to ask BT to investigate further into the low speed, but feel agrieved that we are paying for a much higher speed than is obviously technically possible.
I downloaded 'iplayer' to see a 1 hour programme I had missed and it said it would take 6 hours to download! Needless to say we do not use iplayer and watching other videos on-line is very hit and miss.

PS I filled in a form at http://www.ehampshire.org/notspots.asp but haven't heard anything or what might be done to improve the situation.

Kevin
This did go on the agenda for the last meeting and it was agreed to lobby BT for a better broadband service which will be done this week.  As far as cable goes, the pc has never been asked for its opinion and one of our councillors who used to work for BT thinks that it is a non-starter because it would be too expensive too lay and there would be issues in obtaining wayleaves over private ground.  apparently, some of the cable was laid in Lychpit when the estate was built so it may be an option there but not in the village.

I live in Hatch Lane and I checked my broadband bandwidth on Monday 12/1/09 at 15:10, I have bandwidth of 127.4 kbps (ie 15.03KB/s).

I spoke to a BT linesman, who was working at an inspection chamber in Milkingpen Lane, and he said the problem is twofold. One is that we are too far from the exchange, and the other is that the cables to Old Basing are made from aluminum which have corroded. He also said that there was a plan to lay a new link (I think he said an optical link) to the Hatch and set up a kind of mini exchange to distribute broadband around the village.   I think we will have to wait for a long time to see any improvement.

Thanks for taking up the broadband cause. Here are some notes from Norton Ride in Lychpit:

• BT broadband with BT’s router
• Service is 100% dependable
• Service is 100% slow :-)
  • Download test shows “171.30kbps which means you can download at 21.41 KB/sec. from our servers”. This is after fighting its way through Symantec firewall etc. but on a modern Core d Duo PC business laptop
  • Router claims downstream 1,792 Kbps, upstream 448 Kbps. It used to show ~700kbps downstream until a while ago
  • My neighbour gets 4,000 Kbps but is connect via an 8xxxx number. I have a 47xxxx. BT says the restriction is at the exchange end and they can’t move my line to the part of the exchange where the 8xxx numbers terminate.

  I confess I have got use the to the slow speed but I should not as my bill is for up to 8Mb/s service.

My speeds are using the link on your page are: -  

• Download 494.8 Kbps  
• Upload     61.85 Kbps

This I consider slow!
My supplier is Tiscali and so far very few problems.

I have had 4 different ISPs in the last 8 years in my quest for better broadband. I now achieve 4 Mbps download and 800Kbps upload which I think is as good as you can get out of the old copper wires at 2.4Km from the exchange.
My last 3 ISPs have been :

• Talktalk.  Speeds varied between 450Kbps and 1.1Mbps
• Newnet.  Speeds increased to 3 Mbps immediately on connection and remained constant.
• O2.  Achieved 4Mbps on connection and this has trimmed to 3.9Mbps and is rock solid.

I long since removed the ring wire from my master socket. 

It seems to me that the ISP is the most critical factor affecting performance.  My line was unbundled when I was with Talktalk but their traffic shaping techniques reduced speed dramatically during periods of high usage. My line has since been reclaimed by BT and the speeds achieved by both ISPs since rebundling have been significantly better.

Just read your comments in the Basinga. We have just registered 127.40 kbps on the speed test which is pretty much what we're stuck with. We rarely cannot connect, but we do note that early afternoons on weekdays (2.30pm) are particularly bad.

We've recently spoken to BT and they said that the maximum that we can ever hope to achieve is 1000kbps, and that they have no plans to change things in this area.

This is now a big issue for us because it prevents us doing work, as we both have on-line training modules that we cannot do from home because of the abominable speed.

Incidentally we did threaten to leave and subsequently managed to negotiate a discount of approximately £6.50 from the standard 'Option 1' tariff.
I'd sooner pay more and get a faster link though.

I am in Park Lane with Tiscali and get speeds of around 2.2Mbps (strangely though the tool you suggest only shows a speed of 800 Kbps). I checked with several other tools which show the higher speed and downloads arrive at the higher speed as well.

The service is reasonable although I have to reset my cheap wireless router around once or twice a day. One day I'll spend £50 and get a better one.

Tiscali's price is good as it includes phone line rental, free week-end calls and up to 8Mbps broadband for £15 a month.

It would be good to get a faster speed but what I get is adequate for the up to 4 pc's that google, email, facebook and watch iPlayers at any one time.

I suffer from the same sort of speed issues as several of your other commentators.

I struggle to maintain a speed of just over 1MB with BT.  I find that problems with the old lines lead to faults on the line, which in turn cause the broadband speed to get limited.  As an example, about 10 days ago my rated speed was cut back to 700 kbps.  I immediately notice this with for example BBC iPlayer becoming unusable in peak periods.  Last November the fault was worse, and speed was cut back to 300 kbps.  iPlayer doesn't work at all at that speed.  Once your rated speed is cut, it won't go back up on its own.

When this happens, the only way to get speed back up is to get BT to admit there is a fault on the line, then get an engineer to try to resolve it.  This can be a very tedious process involving calls to Mumbai, waiting in queues, fairly pointless test procedures, until finally an engineer will call.  I find the local engineers very good when they finally get on the case, but you cannot contact them direct until they are assigned to the job.

I don't know if having another ISP would help, as all the services come through the BT lines.  I think those people who get much more than 1MB speed are just very lucky with their wires!

I recommend a conversation with the MAC department at BT (that's the people you go to when you want to leave BT for another provider).  They will promise you a minimum level of service that I think the engineers then have to maintain (in my case I've been promised 1MB - not stunning, but workable).  They'll also tell you that Basing is scheduled for rewiring next year, but the engineers say don't hold your breath!  Oh, and they'll cut your price by 50 to 60%.

Test using link on Basinga Page =
Speed = 686 Kps
Down = 85 Kbps

Using ThinkBroadBand speed test =
Down = 748 Kbps
Up = 322 Kbps
 on 04/03/2009

I am using Sky Broadband via BT Line in Linden Avenue.

I have no problems connecting at any time of day.
Also, the speeds remain reasonably constant, using the ThinkBroadBand speed test.

I believe there is an optical cable already running past Old Basing, from Basingstoke towards Hook along London Road. It was installed on the south side of London Road. This was installed a number of years ago. I do not know who owns it.

Have just read your article in the Basinga which I found interesting and informative. 

I have had broadband for about 4 years with Tiscali as my ESP and as my line supplier for the last 2 years approx.  I have found Tiscali to be a good supplier and have  no reason to seek an alternative apart from the speed issue. 

I have just conducted a speed test using your link and the reading came up as 372.90 kbps.  I have no idea if this is good, bad or indifferent compared to other connections in the village.  I suspect it is poor when compared to other parts of Basingstoke but I have been told by engineers that it is all down to the quality of "copper" to my line and the distance we are from the exchange, which apparently is on the edge.  I would be interested to hear how I compare to others in the village.

When I transferred to Broadband I had BT install a second connection box by extending the line from the main box to ensure that I had the best possible connection as I was told then we were at the edge of a broad band supply and that an overhead supply did not help.   I have had concerns about reliability recently and have disconnected my router in order to establish if it is my equipment at fault.  I cannot honestly say that the line is unreliable on a regular basis, but some days it just seems to playup.  How do you convey that to a call centre in India?

I have had 2 major failures to my supply in the last 2 years and each one has been down to exchange problems that BT were the cause and responsible for any delays in the repairs.  Tiscali's helpline was has improved considerably when I needed to contact them on the last failure which was in February of this year.  They answered the phone reasonably quickly and although they are still using an Indian call centre we could understand each other,  they carried out a line test  and quickly indicated that the fault seemed to be an exchange problem and that they would call back within 4 hours.  This they did and confirmed that the problem was an exchange one and that it should be resolved within 48 hours.  A BT Open reach engineer eventually turned up  and carried out a couple of tests and by doing some work to a nearby connection pillar at the end of the lane resolved the problem just within the 48 hours.   The only gripe I have is that Tiscali helpline is a premium rate number which was very expensive to use, as I could not use my land line and forced to use my mobile it was an expensive call, albeit that I only had to make one call.  Tiscali called me back twice on my mobile to confirm what was going on and again to check that I was back in action and happy.

I've just read your article about better broadband and I think I might be able to help you. I use mobile broadband and would be very happy to run a few speedtests from various parts of Old Basing, if that would be useful?
I'm with O2 and I get a decent 3G connection speed most of the time. In
fact, it's quite often faster than my BT wired broadband connection!

I live in Old Basing and use both fixed like broadband via BT and T-Mobile mobile broadband.  T-Mobile is probably more reliable but it is a bit slower than BT.

I'm still struggling to get our broadband speed improved from the 230kbps we currently have.  Our ISP is AOL and they've said that there's nothing more they can do - the problem is the BT cables.  I sense that other people have the same issue with slow speed due to ancient cables - has anyone successfully challenged BT about this and got their cables changed?  If so, how did you do it?  If not, would it be worth writing a letter from a group of us asking for something to be done?

I guess the other option is to look at mobile broadband which we will explore but I'd rather get the land line sorted out.

It was very straightforward, placed order, they informed BT and sent wireless router with connection date and was pleasantly surprised that everything worked with a 30 minute setup time.     They do charge a one off £29 connection charge though but also offer a 30 day free trial.     Only problem I had was in trying to install their security/anti virus software which left me without protection for several hours until I sorted the problem out so I definitely recommend that people stick with existing software on that one, but the broadband (and wireless) service has been very good and consistent.   (apparently they install their own hardware in the exchange)

This is an update on my broadband speed in Inkpen Gardens.
My service provider is Demon Internet.
Package Home Office.
Download speed was 800Kbps.
Yesterday I was told I was being upgraded to Home Office 2+.
Not quite straightforward, but after a few calls to the helpdesk my broadband download speed is now 1400Kbps, upload 500kbps.
This now enables live video streaming without too many hiccups.

Demon is now providing me with 2.5Mbps at Inkpen Gardens.  Tony reported the following to Demon

"My download speed is consistently at 2.5Mbps and uploads at 580Kbps. Can you advise if this service speed is now available to other service providers in this area, or is it exclusive to Demon customers? "

Demon replied

"The speed you are getting is a good speed. You are getting this speed because it is on ADSL 2+ service. Currently no other providers have upgraded their systems to support ADSL 2+."

I'm moving house to Lychpit in a few months.  Have been reading the comments on the forum.
I need a really reliable Broadband connection, as work from home most of the week, although do not want wireless prefer cable in to my pc (not sure what technical term is!).
What provider would you recommend.  I currently have BT,  they are not that fast but connection is very reliable, is BT ok in Lychpit.  I did the speed test where I currently live  and seems around the same speed as some of the other people so I'm hoping it will be just as reliable.  Moving to Saxon Way if that makes any difference to what part of Lychpit.
Any advice appreciated!

I was very interested to read Tony Fendal’s comment about 2.5mbps in Inkpen Gardens.  I’m in Privett Close (just up from Inkpen Gardens) and was informed by Sky (my provider) that adsl2+, whilst available in my area, would destabilise my line to the point where it would cause more issues than it cures.  They therefore have to leave me capped at approx. 600kbps.
 
As I had my number re-routed from my previous address in Old Hatchwarren, I contacted BT to ask if the route my line has taken is causing the problem, and whether they could arrange a more direct route from the exchange (apparently, despite being 7km from the exchange, my line is 10km long).  They totally washed their hands of me, as they don’t provide my Broadband service – I found that very frustrating, as they still own my phone line, and consequently the infrastructure that delivers Sky’s service….
 
It’s frustrating – I think all people really want is joined-up information!

A glimmer of hope today with BTs announcement to include Basingstoke in their 40mbps roll-out.
See:-  http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/25425/bt-names-next-super-fast-broadband-locations.phtml

As already indicated I purchased Vodafone PAYG Mobile Broadband.  I have been using it on and off for a couple of weeks now and here is what I think so far:

• In terms of usability - it works great in the garden, quite well in the conservatory, ok in the kitchen, but hopeless in the office!  Guess where I'll probably use it the most?  Outside in the garden the bandwidth meter reports speeds of > 1 Mbps, but in the office it is only 200 or 300 kbps.
• However, it's nice to have something I know will work when I can't get my adsl router to connect (which often takes 15 mins or more).
• I can't send email from my Windows Mail program.  But I can receive mail ok.  This seems to be an issue with Vodafone requiring me to supply some sort of user name and password to access their smtp server.  But I haven't been given one.  I can't find any information on how to set this up.  This would not be a problem if I just used a web mail client like hotmail.
• When I am working offline (not connected to the internet) a little pop-up keeps rearing it's head telling me I am not connected and to connect now!  I haven't seen how to disable this yet although I am sure it can be done.

So, my conclusion so far is that it probably isn't the solution for someone who wants to replace their landline connection, but would be great for browsing on the go.

1.76 Mbps on Saturday 15 August 2009.

My provider is Post office telephones