Do different ISP providers have different speeds?

[bamberger]

I'm currently with Virgin cable which I find wonderful but I'm about to move to a non cabled house where BT is the only line supplier (ie the likes of Talk Talk don't have their own equipment in the exchange).
Every ISP under the sun can provide broadband to the house but it is going to be coming down the same copper wire. So other than level of customer service/installation/free equipment is there going to be any difference in performance?

Thanks

[Huderon]

No, not really. You can check the likely speed you can get on the phone line on the BT website if you know the phone number ... http://www.productsan...oryId=CON-TOTAL-BB-R1 and the speed checker is on the top right hand side of the page. Oh, and the check does not make the phone ring.

I've just done it on out home line, and interestingly it comes back with two results - one which is available now and BT Infinity which will be available at the end of the year. So, at least round here, BT are planning to roll out fibre optic fairly soon. It may be worth checking when it will be available where you are moving to

[Buenchico]

Huderon seems to be ignoring some important issues:

Each ISP will have its own 'contention ratio'. That's because (unless you've got a 'leased line', as used by big businesses) your access to the internet is shared with other users. The budget ISPs typically have a 30:1 contention ratio. i.e. you'll be sharing your internet access with up to 29 other users). Better providers offer 20:1 or 15:1 contention ratios (but, unsurprisingly, tend to charge you more for their services). 10:1 ratios (or better) are available with some home services but, again, at a cost. For example, my ISP (Claranet) has a 7:1 ratio but it's far from being the cheapest home service on offer.

Additionally, nearly all home broadband services use 'traffic management' (otherwise known as 'traffic shaping' or 'throttling'). That means that the maximum speeds you'll get for certain services (such as video streaming or file-sharing) and/or at peak times of day are reduced in order to ensure that there's enough capacity left for other users. Again, the budget providers tend to use such practices far more vigorously than the 'full' price' providers. As an example, here's Virgin's policy:
http://virgin.net/all...ficManagementFAQ.html

To the best of my knowledge, the only budget provider that doesn't use any form of traffic management is BE Broadband. However that isn't necessarily good news. If their contention ratio is high, you might find (particularly at peak times) that your connection speed almost grinds to a halt.

Chris