Moving from phone line - is cable worth it?

We've had Sky Broadband for the past year or so and it is beyond hopeless. It literally cannot load two pages at the same time (if attempted they both time out) and the download speed clocks in at about 200kb/s on a good day - our package promises something around 3mb/s.

I think we've accepted we are in a poor position (about 3 miles away from the BT interchange) so we're looking at changing to cable

So I suppose I should ask my questions...

1) Is Virgin cable *actually* any good? Is it noticeably better than a phone line internet service?

2) Does cable suffer from the same distance and traffic related problems that phone-line broadband does?

2) Are we wise to just shrug off phone line broadband or should we try a service other than sky?

Thanks for your time!

The first question to ask is whether cable is actually available in your area? Not all areas of the country are cable enabled.

If you are a long way from your exchange for ADSL broadband then all providers will struggle with speeds, but some can be better than others, maybe try switching to one with no minimum term contract such as Plusnet to see if they are better, at least you won't be tied in if they are not.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

We've had Sky Broadband for the past year or so and it is beyond hopeless. It literally cannot load two pages at the same time (if attempted they both time out) and the download speed clocks in at about 200kb/s on a good day - our package promises something around 3mb/s.

I think we've accepted we are in a poor position (about 3 miles away from the BT interchange) so we're looking at changing to cable

So I suppose I should ask my questions...

1) Is Virgin cable *actually* any good? Is it noticeably better than a phone line internet service?

[u]2) Does cable suffer from the same distance and traffic related problems that

2) Are we wise to just shrug off phone line broadband or should we try a service other than sky?

Thanks for your time!

In relation to your second question, I had all sorts of problems with broadband through a BT line, but have had a mostly reliable service since I switched to cable a few years ago.

I've had Virgin broadband for about 8 months now -dropping the service as I'm moving and their prices for 3 services (bb, TV, phone) are high - about £90/month when you add pay per view movies. I've been *sort of* happy with them, and am only dropping because Freesat is really good (or will be in November when the PVR box comes out) so I don't think they're worth it anymore, but I have to say the broadband services have been good - no real outages and certainly the fastest link I've ever had. They're also simple to setup multiple machines, and their customer service has been decent. you could do a lot worse IMO.

I have Virgin cable. Have been with them for 5-6 years. I get upto 20mb on their max service.

They use fibre optics which have no range limits.

The best adsl I can acheive is 2.5mb so I am staying with cable for now...