The last time I changed broadband suppliers was nearly 4 years ago and as I recall I was without any service for at least 24 hours. 10 days ago I made the decision to go for a new, superfast, 24MB connection from www.bethere.co.uk They are an LLU provider which means they have their own equipment in the BT exchange; non LLU suppliers are simply reselling BT supplied broadband. BT has no faster broadband than 8MB. So, not only was I changing providers I was also being removed from the BT equipment and connected to the private equipment in the exchange, I therefore expected delays and maybe problems.

Yesterday was the day it was scheduled to happen and by 7:30pm I was still connected to my old provider. I called bethere and they said it was scheduled for that day and it could happen anytime before 9:00pm, so I continued to browse the web and listen to streamed music. Then suddenly the music stopped and the web didn’t work! I went into my router settings and changed them to those supplied by bethere and clicked save. Within a couple of minutes a connection was reported, the music came back on and the web woke up!

This morning I decided to see how it long it would take to download a 750MB length film, something I’ve always set for overnight in the past. Went and had breakfast and a shower and returned to the PC after 90 minutes – it had already finished! Quite how long it took I don’t know except to say it was less than 90 minutes.

bethere provide a ‘free’ wireless router but I didn’t want it, I tried to negotiate something else in its place but with no success. My existing wireless router is a Fritz!Box and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. The bethere router is a Speedtouch 780, full details here http://tinyurl.com/22vagv I may be open to offers for this brand new, unused, wireless router with two voip ports.