Moving to Brough

[piscosour]

Hi,

We've just bought a house in Brough (moving in a few weeks), and we've never lived in a KC area before so we're not too sure what to expect. According to their postcode-based speed checker, we should get up to 16Mbps at our new address, which will be great if we actually get it, as we currently get a maximum of around 5.5Mbps with O2 Home Access, on a good day and when the wind's blowing in the right direction!

The Karoo Mid 3 package would probably suit us best, but since the Karoo broadband reviews that I've found online are overwhelmingly negative, I was wondering if there are any other alternatives to consider, such as this Fibrestream that I've been reading about?

Cheers

[bashdabish]

Those with good things to say don't bother posting mate.

Most of the negativity is aimed at the older max packages which are not available to new customers bud so don't let that put you off. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

[Robo]

That is not true either as posters do give praise where it is due, that is why there is a praise section on this board
I can only speak for myself but for £30 a month for the pro package I would expect more for my money because the more users they put on the pro package the worse the speeds get at busy times.
I have decided to cut my losses and dump Karoo's phone and broadband service because for less than I pay for my telephone a month £17.00 I can get a decent 5 meg service from 3UK and get 2meg speeds at this time of night.

[grabo1530]

That is not true either as posters do give praise where it is due, that is why there is a praise section on this board
I can only speak for myself but for £30 a month for the pro package I would expect more for my money because the more users they put on the pro package the worse the speeds get at busy times.
I have decided to cut my losses and dump Karoo's phone and broadband service because for less than I pay for my telephone a month £17.00 I can get a decent 5 meg service from 3UK and get 2meg speeds at this time of night.

AGREE 100% ....Pro package is getting poorer and poorer

[piscosour]

Thanks for sharing your experiences, seems as though opinion is quite divided! I do realise that people are much more likely to come online and write a review of a product if they've had a bad experience than when it's been good or acceptable, it just seemed very heavily weighted towards the negative camp with Karoo.

We're pretty heavy downloaders in our household so mobile broadband isn't much of an option at present, as the FUP tends to be of the order of a few GB per month. Do Karoo throttle particular protocols such as BitTorrent (which we don't really use), or do you just generally get poor download speeds across the board at peak times? Our downloading consists almost exclusively of streaming video such as YouTube for my wife, and episodes of TV shows in HD (where possible) over HTTP or with BBC iPlayer for me. We're more than happy to pay for the bandwidth that we consume, unless we get terrible speeds.

[Adrian]

As far as a basic internet service goes Karoo is fine. It is reliable, but when it fails it fails in a big way. The only on-going issues with the services are the poor peak time speeds, say 5PM-11PM or when there is any kind of popular TV or sport on. The rest of the time speeds are full rate.

There's also very few value added services, and nothing to distinguish the top "Pro" packages from the bottom basic packages. The only real difference is the GB usage.
No differences such as decent web space, higher priority, higher upload speeds, multiple IPs, reverse DNS, VOIP telephony, line bonding and so on, just a no frills internet service.

Disappointing as none of the above are too technically taxing to implement. The only thing that has changed since the launch of the ADSL2+ packages is the introduction of packages in the middle ground, in terms of usage allowance.

Tech support has improved over the years, used to be frustrating trying to explain a problem to someone who doesn't know basic broadband terminology, also a few belligerent people but usually fine once bypassed to get to the higher levels of support.

The line and engineering team have always been extremely helpful and always do their best to get you the best service and the job done.

[mrX]

Contention can be heavy sometimes on an evening, although I've not used my connection during peak times recently, I'm on the pro package, and when I've wanted to stream Iplayer etc I've not had a problem but unable to say how things have been of late. KC have been quite open in acknowledging  that they are trying to resolve peak time congestion issues, and are in the process of investing £4 mil in the network to improve things. I think a lot of the negativity is born more out of frustration at not being able to use anyone else in the area.

[Gonzo]

Welcome to Brough.



todays check, very good in this area, don't listen to the prophets of doom.

Karoo mid.

[richardmyers]

A family member living in Brough gets the full 8mb on his Max package, very pleasing. As others have mentioned, peak usage can be a ball-ache across the board on all packages at times - usually sporting events - but otherwise things have been steadily improving over the last year or so; they do now listen to customers a hell of a lot more than they used to.

[Adrian]

Welcome to Brough.

todays check, very good in this area, don't listen to the prophets of doom.

Karoo mid.

Until the evening. People are being realistic in this thread.

[Karoo]

Hi there piscosour,

Firstly, a warm welcome to the area and fingers crossed your home move goes smoothly.

Just to answer some of your queries. Like any ISP, we can't guarantee an exact minimum or maximum speed for any given household, because speed is affected by so many factors like line length, wiring in the home and equipment being used, so it's pretty impossible. We do however comply with Ofcoms code of practice to give you an estimated connection speed, which is the one you have been quoted from our speed checker. This is an average speed for your post code area and is the maximum speed any household living down your street will be able to surf at (but will be dependant on the the above things and what time you are online and what websites you are visiting).

If you would like us to assist with anything please don't hesitate to contact us at consumerservices@karoo.co.uk with your name and a contact telephone number. We will be more than happy to give you a call once you are online with us to check everything is OK for you.

Just let us know if there is anything we do to help.

Karoo.

[marko]

Karoo do seem to have sorted their poor peak time speeds out lately. I'd like to think this is because of all the complaining from customers. If that's right, at least they're listening.

Between 6pm and 11-12ish for me, throttling on newsgroups drops to around 3mbps (off peak arond 7mbps) compared to the terrible 50kbps peak time speeds a month or so back. I've also noticed very little buffering when using iplayer, youtube and such like. If this continues I'll be quite happy.

Also connection is always rock solid and can stay connected for 100+ days if I don't restart the router.

I'm HU9 btw, not Brough but just thought I'd add my experience of Karoo.

marko...

[Gonzo]

1.00 PM

[Robo]

Gonzo what are your speed test results like between 4-10pm, this is the time most folk are complaining about but you are posting early morning speed tests

[Gonzo]

10.PM