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Another solution is to pay a little more for the "premium" options. Unfortunately this is not what most home users want to hear - the Internet is not important enough to justify the extra if they can possibly get by without it.

I switched off Be (though I still strongly recommend them if they are available in your area and FTTC isn't or you don't need FTTC) who have their own backhaul instead of using BT's, as I wanted to move to FTTC for the extra upstream capability (I now sync at ~10Mbit upstream, and see about 8.5Mbit in usable throughput, where the best my line was capable of otherwise was ~1.5Mbit). You pay extra for the 10Mbit up (otherwise you are capped at 2Mbit) usually by way of effectively being on plan intended more for commercial users and techies (like me) than the average home user, and the extra you pay also nets you "premium" status in certain parts of BT's network which apparently implies some traffic priority and thus far (I only move a month ago) seems to have protected me from the congestion problems other people on BT based ISPs report on the same exchange at certain times of the week.

In order of preference, if you are looking for reasonable speed with reliable QoS, I would suggest:
1. FTTC with 10Mbit up (even if you don't need the speed upstream, it may help) with an ISP that does not shape traffic or filter it (someone like AAISP) *if* you can afford it and FTTC is available in your area
2. ADSL2+ via Be if they are available from your exchange and your line isn't so long that you can't get more than ~5Mbit
3. ADSL2+ via another LLU provider (though do some research, not all are as good value for money), similarly dependant on line length
4. FTTC without premium (it at least puts you on the 21C network not the old IPStream setup) with a good non shaping/filtering ISP (yes, I would suggest copper to the exchange with Be or similar instead of FTTC via BT at the moment if you care about consistent quality of service more than raw speed)
5. ADSL2+ with a good ISP that either performs little or no traffic shaping (besides the minimum traffic management required for QoS purposes) and no filtering or one that is up front and honest about the traffic management they perform (good look reading between the lines there though!)
6. FTTC without premium with BT or just about any other ISP
7. Anything else if none of the above are available (i.e. if you are on a rural exchange that hasn't seen any upgrades in ten years) or you really do want the cheapest possible (as not of the above will be cheaper than a bog standard ISP where you will experience congestion issues at peak times and have terrible tech support should you ever need it)

I'm not sure where Virgin and other alternative fibre providers fit in there, none of them are available in my area so I've not really researched the ins and outs (though I'll point out that Virgin are usually third in line (behind TalkTalk and BT) when people are complaining about bad service and other behaviour customers would be irritated by if they know about it like http://www.badphorm.co.uk/).

This is probably why BT are seeing a drop in customers: people upgrading to FTTC but using another ISP rather than them, or people moving to LLU providers to try cure congestion/shaping issues they are seeing. For Sky I think they are just seeing a lot of people not renewing after the initial minimum contract - people that signed up because it was very cheap if you already have Sky TV but are jumping ship as soon as the contract is up as they've had problems with the service in that time.

everything on a network as TCP/IP currently works is being delivered according to factors that have nothing whatsoever to do with financial input. yes, you can use financial input to build network infrastructure or build more servers, but on an existing pipe, to make financial input a factor, you would need to do artificial things that would add to overhead and cost. you would have to

1. proactively examine the headers, 2. pick out the headers from companies that are paying you, 3. proactively block all other headers

ironically, the effort involved to do this proactive promotion of certain headers is an additional cost on the speed of your network

This is BT and Talk Talk we're talking about. Remember Phorm? I don't think they're too bothered about the extra overhead of packet analysis if it makes them a few more quid.

There are other scummy "business opportunities" this opens up, for instance taking money to substitute B's ad for A's in Google's search results--A pays Google and B pays the networks.

Like Phorm did in secret on the BT customers?

I unfortunately have a Virgin Media connection, it sucks, the downloads are throttled http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media#Bandwidth_throttling a lot, often to 1/4 speed. Uploads are currently going at a paltry 20-30KB/s - That's Over 6 hours to upload a 700MB CD!!!!!!!!!.

Also - See http://techdirt.com/articles/20091130/0316037113.shtml/ Deep Packet Inspection and File Sharing Monitoring http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/26/virgin_media_detica// and Phorm the advertising crap http://badphorm.co.uk/news.php?item.46.4/

And they don't support filesharers like Talk Talk http://www.pcworld.com/article/146785/virgin_music_campaigns_against_illegal_filesharing.html/ and http://torrentfreak.com/isp-will-protect-file-sharers-from-music-industry-disconnection-threat-080404// they will happily hand over your details to all and sundry if accused of copyright infringement - this handing over of personal details is probably Illegal itself under the data-protection act. Also they force you to have a phone line with high call costs or else you are charged an arm and a leg for the internet connection.

The summary of the story doesn't emphasise the point that the spying test was just a small trial, and that Phorm is actually coming directly to the UK.

3 of the major UK ISPs: Virgin Media, BT and Talk Talk are getting all ready to implement and bring in Phorm. More information and details are available at the useful website BadPhorm: http://www.badphorm.co.uk/

Thousands and thousands of UK users are going to be subject to this inescapable violation of their privacy with little to do about it. There is an opt-out cookie, but this does not prevent the fact that the users browsing still goes through the Phorm servers. Would you be happy with all your internet browsing going through a third party server, let alone one owned by an advertising company that wants to profile you and "see the whole internet" (Reference: http://www.badphorm.co.uk/news.php?item.30.3 ) through your browsing history.

There is lots of interesting discussion going on about this, particularly at Cable Forum by Virgin Media users, who are going to be thrown into this spying (Link: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33628733-virgin-media-phorm-webwise-adverts-updated.html )

A fast growing petition to the UK government on the governments website is nearing 10000 signatures, and just shows how many people do not want this to happen (Link: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/ )

This may not concern many people in the US, or people on the smaller ISPs in the UK - but the worrying thing is, other ISPs are already saying that they are going to watch the results and see if the ISPs can get away with it - if they can, they will likely pick it up to. And your ISP might do too!

The summary of the story doesn't emphasise the point that the spying test was just a small trial, and that Phorm is actually coming directly to the UK.

3 of the major UK ISPs: Virgin Media, BT and Talk Talk are getting all ready to implement and bring in Phorm. More information and details are available at the useful website BadPhorm: http://www.badphorm.co.uk/

Thousands and thousands of UK users are going to be subject to this inescapable violation of their privacy with little to do about it. There is an opt-out cookie, but this does not prevent the fact that the users browsing still goes through the Phorm servers. Would you be happy with all your internet browsing going through a third party server, let alone one owned by an advertising company that wants to profile you and "see the whole internet" (Reference: http://www.badphorm.co.uk/news.php?item.30.3 ) through your browsing history.

There is lots of interesting discussion going on about this, particularly at Cable Forum by Virgin Media users, who are going to be thrown into this spying (Link: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33628733-virgin-media-phorm-webwise-adverts-updated.html )

A fast growing petition to the UK government on the governments website is nearing 10000 signatures, and just shows how many people do not want this to happen (Link: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/ )

This may not concern many people in the US, or people on the smaller ISPs in the UK - but the worrying thing is, other ISPs are already saying that they are going to watch the results and see if the ISPs can get away with it - if they can, they will likely pick it up to. And your ISP might do too!

Perhaps you may care to finally get round to answering these questions then:

Outstanding Questions

(I assume you are the PR person who works for Citigate Dewe Rogerson).

Everyone else may care to visit the Interesting forum and read recent news stories about Phorm.

Posted anonymously because in six months your computer will know who I am :P

Perhaps you may care to finally get round to answering these questions then:

Outstanding Questions

(I assume you are the PR person who works for Citigate Dewe Rogerson).

Everyone else may care to visit the Interesting forum and read recent news stories about Phorm.

Posted anonymously because in six months your computer will know who I am :P

I haven't had a chance to look into it properly but there appears to be a Firefox extenstion called Dephormation. The site states "But Dephormation is not a solution. It's a fig leaf for your privacy."

If you, dear reader, live in the U.K. and are with an ISP that's thinking of dealing with Phorm then take a look at Bad Phorm to see what you can do about it.

Replying to self:

It seems you are right. I'm not surprised as this kind of cynical lying, but it really is sad nonetheless.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080309-bad-phorm-uk-isps-to-sell-clickstream-data-to-advertisers.html
http://www.badphorm.co.uk/