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qazx's Review for webmate (MacAce)

 webmate (MacAce) (Broadband Fixed Line)
Posted: 02nd Feb, 2010    By: qazx
Full Star Full Star Full Star Half Star Empty Star
Title: better than average but still slow at peak time
been with them for 14 months after migrating from the lamentable o2 which were giving less 0.2mbps evening speed on their access landline service.

macace are ok, reliable (only a few 20 minute drops outs in the year) and good personal support, quick to answer calls, no call centres, uk based and they seem to continue looking at your problem until you say its resolved. staff seemed to have technical knowledge too.
1 month contract, and the price of £25 for 50gb usage and unlimited at night is cheaper than rivals (ie fast.co.uk) but obviously not as cheap as the £5-10 deals out there (which ive found are so slow/oversubscribed or low download cap that theyre useless).


they claim not to oversubscribe their bandwidth, however im still not very happy with peak time speeds. i normally get 3-4mbps in the day (i only get 5-6mbps max from the exchange in my area - herne bay), but it falls to ~0.8 -1 mbps in the evenings and recently is dipping down to ~0.4-0.8 mbps (in an email they admitted the network is congested at the moment).
i did ask them what my peak time speed would be before i joined and to give them credit they did check and say it would be about 1mbps.
however i think the loss of more than 75% of your speed at peak time isnt really good enough, its always been like this and it means if you live in an area like mine that only gets 5mbps max. from the exchange, then at peak time (~7-11pm) its unlikely more than one person on the network will be able to watch iplayer or other internet tv and on a bad day video is constantly interrupted.

another not so great experience is they tried to charge me for extra usage (claiming it was double one month to what i normally use) until i queried it and they looked in to it and found their meter was recording it wrongly. im sure this was the case in a couple of other previous months but it didnt tip me over my limit. although since theyve noticed it its been ok.

overall its ok for the price but the big fall off in speed at peak time is pretty annoying and often stops me using video and radio streams so i cant really recommend them because of this....although i have been with alot worse isp's and not really satisfied with any of them.

edit: macace are about to impose peak time restriction on their business packages (just 10gb/month between 6pm-12) so it makes them uncompetitive. i will now be switching to another isp.



Time With Provider:
Package Name:
Value
Full Star Full Star Half Star Empty Star Empty Star
Speed
Full Star Full Star Empty Star Empty Star Empty Star
Support
Full Star Full Star Full Star Full Star Half Star
Services
Full Star Full Star Full Star Full Star Half Star
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