O2 and Be Broadband networks are suffering extreme congestion, with users reporting download speeds of just 1.5Mb. Far less than the "up to 20 meg" advertised on the O2 web site"
User's of O2's service have noticed the drop, leading to calls from users on O2's forum for the company to fix the problem.
O2 bought Be Internet in 2006 to step up to the high-performance area of the market. According to The Register O2/Be gained 62,000 new customers in the last quarter, at a time when other ISPs were shrinking.
Confounding matters is that O2's customer support is not always informing users of the problem. Macworld's speed test of O2's 16-meg line returned a speed of just 1.51Mb, leading Macworld to contact O2's Customer Support and discover if there was a problem with the network. O2's Customer Service department offered help such as "clearing the cache in Internet Explorer" and "trying different router setups".
One user, paulvwells, said on the O2 forum: "O2 customer services won't do anything about it as they told me it is because my router has to be plugged into the master socket", the user let his feelings on this be known with a smiley icon of rolling eyes. Another user called Howard Hopkinson replied: "I suspect that's another #### excuse".
One user called gazza1690 wrote that O2's customer services has told him: "its main fibre optic cable was broken".
An O2 SpeedTest captured on an iPhone. The line is advertised at 16Mb, but is only delivering 1.51Mb
O2 Broadband's customer services initially told us that they: "weren't aware of any issues at the local telephone exchange". However, O2 clarified today that: "parts of the network are experiencing congestion at peak times. This is why you're experiencing a drop in your line speeds. O2 is looking into the issue at the moment and is investing heavily to increase the capacity for people this is happening to."
O2 was unable to confirm when any capacity increase is likely to take place. However, Broadband tech site Sam Knows reported on 16 Jan that the upgrade should start to ease congestion in four to six weeks. If so, congestion problems should be solved by late February, early March.
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