I experience quite a loss in signal through the internal wiring in my house so this is something to bear in mind. A couple of months ago, Pipex arranged for a BT engineer to come out and check my connection. He plugged his box of tricks into the master BT socket and surprise, surprise, the sync speed was about 7MB.

When I connect to an internal phone socket in my office, the best sync speed I get is 5MB. At peak times, my download speed can go as low as 750K. At 3am it can be as high as 4.5MB. Most times it's between 2-3MB ... hardly breakneck speed and generally no better than the dedicated 2MB connection I had before.

This 8MB service is a con. But that's not limited to Pipex. Their service is totally crap but the real problems lie in the quirks of ADSL Max. Any connection that can vary from 750K to 4.5B depending on the time of day is inherently useless. What good is the fastest connection happening at 3am when you should be safely tucked up in bed?

My sync speeds vary wildly and this has a very direct effect on my download speeds. I've got another phone line in the house, so after my year's up with Pipex, I'm gonna jump ship and use the other phone line purely as an internet connection.

YC