o2 Broadband. What can I say about it. Well firstly I should say I have good experience in setting up home networks and am far from a novice.

I transferred from Sky Broadband. Was told my speeds would be better because it uses ADSL2. Customer services would be better because it is 24/7. Oh and there were no limits on things like emails. Seemless transition blah blah.

I get a modem that turns out was faulty. That's after THREE HOURS on the phone to support.

The new modem arrives. Speeds are good for my area at nearly 3mg. Then after a week they were around 1.1mg and 1.5mb. LESS than I have got on rival services.

On top of that o2 has set things up so that using a third party router becomes a headache.

Their router it has to be then. Except it has been set up so that putting in manual settings such as MAC codes to ensure that only computers with certain identities can access the router, cannot be done.

Also (yes there is a long list), setting up a network is a headache, you have to ensure that each computer talks to the router using a STATIC ip NOT variable IPs which is what o2s software defaults to. Yet I was told that I would be able to do th is and that the networking was seamless. WRONG. And o2 are worse than useless in telling you how to get around this problem. So unless you are a dab hand with networks, it is a complete nightmare.

On top of that they restrict your email sending. Something I checked first. I reply to a high volume of emails to a forum I run. But the maximum number of emails I send is about 150 a week. Usually in one day. But o2 doesn't allow you to send any more than 50 and now limits to 10 at a time. WITHOUT discussion and without anything mentioned on the website or in our calls to sales. And we asked about it.

Worse, the so call great customer services is NOT. My last email complaing copied to the chief executive has been sitting in the inbox for EIGHT days without one word back.

In short it has been something like six weeks now and my network remains up and down, speeds are well below the standard that I have seen from other networks and customer services is c..p.

It's best attribute is it is cheap, but so is Sky. And while Sky isn't the best I would have to say it's infinitely better than o2 Broadband's service which is a complete nightmare. I would strongly advise to think twice before swapping. Or at least make sure that everything you are told on the phone is in writing.

I too have experienced the terrible customer service from O2. I was told at store that they were launching a fantastic new package that would combine my landline, mobile and broadband. When I phoned 3 times to request information about this I was met with ludicrously unhelpful staff.

4 staff did not know what 'mobile broadband' was. 1 hung up on me accidently (I think!), 3 were pleasant but had no idea what their mobile service included and apparently they do not offer any landline services.

Needless to say, I am now looking elsewhere.

Yup, that's o2 customer service for you.

I did get an answer to the dramatically poorer speeds I am getting when compared to my previous providers using the same setup - despite being sold this as a service that provides faster speeds using their much better superduper ADSL2+.

Oh the belated response, it finally arrived a week after I was told it would arrive that afternoon. Not an unusual occurance from three years of using o2 for mobile and broadband.

Apparently o2 did respond earlier. Funny how it did not even appear in Spam whereas every other message I finally get does arrive. The email was presented to me again. But when I asked for the FULL HEADER information - so that I could take this up with the server - this would show if it had REALLY been sent in the first place I surprise surprise have had NO response.

The answer, when it came. would be hilarious if it was not so totally shambolic.

Oh, I should say there has been NO CHANGE to speeds despite this. My comments of the REALITY of o2 are in black.

Here we go. Deep breath.