Moving back to UK after 7 years - which ISP?

plusnet cheap enough to take a risk. Watch for cashback bargains via Quidco.

Depends...

At home we use Sky, which is bundled in with phone and TV. Worth searching around, I think. Need to do thsi myself as my previous deal has expired.

For what it's worth, I've used BT for the last 11 years, and have had no cause for complaint. Not a clue how much it's costing me though.

Tony

If you can get Virgin Cable, do!

We're on a 20Mb connection that is very fast and very reliable - we've never had any issues in nearly three years.

Welcome back

Line speed is the main flavour this month, seems we can't live with less than 20Mb & that is driving pricing more than anything, but most all get linked with all sorts "must have" stuff like HDTV.

Which? (consumer magazine) survey rated the following 3 as tops in service & customer satisfaction - Zen - O2 - Be
Of the big players - AOL & Orange were rated at the bottom.

Value for money is very depending on what package you are looking for & that is far too complicated for these pages.
In pure cost terms Zen are for sure the most expensive overall but its all linked to 20Mb line speed heaven.

You mentioned BT, I disagree expensive & unreliable. If you believe Which? they are rated midstream in most categories. They are competitive with their basic package about as cheap as most & their top end deals nowhere near as expensive as people like Zen. They are launching a new 40Mb high speed package called Infinity that looks like its a big challenge to all the market, its not all over the country yet, but it looks like you get it for close to the same price as the 8Mb deals.

FWIW - I have been with BT since day dot & have not had any reason to change.
I get unlimited ISP, free Wifi in their country wide hot spots (important for me) & free night & weekend land line phone calls. 8Mb line speed is not top draw but have not found any reason for faster & for sure not to pay more for it. In my small neighbourhood I can see all the wifi users, out of 10, 8 are on BT.

I've been with Blueyonder for a number of years and have no complaints whatsoever. Virtually 100% availability and performance is excellent.

If you're not sure then it might be worth signing up to a monthly rolling contract to see what the service is like first.

If you want quality with no hidden blocks, should you use bit torrent for instance, Zen are excellent, but if you are looking for cheap and cheerful there are lots to choose from.

Here is a guide to what various ISPs do to your connection, but if you don't use any of the programmes they throttle, then there is no problem. Those not listed there do have not been found to limit use in the ways listed.
http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs#United_Kingdom

I thought Blueyonder had been taken over by Virgin.

Whatever you do, ignore anything that says 'up to' in terms of band width, ask what average you can expect to have, and how much it changes at peak times if it is a concern. This post has 'up to' 1,000,000 words in it, which means nothing what so ever.

Been with BT here since the start with very few problems, apart from a router which I knew was faulty from its delivery - that took several days to sort, but they did give me a decent credit for the agro, otherwise have been fine.
Had AOL at work and it was apalling, as was their service.
Changed to Plusnet and have not looked back. Brilliant service, and when there is a problem (always been with the phoneline/exchange to date) they have been truly remarkable in their customer service dept at getting it solved.
BT is rolling out it's new high speed Fibre Optic presently, and the first users of this have been Plus Net clients.
Perhaps un-surprisingly, at the bottom of letters from them : Plus net is wholely owned by BT.

Thank you all. Useful info.

If it's going to work perfectly, then no problem, go to BT. But if there is ever a problem, they are a spectacular nightmare to deal with

I had BT internet for 7 or 8 months after moving to new home. Then one day it just stopped working. to cut a long story short (a bit like what they did to my life expectancy) they were threatening to sue me for non-payment of bills. I refused to pay for a service they were not providing and had not been providing for some time.

I only escaped by emailing the chief executive

Under no circumstances would I ever get BT internet again. I would always go with Zen - it has to be worth the extra.

Unfortunately, can not get anything at the house so have an external aerial with mobile broadband "dongle"

I was with BT for years. On a couple of occasions when I had problems their customer service was unbearably bad, so I left and moved over to Zen. Although being more expensive I never experienced any problems and if I ever phoned for technical advice found them to be very helpful (UK based). O2 then offered me a ridiculously good deal to move across to them a couple of years ago and they have been fine since (apart from the free routers they supply which didn't last very long - I went and bought my own and have a brand new O2 one as a back up should I ever need it).

Based on my experiences then I would recommend both Zen and O2.

Mark

Not sure if my experience is typical but we recently took out a new BT contract which gave a free BT Homehub router.

Now find that we frequently have wireless networking issues which appear to be interference related. Unsure where the interference is from as no new stuff in house but could be that neighbouring networks are the problem....

UKFSN

No port blocking

Supply your own router.

quote:

Originally posted by Svetty:
......a free BT Homehub router......frequently have wireless networking issues ....

Here is your correlation. In this case it does imply causation.

If you have been with BT a long time there are few issues. Coming to them anew I suspect you'll be shocked at the drop off in every aspect of service. The rest are much of a muchness with "don't give a sh1t" customer service needing to be balanced with speed and cost.

I moved from Sky, with whom I retain a TV package after they overcharged me for a year in comparison to new customers and basically told me it was my problem. Combined with a significant speed drop over a number of months it was enough for me to walk. After much research I realised Virgin has the same attitude as do most others. Lesser knowns such as Plusnet based their original offer on good customer service but things move on.

I went with O2. The customer service is a notch higher and the cost is excellent. Even cheaper if you get a mobile with them too. There are indeed router issues but, not always, and easily resolved truth be told. However, talk to a few of them. Throw them a tech issue - an awkward building or something - and judge for yourself.

Mike