Internet Broadband

I'm very happy with BT. Not the cheapest - but it's a very fast and reliable service.

John.

We're with Telewest and although I'm extremely unimpressed with their TV compared to Sky, I'm very happy with their broadband via Blueyonder.

Have been very happy with Blueyonder bband for 2 years & their phone-TV for 7 years.

NTL probably are the same as our Telewest.

The TV box is (see Hi Fi World July 2005) as good a 'DAB' tuner as we're likely to get also ...

There is cheaper, but we are happy with fibre-optic cable.

BT 2M with a wireless hub has been fine for us. Half a day down in 18 months is the best service we've had from any provider in 8 years and the kept us informed of what was happening.

FWIW

I wouldn't go with Tiscali, they have an appalling reputation.

I'd look at either Freedom2surf (who I use), Zen (who I did use) or Metronet, also possibly Pipex.

Check contracts and small print. BT Wholesale will charge any ISP £50 + vat to connect a line for ADSL, some ISPs charge you for connection, ISP offering free connection will want you to stay with them for at least a year to recover this.

The broadband market changes very quickly so you might want to move to a different provider during that time, some ISPs will let you pay the connection fee and leave, some will demand you pay the remainder of the 12 months.

Also, if possible, get a router over an ADSL modem, less drivers involved so less hassle, also they offer additional security over a modem as a router will have an inbuilt firewall.

cheers,
Paul

I use PlusNet - and I am very pleased with what I get. Before I was with BTOpenWorld which became BTYahoo or something like that - it was a very frustrating experience.

Just seen this reference to
an article in The Guardian

Thanks all for your advice and comments. especially Paul. Looks like you have done your homework on this!!

Happily using Zen at home and Nildram at work.

Not the cheapest but reliable. Zen have a particularly helpful help desk too.

I use BTOpenWorld broadband 2.0 Mbps and I am very pleased it. Its very fast and the service I get is excellent.

I am very happy with the service from Pipex.

They do some good 2mbps deals if you have low monthly bandwidth requirements (but be careful of "first three months at this special low rate"). See Pipex packages.

They seem to be one of the few ISP's where "unlimited" really means that. Most others have some sort of "fair use" policy which kicks in above some monthly limit - hardly unlimited.

It's also worth noting their support hours, but there is also a thriving "self help user group". See PipexSupport .

cheers, Martin

PS BT have very expensive penalties if you want to leave them before the end of your first year - ie you have to pay the rest of the year's fees! Pipex make a £50+VAT charge if you downgrade (to a cheaper tarrif) during the first year.

been consistantly pleased with demon, just gone up to 2mb for about £25, good tech support as well, glad as i'm not much of a nerd

quote:

Originally posted by Martin Payne:
They seem to be one of the few ISP's where "unlimited" really means that. Most others have some sort of "fair use" policy which kicks in above some monthly limit - hardly unlimited.

Not any more, they recently introduced traffic management to throttle/curb excessive users.

I doubt it will affect 99.x% of their users but it might be something to be aware of.

Tiscali are based in France. Apparently the technology to get you in with them makes it incredibly hard to get out of the contract.

Check out martins money savers website, its very good for this type of stuff, and totally independent

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1092034925,22928,

£25 for 2MB? I'm paying £35 a month for 1MB/128 unlimited. Plus, I still have to pay a similar quarterly charge for the same telephone line despite only using a fiver's worth of fixed line calls!

The national telecoms company which I use deserves to lose customers for their very high pricing policies despite huge profits and ever-reducing staff levels. Even though they offer great reliability and a spam and virus email filters as standard. They were also very early providers of broadband covering most of the country when we were still hearing loud moans from the UK and the USA about slow dial-up modems.

The power company are now laying a fibre optics network in the area to offer a very high speed service, including TV, I believe.

I imagine the pressure will be on reducing prices when the telecoms company finally gets some real competition. Interesting times ahead. The national telecoms companies are already getting a hiding on fixed line calls from the likes of Skype and other online phone services according to "Clickonline".

Sorry to suggest the obvious/boring, but...
I've been with wanadoo (freeserve of old). £17.99 pm for 1meg, & just been offered by them to go to 2 meg for a £20 one off payment. So 2 meg for £18 pm. Not too shabby. I've been with them for 2 yrs or so, & had only 1 problem which took 4 days to fix. Again, not too shabby.
maybe worth a look.
matt.

Wanadoo are farked. They have been losing serious amounts of money since the name change to such an extent that they just fell under the Orange banner.

so now you can expect your service to change to Orange in the future, with even less back up and support as they out source to India.

I wouldn't touch wanadoo with a really long stick.

check out Metronet, when you run into trouble you phone a number and some one picks and and says hello. Its most refreshing.

nime
where are you, your post is of little help, if your residence is not known, I know these location things seem to be treated as a joke by many but you cant get any sense of these posts unless people supply useful info.

what does in exile mean anyway?

I may be in exile but i'm 15 minutes north of Bristol - it helps, i dont know if you're in an igloo in Athens
BTW

I changed it to "in exile" after a few complaints that I was always praising life in Denmark. Having lived here for some years I find a lot to like compared with my homeland. Even if it isn't quite perfect here.
I posted in this thread to show the contrast between ISP pricing here and there.

I know exactly what you mean about living north of Bristol though!

Nice deals, but remember location is everything. I'm in Milton Keynes using BT Internet, patchy service at peak times + some disconnection as I am on the limits of their broadband service area i.e. a long way from their exchange. Also have a modem/router that is always on. So doesn't matter who is doing the deal the quality will depend how far you are from a BT exchange.

Tim

Connected to virgin at home, had no problems in 6-7 months, initial setup took some effort as was using own router/firewall but since then no problems. As with all broadband slows down at busy periods. The contract is not a 12 month sign up so changing is not an issue.

Matthew

quote:

Originally posted by Paul Hutchings:
Not any more, [Pipex] recently introduced traffic management to throttle/curb excessive users.

I doubt it will affect 99.x% of their users but it might be something to be aware of.

OK, thanks for pointing this out.

Seems to have caused somewhat of a furore, basically because they won't state how much usage will put you into the "managed" category". Idiots.

I withdraw my recommendation.

cheers, Martin

Yes for me that is "the rub".

I don't use Pipex, but with any ISP I have no problem with limits so long as they're clear what they are - to me it seems underhand to sell a product as unmetered/unlimited/uncapped or whatever legalese they might use, "oh but if you use it too much we'll jump on you".

Seems wrong to me.

Paul

The most I used with metronet one month was 29gigs.

They sent me an email 'shot across the bows' informing me they were required by law if asked to provide information on high usage if bit torrent etc was being used.

Its a fair cop, snigger.

Bluyonder has recently changed its installation system since ours was splendidly 'put in' 2 years ago.

2 days ago a friend who wisely claims to know nothing about computers etc and just wants to sell on eBay (no comment) paid for full cable 'phone-TV-radio box-Broadband installation.

Once the jolly chappies did the biz and checked it worked into computer of your choice.

Now they leave new subscribers with installation-disk/box of new little black modem-USB 2 + Ethernet cable.

Theoretically, the new (3 months old) installation disk guides new customer through setup procedure. With help from free-to-their-phoneline 150 Blueyonder technical engineers, a semi-PC- literate user can achieve success within 1 hour, including email functionality.

I have always found it possible to get help free on Blueyonder contacting 'technical support' via nice helpful staff on their free 150 number.