Best internet providers

artona

artona

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stewart
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Hi

Who do you use as an internet provider and whats the best deal financially?

Please advise

stew
 
ZEN £25 a month for rock solid service, no frills.
 
I use SKY, unlimited, 20MB service, fast and I've never had a problem in the last year since I got it, I pay £10 till Jan, then it goes up to just a paltry £15!
 
You will open up a can of worms here artona :LOL:
I have been with talktalk for a couple of years or more now, no problems whatsoever.

25meg connection
free uk phone calls
free calls to 16 international companies
no charge for 0870/0845 numbers at evenings and weekends
 
Be There, 18 quid a month, rock solid service, up to 24mb connection (depends how far you are from the exchange) and unlimited.
 
Just dont take too much notice of speed tests or things like best ten providers, you will always get different opinions about providers, its just a case of choosing one and going with it. I am 380 mtrs from the exchange so I would expect a decent connection :D
 
Was with Virgin since the dial-up-days but their service levels hit rock bottom last year so I dumped them. Moved to BT Business and so far I couldn't fault them.
 
Just to throw a spanner in the current works - with Virgin media and had no problems whatsoever. Looking at the link in post #5, virgin also perform better too. Not sure if they are the cheapest, but I have never had any problems with the connection, or the service.
 
Think it really depends where you are in the UK as to the best service you'll get. Lots of choice out there from BT, Talk Talk, Virgin etc. Could also depend on your computer system, as there are small providers out there that work better with Apple Mac's than the major ones. Depends what you want to pay and take there hype with a pinch of salt regarding speeds. Best advice is to do a check on the max broadband speed in your area via BT, put your post code in and it will give you the max line speed, so there's no point in paying more for something your not getting.
 
I'm with Virgin, never had any problems until recently, my 20mb was going anywhere from 5 to 15. I finally had enough and got an engineer in who said it's to do with Virgin being oversubscribed on their 20mb service, but they won't do anything about it until enough people complain.

Gone back down to 10mb and I always get 10mb without fail. Was considering the 50mb but dumped that thought for now.
 
I'm on O2, £4.37 per month for 8MB unlimited broadband but I'm getting 10MB download speeds. Can't fault them.

Trev
 
Depends on the speed you want then the price will vary, your not always guaranteed to get the advertised speed depending on your telephone exchange.
I'm with Sky 8mb package but it's usually 7 mb. £5.00 per month but thats if you have the Skytalk phone package. Never had a problem with them in nearly 2 yrs with them.
 
i use Bethere as well.

but O2 are a good shout as well.
 
I use bethere too, I get a fantastic connection, 24mb for £25 a month
 
If you can't get bethere (I couldn't in Islington for some crazy-ass reason) I recommend Aquiss.

No traffic shaping, no download\traffic limits and exceptionally fast @ 1.60mb/s+ download speed.
 
I'm with Pipex, who were bought out by Tiscali (i think), and then Talk Talk.

It is the worst internet I have ever had, cannot get speeds above 100kb, connection drops every couple of hours, oh and cannot watch iPlayer or youtube between 5-11pm or weekends!
 
So do we know if there's any new tech out there that is improving copper wire connection performance, apart from your proximity to an exchange.
It seems to me it doesn't matter a fart who your ISP is if we're talking about raw speed since the same limitations apply to every single one, except Virgin.
Value for money is another issue..
 
Another vote for O2 here, but seriously check out what broadband etc they'll have a much larger base of opinions than here.
 
it varies a lot!

for example,. after sorting out a problem with NTL. virgin media my connection in Nottingham was rock solid.
similarly in newcastle, however, we dumped the connection, before I moved in...because they wouldn't upgrade the 5 year old TV tuner...muppets..so we now have SKY

SKY BB is cheap as chips and I would never have it again
too many max hops...no fast path option in their configuration, bad line speeds and unstable connection...however, that could be either our line or their config..it's gotten a lot better recently.

So everything is relative...customer service response and quality should not be discounted.
SKy BB though is not for a demanding user (I count myself as such as I want good latency, min hops etc for gaming hobbies, high percentage of uptime and no dropouts during the day which require a local reset as I access my PC from work quite a bit)
In fact during one problem, when they changed my default settings as it was unusable for the above, I almost got the level 3 tech support bloke to admit it was mis-sold to us regarding 'gaming' as it's completely unsuitable. I didn't want to push it though as he was very nice and as helpful as he possibly could be. so top marks to him, not to Sky though,.
If you are a demanding internet user though, steer clear of SkyBB.

people rant on about Oooooo ADSL 20 meg soon...cable broadband has been providing me with 20 meg on virgin media for years.
they're running 50 meg now if you really can be bothered.
if you have a GOOD quality phone line and are close to an exchange though ADSL suits a lot of people

oh yeah...look for ENTANET resellers. the quality of their BB is rather good I've heard.
also heard good things about ZEN and bethre too
 
We've got Virgin, but then we've got the VIP package. Every TV channel, HD box, two other boxes in other rooms, free uk phone calls to landlines plus 20Mb broadband, all for £85 a month.

Expensive do I hear you say? Well I've got all sports channels, including sky & ESPN in HD, all movie channels including Sky, plus as my wife works from home I save a fortune on phone bills.

Then I get 20Mb broadband with very little contention. I can usually get 18.5-21mb download speed.


However,
We were NTL (which became virgin) and my daughter has moved to Bristol for Uni and has virgin in her house, but that's on BlueYonder servers (which are also part of virgin).
It refuses to let her account details use the smtp server to send emails. :wacky:
 
I've just had an email from Virgin telling me I can watch England play football live on Saturday.

Can't remember who it was they were playing though.
 
Byker28i said:
However,
We were NTL (which became virgin) and my daughter has moved to Bristol for Uni and has virgin in her house, but that's on BlueYonder servers (which are also part of virgin).
It refuses to let her account details use the smtp server to send emails. :wacky:
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like it's not set up correctly?
 
Some may laugh but BT - its pricey but 3 years and not one failure.

Not one.

To me reliability and uptime are paramount.
 
admirable said:
Sounds to me like it's not set up correctly?
Click to expand...

LOL do you work in their indian call centre? :D

45 mins on the phone with the guy just saying delete the settings and enter exactly the same settings/servers we had. Nice bloke but lost when he couldn't follow his crib sheet.

It's because Virgin haven't truly integrated Blueyonder/NTL/telewest.

Got the south wales daytime crew onto it who fixed it.
 
so what was the problem?
 
I get the 20mb Sky package free (perk of the job) but I only get about 5mb, despite two friends getting roughly 14mb on the same service with the same exchange and only living round the corner from me. My router is plugged in to a really really old naff extension cord though so may have to move it downstairs and see if improves. I was on about the same speeds with Pipex before I dropped them (best thing I ever did!)
 
artona said:
Hi

Who do you use as an internet provider and whats the best deal financially?

Please advise

stew
Click to expand...

A very broad question. And a pointless one for many to answer without knowing where you are. People recommend Virgin cable but if it doesn't run down your street then that's a pointless recommendation. Some of these 20 and 24 mbps deals are only available in some parts of the country and only then with a following wind and a short cable run to the exchange.

What remains is customer service. The Utility Warehouse regularly come top or near top of customer surveys and they have more than one 'Best Buy' from Which. Most subscribers (not those out in the sticks) get line rental and broadband + other benefits for less than 20 quid.
 
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