Broadband woes..

rgrebby · 17 Apr 2011

Im moving into a new house on thursday and need to sort out broadband.

Its not had anyone living there for a while so im guessing there is no connected phone in there but does anyone recommend a cheap unlimted broadband and phone package out there?

Chappers · 17 Apr 2011

Depends where you are and if you have cable or not. BT seem to have a number of deals at the moment, which could be right up your street. Also check out Sky. Also don't get hung up on the unlimited option. You may think you download a lot of data but you may in fact be an average user. so a 40Gb limit or similar may be sufficient.

I thought I had a high usage, but it turned out I was was under 40Gb month. Saved me some money on a new contract. Plus I can always upgrade within the contract period if needed.

arad85 · 17 Apr 2011

BeThere or O2 (same provider, just depends on how you slice the deals). Only truly unlimited package there is as far as I know

dontfollowme · 17 Apr 2011

I agree with the Be/O2 recommendation. Its so much less hassle than having to abide by peak non peak times. Check here to see if you can get it: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_availability

2blue4u · 17 Apr 2011

40gb is more than enough for most people. Consider the utility warehouse, they come top of various surveys for customer satisfaction for home phone, broadband, combined phone and broadband - as well as home energy. Depending on the state of your local exchange, it will probably cost £19.99 per month for both line rental and broadband (£24.99 for unlimited if you really need it). And they have discount schemes to reduce that even further. They are also much cheaper that BT if you need a new line installed. But don't rule out being able to use any exchange line that has been in use in the house at any time in the last ten years. To resurrect such a line will only cost £25. But if an engineer has to come out to wave a spanner at it then it will cost the same as a new line.

neil_g · 17 Apr 2011

sky unlimited here. i may/may not use a lot of data but its nice knowing i'll never run out and that sky never throttle.

AdeM · 17 Apr 2011

I have sky as well, have Sky TV, Sky Talk and Sky Unlimited Broadband, makes life a lot easier and ive not had a problem since I had it, all my TV/Phone/Broadband are one bill

B1ts · 17 Apr 2011

AdeM said:
I have sky as well, have Sky TV, Sky Talk and Sky Unlimited Broadband, makes life a lot easier and ive not had a problem since I had it, all my TV/Phone/Broadband are one bill

Aah that is the rub though, if you do have problems they are without doubt the worst bunch to be with.
It has got to the stage at work that home workers we set vpn access up for and or voip, if they are on Sky, either they change, or we cannot let them work from home.
Put it this way, when I discovered that a standard h.323 voip port was being blocked by them, firstly they had no idea what a port was and then they insisted that all voip traffic uses the imap protocol

This was third level support, admin, that did not know the difference between email and voice over ip.

neil_g · 18 Apr 2011

B1ts said:
Aah that is the rub though, if you do have problems they are without doubt the worst bunch to be with.
It has got to the stage at work that home workers we set vpn access up for and or voip, if they are on Sky, either they change, or we cannot let them work from home.
Put it this way, when I discovered that a standard h.323 voip port was being blocked by them, firstly they had no idea what a port was and then they insisted that all voip traffic uses the imap protocol
This was third level support, admin, that did not know the difference between email and voice over ip.

supply your employees with alternative routers with cloned MAC addresses maybe to get around it? mind you not sure what level youre saying they block it at but the router i have allows all ports to be unblocked?

onomatopoeia · 18 Apr 2011

neil_g said:
supply your employees with alternative routers with cloned MAC addresses maybe to get around it? mind you not sure what level youre saying they block it at but the router i have allows all ports to be unblocked?

Hard to believe that they block a port at the customer router, given that that can be replaced. Mind you my opinion of ISPs that block ports is not very high.

neil_g · 19 Apr 2011

onomatopoeia said:
Hard to believe that they block a port at the customer router, given that that can be replaced. Mind you my opinion of ISPs that block ports is not very high.

i know but i cant find any reliable info to say that they actually block any ports?

philshep · 19 Apr 2011

I can recommend bethere, be using them for a few years now no issues, also they don't block ports or throttle your connection. I think they also do phone deals now.

arad85 · 19 Apr 2011

philshep said:
I can recommend bethere, be using them for a few years now no issues, also they don't block ports or throttle your connection.

I won't even consider BTInfinity even though it would give me peak 8x what I'm getting now due to their traffic policy. The only issue I have is line stability, but that's down to the piece of copper between here and the exchange which is nothing to do with Be at all...