View Full Version : Who's your ISP/Recommend an ISP
Title says it all really. My lady and I will be getting our own place again soon, and I'm going to need broadband as soon as possible. Having lived on the Isle of Man (Where there is only one company), I'm not very clued up as to which companies are good/bad.
Can anyone recommend a package? I'm looking for a minimum speed of 2mbps (the more the better), and unlimited monthly download amounts. I don't really want to spend more than about £20 or so a month.
Cheers :)
I was about to post the exact same topic! :lol: So i'd like to know as well!
Exactly the same requirements, including price. If theres anything with a one month contract, that'd be ideal :D
hmm i've got Blueyonder (cable) 4mb unlimited, so no limits all good would recommend it to any1 and its £25 which is pretty good
NTL its superb 4mb for 20something. and their download speeds are brilliant, i get a film or two a night. (sussh)
Cant reccomend anyone else! but for tv, sky all the way.
Sadly cable isn't available in the north of England, so no NTL/Telewest option unfortunately.
[quote:8c7a81a426=\"Barley\"]Sadly cable isn't available in the north of England, so no NTL/Telewest option unfortunately.[/quote:8c7a81a426]
?
I have had NTL for years
[quote:4ccf98f76f=\"Firerat\"][quote:4ccf98f76f=\"Barley\"]Sadly cable isn't available in the north of England, so no NTL/Telewest option unfortunately.[/quote:4ccf98f76f]
?
I have had NTL for years[/quote:4ccf98f76f]
It doesn't appear to be available anywhere in Cheshire :( I guess you living in the third biggest city in the Uk helps :)
[quote:6221ffa8d2=\"Barley\"]Sadly cable isn't available in the north of England[/quote:6221ffa8d2]
or in the south west either. well, not my bit anyway. So cable isnt an option for me either :(
I just signed up for Orange 8MB broadband, £20 a month, and when i sign up for a mobile contract it will go down to £5.
However i am yet to reach a download speed of more than 290kbps which id say is pretty lame when the top speed for my area is around 660kbps.
So not sure if they are really that go, and tiscali well they rip the **** with their fair usage policy, between 6am-10pm you get about 56kbps and then in the evenings u get your normal 700 or whatever. So stay clear of them.
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Ntl 2mb is now 4mb after the ungrade offers. They give me about 400-500kbps download constantly, and thats with other pcs on my network. but the speeds do occasionally rocket higher, numerous times the speed has started at 1mb/s and slowly fallen to 500, its pretty nippy.
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No NTL's out of the question sadly, it has to be broadband, not cable.
DrunkDwarf
03-01-07, 14:24
[quote:b0a5be8c94=\"Barley\"]it has to be broadband, not cable.[/quote:b0a5be8c94]
Cable is classed as \"broadband\" too...
And is faster might I add, proper optical fibres, not crappy phone lines.
Guys, guys, guys. It might be fantastic, but it doesn't change the fact the majority of the country can't get cable :) Plus cable is only any good when no one else is using it. Cable is shared among everyone in the street/area, so the speed is only proportional to how many people are using it at the time.
Whereas broadband through your phone line is a dedicated line straight to the exchange.
So does anyone know any good ISP's that don't use cable? :P
As far as I knew you still have contention ratios with ADSL
And certainly in the early days of BB Cable was less latent, ADSL was just as fast , but slow about doing it, this was what I observed 5 years ago, so I guess it may have changed
Broadband maybe dedicated to your exchange but you still share one pipe with 50 people from the exchange
Hence why mine grounds to a hault at around 4pm when schools and colleges finish.
I know this doesn't help at all, but BT is soon to trial 21CN here in South Wales. Don't know how long this will mean it will take to roll out to the rest of the UK.
And for those NTL customers out there, here's a handy tip. I recently called them up and said that I was thinking of leaving because I'd seen a better deal elsewhere (I kinda made this up, based loosely on a wishlist of what I want from NTL). They offered me a 3 month deal that I can refresh at the end of the 3 months. I get the base pack, telephone with free weekend calls and 10mb connection for £35 a month, and I'm sure I could have got a better deal if I tried harder not to get too excited at what I was being offered.
Aside from NTL, the only decent provider I've heard people talk of is Sky through a BT landline. Apparently they've got a pretty sweet deal going at the moment including free installation etc.
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[quote:606d63fbe6=\"PrivatePyle@Work\"]Do they bundle it with a satellite telly package? :?[/quote:606d63fbe6]
Tried to have a look at the Sky website, but having problems with the flash on my work laptop. I can't remember whether it's linked to the telly package. I seem to recall it being something like £25 for 16mb unlimited connection, but my mind might be playing tricks on me! If the telly was included, I might be enticed over, since NTL tv is playing up in my area at the moment.
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I've just found out that if you have Sky they do a £10 a month broadband service. I think it's around 8mbps, with no usage restrictions. Has anyone tried it? Looks good!
£18 a month for Sky + £10 for broadband. £28 is a nice price for the package.
[quote:3b64ed1898=\"Barley\"]I've just found out that if you have Sky they do a £10 a month broadband service. I think it's around 8mbps, with no usage restrictions. Has anyone tried it? Looks good!
£18 a month for Sky + £10 for broadband. £28 is a nice price for the package.[/quote:3b64ed1898]
The 8mb connection is capped at 40gb a month, with either a £20 or £40 activation fee and an optional home installation at £50, at either £5 or £17 a month. The 16mb connection is not capped and has no activation or installation fee, and is £10 a month. Both come with a wireless broadband box.
I've always been a stalwart NTL customer, but to be honest the Sky deal is looking very tempting. I've just done some sums, and it looks like £10 for a BT line, £15 for the basic Sky package and £10 for the 16mb connection, totalling a pretty fair £35 a month. You have to add £10 per month if you want Sky+ (after purchasing the box).
I'm gonna have to get on the line to NTL to see if they can match this. With BT upgrading to 21st Century Network in the South Wales area atm, there is the possibility of 24mbit/s connections in the not-too-distant future. Let's see the market economy do its thang...
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One of my EX Isps went TU last year ( V21 -} Biscet )
Seems a lot went with Orange and some went with Bt and others else where
[quote:af0e1200d7=\"PrivatePyle@Work\"]Just be sure to check on the sky website that you can receive the service 1st. It is quite restricted availability. Follow the link... http://broadband.sky.com/ :D[/quote:af0e1200d7]
This might prove useful to anyone considering broadband in the future. It gives a break down of your local exchange, so that you can find out what services you can get, how many people are served by the exchange, and what BTs future plans are for it.
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/
A nice little resource that has a lot of information on it.
I've always had issues with NTL.
They're fine til something stops working, when something stops working it's nightmarish to get them to fix it.
Another issue with NTL is that there is no bandwidth monitoring until you get to the box on the street. if you live ina heavily subscribed area (and I'm surrounded by pikeys and student's it seems) you get a degraded service. At one point if I lost my ip I would have to pray I'd get another one as they were running out of dynamics on the DHCP for my area.
ADSL can be similar. Yes you have a 50:1 or 20:1 contention ratio which can reduce speeds to a crawl, but like most things in life - purchasing from reputable suppliers helps.
a good site to check for dsl installs is www.adslguide.org.uk
I would say avoid plus.net. I'm with them. Everything seems to be capped and on occasion I get atrocious pings in cs:s. They're cheap and I went with them on a recommendation from a friend. Unfortunately they changed policy as I joined and I'm just waiting for the 12 month contract to be up before I move away.
Eclipse are an ISP who seem to be well regarded but you may well want to consider what you use your connection for before purchasing. Alot of ISPs are introducing fair usage policies and capping data transfer at the moment. There's a couple of \"we don't cap\" isp's left but they're expensive because they know not many offer their 'unlimited' downloads options.
Be very wary of the Sky service - from what I've heard in other gaming forums, they're customer service isn't great.
That's one good thing about NTL - they threaten alot but rarely actually follow through with their fair usage.
'Squish
Appreciate the advice 'squish.
The one thing I like above all else with NTL is the uncapped aspect, and the fact I've never had any bother from them (apart from the dodgy TV service). I'd heard that Sky had a soft-cap on their 'unlimited' service at 160gb a month, but to be honest I'd never get near to that sort of usage.
I've decided that I might wait until June/July to move, since that's when BT will be upgrading my exchange. I reckon there'll be an explosion of deals around that time.
Until then I might work on getting my bill lowered with NTL...
24mb broadband all round this summer :D
[quote:177fa7d42f=\"djdaface\"]24mb broadband all round this summer :D[/quote:177fa7d42f]
Who from?
I've never had any more than 2mbps :)
I'm not sure it will be all round this summer. BT are upgrading to 21 Century Network, which will be capable of 24mb, but it's not due for nationwide roll out until something like 2010. Luckily for me, the BT base for this roll out is Cardiff, and they're trialling it here from this summer onwards.
Unless someone can correct me? :idea:
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[quote:fce25ef821=\"Barley\"]Sadly cable isn't available in the north of England, so no NTL/Telewest option unfortunately.[/quote:fce25ef821]
Telewest & NTL is avilable in the North West, i have Telewest and my family reletives have NTL aswell.
Also i think Telewest/NTL is avilable in Warrington which is in Cheshire.
Thanks
my m8 in Sweden has 100meg down and 10 meg up :wink: no idea how much he pays though
Ok change of plan guys!
Looks like we're going to be living in the middle of Manchester soon, renting in Sport City or somewhere. Any new recommendations? :)
if the exchange has been enabled then you could look at Be
though best place to find more info good or bad is
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/
nearly all isp's are covered in forums
After a lot of searching I'm thinking of going with Be actually :)
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/beunlimited/package/20.html
It's available where I'm going to be living, 24mbps just sounds sexy!! ;)
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