Which Broadband

[gregorach]

24 meg!!?? What the heck do you do with 24 meg? Is there anything on the 'net that can even get close to saturating that much bandwidth?

 

[Bigman]

Tried (bethere) unfortunately not available in my area

I'm with Zen and they have been superb.

 

[BorderReiver]

Pipex.

No problems,reliable.

I can only get 1.1Mbps because of distance from exchange.Not Pipex's fault.

 

[dave k]

I'd recommend checking out www.adslguide.org to see how other people rate these ISP's as well. they have a good customer-feedback section, where ISP's are rated.

I choose my broadband based upon speed to other network's.. Since I do a lot of on-line gaming, I got an ISP who host a lot of gaming servers (Jolt, etc) and have very good and low-lag access to servers. I use Nildram, btw.

More or less the actual product is the same - the real difference is all in the detail. e.g. customer service, actual service, etc.etc. It may be worth also checking if your local exchange has been `unbundled`, as this can mean very cheap, fast broadbad. Can I ask where you are in the country? if you're more than 5 miles from an exchange it's likely you won't get any faster than 2meg on a normal copper phone line.

 

[TheGreenMan]

Can't speak hightly enough of Demon. And they are one of the very few that don't have data caps these days. Of course, if you need a business account then there are more uncapped choices available.

Another plus with Demon, is when you phone them, a person answers the phone after about five rings.

Zen also come highly recommended in terms of reliability and quality of customer service, but it comes with a price tag.

Best regards,
Paul.

 

[Neanderthal]

Been with Demon for about 10 years, from modem to ISDN now ADSL. Never had any problems and the static ip is handy for VPN (ignor the last bit if you dont know about VPN, or ask if you REALLY want to know.)

Edit.
You can have as many email addresses @yourdomainname.demon.co.uk as you want.

Stu

 

[Kane]

Been with Demon since they first offered the £10 plus vat a month dialup deal - excellent service - now on broadband with them, unlimited downloads and as fast a connection as your line will support for around £25 quid - also had excellent service from Telewest when we lived in a cable area. Can't praise these companies service highly enough.

 

[Goose]

I'm with NTL. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com is a good place to look for advice on this sort of stuff IMO. Every three months I ring up the retentions dept, I don't even go through the sham of threatening to leave, I just say I want the half price deal reapplied and bingo, 4Mb broadband £12.50 p/m for the next three months. They'll offer all sorts of different deals depending on what package you actually have and you can do this sort of thing with Sky etc too.

I'm with NTL too, found them to be great. Any problems they will send someone out, even if you have forgotten to tighten a plug . The guy asked why I had not called them to move the TV box and sort wiring and settings for my PC when we changed the house around, they would have turned up to do it, for free, apparently! We have a reasonably reliable service, the odd glitch but not enought to be a problem, and we get an explaination(albeit with an "accent") if we call to ask why.
And I agree about the moneysaving expert site, some really good stuff on there and you don't get spammed if you sign up just an email a week update!

PS. Stu, what is VPN?

 

[dave k]

they would have turned up to do it

Not sure I would want a cable monkey playing about with my 3 laptop's, 2 pc's, 2 unix wokstation's, 24port switch and a SAN/NAS array I have setup upstairs... !

NTL seem to have got better in later years - they used to be very bad. There was even a anti-ntl site. ntlhell.com that ntl actually had to buy, as they were getting so much bad press from this site.

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. It's a way of connecting to a private network across a public one - e.g. connecting to your work's network securley across the internet.

 

[PhilParry]

I'd recommend checking out www.adslguide.org to see how other people rate these ISP's as well. they have a good customer-feedback section, where ISP's are rated.

I choose my broadband based upon speed to other network's.. Since I do a lot of on-line gaming, I got an ISP who host a lot of gaming servers (Jolt, etc) and have very good and low-lag access to servers. I use Nildram, btw.

More or less the actual product is the same - the real difference is all in the detail. e.g. customer service, actual service, etc.etc. It may be worth also checking if your local exchange has been `unbundled`, as this can mean very cheap, fast broadbad. Can I ask where you are in the country? if you're more than 5 miles from an exchange it's likely you won't get any faster than 2meg on a normal copper phone line.

I'd agree....good website. I've been with Zen for around 3 years now and they are faultless with superb customer service, but yes, they are more expensive than others....IMHO you pay what you get for, as the saying goes....

Phil

 

[Zammo]

Not quite as yet - the NTL and Telewest networks and associated techbologies are still separate, as are customer services and billling functions - Telewest / Blueyonder being the better of the two (I used to work for NTL and still have friends there)

For what its worth, I've got a 24 Meg connection with Be Internet - www.bethere.co.uk

Never had any problems, only difficulty was updating my card when it ran out - had to do it by phone with an callcentre in India. The guy was perfectly helpful, but they're obviously using cheap call routing because there was a huge delay on the line.

They've recently been bought out by 02, but service has remained independent.

Yeah i'm with Bethere as well, they really are very good i'm currently on the limited download option (4 gig) for £14.99. Though I was able to download a film one month (in less than an hour) and still stay under my usage. The unlimited broadband is £24 and both options speeds dump on from a big height on Pipex, Ntl, Tiscali and all other cosumer broadband suppliers.

Plus you get a rather niffty broadband router with wifi connection (which I currently use). I used to be with Pipex and though they were good there not even in the same league as Bethere.

Whatever you choose I'd steer clear of Tiscali and AOL.

 

[dommyracer]

24 meg!!?? What the heck do you do with 24 meg? Is there anything on the 'net that can even get close to saturating that much bandwidth?

Its 'up to' 24 me, depending on how far you are for mthe exchange.

I generally get about 14 Meg down and 1.5 meg up.

Usenet is where it really comes in handy - I can normally download 5 GB (a DVD's worth) in under an hour.

 

[TheGreenMan]

Just been looking into this me'self. Of course it depends on what you are intending to be doing. I use Bit torrent a fair bit so I need unlimited usage to mean unlimited usage ( a bit of a sore point for me in that most unlimited broadband actually means 40 Gig a month limit.)

So I'm switching from BT to Aquiss

Just an observation or two, maverix:

If an account being offered by an ISP limits you to downloading 40 gigabytes of data per month, then that is a capped account (data cap).

And an ‘unlimited’ account means that there is no restriction (in theory) on the amount of data that you will be able to download and upload (uncapped). However, most ISPs that offer an ‘unlimited’ service, still have something that’s called a ‘fair usage policy’. This is primarily aimed at those who use torrent software.

Before you sign up with someone, I suggest that you read the ‘small print’ for mention of fair usage policies. If you fall foul of that policy you will most likely have your account suspended if you continue to use torrent software after they ask you to stop using it.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Paul.