Broadband

[Steve27752]

A question for those of us in the U.K.
I am thinking of changing my internet supplier to:
Aol
Bt
or Sky.

What do you use and would you recommend it?

 

[david1]

bt here is good... but if I lived near a cable network I would change so your question is not fair, do you have fiber available, do you want fast downloads ?

 

[Idleknight]

Depends where you are, try one of the sites like this which checks your post code and suggests for you the best one.
http://www.broadband.co.uk/

 

[hiho]

with EE for ours but are very near exchange and don't get too many problems

 

[dave53]

to answer your question I'm with sky and i find that there very good

 

[rik_uk3]

I've been with talktalk for a few years, no problems and a rock solid connection; over 70mb/s download, spot on for me.

 

[British Red]

Very rural here. EE, talk talk and plusnet are all useless here. They play "blame ping pong" with the BT line. BT just fix it. BT all the way in the sticks.

 

[Micke]

Is Virgin Media not an option?

 

[Old Bones]

Firstly, AOL are the spawn of Satan himself and should be avoided like the plague. Atbout 8 years ago the US radio host Thom Hartman played a recording of a phonecall between a customer and AOL who wanted to cancel - see for yourself what happened : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY - Hartman himself admitted that in order to cancel with them, he told his credit card company that his card was missing and should be cancelled, just to stop AOL taking any more money. My experience wasn't quite that bad, but is was pretty rubbish. Frighteningly, AOL still make decent money out of dialup for rural areas in the States. I think they should be driven out of business, perhaps by a mob armed with pitchforks and flaming torches.

As for the rest, unless they have their own network (Virgin), they are all using BT Wholesale. If you go for Sky, remember that Sky will try and sell you the rest of their package, which is much more profitable for them. I had a terrible time with BT, and after months of waiting for them to connect me up, I cancelled. I think they are one of the most disfunctional companies I have ever dealt with. On the other hand, my brother (who is a senior IT person at an insurance company, and therefore needs really fast and reliable broadband) thinks they are great, and switched to them from Virgin, who he hated. Virgin are my providers, and I dont really have a problem with them, but like some others, my fibre box is opposite my house, so I tend to get a very good speed.

Frankly, if you ask anyone, they will all have horror stories, and thumbs up, and pretty much all the ISP's will have a mixture of both. If its OK, we dont really think about it, but if it goes wrong, it tends to stick in the mind!

If your in a rural area, then as British Red said, its BT all the way. The Public Accounts Commitee had a go at them last year for being incrediably slow and expensive in rolling out rural broadband, which is being paid for with taxpayers cash. Some of my customers have turned to dish based systems, just to get something half decent.

In addition to Idleknights suggestion of broadband.co.uk, Brianist of UKFree.TV http://www.ukfree.tv/txdetail.php?a=NY299425&irt=760861#b760861 recently suggested thinkbroadband.com to a similar question.

Good luck!

 

[andybysea]

Im same as Red, rural so they just dont seem to care rubbish speed to be honest and worse certain parts of day, im paying for broaband but sometime feel im getting dial up, had bt and sky both say they will look into it but never call back sky have even put phone down on me, they know they have me as we cant get anyine else, its a con that im getting fed up with.

 

[Kerne]

I live in a town and use Virgin and you get the speed you pay for. My mate lives in rural Worcestershire and is with BT. He constantly complains about the fact that he never gets the speed he pays for and all his village gets from BT is lame excuses and no action.

Just my experience...

 

[slowworm]

When I was with BT they also played the blame game as the company that sells you broadband is not the same company that delivers the line. (BT retail and BT Openreach). I've had the same excuse of blaming my PC, router, house phone wiring etc when the fault is obviously not at my house.

 

[Shewie]

BT here, for the last 13 years or so, in all that time I think we've had three outages I can remember.

I know they're not the cheapest but they've always been good for me, plus I need a reliable connection for dialling into work for call out. I live a few hundred yards from the BT exchange so get 16mb download and 900kbps upload over normal copper. We have Virgin cable on our street but I'm happy with what we have, I'm not one for downloading movies or much music so don't need the higher speeds.

BT own most of the copper backbone, certainly as far as domestic lines are concerned, don't be too upset if moving provider doesn't improve performance, it's likely to be crap copper to your house or street cabinet, or even naff cards in the exchange. Fibre/cable is different though.