Broadband - is there such a thing as a free lunch?

[WG774]

Hi,

Having been with Demon since 2002, and having no complaints (telephone support is excellent), it dawned upon me that £24.99 p/month for a 2-Meg service is rather pricey.

I found out that, as a perk with my Orange mobile phone, I can get free BB - up to 5-Meg speed. I don't need more than 5-Meg.

The question is, am I asking for trouble by migrating to a 'free' service? Demon's due to go to 24-Meg in a few weeks, but in all honesty, unless I surf @ 1am, will I notice a difference?

Thanks in advance for any comments you might have.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Depends what you're after. For some people the three things they're interested in are price, price and price, but others are interested in other things, such as reliability and quality of service.

Most utilities offer crap customer service these days and there are plenty of stories of broadband being unreliable, so if Demon are providing a reliable connection with decent service when you have a problem ... then that's what you're paying for, and you should consider whether you really want to move to a flaky connection with no service just because it's cheaper.

[WG774]

Have you had dealings with Orange, Gertrude?

Demon customer service is great, but the connection's slow and £24.99 doesn't strike me as top value for 2-Meg (although they say it's going to 24 later in the year).

I suppose I could change to Orange, and if it's rubbish, change back to Demon. I can email via my 'phone, so if I'm offline for a day or two I won't die.

In all honesty, I would like to know if Orange is any good for Internet providing. If I have a business 'phone contract with them, they're not going to want to give me rubbish BB, are they?

[Evanelpus]

Having been a Wanadoo customer (now Orange) for years, I found out I was paying £17.99 a month for a Broadband service that was quite inferior to most others out there. I was lucky if I managed 1 meg.

So, I called Mumbai's finest and had a whinge and lo and behold someone called me from Middlesborough not 10 minutes after I hung from my previous call offering me a faster service (now 5 Meg), a free wireless box, one months free subscription and a reduced monthly payment. However, as I was an existing customer, I had to agree to another 12 months with Orange.

What I can say is that my Broadband is considerably faster, downloads are quicker and it's quicker to navigate between sites, so I'm happy. If you transfer from one ISP to another you may be able to negotiate a better deal.

[amanoffewwords]

I have a similar dilemma, or 'had' as I have taken the plunge.. .scrapped Virgin Media 2Mb @ £17x/month + will soon order O2 broadband at £12 for up to 10Mb, which will reduce to £7.34 or thereabouts when I migrate my mobile phone to them in July.

Total savings. about £200 x year (or about 113 pints of beer in old money)

For that I'm willing to forgo reliability as I have found something better to do apart from surfing the Net :E (*)






(*) no, not that...learning to play the guitar :rolleyes:

[OFSO]

Don't all shout at me for stating the obvious, but uplink speed is as important as downlink: all the megs in the world coming down to you with a slow uplink connection won't seem very fast.

Here in Spain WiMax is widespread - I connect with a tower about 15kms away - and "only" have a one meg connection, but it's a constant one meg up and down. Gives me all he speed I need, and costs €45 a month including IVA (VAT).

As with everything, you get what you pay for: TANSTAAFL !

[Jofm5]

Some general advice when changing broadband suppliers.


To change your broadband supplier you will need to ask your existing supplier for a MAC Code which will need to be provided to your intended supplier for them to be allowed to replace your service. Some suppliers are unscrupulous and will refuse to give you one - however if you threaten to report them to OFCOM they will succumb as they are bound to by law. They are not however bound by law if your account is not in order.


The usual case when requesting the MAC code is for the customer service teams to enquire why you are moving providers and then possibly offer to match/improve their offering. It is a sad state of affairs but it is usual with broadband suppliers (like with mobile phones) for you to left on a crap tariff until you ask for a better one.

When you look at moving broadband suppliers you need to look at the contetion ratio that the provider has. Demon offers quite a low contention ratio which is why they are rated highly. The contention ratio is how many other subscribers are using the same resources at the telephone exchange - if the contention ratio is 50:1 then if 25 users are high bandwidth users then the service will be very slow as your all competing for the same resources. The less people to compete with then theoretically the better the service (depends on individuals usage patterns).

I would suggest rather than move poviders straight off the bat - speak with demon and tell them what you can get and see if they can better your deal - you may be surprised to find you get alot better deal for no extra outlay and no loss of service.

Cheers

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Have you had dealings with Orange, Gertrude?
No, I'm using Virgin, cable modem.

I originally signed up for 512k for £24.99 ... since then the price went up to £25.00 (before it came down again with the VAT cut) ... but the original speed was never 512k in the first place, it was 600k, and over the years they've increased it to, I dunno, somewhere around 10M, more than I need anyway, for the same price.

Their call centre is crap ... but you hardly ever have to use it, because It Just Works for months, or sometimes years, at a time, and when something does go wrong they discover it for themselves and fix it. The most recent occasion I had to call them was a couple of years ago when we had a lightening strike on our fish pond which took out the modem (yes really) and we had to persuade them to send us a new one.

I would not be surprised to discover that

(1) £24.99 is what you have to pay for decent service
(2) Demon are a bit behind the curve on speed
(3) but they'll catch up in due course.

I would very seriously consider sticking with a provider who provided decent service. (But that's partly because I'm lazy.)

[Gertrude the Wombat]

uplink speed is as important as downlink
Not for most domestic users. I have to deliver a 40Mbyte file to clients from time to time, at which point the uplink speed is a big deal, but apart from that sort of thing (or, of course, peer to peer theft systems) you shouldn't notice it.

[Jofm5]

I concur with gertrude on the uplink speed, most broadband suppliers are 128k or 256k upload which is more than sufficient as typical use sees the user download multiples more than they upload.

Whilst having a higher upload speed may help the odd time you need it - it comes as a sacrifice of the download speeds. Using a dedicated line like a T1/E1 you will get a 1.5/2 mbps pipe but that means whilst uploading at 1mbps the remainder of the pipe is available for download.

The same principle applies to broadband - if your broadband line is capable of 8mbps and you have 1mbps upload speed your effective download speed will be 7mbps.
This is also true with WIMAX whereby there is a dedicated bandwidth fequency spectrum - if part is used for upload only the remainder can be used for download.

The above is one reason the upload is throttled, SDSL as you may read about is where the bandwidth capability is split half and half between upload and download - this makes the service more pratical for serving to the internet - e.g. web servers which is why it costs alot more and is focused at businesses (these products compete with leased lines such as a T1/E1.

Cheers

Jof
p.s. T1 is a 1.5mbps (24 64k channels) dedicated leased line as found in the USA, an E1 is the european equivalent which is 2mbps (32 64k Channels).

[call100]

No, I'm using Virgin, cable modem.

I originally signed up for 512k for £24.99 ... since then the price went up to £25.00 (before it came down again with the VAT cut) ... but the original speed was never 512k in the first place, it was 600k, and over the years they've increased it to, I dunno, somewhere around 10M, more than I need anyway, for the same price.

Their call centre is crap ... but you hardly ever have to use it, because It Just Works for months, or sometimes years, at a time, and when something does go wrong they discover it for themselves and fix it. The most recent occasion I had to call them was a couple of years ago when we had a lightening strike on our fish pond which took out the modem (yes really) and we had to persuade them to send us a new one.

I would not be surprised to discover that

(1) £24.99 is what you have to pay for decent service
(2) Demon are a bit behind the curve on speed
(3) but they'll catch up in due course.

I would very seriously consider sticking with a provider who provided decent service. (But that's partly because I'm lazy.)
You are paying too much....VM have always been good to me....Here is a copy of my answer in the other BB thread....
Hi £25 a month is the 10Mb package I presume. It has actually dropped to £20 Per month. I get it for £16 per month....If you are out of contract (Over 12months), which you will be if you signed up with NTL (as I did), then phone retentions (150 from VM phone or 0800 298 5770 )and tell them that Sky are offering you a better deal.....See what they will discount you to. I do this every year at the end of each discount. You also get £1 off for going paperless on your bill.
Give it a go...What have you to lose....Don't be wishy washy though....and be very nice.http://static.pprune.org/images/smilies/thumbs.gif

[airborne_artist]

You need to consider the speed your line will support. Some out in the sticks can only struggle to get to 2 Mbits - so there would be no point paying for more. There are a number of line testing sites out there that may help.

[PPRuNeUser0211]

WG - I'm with Orange on their old fiver a month upgrade to the package you're looking at. One or two minor issues over the years but nothing that wasn't solved by a "I want to talk to your retention department" after being put through to mumbai. Very quickly connected with the UK call centre who are more than helpful.

Mrs Target uses the free package in our domestic abode (being a man of travel I have several!) and we've not had any snags with that either over the past couple of years. Both packages are the "up to 8mb" variety but that depends heavily on how far you are from an exchange. "work" abode is out in the sticks a little, but with a low contention ratio so although the line speed is only 3>4 mb I can consistently get that with little/no noticeable slowdown in the evenings. "Domestic" abode is in the centre of a major midlands city and has a line speed of 7>8mb but the contention ratio is through the roof, so download speeds are fantastic at around 2am but pretty poor 5pm>9pm when the world and his dog are watching Iplayer

Overall, I've been with orange BB for a couple of years, had one or 2 issues but generally excellent serivce.

On the mobile front, Orange Mobile retention department is absolutely fantastic. They couldn't have been better when it came to contract renewal time, and gave me a package so good that I even had the guy who rang me recently to check how my new phone was doing asking how I'd managed to get a better deal than his employee discount rate.

[rog747]

am with talktalk for last 3 years

£20 pm

includes
the phone line rental,
broadband 100.0 mbps, free wireless router
and
free calls 24/7 anytime to UK landlines ,usa and eu is free too...:ok:
if the call isnt free overseas then its dirt cheap to most other areas.

had some initial hiccups but now its 100pc:)

0845 and 0870 is not free

[bnt]

One other aspect you need to be aware of is the Contention Ratio, which is the number of other users on the same network segment as you. The bandwidth figure you're given (e.g. 2 Mb/s) might be limited for you individually (at the ISP's switch), but that doesn't mean you're guaranteed to get that all the time. You might have 40+ users on a segment, each limited to 2 or 3Mb/s, but the total traffic on the segment only 20 Mb/s, not 80-120 Mb/s as you might calculate. If they're all on YouTube... as always, hell is other people.

[hellsbrink]

includes

broadband 100.0 mbps, free wireless router


That speed is how fast you connect to the router, not the speed you actually get.

Perfect example? My wired connection says 100mbps but my true interweb speed is actually 12mbps (could be 25 but half of the bandwidth is used for TV)

[rog747]

sorry yes its about 6 to 8 meg here