Broadband - Which is the best?

[dwlpl]

At present I am with BT Broadband and paying £27 per month (with a speed of 576kbps) for the honour of problems and trying to get them sorted out via a Call Centre abroad whose employees cannot understand.

Any body recommend another provider or can give me a website that compares them all.

[BOAC]

I used 'adsl4less' for a while and had no problems - they also have a 1 month contract period!

[boguing]

I've just gone over to TalkTalk. £22 for free calls to UK and Europe (not mobiles though). 8Mbit at the moment, although it goes up to 8 soon.

Tech support is good once you get through, but of course it's overloaded, it's a very good deal.

[spekesoftly]

This link (http://www.adslguide.org.uk/isps/compare.asp) may help with comparing a selection of ISPs.

[EGKK931]

Just one word of advice:

NEVER AOL!!!!

[Saab Dastard]

If you are within a cable area, the service is pretty good - at least in my experience.

A phone / TV / broadband package can be very cost-effective.

SD

[frostbite]

Echo the never AOL bit!

I've been with Freenetname (you get what that implies) for a number of years and they've been reliable 99.9% of the time.

[dwlpl]

Sky Broadband on the surface at least looks good.

Are there any pitfalls that anyone has come across yet?

[rotorcraig]

I'm with Pipex, as are quite a few of my friends, and it has worked well for a number of years.

Now on 2Mb - whether you will get to 8Mb (or any speed for that matter) depends both upon your service provider and where you live.

Agree don't touch AOL.

RC

[amanoffewwords]

Broadband = Telewest/NTL

ADSL = Plus.net

[Mercenary Pilot]

Tiscali and Onetel are worth consideration IMHO

I wouldnt touch NTL, Wanadoo or BT personally.

Also avoid AOL at all costs:yuk:

[IO540]

Zen = #1 without a doubt.

Eclipse are very good too.

I use both of the above in a commercial context.

You pay a bit more for a good service, not a load of t0ssers who contract out "customer support" to India.

Avoid Clara in particular.

[Raven30]

Eclipse here as well. Certainly more expensive than some but in 18 months I haven't had a single problem. No cap on downloads and a 1 month contract. I would like to pay less for broadband, but just don't want to lose the good service. You pays your money.........etc

[Keef]

I'm with Pipex in Essex and PlusNet in Norfolk. I've had no problem with either.

Pipex was expensive (£23.44 a month); last month they screwed up my bill (they didn't debit the credit card) and threatened to cut me off. A slightly miffed phone call later, and they discovered a £17.99 package with the same effective service (a 30GB cap, but I never download that much a month anyway).

There are many folks who've had serious problems with the new 8Mb setup - at least with PlusNet - but I have to say it works fine for me. The actual speed as shown by ADSLguide varies between 2Mb and 5Mb (so far - three weeks' experience).

Agree absolutely not AOL.

[IO540]

This isn't very relevant anymore but back in the bad old days of dial-up modems, the name of the ISP game was to get as many customers as one could, loading up the system to the point where it was nearly but not quite falling over. At that point you maximise your profits. You will also have roughly the same number of customers leaving as you will be getting new ones, but that's OK provided the system is fully loaded. Customers are irrelevant to the big picture.

Pipex was one of the most notorious players in that game.

Broadband is different, in that an ISP has no modem banks** and phone lines; indeed has no physical existence other than a building somewhere, with a fibre connection into BT's ATM network, and from there on it all goes via BT. The only customer presence an ISP needs is the support line, and that is what you pay for (or pay a bit less for, if it is in India). A lot of ISPs are also evidently run by what I call crooks (like Pipex and many others were back then) - IMHO only a crook will subcontract support to a monkey call centre and charge a premium rate for calling it.

The actual technology for creating a reliable ISP is no rocket science and is well known. It just costs money to implement properly.

At current prices, anything less than say £18/month is likely to be a bunch of crooks, will give you hassle, and won't last. I don't smoke but the difference between a good ISP and a crap one is roughly one fag packet per month.

(** the better ISPs do have a deal with some network outfit to provide a dial-in number, for modem and mobile users)

[Keef]

Well, the Pipex person who answered the telephone to me had a very non-Indian accent. He was sharp, helpful, and we were all done in about two minutes. What he said would happen, happened.

PlusNet I've never spoken to - I ordered the service online, and it was connected when they said it would be, and worked straight off.

[bjkeates]

Plusnet's customer service is excellent. The staff have been very helpful and knowledgable in the times I've needed to call them (which isn't often) and they send you regular, frank and honest updates about their performance and what they are doing to improve. Their packages are cheap as well. I'd highly recommend them.

[Loose rivets]

He was sharp, helpful, and we were all done in about two minutes. What he said would happen, happened.

Gosh Keef...you sure you didn't dial your boss' number by mistake?:}

[PPRuNe Pop]

Pipex.

Never had to call them in the three years I have been with them. I think that £23.44 is still a bit high even for 2.2mb but the overall service and reliability is great. It is only at moments like this, when people want to check out the services, that you realise that a trouble free service is taken for granted.

I will stay with them I expect.

[BEagle]

I note that Powergen and Abbey National are closing their Indian call centres following customer complaints...

I had an almost unintelligible response from Dell's Indian call centre, so gave up and pestered Dell until I found someone who could answer my questions. I gave them an exceptionally low score on the 'How did we do' web thing, so they called to find out why - and they were told in no uncertain terms!

96% of LLoydsTSB managers have been stated as considering that customers are receiving a poorere service since the outsourcing started. But, ever since discovering the number of my local branch (they really hate you finding that out!), I've been spared the annoyance of using call centres which I cannot really understand.

I feel sorry for the Indian employees who are being taken advantage of - and contempt for the greed of companies cutting costs in this way.

Anyway, back to Broadbean ISPs - I'm with Virgin.Net and find it excellent. I'm getting 5216 Kbps download and 448 Kbps upload; no monthly download limit and it costs £25 per month which I can pay by a standing charge to my credit card - for which I get airline miles.

Wouldn't touch AoL with a barge pole!

[Duckbutt]

I note the common theme throughout these postings of 'don't get involved with AOL (I'm not). For my own education would someone kindly elaborate as to why not exactly?

[spekesoftly]

I'm another satisfied Pipex Broadband customer. I did have to contact their Tech support only a few weeks ago, when the ADSL connection failed, due to a BT exchange fault. It involved two phone calls to Pipex on an 0845 number, each lasted about 15 minutes and cost 40p. The first call was to report the fault, the second to confirm I had carried out some simple checks, before Pipex contacted BT. On each occasion I did have to wait a short time in a queue, but both calls were dealt with promptly and efficiently by native English speakers! About three hours after the second call, the b/b connection was restored, and in the intervening period I was able to use a dial-up connection FOC.

At £23.44/month, I agree with Keef and PPRuNe Pop that Pipex now look a tad expensive, but my good experience with their Tech people means I'll probably stay put.

[TruTh747]

Hey m8,

I currently use ntl 4mb (cable) and it costs me 24.99/month. I thought this was worth it until sky broadband launched. Sky is offering £10/month for up to 16mb! This is a wicked deal and as soon as my contract is up in September i will change to them.....

Best Regards,

+Truth

[FL460]

I am another happy 2mb Pipex customer. As I work in IT I did a a lot of research and although they are a tad more expensive, the tech support is great.I have only had to call 3 times in 3 years and was dealt with in a professional manner, in fact if they have network issues they put that info on the recorded message when you connect so you dont have to wait to speak to someone. Additionaly if you can get to another pc and go to the website and disruption is posted.
I understand that their call center/office is around North London or Watford.
:ok:
cheers

[spekesoftly]

I understand that their call center/office is around North London or Watford.
cheers
Pretty close - Pipex's website shows an address in Welwyn Garden City, Herts. Judging by the accents of the two helpful guys I spoke to (see earlier post), that's where my calls were answered.

[Rick Storm]

I'm with wanadoo (now orange) pay £17.99 pm for a max 2gb download per month 1.1MBps speed. I've never had any problems with the above ISP I don't play on-line games or download VAST amounts of video:E I surf 5-6 hours per day and I've never reached my max quota yet. Lots of MB in a giga

Rick

[EI-WAT]

Nothing wrong with AOL at all 14.99 1MB with a Free Wireless Router costing £85.00

[Saab Dastard]

I am very happywith the Telewest / Blueyonder package we've got - combined 4Mbps BB / TV costs £30 / month - no download limit.

The only gripe I have is that their email servers are a bit unreliable - they are MS Exchange, so I'm not altogether surprised.

SD

[spannersatcx]

sky broadband launched

hmm that's what I thought, so I registered an interest, answer "not expected until next year" great, seeing as I'm on a 4mb BT package currently delivering 200k at the moment (for the 3rd time since upgrading!!! a few months back:mad:

[Raven30]

Nothing wrong with AOL at all 14.99 1MB with a Free Wireless Router costing £85.00

Surely if it costs £85.00, its not exactly free??:}

[EGKK931]

Raven30

Listen to the advice already here, do NOT consider AOL!!! :rolleyes:

I know as I have a friend, tried to change to different ISP and they wouldn't let him took over a year to get out of their evil grasp!

Literally anything is better than AOL. ;)

[BOFH]

IO540
Zen if you are well-heeled. Rather similar to going to your butcher's than Sainsco for the Sunday roast.
:ouch:
BOFH

[spannersatcx]

I think it was meant that a router worth £85 you get free.

[Raven30]

Don't worry, once bitten twice shy.
Signed up to their dial up service years ago before I was any wiser. In their favour, they were one of very few in those days who offered unlimited usage and a free helpline. The downside was the memory heavy front end, the awful web mail and the bl@@dy adverts. And the channels - what a waste of resources when all you wanted to do was a bit of browsing or check your mail.
I'm sure they are better these days but no way would I touch them again.

[BDiONU]

I currently use ntl 4mb (cable) and it costs me 24.99/month. I thought this was worth it until sky broadband launched. Sky is offering £10/month for up to 16mb! This is a wicked deal and as soon as my contract is up in September i will change to them.....
NTL are very keen to retain existing customers, especially if you've been with them a while. Why don't you ring them on 0800 054 9403, option 3, and tell them what you wrote above and ask them what they can do for you? Don't fall over with surprise if they offer you 10Mb (soon'ish going up to 16Mb) for £17.49 a month ;-)

BD

[slim_slag]

Once you have removed every last bit of their nasty software from your computer AOL broadband is perfectly OK.

[AppleMacster]

Another vote for Zen from me. Great customer service –*you speak to someone in Rochdale usually without being stuck in a queue for more than about five minutes. They even do "live" internet chat-based support which seems to be even quicker. Add to this support for the Mac as well, and it's a great package.

You get what you pay for in my experience when it comes to broadband.

[Cheerio]

I have no complaints about virgin.net. Although it seems to hang off the NTL network, for me it runs at a little over 2 meg, and has a 100% reliability so far. How an organisation responds to a quality issue is important, so I can't comment on that. But after a couple of years of trouble free service, I can recommend Virgin.

[airborne_artist]

Surely if it costs £85.00, its not exactly free??

Except that few, if any, routers cost that much. The last one I bought cost £31.00 inc next day delivery. They are so cheap that I keep a spare one in case I have a problem, as the cost of the router is diddly squat compared to the loss of a day's work without one.

[BOFH]

AppleMacster
you speak to someone in Rochdale
As a foreigner, it took a while to adjust to the accent :} . If you accidentally end up in a grot site, all the 'ladies' just happen to be from Rochester too.:=
I noticed that Beagle's recommendation of Virgin looks enticing - it's 40GB a month download before they 'have a word'. At 25GBP, it's tastier than Zen (50GB = 35GBP pm + 1GBP per GB over pm).
BOFH

[FormerFlake]

Check out Blagger.com for some reviews of most of the ISPs including customer service.

[maggioneato]

Another vote for Zen. Got rid of AOL last year, wouldn't have it back even if it was free. Helpful call centre, with people you can understand. Not the cheapest, but in my opinion one of the best. I supose anything is better than AOL, they are just awful.

[heretic]

For all you AOL users
If you look at drudge or http://techcrunch.com/ they have just put their useage database out and it can be downloaded. Anyone know how to open a tgz file in windows?

[derekl]

I'm another Zen groupie, as are a number of other folks I know. They were the first to understand (about three years ago) that all we wanted was reliable Internet connectivity without all the cuddly-bunny Yahoo stuff from BT and others.

[ormus55]

talk talk is the best deal at the moment, ie FREE!
but waiting times to get the BB are a pain.

AOL is just fine assuming you dont install their shyte SW. ive used it for yrs now with only 1 problem.

BT are just too fookin expensive.

[effortless]

Hate to say it but BT have been great. Not the cheapest but I have had no down time, consistent speeds and real ease of contact when I have had a niggle.

[747-436]

Try http://www.ic24.net/. About £16 a month for 2-8Mb, depending on where you live. There is a 5 gig allowance, once you go over that it is 20p per 100mb so not too bad really.

[slim_slag]

Perhaps somebody can explain how this broadband stuff works.

My understanding is that it goes from my house via BT until some huge junction box which could be miles away. Then it goes into 'the internet' via a big pipe owned by my service provider.

Round these parts we are quite a long way from the BT exchange, and the only time I notice the broadband goes down is when there is a bloody big thunderstorm and rain in the local area. My assumption is that something has gone wrong with the BT copper. If my next door neighbour was on another service provider, the chances are that his broadband connection would go down as well.

So why the big difference in providers? Isn't BT the weak link in the chain and there is nothing I can do about that as we don't have cable.

[747-436]

The further you are away from the BT Exchange the slower the broadband is.
Round here where I have my broadband (Small town in the country) I get 2Mb but one of my friends who lives in a village only gets about 1mb as he is about 3-4 miles from the exchange.
Unfortunatly BT is the weak link and not much anyone can do about it.
IC24 should be able to provide me with 8mb for the same price but cannot as lines can only cope with 5, but I can still only recieve 2mbs even though my service has been upgraded.
Its ok if you live in a City!!

[slim_slag]

Yep, round these parts it's not worth paying for one of these 8meg services as we cannot get close to that. Also as I understand it, contention is pretty much the same at 50:1 for all providers if you are on a home service, and unless something special is done, this limit exists at the BT exchange, so nothing I can do about that.

I would suspect the places where BT interconnects with my provider's pipe (AOL) is pretty solid, AOL may have dreadful client software but I bet their network is pretty good. I also suspect a lot of these specialist providers who charge a little extra are simply reselling a large provider's service anyway.

So what's the real difference between providers? Customer service? Never needed it, service only goes down when there is a thunderstorm (and occasionally the storm takes router power out too), and they cannot do much about that.

[ormus55]

even here not far from the city centre i can still only get a max 2 mb connection no matter who the isp is. (AOL 1mb at present).
the bt copper line is shyte.

my son has ntl cable a few miles from me, hes on a 10mb connection!

[rvusa]

Quote:
Originally Posted by TruTh747
I currently use ntl 4mb (cable) and it costs me 24.99/month. I thought this was worth it until sky broadband launched. Sky is offering £10/month for up to 16mb! This is a wicked deal and as soon as my contract is up in September i will change to them.....
NTL are very keen to retain existing customers, especially if you've been with them a while. Why don't you ring them on 0800 054 9403, option 3, and tell them what you wrote above and ask them what they can do for you? Don't fall over with surprise if they offer you 10Mb (soon'ish going up to 16Mb) for £17.49 a month ;-)
BD
As I too use NTL at £24.99/month I tried BD's recommendation today. The telephone number appears to be wrong but I got through eventually. After some discussion on the merits of fibre optics verses copper wires he eventually gave me three months at half price. He said the £17.49 was only an introductory offer for one month. Still, for a phone call I saved £37.50, so it wasn't all bad! Thanks BD

[ormus55]

they are all trying like mad to keep customers. when u threaten to leave them they offer you sorts of goodies.
AOL has just offered me the gold service with a free wireless router for the same price as my silver service.
the downside is signing up for another 12 months.

BT has phoned me up twice recently, to try and get me to go back to them. their deal still has a cap on it. told them they are still too expensive and the cap is just bloody annoying.

[BigEndBob]

Anybody thinking of going to TalkTalk free internet....don't bother.
I've been with them for 3 weeks and the connection is mainly off rather than on. I was with Totalise which became Madasafish for £17.99 month.
In 4 years i've been unable to connect on 4 occassions.

With Talk Talk this has happened in 1 week!
Thats what you get for free!

[ormus55]

talk talk bb problems were on the bbc tv this week. the presenter had hundred of letters from peeps pissed off at talk talk.
either not online yet, or cannot get connected. very poor customer service it seems.
the carphone whorehouse claimed its cause too many customers had signed up and they couldnt cope with the demand.

[Helen49]

Been with them five years......no problems at all
H49

[Gouabafla]

I've been using Nildram for years now and I'm very happy. They aren't cheap, about twenty five quid for an 8Mb service. However,the service has only gone down twice in the four or five years I've been using it and each time the technical support has been brilliant.

As I work from home, I'm happy to pay a premium for this level. Don't think I'd feel the same if my connection was purely for home use.

[Fokkerwokker]

Not sure what the implications are at the moment (I am a Pipex customer)however would very much appreciate an update on who thinks what about who!

May ta's

FW

[green granite]

I swapped from demon (because they were dragging their feet on broadband) to BT, not had any problems at all and I live in a village, down load from a fast site at 7.45Mb, no monthly limit, and their help line is excellent although I've only used it once.

[BigEndBob]

Just out of interest i will revise my opinion of TalkTalk.
Things have settled down over the last several months since my last post.
Recently my connection went up from 2 to 5Mbps.

Think they just got overwhelmed by the response to their offer.
Would now recommend them:ok: