Just want an internet connection

[ceeb]

Hi All

I have rented holiday places where there is just a router that you log onto with no need for it to be connected to a PC. I would like to do this, just having a router in the front room with no PC so a laptop can just log on.

Anyone know how to do this please?

Thanks

ceeb

[Saab Dastard]

You need either a wireless-access-point-cum-broadband-switch-router (ADSL or cable) or the addition of a wifi switch / access point to work with an existing broadband switch / router. Obviously you'll need a broadband service connection to your home.

Alternatively, dispensing with a fixed broadband service, a 3g / 4g capable device to connect to your laptop (USB or similar), or a laptop with built-in 3g / 4g card. With either of these you'll need to subscribe to a mobile service provider.

SD

[Gizmo1]

Wireless access point

I've recently purchased a device for under £20 that works great. Google "TP Link Nano Router". It also works in hotels that only have a wired connection or charge for each device that is connected wirelessly. Allows multiple devices wireless access from one wired input. .... Giz.

[henry_crun]

I'm just an ornery simple guy - this is what I did:

I contacted BT and asked for a broadband phone line. They set everything up and sent me a router (BT Home Hub 3). You don't have to be in when they deliver, cos it has no value to anyone else, they just leave it in a handy place.

The router plugs into your phone socket and also needs a mains supply. There is an adapter so you can still plug your voice phone in. Best to keep it close to the main phone socket, but if you have to extend they can provide extra adapters with "filters" to separate voice and broadband.

The router has a pull-out card with the "Wireless Key" written on it. To connect your laptop you need to look on your laptop for your wifi hub and enter the Wireless Key when prompted. This is remembered, so it is a one-off operation.

You can connect several items, I think mine is five, so you get wifi on your phone as well, and can connect to your printer, kindle etc though wifi. You can also connect your phone or laptop to any other BT router at a cafe, friend's house or whatever free of charge by entering your account password. As can any other BT subscriber use your router (at no cost to you).

Leave the router powered up full-time because they send updates, usually overnight.

The cost of broadband is fifteen or twenty pounds a month on top of the line rental. There are various tariffs, I had a limited one at first but eventually transferred to unlimited, only a few pounds more, so I can watch vids and listen to the radio without worrying if I go over the monthly data limit.

Hope this is helpful. Enjoy!

[ceeb]

Thanks for your replies, much appreciated. I already have a broadband connection and a router so I am going to give it a try and move it into another room on its own and see if I can log on with my laptop.

It will be nice not having to fire up an antiquated PC to connect to the www!

Cheers

ceeb.

[henry_crun]

The wifi is usually sufficient to serve several rooms unless you have a really big house or lots of metalwork. Your laptop should be detecting lots of wifi, two from your own router and those from next door and across the street.

[mixture]

a 3g / 4g capable device to connect to your laptop (USB or similar), or a laptop with built-in 3g / 4g card.

No, you don't.

Look up MiFi.

I contacted BT and asked for a broadband phone line.

Friends don't let friends touch BT broadband with a bargepole.

Avoid doing direct business with any aspect of BT Retail (and indirectly via Wholesale/Openreach as far as feasibly possible by using LLU broadband etc. ).

[henry_crun]

MiFi - yes very good, converts 3G to wifi, much better than a 3G dongle. But the downside (as with the dongle) is limited data, high over-run charges and very limited performance. In my area I couldn't connect reliably daytime, had to do overnight to get any speed. The sim is interchangeable with any data-enabled phone on the same network, so no need to get a new sim. Can use anywhere in the uk that has a 3G signal.

BT - no probs here. You may get cheaper deals elsewhere but without the flexibility of being able to connect to any enabled BT Hub anywhere in the uk.

[Flying Serpent]

Friends don't let friends touch BT broadband with a bargepole.

Avoid doing direct business with any aspect of BT Retail (and indirectly via Wholesale/Openreach as far as feasibly possible by using LLU broadband etc. ).

Sigh...

It would be helpful if you substantiated your occasional rants against BT with some cold hard facts for the benefit of others.

[mixture]

Sigh...

It would be helpful if you substantiated your occasional rants against BT with some cold hard facts for the benefit of others.

They are not rants, I'd love to expand, but don't have the time to write up all the detail.

Both technically and commercially, they are very poor value products, and the post-sales support is horrendous.

Just this weekend I've been helping someone as a favour, they've got four BT residential lines .... their bill last quarter was £600..... £330 of which was being spent on line rental which BT inflated with artificial and useless bundle packages... sold under the pretext of saving people money with "anytime calls" and international bundles which saved them absolutely no money on calls they were billed for anyway.... only a small percentage of calls actually fell under the bundles. Having worked my magic, next quarter based on the same call pattern, their call charges will be £45 plus whatever the resulting basic PSTN line rental came to with all the crap removed.... as an example of "unnecessary crap" ... BT were charging them £1.50+VAT a month per line for "privacy service" which..... yes, primarily constitutes BT registering them on their behalf on the free TPS service !

Do you seriously think BT can sell £7/month broadband packages without cutting corners .....you get what you pay for in this life. It is simply not commercially viable to structure a decent product for £7 a month. BT rely on volume which comes with the associated FAPs, contention and many other things. Why do you think they need the BT Sport carrot to dangle in front of unsuspecting punters... or how about the cheeky way you pay BT on an opt-out basis to provide WiFi for others by them using your router as a Openzone/FON hotspot they carefully don't tell you about the big favour you're doing them on their TV adverts or in their marketing bumpf....

There is no comparison between a cheap BT broadband and more robust broadband..... but most people are just too stingy to cough up £35+ a month. Top of the range broadband, such as offered by Easynet LLU at around £64 a month for 20Mb is chalk and cheese from BT .... the structure of the Easynet service is excellent and I can call up a UK based support desk, get through to people who are on the ball and know their network inside out (no Level 1 script reading monkeys), the service gets proactively monitored, and there's a repair time SLA on it. Try getting that out of BT for £7 a month !

[henry_crun]

I've been on BT for over a year now, only use it for internet, though I can plug in a voice phone if I want. I have the basic package plus unlimited broadband using Hub3. Thirty-one pounds a month including line rental. It works perfectly and seamlessly. I use it for browsing, shopping and radio. Devices connected via wifi are tablet, phone and Kobo. Much better than other options. I'm one happy bunny.

[Ancient Observer]

When BT goes wrong, or tries to con the gullible, then it is a pain.

When all is well, it is fine and well priced.

At least it pays taxes in the UK and the pricing is for the vast majority of people very good indeed. And is you want Value, try its cheap brand, plusnet.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Originally Posted by Flying Serpent

Sigh...

It would be helpful if you substantiated your occasional rants against BT with some cold hard facts for the benefit of others.

I've never met Mixture, but I know exactly what he's talking about. His experiences of BT are similar to mine, and would be to yours if you worked for some time in the industry.

However, i'd still put BT as a 'mediocre' solution, as their product however terrible can't be as bad as the customer service you can receive from TalkTalk.

[Ancient Observer]

The worst BT and Open Reach habit is their random assignment of Engineers to solve problems. When I did have an extended problem with them, some time ago, they must have wasted 10 years of profits from my (modest) account by sending out a stream of Engineers who had not been briefed on the problem and its history, and who stood less chance of solving the issue than my granny.
So if you and Mixture only get called in when there is a customer's issue, and are faced with unbriefed untrained folk, you have my sympathy.

[mixture]

So if you and Mixture only get called in when there is a customer's issue, and are faced with unbriefed untrained folk, you have my sympathy.

Oh the number of times I've seen that one ! Ranks amongst one of the top 10.

Not only repair engineers either.

The open screech engineers they dispatch to install LLU copper lines also require you to spend 20 minutes explaining to them what exactly they've been sent to do, and then spend 20 minutes comforting them when they go into a nervous breakdown because there's no dial tone on the line because nobody ever told them that might happen under certain configurations during their "training", so you have to tell them how to check they've correctly installed it.

I've also been at large sites where years of BT bodge jobs have left behind messy cabling in the DPs.... so I've been told by the current breed of "engineers" that they never close off jobs for those sites because they run in fear of the auditors coming round and seeing the poor state of the cabling.

His experiences of BT are similar to mine, and would be to yours if you worked for some time in the industry.

Indeed. Most people's interactions with BT are limited to perhaps a single BT phone line and broadband for their home .... maybe combined with a few "pub tales" from their mates.

Those of us who get to see more of BT can easily bore you to death with reams of war stories.

The same goes for solicitors who deal with BT. I recently had lunch with mine and we got chatting about BT.... even little battle-hardened me was astonished by some of his tales about the sales and contract negotiation process !

You have to remember the BT mindset...their priorities are....

1. Sell
2. Why haven't you signed up that customer yet ?
3. Next customer !
4. Post-sales "support" and "customer service" .... if you're lucky

However, i'd still put BT as a 'mediocre' solution, as their product however terrible can't be as bad as the customer service you can receive from TalkTalk.

The TalkTalk network is "OK", the lines are reasonably stable and it is largely LLU (and I'm a firm believer in avoiding BT resellers and going LLU for broadband) .... but yes..... they've lost their way a bit on customer service. I would still put BT at the top of the poor customer service league table, but TalkTalk are a very close second... hopefully TT will be the subject of an acquisition and so might see some positive changes to customer service.... but that may be an optimistic dream !

My choices are .....

If you have to be on a BT based network.... Zen Internet.
LLU .... Easynet (by extension, theoretically Sky should be OK because they run it over the Easynet LLU network.... but I haven't had much direct experience of the Sky setup, so I don't know how the commercials and technicals pan out).

There are other options out there too, particularly for businesses, but I'll keep it simple by just listing two.

P.S. Don't fall for the BT owned Plusnet......once BT have finished milking it as an "independent" brand they'll no doubt be merging it back under the BT Retail brand along with the associated changes to product structure.

[henry_crun]

Originally Posted by mixture

Most people's interactions with BT are limited to perhaps a single BT phone line and broadband for their home

That is exactly what this thread is about, one person wanting connection in their own home.

If you want to rant about telecomms for businesses why not set up a thread about that, instead of invading a perfectly innocent domestic thread?

[P.Pilcher]

While PlusNet are independent, I am sticking with them like glue! British (Sheffield) based help desk and their service to me has never missed a beat. I am one of the single telephone line domestic user types. As I have been with them for ages, I get free hosting of up to six web addresses! I never knew what to do with this facility for years, but I do now and my pretty simple websites are hosted without problems.


I just hope that BT just watch PlusNet and learn.


P.P.

[henry_crun]

...and do you have PlusNet wires coming to you from a PlusNet telephone exchange?

[mixture]

That is exactly what this thread is about, one person wanting connection in their own home.

And that's my point !

People like that are unable to see the bigger picture.

Hence you need people like me to stop you from making the mistake which is entering into contracts with BT Retail that you'll later come to regret.

[M.Mouse]

Hence you need people like me to stop you from making the mistake which is entering into contracts with BT Retail that you'll later come to regret.

You are no doubt correct that BT in general is an appalling entity to deal with most of us do not have that experience much like Ryanair supply, to most people, exactly what it says on the tin despite those of us prepared to pay for quality in air travel not touching them with a bargepole!

I was with Nildram way back in ADSL infancy. Slightly dearer than others but reliable and great customer service. Roll forward several takeovers and I was a customer of Opal (part of TalkTalk) and after several months of tearing from my head what little hair I had left I gave up and moved to BT.

BT Infinity has been rock solid and reliable at reasonable cost. I would suggest that probably 95% of BT customers have no complaint because the service works. Should my service go wrong I appreciate I will be dealing with a chaotic and dysfunctional 'customer service' call centre and often poorly trained engineers.

You clearly know your subject and no doubt set very high standards, as I do in anything I am involved in. Sadly the world is not generally built that way. People want cheap, organisations like BT work on numbers. 95% of customers happy, 5% mighty pissed off = profits and success, screw the dissatisfied.

B & Q, Sky, Ryanair, BT all very successful organisations in terms of profit and market share but are they companies I like and am happy to deal with..........

Don't get me started on Vodafone.