Broadband?

[MrJan]

After years of trying I am getting very close to convincing my Dad that we actually do need a broadband connection and that it'll make life a lot easier than the slow old dial up we have now (go ahead and laugh ;) )

However he is still a bit concerned about the effort and cost of the whole thing so I was wondering what providers people on here use and how good they are.

Things that we shall want to consider are cost, whether we get phone calls included in monthly fee, whether we still need to pay line rental to BT (and if we keep old phone number), whether modem is included etc. etc. It is also key that we don't end up with multiple bills to confuse things so would be best if phone and internet all come in one package.

Now I'm not after a connection that is fast enough to spin the world backwards, just being able to not have a pay as you go connection would be nice, but would like to know what other people use and what they think of it.

Any comments will be gratefully receiver :D

[Daniel]

Put your postcode in here and see if you can get cable first :) Then if you can or can't I can reccomend what to get :)

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php

[tinchote]

I can give you some info about broadband in Western Canada, but that will probably not help your cause a lot ;) :p :

[MrJan]

Sam Says I have: BT Wholesale (ASDL, ASDL Max and SDSL), TalkTalk (CPW) LLU, Sky Broadband/Easynet LLU and Virgin Media (Cable).

I understand very little of that :D

[BDunnell]

I'm on Virgin Media. It seems to be OK. That's as much as I can offer.

[Daniel]

Well here are Virgin's deals :) Brockman usually reccomends cable to most people and I'd tend to agree. Generally fast than ADSL

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=2

Put your postcode in and search for what ADSL broadband you can get and read the reviews each company gets. I'm with BT but purely because I do a lot of online gaming and I want the best ping I can get and I can only get that with BT :)

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/

[Mp3 Astra]

I'm not sure if this forum is like the BBC, and you're not allowed to slate comapnies without solid evidence of it being true. If not, then I disrecommend Orange Broadband whole-heartedly. We constantly get DNS errors, slow service, appalling customer service and not very much for your money.


That's all I can tell you about Broadband right now. :)

[BM]

I've been with Tiscal for more than 18 months now with almost no problems, we have no download limits and now get our phone calls included for less than £20 (I think!). When we first got broadband, paid £17.99 a month for 2Meg, which is more than adequate especially when you've been using dial-up for a while. I assume that Tiscali's price has now gone under £15 for that service!

A USB modem is usually included but if you have more than one computer a router is required.

[Daniel]

I'm not sure if this forum is like the BBC, and you're not allowed to slate comapnies without solid evidence of it being true. If not, then I disrecommend Orange Broadband whole-heartedly. We constantly get DNS errors, slow service, appalling customer service and not very much for your money.


That's all I can tell you about Broadband right now. :)
Well I wasn't impresed with Orange when we had to leave. They just had to make it that little bit more difficult to leave them than they could have :) But while we were on Orange we never really had any issues with them. It was just that the BT connection was always going to be that tiny bit faster and that was what I was interested in.

To be perfectly honest you're not going to find a hell of a lot of difference between the different companies other than price and the speed/download cap they give you.

[Mark]

Cable is generally regarded as being the best of the bunch. Primarily because they own the entire network right up to (and often including) your modem, so there are less people involved for things to go wrong.

Do you already have Sky TV? If you do then cable probably isn't the best idea, but if you don't already have digital TV then go for cable, if you look at some of the packages you can get Telephone and Broadband in one package, then a basic digital TV subscription thrown in for free.


Things that we shall want to consider are cost, whether we get phone calls included in monthly fee, whether we still need to pay line rental to BT (and if we keep old phone number), whether modem is included etc. etc. It is also key that we don't end up with multiple bills to confuse things so would be best if phone and internet all come in one package.

With Virgin you disconnect from BT completely so you don't pay line rental to them any more, but instead it's included in your Virgin package, and yes, you keep the same phone number. Modem is included and everything is on one bill.

Only disadvantage with cable is that it uses a cable, that'll have to be put throught your garden and through the wall of your house. I suspect if your Dad hasn't got broadband by now he may well rule out the cable option because of that, which would be a shame because it's no big deal.

[Dave B]

The simple rule is that you get what you pay for. "Free" broadband from the likes of Orange or Talk Talk is, as a general rule with exceptions, terrible.

I've always recommended cable in the past because back in the old NTL / Telewest days there were absolutely no restrictions on usage, and no throttling of p2p or gaming traffic. Increasingly I'm hearing reports that may no longer be the case, but in my experience on what is now Virgin Media I've never had any such problems.

I've been with Telewest / VM for about 5 years, and would thoroughly recommend them. However, do not under any circumstances use Virgin for your phone calls - they're very expensive.

If you stick with using a BT line you should be fine according to what you've posted about the speed test. Be extremely wary though about signing up to any company which wants to take over the line - in many cases this will preclude you from using cheap/free carriers for your telephone calls.

The process is called Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) and effectively means that BT would no longer have anything to do with your line. Now, BT have their detractors, and they're a long long long way from being perfect. But you can ring their faults team for free 24/7 and a few horror stories apart, their engineers are both plentiful and knowlegeable. Ask yourself if your WLR provider could say the same...

In all honesty, your choice will hinge on whether you're driven by price or service. Sadly the two are, for the most part, mutually exclusive. This is a good site (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps.html), have a browse and remember before you commit that you'll almost certainly be signing a 12 month contract, longer in some cases, so choose wisely!

:)

[Daniel]

The simple rule is that you get what you pay for. "Free" broadband from the likes of Orange or Talk Talk is, as a general rule with exceptions, terrible.

I've always recommended cable in the past because back in the old NTL / Telewest days there were absolutely no restrictions on usage, and no throttling of p2p or gaming traffic. Increasingly I'm hearing reports that may no longer be the case, but in my experience on what is now Virgin Media I've never had any such problems.

I've been with Telewest / VM for about 5 years, and would thoroughly recommend them. However, do not under any circumstances use Virgin for your phone calls - they're very expensive.

If you stick with using a BT line you should be fine according to what you've posted about the speed test. Be extremely wary though about signing up to any company which wants to take over the line - in many cases this will preclude you from using cheap/free carriers for your telephone calls.

The process is called Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) and effectively means that BT would no longer have anything to do with your line. Now, BT have their detractors, and they're a long long long way from being perfect. But you can ring their faults team for free 24/7 and a few horror stories apart, their engineers are both plentiful and knowlegeable. Ask yourself if your WLR provider could say the same...

In all honesty, your choice will hinge on whether you're driven by price or service. Sadly the two are, for the most part, mutually exclusive. This is a good site (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps.html), have a browse and remember before you commit that you'll almost certainly be signing a 12 month contract, longer in some cases, so choose wisely!

:)
I second that. You don't want your line going to another company. If you go to the broadband only section of Moneysupermarket you'll only get Broadband and you won't be lured into an expensive call package or have your line migrated over to another carrier. I've heard a lot of good things about Madasafish but for reasons explained previously I went with BT and can't complain about the product at all :) The homehub phone is alright and you can just use it as a normal phone :) Ours broke but we just got it replaced :)

[MrJan]

Thanks for all the advice :) After ruling out the cable option (it would involve tearing up the drivway which is a definate no) I have been looking around at a few different options. Virgin seems to offer best broadband only package (emphasis on price) but Tiscali has a good bundle with what appears to be free phone calls at all times. Will still be paying BT line rental but looks like quite a good price.

Anyways will need to investigate a bit further before I start trying to convince the old man it's a good idea, perhaps if I'm lucky I'l have b/band by Christmas :s anta: :D

Cheers again for the help :up:

[Daniel]

If you stick with using a BT line you should be fine according to what you've posted about the speed test. Be extremely wary though about signing up to any company which wants to take over the line - in many cases this will preclude you from using cheap/free carriers for your telephone calls.

The process is called Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) and effectively means that BT would no longer have anything to do with your line. Now, BT have their detractors, and they're a long long long way from being perfect. But you can ring their faults team for free 24/7 and a few horror stories apart, their engineers are both plentiful and knowlegeable. Ask yourself if your WLR provider could say the same...

Went into Carphone Warehouse on the weekend to ask about a sim only plan for my N95 and got offered what I think was an unbundling deal for our landline. No thanks! :)