Ok I am not prepared to pay Wanado's extortionate charges for broadband so am seeking a new service provider.
Both Tesco and Supanet are coming in at around £19pm with no download limits. Tesco also has no contract so I will not be tied to them for a 12 month period like the rest.
Any better deals? Does anyone know of any problems with the 2 above providers?
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Steve S
wumpster
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Re: Broadband Service Providers.
« Reply #1 on: Dec 6th, 2004, 1:45pm »
Virgin.net - £17.99 per month for normal (512k) broadband, no 12 month contract. Has 3GB monthly download limit, but this is plenty for us.
Plus, we signed up for it just after I fractured a vertebrae (oops) and was off work, so I was surfing lots. Had no problems yet (crossing fingers etc).
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Vulcan
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Re: Broadband Service Providers.
« Reply #3 on: Dec 6th, 2004, 5:16pm »
I don't know anything about the two you mention but I use Blueyonder Cable. 56k, 256k,1.5mb or 3mb you pick your flavour to go with you needs and your budget. In January the 1.5 goes up to 2mb and the 3 up to 4mb at no extra cost. I have had BY for 6 years now and am on the 1.5mb at the moment, no complaints with their service whatsoever. No download limits at all, I also take my telephone and Cable TV from them and have two set top boxes with the full package. My monthly bill for..
Internet connection 100mb webspace, plus upgrade to advanced (Perl, PHP etc) TV downstairs (full Sky package) TV upstairs (kids.. package as above) Telephone with anonymous caller reject, caller display etc
..comes to just over £100pcm, phones calls are on top of this.
Personally I am very pleased with the deal I get.
Oh the internet connection is stable and reliable.
Methinks it's swings and roundabouts a bit... Glad you're happy with blueyonder (telewest) George - I know my brother isn't.
We were with Demon Internet (dialup) for donkey's - it was only when I needed help with poor connection speed and dropped connections did I find that they weren't what they were 10 years before (when they had a clue). So I tried the free Aardvaak dialup and suddenly found that my "faulty" modem and "must be a BT problem then" line were back up to full speed.
When we moved here, I asked Aardvaak about broadband and they provided it (£20 a month + £50 connection fee and no monthly payment option and no crap USB piece of junk "modem" - paid up-front for a year - it was a good deal at the time, things have changed since I guess).
I always get very close to theoretical maximum connection speed on my 512k line (there's a speed test on the page that Snoopy posted earlier). At work, we're still with Demon which is about 20% slower - our company "expert" tells me that it's due to different exchanges (I live about 0.7 miles away from the office and it's the same exchange so "go figure" that one).
It depends what you want (& how much you want to pay) but I know I've got a fallback option in terms of a seamless dialup connection to the same stuff if broadband does go pear-shaped for any reason.
Also, having been into this for a while, if you have to contact your ISP about something technical it is nice when they actually know what they're talking about. I would suggest that most ISP "call centres" are staffed by people that haven't got the first idea what it's all about.
Just my 2p worth...
Cheers, Dave
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Vulcan
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Re: Broadband Service Providers.
« Reply #6 on: Dec 6th, 2004, 9:30pm »
New Year's eve a few years ago we were going to set up a webcam session at midnight and the connection went off at 9.00 pm Called them up and got an extremely knowledeable guy who didn't ask any scripted questions and accepted the fact that as I work in IT I knew what "it wasn't" ie any of my kit! He did a bit of checking and said he would call me back..hmm I was dubious but accepted this. He phoned me back within the hour and said he had despatched an engineer to one of "the green boxes" where the fault was and I would be back on the air in no time. My connection came back at 2 minutes to 10 and he phoned me again at 10 past to make sure it was all ok.
This was New Year's Eve too!! I was well impressed ....
During the run of the mill day if I have any problems I would use the newsgroups support to get answers, you can actually get a convo going with Alex B the webmaster! and you get real service.
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Dave Boulton
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Re: Broadband Service Providers.
« Reply #7 on: Dec 6th, 2004, 10:45pm »
Amazing! I guess the moral is if you find something you're happy with then stick with it. I've had some fairly spectacular "scripted" calls in my time: "Which version of Windows is that sir?" Er, it's not, it's Linux. "Is that Microsoft linux sir?" No. "You just need to run the Windows Network Setup Wizard then sir?" ARGGHH....
<ANORAK>The all time best was probably Tiny when I asked if the UART in the machine I thought I wanted to buy was a 16550. Got a "wozzat?" back. I explained that it was a serial chip. That got him confident: "Chips! that's SIMMs, innit! Definitely SIMMs.". Ah well... </ANORAK>
Nearly all the big ISPs are losing money on their services and the only one making anything out of Broadband is BT who charge the ISP the setup cost £50+vat and the monthly rental of the exchange line.
Now that the price war is bringing the monthly cost down to £18 a month with free modem and free setup, the ISP makes only a few pounds per YEAR from which it has to pay staff, engineers, backbone costs, equipment and office etc. One bad debt can wipe out the profit completely.
Whilst the big companies can afford to do this in order to grow their customer base (you are effectively locked into the ISP as it's hard to change Broadband provider and doing so leaves you with no BB for 3-6 weeks) the smaller ISPs cannot afford to offer loss leaders.
The problem is going to be that eventually the big companies are going to have to find a way to make money from broadband otherwise it all collapses.
The only exception are the cable companies who own their own networks and so don't have to pay BT.
So my 'advice' is to find a smaller ISP and support them. They are likely to be able to offer better support and better bandwidth albeit at a higher price.
Unfortunatly it is hard to change broadband providers as it can take several weeks for disconnection / reconection. But once again this is just the providers messing us around and making things hard in a hope that we will stick with them. There is a system in place where you request a number from your service provider which you then pass on to your new provider, the changeover can then be done without any disconection from the service, and its free. Unfortunatly most providers wont offer this service.
Hmm all these probs with ADSL make me pleased I am cable. The network is all fibre optic until it gets to your individual UBR in the green boxes on the street corners then it's copper (coax) from there on in right up to the Cable Modem. I don't have to do any "log on" nonsense as the internet is just "there" when I switch on the PC... plus if I want it I can have up to 4mb download speeds at the desktop. I've had this connection actually for about 8 years when I work it out (it started as a 512 service) When I first got it, BB via ADSL was REALLY hard to get. (distance from exchange or some other excuse) in my early days when gaming online I was usually the only BB guy in the games. Don't think I would want to go to ADSL now... hopefully I never will have to.
I'm with Virgin.net BB and I have no complaints about there service, I find it very reliable, that is for £24.99 per month I have no contract, free connection to 512kbs uncapped BB but on the 7th January I move house, I've sent them numerous e-mails on the subject and they continue to ignore them why I dont know but its ridicloius to think I will be paying for it If I wont be there, so come next week I'm stopping my connection the ruthless way! telling my credit card company to stop paying!
If they would only read there e-mails I would happily stay with them.
JJ
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Vulcan
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Re: Broadband Service Providers.
« Reply #15 on: Dec 8th, 2004, 10:52am »
Have you tried ringing them? I know from work that a support email addy can get thousands.. yeah thousands, of mails per day and depending on how many support staff you have reading them it can take a serious load of time to sift through them, if you even can! The old dog and bone usually gets through to us at work a lot quicker, especially if the user is persistent. Human nature makes you get rid of an annoyance blurry quick..
I found with wanado its just a total waste of time emailing them, never had a reply back yet. I have rung them on a couple of times and had no problem talking to someone.
That because they are making moeny when you are talking to them ... don't forget its a national rate number i.e 10p per min at peak times ..Thats why you get abetter response on the phone....
I write to the head man that gets a response.....usually! if you want his name I have it......
i know you are going to all laugh but i have had no problems with NTL, when it was running slow and doing other weird things just phoned them upand sorted it over the phone at local rate, but saying that all good things must come to an end so i'm just waiting Lee
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why I dont know but its ridicloius to think I will be paying for it If I wont be there, so come next week I'm stopping my connection the ruthless way! telling my credit card company to stop paying! 
