Broadband recommendations

[Tyler]

Hi All,

Can anyone recommend a broadband service provider to go with, or even those to avoid? I know it's often discussed on here, so just wondering what people's views are?

I know Orange don't have the best of reputations, but they do seem to have smartened themselves up a bit as of late (could be wrong) and the £300 off any laptop is a very tempting deal, even if it is a 2 year contract. Again though, any thoughts?

Cheers,
Tyler

 

I haven't used Sky but I'm considering it, Broadband, Telephone and TV for £28 or £29 a month... Try having a look on the site. It's the See, Speak, Surf promotion.

 

[rwhitetlc]

I have a friend who is with Pipex. She has found their customer support to be hopeless. Recently they spent two days on the phone (at her expense) talking her through useless ways to sort out her connection until it eventually dawned on them that the problem was at their end. Even when that was discovered it took a further 2 weeks to get her back online.

 

[Astaroth]

We use Demon (Thus) and whilst there are a lot cheaper than them the stability and speed of the connection has been excellent. In 3 years only one outage of about 30 minutes and the line has only dropped once and that was when we had a powercut and so the router went off which you cant blame them for. Checking our current connection, it has been live for over 2 years.

 

[franco_24]

I have a friend who is with Pipex. She has found their customer support to be hopeless. Recently they spent two days on the phone (at her expense) talking her through useless ways to sort out her connection until it eventually dawned on them that the problem was at their end. Even when that was discovered it took a further 2 weeks to get her back online.

I can recommend eclipse broadband for business. It costs £19.99 plus VAT and does what it says on the tin. It works well and I have had no trouble with it. Needs a BT phone line. http://www.eclipse.net.uk/

Whatever you do avoid Tiscali. A quick search in google will bring up sites like http://www.ispreview.co.uk/ Just look under their ISP complaints section. I tried them for a year and would never ever consider them again under any circumstances.

 

[INTERACSS]

I was with F2S (http://www.freedom2surf.net/) for a number of years and had absolutly No problems, even when they where bought out by PIPEX, still have no issues.

My other half when we met was with AOL, know there is a different kettle of fish, poor support and customer services, was up and down like nobodys business.

Cheers

James

 

Most of the ISP's have bad reports about their support. I have had problems lately with:
Pipex (long support calls at high call cost)
AOL (took them 45mins to get to the point I was at before ringing them)Orange (totally rubbish in every way)
BT (not a bad service overall, but we seem to be bottom of their list in NI)

I am looking at reselling Eclipse myself - Any dealings I have had with them have been positive.

 

[falconinternetlimited]

Tyler,

I going to try and be impartial here but can I suggest you check out http://www.dslzoneuk.co.uk

Have a look at the reviews and ratings of the different broadband suppliers. Getting a free laptop from Orange is indeed tempting, but if you work out that the laptop is worth £300 and you'll be paying them over £300 over the 2 years - and you may have a rubbish broadband service and be locked into them for that period of time, it may not be very worthwhile.

What you will find is that most ISP's now throttle their customers connections. Some more than others. This means, at times, you can experience slower speeds than dial-up with some ISP's

In case you are interested, we are a reseller of Entanet. Entanet only work through reseller companies but are well respected within the internet community for the way that their netowrk is managed, even at peak times, and for the price against allowance tariffs that the resellers offer.
For example you can get a 30GB peak and 300GB off-peak allowance with an up to 8MB connection for £19.99 a month.
We have been focussed on the business market fo rthe last 2 years, but recently have turned our attention to the consumer market and our reviews from our customers are very encouraging.
http://www.dslzoneuk.co.uk/isp_details.php?isp=104#

If you would like any further information please do not hesitate to ask.

best wishes,

Rupert

 

[Gavin Harris]

www.zen.co.uk - the most professional ADSL provider I've ever come across with excellent support. You don't mind paying a couple of pounds extra per month for the additional support they provide and good quality connection.

 

[Dawg]

Nah. Zen are rubbish. Totally useless. Sort of baby puke shade of Orange, if you see what I'm saying..
(I just don't want them to get too popular and stop having great service, good connection, great contention etc etc..as I have been happy with them for years.)

 

[tommy]

TalkTalk i would stay well clear, useles support team, useless technical team and useless overall

Virgin Media I have the whole bundle Mobile, Broadband (20mb), Phone and TV I have to say though since the merger the customer support seems some what better, perhaps they are starting to pull their fingers out. But I have to say I have only had one problem with them and this was when they were Cable & Wireless but since then I havent had any drop outs that I have noticed.

Didnt Tiscali just purchase Pipex Broadband for just over £200m?

If so i would hate to see if Tiscali change anything at Pipex

 

I've used NTL/Telwest/Virgin Media or whatever they are called for the last 6 years or so. Had a few little problems but they have always been sorted.

 

[RedEvo]

www.zen.co.uk - the most professional ADSL provider I've ever come across with excellent support. You don't mind paying a couple of pounds extra per month for the additional support they provide and good quality connection.

Yup, Zen all day long. Superb.

d

 

[Lisette]

I use BT and have been really happy with them

 

[confused]

definatley zen - assuming adsl of course. customer servie and support is excellent, you get through in a few minutes (thats if you ever need to....) and whats more, you get someone in ENGLAND who speaks ENGLISH and LISTENS !!
That said, whilst ntls' suport is crap, I'd rather have a cable connection. I use zen at home now as I recently moved house and cant get cable I also support quite a few companies that use zen and always reccomend them - that said, Dawg does have a very good point!

 

[securitypub.com]

Try thinkbroadband.com before you select

 

[KM-Tiger]

Try thinkbroadband.com before you select

Or specifically the comparator here.

 

[kierweb]

Avoid Talk Talk (had sooooo much trouble with them and they block ports) ... I currently use Demon and had no problems at all with them.

 

BT (not a bad service overall, but we seem to be bottom of their list in NI)

I did my research in relation to this and sought advice and in the end I went with BT. So far so good...

 

[stugster]

I've used NTL/Telwest/Virgin Media or whatever they are called for the last 6 years or so. Had a few little problems but they have always been sorted.

Yup, same. When the service has gone down (maybe once every 6 months - if that) it's been down for an hour at the most, and it's back again as fast as ever.

The only thing I would say though, is that now VirginMedia own the service, they're introducing Bandwidth Capping. Meaning, once you've gone over your "Acceptable Use" they'll limit your speed for the remainder of that month.

Much better of course, than cutting you off for the rest of the month! But still, they keep that quiet.

May I suggest http://www.ispreview.co.uk ?

 

[Gavin Harris]

I actually prefer a bandwidth cap for going over the acceptable use rather than being charged per gig for bandwidth used beyond your allowance.

If I remember correctly, if you're on a 20mb connection with Virgin, they limit you to 2mb if you go over the limit. Doesn't sound too bad to me!