Brits, Who's Your ISP?

Dorsk 81 · Post by **Dorsk 81** » 2007-01-03 12:02am

My contract with Demon ends at the beginning of March, and after their piss poor downstream speeds, 135kb on an 8mb line, constant line dropping, and crap customer service who try and blame everyone else for any problem, I'm leaving them.

I need to find a new ISP before the end of February, by around the 18th, so who do you use, are they any good, or do you know of any decent ISPs with high speed packages that have either high or no usage limits? Any help would be much appreciated.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2007-01-03 07:30am

Right now, BT. When i was up in Newcastle, Telewest.
I'd say that Telewest is better as their line seemed to be faster with a 4 person network than BT's is with just 2 people on it.
Both were on 1meg lines origionally though when Telewest upgraded us to a 4meg line i noticed a difference, something i haven't noticed at all since BT have claimed to upgrade us to 4meg.

The network was wired in Newcastle, but wireless down here in Leeds though, i don't know if that'll have any difference though.

Zac Naloen · Post by **Zac Naloen** » 2007-01-03 08:09am

I'm on NTL at home BT at uni.

NTL is far superior i actually get the advertised speed.

i dunno if you can get ntl but the download limit is unlimited.

Prozac the Robert · Post by **Prozac the Robert** » 2007-01-03 08:13am

NTL at home, Telewest at uni.

NTL are generally ok, but there can be downtime. I don't think much of their customer service. TV with them sometimes doesn't work, which is pretty unforgivable.

Telewest are sometimes ok, but I think it depends where you live. This year they have been fine, but last year (in a different house) there was quite a bit of downtime, and speeds were often really slow.

Zac Naloen · Post by **Zac Naloen** » 2007-01-03 08:46am

Prozac the Robert wrote:NTL at home, Telewest at uni.

NTL are generally ok, but there can be downtime. I don't think much of their customer service. TV with them sometimes doesn't work, which is pretty unforgivable.

Telewest are sometimes ok, but I think it depends where you live. This year they have been fine, but last year (in a different house) there was quite a bit of downtime, and speeds were often really slow.

NTL and telewest are essentially the same company so any problems are likely to cross over.

No one is brilliant in the ISP market and downtime is non-existant in my area with NTL and the upload/download limit is unlimited and we very rarely have any problems that require phoning up and having to speak to customer services (an email will usually do). I guess it depends on where in the country you are and how new the cabling in your area is (TV is also fine for me with NTL)

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-01-03 10:55am

Tiscali.

Perseid · Post by **Perseid** » 2007-01-03 11:40am

BT, their the only ones I haven't had any trouble with.....so far

Jade Falcon · Post by **Jade Falcon** » 2007-01-03 04:20pm

Nildram, they're maybe not the fastest or the cheapest, but they've been reliable the past few years. Plus they don't force you to sign a 12 months minimum contract.

Manus Celer Dei · Post by **Manus Celer Dei** » 2007-01-03 04:24pm

Crazedwraith · Post by **Crazedwraith** » 2007-01-03 04:36pm

NTL at home. Something really crap called HallsNet at Uni.

Jon · Post by **Jon** » 2007-01-03 05:29pm

I'm with Be Broadband. I live in the city centre practically on top of the exchange so I have a 24meg line, and performance is generally pretty good (never 24, of course, hah).

https://www.bethere.co.uk/

^ had no problems with them, no caps and a decent price for the speed.

Dorsk 81 · Post by **Dorsk 81** » 2007-01-03 05:43pm

Unfortunately I'm outside NTL's area and I doubt that'll be changing anytime soon, it took our MP intervening to get BT to upgrade our exchange.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Tiscali.

Have you had any problems with them? I've heard some pretty bad things, kind of along the lines of what's happening with Demon now, low speeds and poor customer service.

Jade Falcon wrote:Nildram, they're maybe not the fastest or the cheapest, but they've been reliable the past few years. Plus they don't force you to sign a 12 months minimum contract.

I was looking at their Broadband 2 package, 8mbps, 50GB a month usage and anything between midnight and 8am doesn't count towards it, but that does come with a 12month minimum contract.

Bedlam · Post by **Bedlam** » 2007-01-03 06:12pm

I'm with BT

They do tend to push you to sign up to the latest version every year or so (6 month contract) but each upgrade does seen to be significantly better than the last.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2007-01-03 07:46pm

Zen Internet. Not cheap, but I've never had a single service outage in four years.

Unfortunately, the speed isn't great (2.5mb/s on radsl), but then I live in the Midlands, and the phone network here is shit.

Lord Edam · Post by **Lord Edam** » 2007-01-07 11:58am

Eclipse's evolution packages

choice of 20,30,40,50GB limits at peak time (6PM to midnight), anything else is unlimited.

two static IPs and they'll set up reverse DNS as well, if you want that sort of thing

on an 8Mbit line my typical off-peak downloads for usenet are around 500kbytes/s, but p2p & NNTP are very heavily choked during peak time. Web, gaming etc. is always fast.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-01-07 02:34pm

Dorsk 81 wrote: Have you had any problems with them? I've heard some pretty bad things, kind of along the lines of what's happening with Demon now, low speeds and poor customer service.

Nope. Only a couple of slow periods in as many months. No disconnects that weren't down to Windows (on Linux I can be on for days constantly connected) and best of all, no download limits.