Spec me an ISP, bitches!

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » February 13th, 2007, 9:52

Okies - all being well I'm going to be moving house sometime in March. This means moving my telewank connection over again, although its now Virgin Media I believe. Currently, we pay £14.99 a month for unlimited 2meg broadband, and have the basic TV package thrown in for free too. Its basically freeview, but with Sky1 and a couple of others thrown in too. So, we have the option of either:

a) Stay with current deal, and hope they don't try to up the prices or start charging for the TV. If they do start charging for TV, we'll just cancel it and get a freeview box instead, but I believe that their current 2meg broadband deal is £3 more a month and every penny counts!

b) Sign up with someone new. If so, who? Any particular company recommended or to be avoided?

What does the collective 5punk think?

Post by **Grimmie** » February 13th, 2007, 11:15

I love Telewank.. But that's just a personal preference rather than a technical opinon.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » February 13th, 2007, 11:49

I'm thinking of going to Virgin/NTL/telewank because:

1. I can get more than 1MB that I'm on at the moment
2. Phone and TV are all included so I can ditch BT and Sky.

But changing from a reasonably reliable service to an unknown gives me the fear.

wyrd · Post by **wyrd** » February 13th, 2007, 12:12

unless you really want all of your emails deleted and personal details emailed to most of the internet, avoid the "plusnet family"

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » February 13th, 2007, 12:26

To be honest, the service has been pretty reliable from telewank. Customer services have been hit and miss, and depend entirely on the whim of the monkey at the other end of the phone, but the actual service itself has been good. My problems may be more since I've moved their services to at least 4 different houses since I first signed up with them. I was just wanting to make sure I wasn't missing any fantastic deal elsewhere to be honest.

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » February 13th, 2007, 12:50

The massive thing to consider si whether the new address has an existing BT Phone Line.

If it doesn't, they charge £125 quid for installation which is ridiculous, and you then have to pay £11 line rental a month regardless of whether you use their phone service or not.

This is the only reason I haven't moved across to Sky Broadband, as that is by far the cheapest TV/Broadband/Phone package currently available, but I don't have the spare cash to blow away £125.

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » February 13th, 2007, 12:54

Hmmm, good point. Well I know it has telewank cable installed already, as the box is hanging off the wall in the bedroom and the wire is trailing into the middle of the floor! I think I also saw a telewank phone connector box somewhere too, but I don't know if thats an indication of a BT line or not. I very much imagine that we'll just stick with what we have because it does the job and I know where I am with it. The TV is pretty good too, with loads of films that you can "rent" and watch easily, and a replay function for quite a few popular programmes from certain channels such as BBC and Channel 4.

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » February 13th, 2007, 12:56

Make sure you definitely don't sign the contract they send you when you move address, as we refused to, as you are an "existing customer", because if you sign it, you are tied into their service for another 12 months.

Tell them that you are moving but, you are thinking of cancelling with them, and they offered me the 10MB package along with the free tv and stuff for the same price as the 4MB

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » February 13th, 2007, 12:58

Yeah, we have free TV through various coercion methods, but if I can push for the 4meg deal then that might be worth a go! Cheers for the point about the contract too.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » February 13th, 2007, 13:48

wyrd wrote:unless you really want all of your emails deleted and personal details emailed to most of the internet, avoid the "plusnet family"

I've been with Plusnet for years and had no real problems. My emails don't go anywhere near them though.

I guess it's all down to personal experiences.

wyrd · Post by **wyrd** » February 13th, 2007, 14:17

you must be one of the lucky ones

i was with them for 8 months, i think

and got 2 emails from them

one said if your last name is between something and something else, then we have just emailed your name, address, email address and a few other things to most of the other people we know

i was in that range

and another time, i got one saying, oops we just formatted a mailserver, good luck

fortunately i don't use isp email as i move around a lot

Post by **Joose** » February 13th, 2007, 14:48

Ive been on NTL for a good few months now, not got anything bad to say about them. Its reasonably fast, reasonably priced, and its gone down once in 7 months.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » February 13th, 2007, 14:50

Yup, I found NTL very good indeed.

Unfortunately the same can't be said for plusnet recently.

pixie pie · Post by **pixie pie** » February 13th, 2007, 17:40

I've noticed that since its become Virgin, they've changed/simplified/increased their prices (Delete as appropriate). £20 for 2 packages, £30 for 3.. £40 for 4. The packages being: Phone, Broadband, TV and Mobile. But, I think there's a bit of leverage between them.
If you were considering going without a landline, thought about trying the Orange mobile, with free broadband. Contract phone, use it as your home phone. Probably more expensive though.
Also, WEY, I think it was a typo, but line rental is £11/month, not 111. (You can get this cheaper through some other places, I think ours is about £9 with Onetel/carphone warehouse.)

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » February 13th, 2007, 17:52

pixie pie wrote:Also, WEY, I think it was a typo, but line rental is £11/month, not 111. (You can get this cheaper through some other places, I think ours is about £9 with Onetel/carphone warehouse.)

Yep typo.

Are you sure? I think in order to use a LLU broadband package, you have to have a BT Line?

When I say line rental, I'm not talking about a phone package, as that cost comes ontop of the bt line rental, so for example THIS £19.99 package for 2MB broadband and phone, would actually cost you £30.99

I'll have a look around though, because if you can get the line rental cheaper than £11 I might think about changing over to Sky.
In the past when I looked at this, other companies would take over the cost of the £11 for you so as you only had one bill, but I never heard of one charging less than BT.

pixie pie · Post by **pixie pie** » February 13th, 2007, 18:04

I think you would have to sign up for them as your ISP before they'd give you a line rental deal, as thats the only way they can make any money out of you.

As for talking about Sky, if you're already subscribing for their service and are in one of their areas, then you definitely should, only £5/month for telephone (unlimited landline calls) and £10/month for 16Meg unlimited broadband. I'd make sure we were on it if we weren't out "in the sticks" as it were.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 13th, 2007, 19:43

Woo Elephant Yeah wrote:other companies would take over the cost of the £11 for you so as you only had one bill, but I never heard of one charging less than BT.

My Mum was on about this at the weekend, but I wasn't really paying attention. She reckoned Tesco were a cheaper line-rental option (with free calls to other Tesco users) plus you got clubcard points, which I suppose is better than nothing if you shop there.

She was trying to get me to change so she could call me for free, but after I pointed I didn't actually have a BT line and the only reason I bothered to have a damn landline was so she could ring me, she abandoned the idea.

Main problem with letting someone other than BT deal with your line rental is that if it breaks between the exchange and the boundary of your property then it's still BT who have to fix it, and the £125+ charge is likely to be passed on to you.

MrGreen · Post by **MrGreen** » February 17th, 2007, 21:49

Virgin TeleWank are Great, but don't let them install a Scientific Atlanta modem, I have a friend who has the same one, and they crash all the time, but I've had this ISP for years, so the modem might be no longer standard issue.

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » February 17th, 2007, 22:15

wyrd wrote:
one said if your last name is between something and something else, then we have just emailed your name, address, email address and a few other things to most of the other people we know

did you do anything about that?

i'm pretty damn sure that would be a breach of the data protection act and you could probably et some money out of them by way of compensation

Post by **FatherJack** » March 8th, 2007, 1:38

I think I want a new ISP, while my current setup (Pipex wireless) is exceptionally reliable, I'm probably paying way over the odds for lower-than-average speed. (£36 pcm for 256k DSL)

I have a telephone connection, it isn't currently looked after by BT, but that can be easily changed if neccesary.

I require (compared with what I have):
- broadband only (the only service I get from Pipex, it's connected independantly of anything else)
- reliability (been really, really good)
- speed (not good, but very consistent)
- decent up-speed (equal to dl speed)
- no bandwidth cap. at. all. (yes)
- low contention ratio (only three people in my city use the service)

I'm not especially looking to save money, just have a faster connection, while I do not require phone or TV services, if the deal is good I'll consider it.

I've recently unsubscribed from Sky, and haven't really missed it narf, despite having been with them for 15 years, but am considering a wholly new TV setup when I redecorate the entire ground floor sometime in the next few months.

Things I have heard/experienced:

- NTL have rather poor customer service (my own ISP may have, I've just never had to call them)
- A mate is pleased with his NTL setup, especially speed, but despite being supposedly un-capped, received a carefully worded letter asking him to reconsider his excessive usage
- Dad on BT has experienced random, recurring disconnections, which BT blame on his router. 3 routers later, it is safe to say they are mistaken

Any experiences, stories, speed tests and recommendations welcome. What do you lot use?