Which Broadband Providers?

[Boss Hog]

So who do you use?

I was with Pipex for 12 months who let me just say were a NIGHTMARE as soon as Tiscali took them over :icon_Wall:

Just took them through www.CISAS.org.uk which has taken 6 months and I won, yippee, just waiting on my money now.

I am currently with www.zen.co.uk who aren't the cheapest but have been 100% perfect so far.

[sabian1982]

Sky - works out at £5 per month, just can't be beat.

[Pixels Ink]

Virgin 20MB connection, probs upgrade to the 50MB service when its available.

The upload speeds are excellent for sending big print files and the download speed is just whhoooosshh!

Never had a problem with them, and the previous owners Telewest.

I just wouldn't use ADSL at all.

[IS-James]

Virgin 20MB connection....

...I just wouldn't use ADSL at all.

Something to be careful of with Virgin is that they are in the process of changing how they throttle the connection speeds of heavy users. They already have caps in place for how much you can download in certain times and if these caps are passed then they reduce your connection speed until the end of that period. It seems they implement this capping in a targeted fashion so if you are on the same loop as a lot of other users then it will be enabled. So it can be a bit of a lottery as to whether you get good service or not.

Saying that, they are a fast, cheap option and after the inital installation you tend to get few problems. The initial installation can be a real pain as they use contractors to do the installs so if there are any problems you have to contact Virgin who then talk to the contractors and so on. This can lead to a very drawn out process. When we had out office cable installed it took about a month of wrangling before we had a working connection.

If you can't get cable or want to go with an ADSL option then I would recommend Zen. They certainly aren't the cheapest but their speed and reliability is top knotch. Also they don't throttle or shape your traffic at all so you can be sure that you will have full speed when you need it. Their home packages have caps on traffic and above that work on a pay-as-you-go system. They also offer business packages that are completely unlimited and come with an even more attentive level of support.

[Pixels Ink]

yeah, they do cap me at peak times. but the cap is 5MB. i can live with that!

My 12 months contract is up in March and I've wangled 50MB for the same price as my current 20MB. I said I was gonna shift to 02 ;)

[IS-James]

I have looked into moving to Sky for my home internet access in the past to save money but unfortunately it is only available to sky tv customers. This rules me out as I live in a 3rd floor flat and dishes aren't allowed. It also rules out cable of course as Virgin wouldn't be willing to run cable to the third floor even if the building owner would agree!

You would imagine that Virgin would have some kind of housing developers scheme so that if a company is renovating an apartment building they could have Virgin come in and cable the whole place. Adding the selling point of all the flats being ready for cable tv and internet and handing Virgin a whole load of customers in one go.

Ah well....

[agbdesigns]

Can't beat O2 , £10 for a 16mb connection with free router and good customer service.

[Xenonsoft]

PlusNet for me. Brother set it up a good while ago and we've not had any major problems, other than capping if over used, which is fair game I'd say.

[IS-James]

Can't beat O2 , £10 for a 16mb connection with free router and good customer service.

What are their usage policies like?

[agbdesigns]

It's all fine mate, best service.