My BT Broadband is up for renewal in July.

Sky is cheaper but i've heard a few horror stories. I'd rather pay extra to get better quality, speed, support and stability. Who would you recommend? (anyone other than AOL of course).

Thanks,

Jon.

I have been with Virgin Non cable 8MB Broadband and I have not had any problems at all.

Used Tesco as well and no problems either, but they seemed costly for faster sevice.

Virgin are

I'd seriously consider Zen Internet. I've been with them for a few years now and have had nothing but awesome service from them. They always get great reviews and they also came quite high in the Watchdog survey a while back.

Also check out thinkbroadband for some comparisons.

Hope that helps.

Zen are annoying me a bit at the moment as they rebalance their pipes on fridays and mondays which often results in my system being kicked offline and not coming back on until the modem has been off for an hour or two.

Bearing in mind they are twice the price of other services, I'm not sure I can recommend them.

In a minority I know, but I can highly recommend Plusnet. Never had any bad service from them and the only time my link has been down was when BT drilled through the cables serving our street

Chris

Orange..........If you have a Orange monthly contract you can get Orange Broadband, another phone ( Broadband phone ) and number + free calls to numbers starting 01/02.........24/7 for

I wouldn't use orange personally as you have to sign up to another 18 months contract to benefit :thumbdwn: , bit stupid when I'm nearly out of mine!

Also, don't whatever you do touch anything related to breathe (run by virtual isp services) - these people continued setting up fraudulent direct debits (several times too) from my bank for two years after I'd cancelled their service :eek: - Had to change bank accounts to stop it!!! And Wanadoo tried a similar stunt after I left them so even though they are now owned by orange I'd still avoid them............

I am happy with Virgin Media (or NTL as Was), I know it's cable not xdsl but I have got 20MB download and a 2MB upload now, and after speaking to customer services I am paying

It depends on your distance from the exchange and what you want to get out of it, ive been through the cheap providers, talk talk, plus net and a couple of others. I got fed up with dodgy call centers and people who dont have a clue what they are talking about. I now pay a little more but get far better service with be un ltd, my p2p hit 350k over the weekend.

and at a pound a meg it isnt really that expensive. No other company offers 24meg and i get emails telling me about planned outages, text messages confirming payment is due to come out a week in advance every month as well as online help desk and forums manned by techies.

I'd recommend it if you can have it in your area.

If your a way from the exchange though then cable could be a better option.

check The Broadband Resource to see which providers are in your area

did i mention no lengthy contract either, three months i think.

I have been with a few ISP's in my time..

Zen are brilliant, nothing but praise here.. but they are expensive! As they say.. you get what you pay for.

Plusnet are good if your a light to moderate user, their fair usage policy is a bit strict and they have had some big technical cockups recently!!

Virgin Media/NTL/Telewest in my opinion are by far the best all rounder providing you live in a cable area. Where i live (huddersfield) its brilliant never had a single problem.

Where my parents live (birmingham) nothing but problems recently.. they have been without broadband for something like 3 weeks because the exchange is over loaded and they are putting off the upgrades needed because of the new 20meg service, it was planned for may. Now they get minimum 75% packet loss all day everyday.. there excuse is 'the work is pending'

Orange/Talk Talk and other free ISP's avoid like the plague! Working in a IT firm dealing with the public we are constantly dealing with customers with problems regarding the two ISP's mentioned above... they are also to blame for the recent overloading of the UK's telephone network which is pretty close to capacity!! Too many people wanting cheap crappy broadband

As i said.. you get what you pay for!!

All DSL services are run through BT no matter who your provider is, its all fine when it works but its when you get a fault somewhere that it becomes frustrating, you ring Tiscali with the problem and they say , ooh thats a line fault, ring BTs customer services and register it. Then you ring BT, explain the fault and they say, as you arent a broadband customer of BT you need to call Tiscali and get them to register the fault with BT.

rinse, repeat

Id much rather pay a bit more for the direct service

All DSL services are run through BT no matter who your provider is, its all fine when it works but its when you get a fault somewhere that it becomes frustrating, you ring Tiscali with the problem and they say , ooh thats a line fault, ring BTs customer services and register it. Then you ring BT, explain the fault and they say, as you arent a broadband customer of BT you need to call Tiscali and get them to register the fault with BT.

rinse, repeat

Id much rather pay a bit more for the direct service

But that would depend on the provider. I had a line fault a few months ago, I called Zen on the Friday, and on the Saturday morning BT called in to have a look. By the afternoon I was back online, and I was contacted by Zen to make sure all was well...

I only had to make one phone call, and that was to Zen. I think I class that as excellent service.

I only had to make one phone call, and that was to Zen. I think I class that as excellent service.

Same with Plusnet when BT cut through my cable

Chris

that is very good service, i spend most of my days fixing broadband probems and usually end up with the response i posted if people are on 3rd party providers

One thing i'm very confused about is lag caused by traffic volume.

If all ADSL lines go through BT, then it presumably doesn't make a difference which ISP you're with from that point of view?

I can't get cable in my area. I can also only get up to 3Mb download speed due to my distance from the exchange. IIRC the exchange is due to be upgraded by 2009, the same time that cable will be available. Typical!

Gillywibble

I think you are probably better of staying with BT they now have some better priced packages and as you say all Isps operate through them.

Re lag or traffic volume due you mean the dreaded Contention ratio or traffic shaping, most home users are stuck on a 50:1 contention ratio meaning up to 50 people online(same exchange) will be competing for bandwidth on 1 "channel" at the exchange.

Traffic shaping employed pretty much by all Isps now is the reduction of bandwidth between the hours of 6pm and 11pm to put off the heavy users and give us all a chance:rolleyes:

Isp to avoid Pipex(possibly about to bought by Tiscali:thumbdwn: )

Gillywibble

I think you are probably better of staying with BT they now have some better priced packages and as you say all Isps operate through them.

Re lag or traffic volume due you mean the dreaded Contention ratio or traffic shaping, most home users are stuck on a 50:1 contention ratio meaning up to 50 people online(same exchange) will be competing for bandwidth on 1 "channel" at the exchange.

Traffic shaping employed pretty much by all Isps now is the reduction of bandwidth between the hours of 6pm and 11pm to put off the heavy users and give us all a chance:rolleyes:

Isp to avoid Pipex(possibly about to bought by Tiscali:thumbdwn: )

i thought the point of local loop unbundling was so that third parties (not bt) were able to gain access to bt exchanges to install their own hardware?!? Hence people like Be un Ltd being able to offer speeds of 24meg broadband on adsl max2 where as other equipment/companies can only offer a lesser speed.

I got a text yesterday from Be - Apologies for the inconvenience but there will be network maintenance occuring on 28/06/07 at 05.00pm till 09:00pm. This may cause service issues. Thanks, Be

I have never been with a provider so open about outages!!!

I also get a text once a month just letting me know their taking payment from my account even though my payment comes out on a set day.

Really cant fault them and would recommend them over any other provider.

no traffic shaping over here

I've contacted Be who say they should be able to supply a minimum of 5Mb on my exchange (i'm currently getting 2-2.5), so I think that's where i'll be going.

Thanks for all your replies

good choice!

If you sign up pm me your name and customer id and i'll use the refer a friend and get you your first month free, obviously i get a free month too:D

I have to do it within five days of you signing up!

All DSL services are run through BT no matter who your provider is, its all fine when it works but its when you get a fault somewhere that it becomes frustrating, you ring Tiscali with the problem and they say , ooh thats a line fault, ring BTs customer services and register it. Then you ring BT, explain the fault and they say, as you arent a broadband customer of BT you need to call Tiscali and get them to register the fault with BT.

rinse, repeat

Id much rather pay a bit more for the direct service

Hmmmmmmm You mean like BT do themselves????

We had a letter around 2 and a half years ago from BT Broadband saying they were upgrading all the 500k broadband customers to 2meg broadband...... a week or so later i noticed the connection had gotten faster and i checked and found we now had 1meg connection speed. A few days later another letter from BT saying we had been upgraded but due to the fact that we didn't have a very good quality line we would only be getting 1meg but they would be rectifying the problem and should get us onto the full 2meg service within 12 months...... Guess what speed we're still on!!!!!

Now the comment above refers to a couple of calls i've had today with BT regarding our line......

We've recently developed a lot of earth noise on the line and have reported it a couple of times but each time it clears and BT clear the fault..... Today we report the fault while it is on and as usual the BT person tries every trick in the book to fob the fault off as an eqpt fault with our phone. Now i'm a telecommunications engineer of 17 years so she was fighting a losing battle with this one.... I also deal with BT and their "remote testing", which isn't the most useful of systems!!!!, as part of my job and you wouldn't believe the amount of times i pass a level crossing telephone fault to them only to be told the line is all OK..... even though i have an engineer sat on the end of there phone line in their termination box with no dial tone !!!!!

Eventually after 10 minutes she backed down and logged a fault for an engineer to come and look into it. Now at this point i also mention the above info about the poor line quality affecting the broadband etc etc... at which point she says oohhh i can't deal with that you need to speak to BT Broadband who she puts me through to. There then starts another 15 minutes of explaining that it isn't a fault on the router, PC, laptop, cabling in the house, filters etc etc but at least once i mentioned what i did this person agreed that i had basically proved all my own eqpt ok as an engineer would do.... She then logs a fault for the broadband side of things.

All's well & good and hopefully sorted i thinks.......... Then i get another call from BT Broadband saying that they are closing my fault down because i've got a fault on my line!!!!! And that they have checked the line quality and the most i'll ever get is 1meg even when the line is fixed!!!!! The guy was rather abrupt and wasn't interested in the fact that BT themselves say if my line was in good nick i could have 6meg. Or that neighbours who are also on broadband and off the same exchange get faster connections... Again pointing out the fact that it is OUR line that is buggered and not an issue with my location etc!!!!! He was only concerned with telling me that he couldn't help and that i needed to report the problem to the faulting side of things to sort my line out!!!!!

Anyway once they get the noise thing sorted i'll see if the connection has speeded up and if not i suppose it'll be another merry-go-round between the fault reporting line and the Broadband fault reporting line again!!!!! The only reason it has become an issue recently is due to the fact i now have an Xbox360 and it proves a little sluggish if i'm playing online and the mrs is also trying to use the net at the same time.

But to be honest i'm also thinking of moving broadband provider but am waiting till i get our line sorted out before mvoing to another company. I'm ready for a long drawn out affair though..... A colleague of mine had BT out 4 times before actually getting an engineer who agreed his line was of poor quality and simply transferred it off the dodgy cable pair it was on onto another good working pair in that section of the route..... Hey presto he went from 500k - 2meg!!!

Cheers

Dave.

**Deleted as double post**

I had line problems due to distance from exchange - 3.6km, i managed about 1.6meg with talktalk and my brother had roughly the same with bulldog, i'm now touching 7meg and was prompted by a be member of staff on the forum to raise a fault as the error stats on my line look high suggesting a tech problem, in all honesty i havent raised a fault as 7meg is pretty damn fast when your used to 1.5

I've so far raised 3 possible faults with BT. The first they fixed and since then they are adamant there isn't a fault.

Interestingly enough, changing from IE7 to Firefox has made a huge difference to my browsing speed, it's literally 5 times faster on loading pages.

The main reason i'm leaving BT is due to the appalling customer service when you report a fault. You get to speak to someone in India, obviously, and then go through the hassle of explaining your situation a dozen times before they even grasp the concept that you have an inkling of what you're talking about.

Before I report a fault I will perform a system check, try a different router, change the line feed in, change the filter etc etc. But when I phone them they say 'have you cleared your internet cache'? It's a joke.

It will be interesting to see if Be can perform.

Good Luck

ohh, dont forget to use quidco to join up as well, its another 24 quid in your pocket:thumbup: