Broadband

[fruitbat]

Right time for me to get internet back at home but which one to go for.

Lot of people i have been speaking to say BT.

Looking online Tiscali's and Talk Talk's (but talk talk looks like have to have line rental with them too) prices do look better I have to say but I not had experience with them and don't wanna get stuck with a company that's gonna be s**t

Thanks in advance

Frooty

Edited September 2, 2007 by fruitbat

[munkee]

www.bethere.co.uk

literally the best BB service available without any slight doubt in my mind.

Insanely good customer service.. i get an email about planned outages and they are always doing work at like 4am if they do have to do anything and ive never had it affect me either way.

up to 25mb broadband and the best bit is.. they dont have a fair usage policy.. and they have never enforced any cap on anyone. i download shit loads with them now and have never heard anything from them to say its too much.

Oh and by the way tiscali are the worst out of any company

[Jonny Jones]

Not heard of bethere... we've been with NTL (now Virgin Media) for years. Had ups and downs with them, fairly decent, probably not the best though... but its somebody to maybe consider if you're still not sure.

[Nick Garland]

People may shoot me down for this but whatever.

NTL/Virgin Media, I think, are the best broadband company IF you are a heavy internet user.

I have used well into the 120gb area of bandwidth in a month before without them even blinking and eyelid, where as my friend on BT went over his 2gb limit and instantly got charged for it and a phone call.

NTL really do have an "unlimited usage" policy, they do not mind howmuch you use it "so long as you do not affect other users in your area". With companies such as BT, Sky etc all running on BT landlines, they generally have a "fair usage policy" which is normally 1gb a day max transfer, now if you do a lot of downloading and uploading/playing online games, this will get used VERY rapidly.

Always check the usage allowance etc as you will be suprised how much you use.

[Krisboats]

People may shoot me down for this but whatever.

NTL/Virgin Media, I think, are the best broadband company IF you are a heavy internet user.

I have used well into the 120gb area of bandwidth in a month before without them even blinking and eyelid, where as my friend on BT went over his 2gb limit and instantly got charged for it and a phone call.

NTL really do have an "unlimited usage" policy, they do not mind howmuch you use it "so long as you do not affect other users in your area". With companies such as BT, Sky etc all running on BT landlines, they generally have a "fair usage policy" which is normally 1gb a day max transfer, now if you do a lot of downloading and uploading/playing online games, this will get used VERY rapidly.

Always check the usage allowance etc as you will be suprised how much you use.

Most places don't base it on how much you download in total, but if you donload heavily during peak times (usually defined as between 6pm-11pm). Virgin media have one of the most complex and drawn out fair usage policies going, and have the right to slow down or terminate your connection whenever they feel your using it too much without giving any notice.

From the sounds of it spacemunkee's provider sounds about the best of the lot.

[Fish-Finger-er]

is it possible to have 2 broadband suppliers to the same phoneline, or would i require 2 phone lines?

reasom being i work for bt, so get free broadband through them, with a usage policy(pretty slack, but im gettin close quite often, and with winter drawing in, the lure of online gaming,and the return of prison break,as well as the fact im upgrading to my own rapidshare account soon, itll soon be thoroughly abused)

also get a free home hub, free calls to landlines through this, and a digital tv service as soon as its rolled out in like october. so dont wanna turn the offer down, as if nothing else, the tv on demand service, with 80gb PVR will be a very nice addition to my room.as well as the phone shizz keeping my mother happy.

but would be interesting in having an account with bethere, and relying on that more for torrents/rapidshare use.

or would i have to have 2 phonelines to achieve this??

[Krisboats]

is it possible to have 2 broadband suppliers to the same phoneline, or would i require 2 phone lines?

reasom being i work for bt, so get free broadband through them, with a usage policy(pretty slack, but im gettin close quite often, and with winter drawing in, the lure of online gaming,and the return of prison break,as well as the fact im upgrading to my own rapidshare account soon, itll soon be thoroughly abused)

also get a free home hub, free calls to landlines through this, and a digital tv service as soon as its rolled out in like october. so dont wanna turn the offer down, as if nothing else, the tv on demand service, with 80gb PVR will be a very nice addition to my room.as well as the phone shizz keeping my mother happy.

but would be interesting in having an account with bethere, and relying on that more for torrents/rapidshare use.

or would i have to have 2 phonelines to achieve this??

2 phonelines or a cable line and a phone line. As far as i'm aware its impossible to have 2 broadband services enabled on the same line at the same time.

[munkee]

Another problem you may find is that some broadband providers bind your actual address as well as your phone line. Meaning only they can serve you with broadband, i remember reading about it on a forum when some guy was requesting a mac code to leave tiscali but they wouldnt give it him (f**k knows why) but long story short he was thinking of creating a new phone line and gettin a new provider on that.. which they wouldnt let him do. Leaving the other phone line with tiscali effectively dead since he wasnt using it and cancelled their payments when they kept taking them

[Nick Garland]

Most places don't base it on how much you download in total, but if you donload heavily during peak times (usually defined as between 6pm-11pm). Virgin media have one of the most complex and drawn out fair usage policies going, and have the right to slow down or terminate your connection whenever they feel your using it too much without giving any notice.

From the sounds of it spacemunkee's provider sounds about the best of the lot.

I am a heavy user for most of the 24 hours in the day and they have never slowed me down, nor my friends.

They have the "fair usage policy" but they never enforce it, check out all the cable forums no one has been cut off.

[Krisboats]

I am a heavy user for most of the 24 hours in the day and they have never slowed me down, nor my friends.

They have the "fair usage policy" but they never enforce it, check out all the cable forums no one has been cut off.

You may not have been spotted yet, but i assure you you will be.

Sorry if it's been posted before but i think that some people are unaware how much they have to download before they are shaped as it is different on whichever broadband package you are on.

Broadband Size: M

During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: M package download at least 350MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 1Mb, with their upload speed set to 128Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Even if a Broadband Size: M user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 1,000 music files per day.

Broadband Size: L

During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: L package download at least 750MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 2Mb, with their upload speed set to 192Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Even if a Broadband: Size L user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 1,500 music files per day.

Broadband Size: XL

During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: XL package download at least 3GB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 5Mb, with their upload speed set to 256Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Even if a Broadband Size: XL user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 4,000 music files per day.

Info is from http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Its slightly more or less depending on how much your usage affects the surrounding areas connection speeds, and the traffic shaping last for 4 hours or so after you've hit the limit for peak time usage. Constant "re-offenders" get their traffic shaped permanantly during peak times and from what i've read up about virgin the traffic shaping drops things like torrents down to around 10kbps tops and cuases problems with things like msn and online gaming.

[Tomm]

NTL has been fine for me for the past 4 years. I don’t really ever speak to them though. In fact they don’t even have my current, or last address! My login information is apparently stored in the modem, so I can just take that and plug it in anywhere in the Manchester area, and it’ll work, apparently. At least this means I don’t get all their junk mail.

The connection in my area can get REALLY sluggish at times so to be fair I think the fair usage thing is a good plan. I don’t download in the evenings anyway, I put the torrents on during the day and turn them off when I actually want to use the internet 

[Tony Harrison]

BT is fine until you move house.

Within five days you will be contemplating either suicide or burning down every BT call centre you can find. Strangely, the BT call centre closest to me has exceptionally good security measures (and I'm not joking).

Incorrect bills for hundreds of pounds, countless (and I really mean countless) phone calls, being told various stories and given promises that just aren't kept.

AVOID BT BROADBAND - YOUR SANITY DEPENDS ON IT.

[Nick Garland]

Ive been with NTL for 7 years now, if the torrents have good seeds I normally max my connection. I also get good constant speeds from direct downloads, ie from ftp sites or large commercial sites.

I still have never had any problem with their fair usage policy.

[Thurston]

Ive been with freeserve/wanadoo and now its orange broadband for 6 years

been great, very helpful, unlimited usage