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Which Broadband Isp For Student House?


dirtbiker

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Right, me and four mates are moving into a house in Nottingham in October for our second year of uni and i'm currently looking for broadband for it.

I'm quite a heavy Bittorrent user and one of my friends is into his online gaming so we'll be looking for a line that's as fast as possible with no download cap if possible.

Free or cheap calls would also be good seeing as two of my housemates have girlfriends at home who they regularly call...

So far i've found:

Tiscali 8mb - No cap, free UK calls: £22 p/m

NTL 10mb - No cap : £35 p/m (effectively)

Bulldog 16mb - No cap : £24.50 p/m

Out of these Bulldog seems the most tempting, although the free calls with Tiscali would be a bonus.

Anyone got any thoughts or suggestions on the matter.

Cheers.

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Find out what the terms and conditions are related to the 'free calls'. They'll most probably be 'local' land lines only. Find out what's local if so, and if there are any time restrictions.

We've got 'free local evening and weekend calls' with BT, but evening is after 6, so it's like just neighbouring phone number areas, and mine, after 6 and before 6am and at weekends.

Depends how much you'll benefit from them, do your flatmates use the phone a lot etc? My sister just uses her mobile to text a lot, and has free Genie minutes so..

Also, check if you can get 4mb+ connection. Most houses don't have lines which will carry it, meaning they're selling something they 'might' be able to offer in the time you've got a contact with them, which is a f**king skank.

I'd avoid BT. They've been looked into for unfair trading and ripping people off. Tiscali sounds good.

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I think bulldog speed depends on how close you live to wherever it comes from and how many people

are using it, if you live next door youll get really fast speeds but if you live further away it will be quite a lot slower. If you look it says "up to 16 meg"

I use blueyonder which seems good, and we get cable tv too.

Get them phone users to use skype...

Edited by adamtrials
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We have NTL, although to be honest the only reason is that you don't need a BT line. So Bulldog which requires a BT line is an extra £13 or whatever when you take that extra cost into consideration.

I have a feeling that NTL have removed all their caps and are now saying that you get unlimited data. I've certainly not had any problems with going over any limits.

As for customer service, I hear NTLs is terrible, but I've never really had to use it. We've had it for 2 years now and had to call them once. In that time, the connection's only been down for a few hours in the day time on two occasions within a week of each other - I guess they must have been doing some work on the lines.

So no complaints with NTL from me, really.

P.S. You are your mate are gonna piss each other off if you're downloading when he wants to play games ;)

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NTL is f**king shocking.

Fair play, lately they've got a lot better, but a few months i had to start writing down evey time the internet went down. Twice a day, without fail for two weeks. NTL half arsed fixed it, as it kept going down after they 'fixed' it, just not as much.

Anyway, its a lot better know, and hardly ever goes down. The only time i can remember in the past 2 months was a town wide fault. However, i tried to ring their customer support, and they shut at 8. Er, nice one, dick heads.

They are by far the best, but not all that bad.

Also, a note on all these 16mb/10mb/24mb options. It all depends on your distance from the exchange. I know people on 8mb bulldog broadband who get 4mb at the best of times, and there is nothing they can do. Someone even got a max of 2mb so was actually advised to downgrade to the 2mb package, which they did.

You'll notice i mentioned 24mb, which, if you want, is available here. Its quite new though, but just incase.

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Our house is in Radford, just down from some Trent accomodation... :-

Just spent £240 on office chairs, this is an expensive business!

I'm pretty tempted to spend the bit extra and get NTL just cos i've got the 2mb line at home and it's been pretty good this year...?

:ermm:

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If you dont want to be tied into a 1 year contract Nildram do a pay as you go thingy -

I'm paying £16 a month for a 2mbit line . There's a download limit (2.5GB) but they automatically extend it and charge you an extra 2 quid when you run over. The beauty is the contract only lasts 30 days so I can stop whenever I want and then restart when I'm not skint anymore. Unlike AOL they don't care what you put behind the modem so you could be running a hundred machines through it without getting any shit.

You need a BT line as well obviously and theres no free hardware but the get out of jail free clause is worth the extra £15 on a modem.

I think it's gone down once for about an hour in the 18 months I've been using them. Unlike NTL who suck shitty dog dick in all ways known to man or beast

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Sounds cool but the problem is that i could use that allowance in a day, let alone between the five of us!

So thats why i need something without a cap :)

um,

AOL?

watch less porn?

stop stealing movies (dirty student bastards)?

:P

I reckon the big ISP's are all much the same, your choice is really between BT and NTL.

Personally I wouldn't touch NTL with Anzo's. I had 3 years of pain with them and I'm never going back - ever

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Our house is in Radford, just down from some Trent accomodation... :-

Just spent £240 on office chairs, this is an expensive business!

I'm pretty tempted to spend the bit extra and get NTL just cos i've got the 2mb line at home and it's been pretty good this year...?

:ermm:

im living at norton court in radford now. You lived near here before? dont listen to anyone who tells you this place isnt any good because its a lie, radford is awesome. make sure u go to kabana next to the gun shop and tell tarek that you know james lol.

Edited by James
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I was in Halls on Jubilee Campus (off triumph road) last year.

Yeah, i'm pretty sure that Radford's no where near as bad as people say, especially our bit seeing as its just an extension of lenton boulevard...

Also, Aldi rocks :D

Back to the topic... I'm still pretty swung towards NTL seeing as we already have their cable tv boxes in three rooms so we can have a wireless router on the first floor and it means we won't have to pay £11 a month or whatever to BT for line rental... :)

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