Broadband?

[Smooth Hound]

I am on dial up at the moment and would like to go on broadband, ive heard that some of the suppliers are not too good, can anyone advise me as to good ones and bad ones please.

[marshlander]

Trouble is, everyone's experience is so subjective. I rub along with Tiscali but I hate their foreign call centres which are no help, can't understand me nor me them! Our friends like AOL but they're a lot more expensive.

this site helps you choose but watch out for prices that only last 6 months! http://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/broad ... iders.html

[Martin]

AO HELL - not with a ten-foot bargepole.................
much-loathed (rightfully) by anyone who knows about the net........
I use Tiscali, and must confess it's been pretty good

[marshlander]

AO HELL - not with a ten-foot bargepole.................
much-loathed (rightfully) by anyone who knows about the net........
I use Tiscali, and must confess it's been pretty good

See what i mean!

[ina]

Are they all available everywhere? I always thought that you didn't have much choice if, for example, you live out in the wilds of the highlands.

[Martin]

ok, let's be a bit more specific - re Tiscali - a while back, there was a lightning strike on a nearby telegraph pole, and the lightning travelled down the wire and fried the filter, modem and laptop while I was working on it. One 'phone call to Tiscali put me through to a charming Indian bloke in an Indian call centre - he was intelligible and really helpful, and promised to send replacement filters and modem, which arrived within 2 days - no charge!
There's also been much publicity about poor broadband speeds - I'm on 8mb/s quoted, and I actually see roughly 6mb/s most of the time, which considering I'm miles from nowhere is blooming good! So overall, I'm happy!
As for AOHELL, I could take hours, so I'll precis my loathing........they censor (some mid-west cretin decides what you can see), they compress content to make it cheaper to transmit, they try to "keep you in the fold" by issuing a doctored browser that keeps beginners viewing "AOHELL" content, rather than getting out onto the web itself - and have always reported subscriber's actions to the US homeland authorities as a matter of course (not such a big deal now that Vista has taken over as being even more of a "US government spy in your computer"........and last but not least, it can be a bitch from hell to remove from a computer once people have seen the light, and want a proper isp (I have wasted HOURS removing it from friend's computers)..........

[Gytrash]

Trouble is, everyone's experience is so subjective. I rub along with Tiscali but I hate their foreign call centres which are no help, can't understand me nor me them! Our friends like AOL but they're a lot more expensive.

I used NTL cable (as it was then) broadband and found that the service was apt to go down for days at a time. And it took hours to get to the front of the call-waiting queue to speak to someone!

I've also used Tiscali, which I've been on for the last three years or so. The service seems to disappear for a day or two once every six months, but is ok the rest of the time. However, every time I've called their helplines, I've spoken to someone in an Indian call centre who either doesn't listen or can't understand what I'm saying. (Maybe it's my Yorkshire accent?! ) It's as if they're reading off a card - they keep saying the same things whatever I ask them. I don't phone anymore - I just wait for the service to resume.

Friends who use BT seem happy with their service. They seem a bit pricey though.

I've never heard one good reason for using AOL, but I've heard lots of good reasons for not using them.

[mybarnconversion]

I stick with BT - not the cheapest, but probably one of the simplest to get up and running with (and I like simple)...

[marshlander]

As for AOHELL, I could take hours, so I'll precis my loathing........they censor (some mid-west cretin decides what you can see), they compress content to make it cheaper to transmit, they try to "keep you in the fold" by issuing a doctored browser that keeps beginners viewing "AOHELL" content, rather than getting out onto the web itself - and have always reported subscriber's actions to the US homeland authorities................................................:

I wonder if my friend know this!

We subscribe to 8mbp/s but get just over 2mbp/s. Tiscali is fine for us when it works. We pay £20 per month which includes all uk landline 'normal' phone numbers which we like 'cos I can ring my mum any time without the oh looking at his watch and tutting. Have the same experience as gytrash!

I've wondered if we changed our subscription to 2mbp/s we'd get almost the same speed as we have now - do you know Martin?

[Martin]

I honestly don't know! - but following the recent publicity about slow broadband speeds I'd be tempted to have a word to Tiscali and mention it!
It could well be poor line quality, and if you're connecting with someone like Tiscali, they've got a damn sight more clout to moan at the line company (BT) than you as an individual!
The other thing to look at is that sometimes you can get better performance from a wifi modem than the "standard issue" jobs

[Smooth Hound]

Thanks folks, tiscali seem to be the most positive then, how much is the bt one and what do you get for your money?

[The Hopefuls]

im with orange broadband at the mo, i only changed because of the £400 off a laptop deal, i was with tiscali before this.
looking back im glad i changed off tiscali as it was forever cutting me off saying my phone line was broke, never had any problem with orange, but speek to other orange customers and they just moan about them,

orange is fine for me :)

[citizentwiglet]

I'm with Tiscali too. I have had a few problems - their servers do indeed seem to crash with alarming regularity...oddly enough, whenever they are running an advertising promotion for new customers! It was down for about 4 days a couple of weeks back, which was a pain in the derriere. I also get nowhere near the speed that I ought to be getting, we are currently waiting to find out why this is.
I've spoken to their call-centre a couple of times and they are pretty helpful, although they do have a tendency to 'pop' you on hold for yonks, which is not good when it's an 0870 number.

However, they do seem to be better than AOHell, Virgin and most of the others who friends are always complaining about. They all have their issues I suppose.....

[WiseBird]

Its BT for us too...expensive, yes at around £40 per month BUT this is on a business phone line and the reason we pay this amount is for the truly unlimited downloads...no capping and no fair useage policy (this is very important to us as I sell downloads over the net).

Also it is simple to get up and running and if there is something we don't understand, the people at the callcentre are very helpful and once (with our permission) even was able to remotely change things on our computer - and I wouldn't trust any old company to do that

[Stonehead]

We're with Thus (Demon), using a business account. It's pricey at £24.99 a month but there are no restrictions, their spam filters are outstanding and it's extremely reliable (email access has failed twice in the three years we've had it here, for a couple of hours at a time). I've used them on and off since the early 1990s.

Theoretically, speed is up to 8mbp/s but actually it's 2.5-3mbp/s. We were warned this would be the case as we're on alumnium wiring at the edge of the service area for our exchange. The BT engineer who came out to install broadband was surprised to find he could connect us and said if we'd been on the other side of the hill it would have been no go.

I'm happy with 2.5-3mbp/s as it's a lot faster than ISDN2e, which is what we had before, and it's also much, much, much cheaper.

However, there is one major fly in the ointment. Their customer service and their Indian call centre are among the absolute worst I've ever come across - and that really is saying something.

But as I've only dealt with them twice, I can live with that.