Broadband Recommends - UK

Hi All

Just had a cheeky letter from my current Broadband supplier (demon) that they are automatically going to upgrade me to a new service, all in interest of customer service blah blah blah.
Being such a valued customer they want an extra £10 per month for their wisdom of pointing this out to me

What they have actually done is changed the features of my current package to a lower spec and the extra gets me back to what I already had.

So may be its time for a change, been with demon for over 10 years, so looking for a reliable reasonably priced, UK based broadband supplier. Reliability is uttermost as I work from home and rely heavily on the internet.

Anyone have any recommendations

Mike


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On 3 Jan 2011, at 17:37, Mike Thornley wrote:

So may be its time for a change, been with demon for over 10 years, so looking for a reliable reasonably priced, UK based broadband supplier. Reliability is uttermost as I work from home and rely heavily on the internet.

I’m pretty happy with idNet.

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

Buy my eBooks at:
http://www.paulbradforth.com/books/


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On 3 January 2011 22:41, Paul Bradforth email@hidden wrote:

On 3 Jan 2011, at 17:37, Mike Thornley wrote:

So may be its time for a change, been with demon for over 10 years, so
looking for a reliable reasonably priced, UK based broadband supplier.
Reliability is uttermost as I work from home and rely heavily on the
internet.

I’m pretty happy with idNet.

I have cable myself but when I was sorting my sister’s broadband out I went
for idNet as they seemed to have one of the best reputations. She’s been
with them a couple of years without any problems.

Another that seems OK is Be Internet (although I’ve no direct experience of
them).

Roger

Roger Houghton
Bath, Somerset
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Good Old BT. Not always the cheapest or the fastest, maybe, but for me, years of true reliability and good, helpful support.

Colin

On 3 Jan 2011, at 17:37, Mike Thornley wrote:

Anyone have any recommendations

Mike


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I believe there are some reasonable deals with BT just now.

However I use Virgin cable and they are pretty reliable and certainly one of the quickest - but if you don’t have cable…

D


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I’m with Zen. Not cheap but an excellent service.

It might be worth looking at the various ‘Home’ packages that include telephone etc. Something I’m contemplating doing to save money. Zen offer one but I need to compare with others ie. bt.

s


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I was with Demon until about six months ago. Just a few days ago I had a similar letter from them . . . they think I am still with them!!!??? Now with O2 and quite happy. O2 even cut my monthly payment after realising that I wasn’t getting the speed that they thought I should.

David

Just had a cheeky letter from my current Broadband supplier (demon) that they are automatically going to upgrade me to a new service, all in interest of customer service blah blah blah.


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At 23:33 +0000 3/1/11, Colin Alcock wrote:

Good Old BT. Not always the cheapest or the fastest, maybe, but for
me, years of true reliability and good, helpful support.

If moving to BT you need to spell out to them exactly what you want.
My father-in-law (who doesn’t understand it all) moved his broadband
supply to BT and discovered that they had also given him web space
and pointed his already owned domain name at their space. His
original business website, which is an online product catalogue, and
was independent of his previous broadband supplier, just
‘disappeared’. It was two or three days before we could get BT to
understand.

I’ve been with Demon since dialup around 15 years ago. If they try
this on me I’ll move too. My router connects to them at just under
8Mb/s, but throughput measured at thinkbroadband.com hovers around
the 1Mb/s. Sometimes slower down than up.

David


David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
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On 4 Jan 2011, at 08:13, David wrote:

I was with Demon until about six months ago. Just a few days ago I
had a similar letter from them . . . they think I am still with
them!!!???

I got that, too!

Our problem was not Demon, but BT. Our phone lines are external on
poles, and the continual ramping up of the ADSL speeds by BT left our
broadband horribly unreliable. I mean we had to reset the ADSL box and
network switches several times a day to even get a connection for a
period of time.

Luckily we are in a Virgin Cable area, and we swapped around a year
ago. It’s been rock solid ever since. Fast, reliable and reasonably
cheap.

Heather


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I’m with O2 and have no problems with them at all. They’re very cheap, even more so if you have an O2 phone contract, and I’ve had no downtime. When I was with Virgin Media I was paying twice as much for half the bandwidth and would lose connection for about an hour daily. That was during the day too, not during peak hours…

Also, be aware that fibre optic broadband is being rolled out by BT in most areas this year. You don’t want to get caught up in a contract with someone and find you can’t switch when that happens (if it’s something you want).

Joe

On 4 Jan 2011, at 10:37, Heather Kavanagh wrote:

On 4 Jan 2011, at 08:13, David wrote:

I was with Demon until about six months ago. Just a few days ago I had a similar letter from them . . . they think I am still with them!!!???

I got that, too!

Our problem was not Demon, but BT. Our phone lines are external on poles, and the continual ramping up of the ADSL speeds by BT left our broadband horribly unreliable. I mean we had to reset the ADSL box and network switches several times a day to even get a connection for a period of time.

Luckily we are in a Virgin Cable area, and we swapped around a year ago. It’s been rock solid ever since. Fast, reliable and reasonably cheap.

Heather


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On 4 Jan 2011, at 10:51, Joe Billings wrote:

I’m with O2 and have no problems with them at all.

Let me just be clear - it wasn’t our broadband provider that was the
issue: it was the supplier of the infrastructure.

We could have switched any number of broadband providers, saved money
all over the shop, but still had a shoddy connection due to the phone
lines being owned by BT, not being capable of more than 2mb/s, and
being forced to tackle 10mb/s and up. Apart from cable providers, all
ADSL networks rely on BT’s phone lines - even the might Sky - to get
their service into your home.

We thought it was our ADSL box that was at fault, so we bought an
expensive new one that made no material difference to the connection
reliability. We swapped out microfilters, rewired the netowrk and
still had a connection that dropped on the hour. BT blamed Demon who
blamed BT who blamed Demon…

We went optical because we could. Now, a year on, BT are finally
investing some of their vast mountain of cash in their infrastructure,
but we’d still be lumbered with a bit of wet string between the
optical hub and our home. If we’d stuck with Demon as our provider,
we’d have suffered a rubbish ADSL connection indefinitely.

I think we made the right choice when we did. YMMV.

=o)

Heather


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BE Unlimited tears BT to shreds in every way possible.

www.bethere.co.uk

Could not believe the amazing speeds, decent pricing, no throttling on up or downloads (BT lies to you about speeds) and delightful customer service compared to the downright awful BT.

Otherwise Virgin Cable on their full package can be faster but for a dedicated IP address and no existing Virgin cabling in your street there is no reason not to go for BE. I am very happy.


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Horses for courses.

Just checked out BE and estimated speed only a fraction faster than BT actually delivers, in my area. Always had fast and appropriate support from BT. All of which goes to show that you should check out what’s best from folks local to you, as well as what looks good on paper. As for cable, very good at its best, but I’ve a daughter and a neighbour that can tell you real horror stories on customer service. The former moved house in November last year and, although an existing customer and doing all the right things, is still awaiting line connection!

Colin

On 5 Jan 2011, at 11:05, John-Paul Kernot wrote:

BE Unlimited tears BT to shreds in every way possible.

www.bethere.co.uk

Could not believe the amazing speeds, decent pricing, no throttling on up or downloads (BT lies to you about speeds) and delightful customer service compared to the downright awful BT.

Otherwise Virgin Cable on their full package can be faster but for a dedicated IP address and no existing Virgin cabling in your street there is no reason not to go for BE. I am very happy.


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ok … all I am going to say is that BT tells you what speed it delivers and then throttles your speed at certain times of the day or when you have used a lit of bandwidth. It is documented on the internet. I know this because I have been woken up to this fact when I had a serious deadline and GBs of data to upload and the speed dropped to negligible and then I began to ask why.

As you say horses for courses, but BT is one of the most untrustworthy big companies in the UK. If you have a very expensive business package with them you may be ok, but for anything normal, BT is one to stay away from.


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Over 20 years I’ve had Talia, Demon, Virgin, Tiscali, Talk Talk, Zen and probably some I’ve forgotten. At the moment I’m with PlusNet, who so far have been pretty good. Zen were definitely the best out the above lot, but you pay more for it. Some of the above use traffic shaping to slow you down, but not Zen.
K


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We are on Plusnet here at the office ~ the tip with Plusnet get the Office package much better performance and not much more either. As a business you can ring them and get straight through as priority, none of the consumer holding on the phone malarkey.

Ultimately get cable if you can.

David

On 5 Jan 2011, at 12:39, Kryten wrote:

At the moment I’m with PlusNet


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