(UK) Do any of you use O2 broadband?

[daneoni]

So i've had it with Tiscali and im now looking to move on to greener pastures. O2 broadband has caught my eye with their 20mb unlimited service plus i also get a discounted price as an O2 mobile customer.

I know i'll probably not get anywhere near 20mb but anything bigger then 12mb is a plus from my current 6mb which often decreases to around 1mb/s...or realistically 600kb/s

Anyway i just wanted to find out if anyone currently uses O2 and what they have to say about them.

Thanks for the replies in advance

 

[neiltc13]

So i've had it with Tiscali and im not looking to move on to greener pastures. O2 broadband has caught my eye with their 20mb unlimited service plus i also get a discounted price as an O2 mobile customer.

I know i'll probably not get anywhere near 20mb but anything bigger then 12mb is a plus from my current 6mb which often decreases to around 1mb/s...or realistically 600kb/s

Anyway i just wanted to find out if anyone currently uses O2 and what they have to say about them.

Thanks for the replies in advance

O2's 20mb service is only available in selected areas. These are the areas where O2 has actually added their equipment to the local telephone exchange. I switched to O2 last week and the service has been great so far, although I'm on the £22.50 per month service which gives up to 8mbit/sec because my local exchange is not "unbundled".

From what I've heard though, if you do live within O2's service area then you will definitely get an incredible product. Remember also that O2's sister company, Be Broadband offers a great range too.

I switched from Tiscali and it seems to be better.

 

[big_malk]

I've no experience with O2, but if you want to get what you pay for, I'd recommend Virgin Media. I have 20Mb, and it actually IS 20Mb, I download at 2.6MB/s (capital B) regularly. According to speedtest.net my connection is faster than 98% of UK connections, and 91% of worldwide connections. I'm not in any major city either, so I assume their coverage is pretty good.

Better still, by the end of the year they should have completed an upgrade to offer 50Mbs broadband, so I'd guess that'd handle about 6MB/s

 

[arkitect]

I've no experience with O2, but if you want to get what you pay for, I'd recommend Virgin Media. I have 20Mb, and it actually IS 20Mb, I download at 2.6MB/s (capital B) regularly. According to speedtest.net my connection is faster than 98% of UK connections, and 91% of worldwide connections. I'm not in any major city either, so I assume their coverage is pretty good.

Better still, by the end of the year they should have completed an upgrade to offer 50Mbs broadband, so I'd guess that'd handle about 6MB/s

Another vote for VirginMedia 20Mb.
Although I would love to get O2 since I am on an iPhone contract with them…

 

[WhiteNoiseMaker]

I'd recommend Be*. Im on the £14 Be Value service and the speeds are excellent (upto 24MB) no download restrictions either (I download on average 200GB per month! ).

 

[daneoni]

Well i just got off the phone with O2 and Virgin and Virgin told me they can only offer me 8mb/s at best because i'm in an 'analogue' area (no fibre cabling i guess). O2 on the other hand said i'm well within their area and can offer me 20mb/s no problem even estimated it to be 23 mb/s than can go through my line all for £15/m

 

[vincebio]

ok, you probably want to hear this....

i was on Virgin 20mb cable, was on it all the way up the upgrading.
Not once did i ever get anywhere near 20mb. Strange yes....
It cost me 38 quid a month...

When i bought my iPhone, i tried to get the 20mb, but it said my line could only take the 16mb. No problem, especaiyll since it was only £10 per month.

Whats happened to me is that not only have i saved £28 per month, but my speed is always between 12 and 16Mbit....i would have been lucky to get 8 on the cable line...which is ironic considering it should have been the other way round..

my advice, is dont even hesitate.

The O2 broadband is excellent.....the costs are excellent.....its never interupted once, apart from Leopard getting bored and my airport going off for 5 mins now and then.
The customer service is really good and is based in Glasgow, which is handy for me obviously

They are upgrading to 50Mbit lines in 2009

 

[tersono]

I switched from a Zen to o2 about 3 months back and I have to say I'm very impressed. Their customer service is excellent and I'm getting a very stable connection (I'm on 16mbit with a static IP at £15 per month - that's over twenty quid less than I was paying with Zen for lower speeds with a download cap ). My only criticisms are:

1. O2/Be's DNS servers are a tad flaky (this is a known issue). Set up your router to use OpenDNS and you'll be fine.
2. The o2 wireless box (made by Thompson) is pretty cack. Do yourself a favour and pick up a cheap Netgear DG834GT (or N) via eBay. It uses the same chipset as the o2 box (so you'll get similar speeds) but it's a lot more reliable. More info here

With the exception of the above two points, I'd say that o2 are probably the best consumer-level ISP I've used (and I've been through quite a few in my time).

 

[edesignuk]

I'd be careful with Virgin Broadband, their throttling policies are getting ridiculous.

This thread has got me thinking about changing back to ADSL, even though my last experience with that sucked too.

freakin telcos

 

[daneoni]

I'd be careful with Virgin Broadband, their throttling policies are getting ridiculous.

This thread has got me thinking about changing back to ADSL, even though my last experience with that sucked too.

freakin telcos

Yeah i just read about the throttling thing and it sounds ridiculous. Hopefully O2 don't follow suit

 

[Mr.Noisy]

I'm Considering o2 myself, ive read/heard some pretty positive stuff about their customer service being really good, I was using zen a while back,they was ok, but as i say that was a while back, then I moved house and got Virgin media in, ive always had a good service from them, but they ain't the cheapest and all i want is a fair ISP for a fair price now live about 2.5 miles from the local exchange so i may be looking at switching back to ADSL sooner rather than later and it may well be with o2, but i'll wait for my phone contract to expire and change to o2 for phone and broadband

 

[eluk]

Try here for O2 specific views. Also on the same site plenty of useful info on broadband.

 

[displaced]

I'd recommend Be*. Im on the £14 Be Value service and the speeds are excellent (upto 24MB) no download restrictions either (I download on average 200GB per month! ).

Funnily enough, O2 broadband is Be Unlimited broadband. O2 took over Be and the O2 Broadband service is simply re-badged Be, with a discount offered for O2 Mobile subscribers.

I switched from Virgin 20Mb to Be at the beginning of this year. The difference is like night and day. VM's 20Mb struggled to give me 4-6Mb during peak times, simply because they don't have the cash to boost their network capacity whilst congestion builds due to a glitzy advertising campaign. Be's network (and consequently, O2's) is very well supported so far, with regular capacity upgrades. I don't know about O2, but subscribing via Be gives you access to their great forums. Tech staff post there frequently, with emails and SMS messages sent directly to you should their be any scheduled maintenance going on that will affect you. They're more than happy for you to phone up with technical requests (e.g. getting your interleaving tweaked for better pings) and have a very open attitude to customisation and tweaking of the supplied modem's features.

Due to distance from the exchange, I get approx 10-12Mbit, not the maximum 24Mbit. But my real-world download speed is consistently in the same range as the sync speed, not to mention that my 1.2Mbit upload speed is better than the 768Kbit I had on VM.

Can't recommend Be enough. Assuming O2's customer support and technical knowledge is as good as Be's, it's a safe bet.