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UK ISP, get me away from BT!

0098386

0098386

Suspended
Original poster
Jan 18, 2005
21,574
2,908
We've almost been with BT Broadband for a year now and I can't bloody wait till our contract is expired. Things have been going from bad to worse with them, it was all peaches and cream for the first month with full connection speed (2mbps), good contention ratio (I think the term is). But it's being hammered now. I can't even use the internet between 3-6pm, for whatever reason it just goes incredibly slowly.
I play games online in the evening and in the last month the connection keeps dropping automatically which makes doing anything but basic web browsing impossible.

To make matters worse in the same month our upload speed has dropped from 500kbps to 96. Which means sending beta's of my project takes hours now. So it even effects my work.

So it fell from 2mbps to 900kbps download and 500kbps to 96kbps upload.


I've heard very good things about Be Broadband, are they as good as people say? Granted they can only offer me a 2mbps connection - so long as it doesn't gradually decrease I'm happy.
We're basically after an unlimited service of around £20/month. Any other decent providers out there?
Can't have Virgin though. Not set up for all that fibre optic stuff and we're good for a phone/TV provider.
 
It sounds like your biggest problem will be any limits on uploading. Are you uploading a lot of data for work? Upload seems to be a problem because most home users aren't too bothered so the ISP can subject you to pretty harsh limits.

Do you have Sky TV? I use sky broadband, which is only £5-10 if you have the TV package and they are really very reasonable. If you exceed your limits regularly on the lower packages they just ring you and ask you to move up a package. If you only exceed it once in a blue moon they don't really care. The most you pay for supposedly unlimited service is £10.
 
If you want damn good 'net access - try Vivaciti.net - expensive ( I pay £25+vat for their business package) - but it's been superb for 18 months.
 
O2 rock. Seriously I don't know if it was just my experience but they have certainly surprised me. The time to get connected from my previous isp was incredibly fast and they have been honest and helpful. They advised me to downgrade speed as I would not be getting enough benefit from it due to the constraints of my line and the price is just great, if you have an iPhone or other O2 phone it's just £7.50! I was paying £24.99 (inc static IP however).

I'd recommend O2 or perhaps Sky. There are plenty of helpful websites that offer users advice.

Try: www.broadbandchoices.co.uk
 
I can't recommend O2 broadband highly enough - they took over BE.

very fast, very reliable, and on the one occasion I had a problem the support people were actually intelligent to talk to.

because I have an iphone a/c the costs of unlimited O2 broadband is £7.50 a month
 
Zen Internet were great back when I had ADSL. They are not the cheapest but they know what they are doing.
 
A vote for o2 here, I've got the 8Mbps connection here although its not gone above 6mbps but I suspect that's because of the distance to my exchange etc... but other than that quality connection, good service.

I would of course prefer to be on a fibre optic connection but all the UK fibre ISP's right now are on the naughty list.
 
Well hopefully BT will respond to us quickly in sorting all this out otherwise we will definitely be looking at O2 or Be. Just wish we had a proper connection up here... I wouldn't mind a troublesome 8mbps service, but a bad slow connection is really a kick in the balls :(

We do have Sky. But long story short we get free Sky TV because of an error on their end and we don't want to talk to them incase they realise this :D

The last couple of days I've been trying to upload about 100mb a day. Usually it's about 100mb a few times a month. Nothing ground breaking.
 
A vote for O2 here. The upload speed is, in my experience, good (I've had an online backup of my entire computer constantly running for a few weeks, and it hasn't noticeably affected browsing). I think it has gone slow maybe twice in the four months I've had it (which was solved by turning it off and on again). Only downside is that the router they supplied is WEP-only and I'm sure someone is fiddling with it.

A definite vote against Virgin. Granted they are better than NTL were, but they're still beyond appalling. I've had years of problems with them in a number of properties in a number of different counties. They simply can't get it right. Personally, I think they've inherited too big a network.

AppleMatt
 
I'm with sky, and they've been pretty good, but I must say, it's entirely possible that a new provider wont solve your problems.
If you can only get 2mb/s it sounds like you don't live near an exchange, and if you are suffering poor speeds during peak hours, then that's because lots of people in your area who use the same exchange are all fighting for bandwidth.
As any provider you go with (other than virgin) will use the same physical BT phone line to get your internet connection to you, they will likely have the same problems.
It's not definite, but it's something to investigate before committing to another contract. It might be worth looking into signal boosters (BT provide a blug in for your wall socket that improves the signal), making sure your router is connected by as short a cable as possible to the master phone socket, make sure your network is secure and no one is leeching off it etc etc.
 
Hey im sorry if this sounds dumb, but do you guys (uk) have any type of fios system like we do in the US?

Im getting 32 Mbps down and a steady 9 Mbps up.
it will drop slightly but never below 29 and 7

BTW i pay about $50 usd for this per month.
 
Arcadie said:
Hey im sorry if this sounds dumb, but do you guys (uk) have any type of fios system like we do in the US?

Im getting 32 Mbps down and a steady 9 Mbps up.
it will drop slightly but never below 29 and 7

BTW i pay about $50 usd for this per month.
Click to expand...

we do, but not everywhere, it's mostly copper ADSL
 
Arcadie said:
Copper adsl.. hmm..
So their is no residential fiberoptic? sucks, You would think since the uk is very compact compared to the us it would be easier to put in.
Click to expand...

Some areas get up to 50mb/s using Virgin's cable internet connection, but it's not available in my town, or the OP's.
They're also *******'s who I wouldn't want to do business with.
 
Arcadie said:
Copper adsl.. hmm..
So their is no residential fiberoptic? sucks, You would think since the uk is very compact compared to the us it would be easier to put in.
Click to expand...

Yea we have fibre optic, they've just started pushing 50mbps with them. According to their adverts at least. I also don't think our road has it yet.

It's probably worth nothing at all but a friend who has an even worse connection (512kbps down, 25kbps up and gets d/c frequently) is mounting a local compaign to get speed in our town up to scratch. It really is terrible up here.
 
Arcadie said:
Copper adsl.. hmm..
So their is no residential fiberoptic? sucks, You would think since the uk is very compact compared to the us it would be easier to put in.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what they all thought. About 15 years ago a load of (mainly US) companies set about carving the UK into territories to lay fibre. The cost of digging up the roads was uneconomic as it turn out, and so the companies started to go bust and merge, ending up as one company, NTL. NTL stopped laying cable (for example the cable goes down my street, and they even dug conduits to each of the houses in my "block" which was being builtbwhen they were still laying but have told me they have no intention of putting the cable down the conduits). Now I hear, the government is thinking of paying for the rest of the network.

But back on topic. I recommend PLUSNET, the best customer service, and a community of 20000 users, many of whom are techheads and offer great community support (not that it's ever needed, it's a very reliable service). The thing is, it's actually owned by ... BT.
 
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