Broadband recommendations

[robd]

Finally moved house so am looking to get my home PC set up again. Can anyone recommend a decent broadband provider? Can't imagine I will be a majorly heavy user but expect to spend a lot of time on iTunes and YouTube! Need a phone line sorting too so a bundled package might suit.

TIA

Robert

[Lee Bartholomew]

Originally Posted by robd

Finally moved house so am looking to get my home PC set up again. Can anyone recommend a decent broadband provider? Can't imagine I will be a majorly heavy user but expect to spend a lot of time on iTunes and YouTube! Need a phone line sorting too so a bundled package might suit.

TIA

Robert

The Sky package is a good one. Set that up for my dad. He got a small sky channels pack, Free daytime/eve/ weekend phone calls and up to 8 meg broadband for £30. You have to discuss with them though as they can chop and change package.

DO NOT be tempted to use AOL.

Other than AOL, they are all pretty much the same.

[FoxyFunkster]

Originally Posted by robd

Finally moved house so am looking to get my home PC set up again. Can anyone recommend a decent broadband provider? Can't imagine I will be a majorly heavy user but expect to spend a lot of time on iTunes and YouTube! Need a phone line sorting too so a bundled package might suit.

TIA

Robert

Despite receiving alot of bad press i had to get the only cable service provider which was NTL at the time but are now Virgin media installed about 18 months ago, as yet i`ve had 1 issue with them, a set top box that stopped working that was replaced quickly, i get the sports package TV plus a landline including local and national calls, broadband which is very quick and a mobile phone with 300 all inc minutes for £40 odd per month, good value methinks.....

[Lee Bartholomew]

Originally Posted by FoxyFunkster

Despite receiving alot of bad press i had to get the only cable service provider which was NTL at the time but are now Virgin media installed about 18 months ago, as yet i`ve had 1 issue with them, a set top box that stopped working that was replaced quickly, i get the sports package TV plus a landline including local and national calls, broadband which is very quick and a mobile phone with 300 all inc minutes for £40 odd per month, good value methinks.....

That does seem a good deal if you are in an area that provides it.

Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile Phones are owned by NTL. They brought them out and kept the name as it is a stronger brand.

[Beowulf]

I can't recommend Plusnet highly enough.

I get my broadband and phone through them as a package and I've never had any problems.

[under par]

Talk talk 3 international


up to 8 mg broadband free

only have to take their phone which is £21 for free landline calls any uk and about 19 countries abroad.

no line charge to bt on top either.

[Sparkles]

Originally Posted by woodface

DO NOT be tempted to use AOL.

- I couldn't agree more.
I think the evil AOL empire was discussed at length on another thread... they're bad news all round.

[Northants Girly]

Originally Posted by Beowulf1970

I can't recommend Plusnet highly enough.

[SeriouslyAddicted]

Originally Posted by under par

Talk talk 3 international


up to 8 mg broadband free

only have to take their phone which is £21 for free landline calls any uk and about 19 countries abroad.

no line charge to bt on top either.

Being a bit of a girly when it comes to these things, do you still have to pay BT line rental if you use some of the other packages eg the Sky package?

[pmjd]

Originally Posted by Beowulf1970

I can't recommend Plusnet highly enough.

I get my broadband and phone through them as a package and I've never had any problems.

Is that the same Plusnet that lost several millions of customers emails and also recently got their webmail hacked, giving away a lot of peoples passwords and leading to a serious up turn in junk mail received by their users?

I used to recommend, and set up parents and relatives with them but I'm a bit wary of doing so now.

[pmjd]

Originally Posted by SeriouslyAddicted

Being a bit of a girly when it comes to these things, do you still have to pay BT line rental if you use some of the other packages eg the Sky package?

It all depends on a thing called LLU, or local loop unbundling, whether or not you will be charged the BT line rental or not.

In a nutshell BT have to open up their telephone exchanges to the competition but can charge for doing so. If the competition thinks it's financially viable they'll pay it, use the telephone exchange as their own and can charge customers directly. If it doesn't look so good financially then they won't pay it and you still have to pay line rental to BT on top of what your telephone/broadband provider charges

HTH
Paul

[Lynn]

Originally Posted by woodface

That does seem a good deal if you are in an area that provides it.

Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile Phones are owned by NTL. They brought them out and kept the name as it is a stronger brand.

They seem to have a good deal at the moment, with line rental, deals on calls, broadband etc. Considering it as an option.

I did think of BT as it would be easy, but they recently charged me for several months of calls they had forgotten to add to my bill. Rather than kick up a fuss, I just paid it, but I'm more than happy to cease being a customer now!

[Beowulf]

Originally Posted by pmjd

Is that the same Plusnet that lost several millions of customers emails and also recently got their webmail hacked, giving away a lot of peoples passwords and leading to a serious up turn in junk mail received by their users?

I used to recommend, and set up parents and relatives with them but I'm a bit wary of doing so now.

No you're thinking of the OTHER plusnet

They WERE hacked which is why they lost the emails. However I've not noticed any extra spam in my inbox and the disruption was fixed pretty quickly.

I've been with them for Broadband for ages and Broadband and phone for a few months and have never had any problems..

[pmjd]

I thought the original lost emails were due to a botched hardware upgrade in July 2006 and a different email loss in January.

I sent up my folks with them and since the webmail hacking thing in April they have been receiving a lot more junk mail for various sorts of enhancements, with a lot proporting to come from various plus.net addresses including their own.

That's why I'm a less likely to recommend them now.

[robd]

Thanks for advice so far. Plusnet looks good (albeit the caveat of the junk email) so far. Now I need to figure out a usage allowance What do you folks use? I don't plan on doing huge amounts of uploading but iTunes/youtube, etc could see me downloading quite a lot each month. Maybe I should see how easy it is to move from one band to another if needs require?

[Lee Bartholomew]

Originally Posted by pmjd

I thought the original lost emails were due to a botched hardware upgrade in July 2006 and a different email loss in January.

I sent up my folks with them and since the webmail hacking thing in April they have been receiving a lot more junk mail for various sorts of enhancements, with a lot proporting to come from various plus.net addresses including their own.

That's why I'm a less likely to recommend them now.

That not unusal for any email provider. I got 10 emails this morning for enlargment pills.

I wouldn't mind but 8 of them are from my ex girlfriends. The two from my mum upset me too

Originally Posted by robd

Thanks for advice so far. Plusnet looks good (albeit the caveat of the junk email) so far. Now I need to figure out a usage allowance What do you folks use? I don't plan on doing huge amounts of uploading but iTunes/youtube, etc could see me downloading quite a lot each month. Maybe I should see how easy it is to move from one band to another if needs require?

You can always up the limit without probs (after all they want your cash).

Say a provider offers a 2meg 4meg and 8meg package. You could go for the 2 meg and norm after a month or so upgrade to the 4 or 8meg. You will prob find you have problems going from 8 or 4 meg down to 4 or 2meg.

It's something work asking them when you call.

Also just because you subscribe to the 2 4 or 8 meg package doesn't mean you will get 2/4 or 8 meg.

[pmjd]

Originally Posted by woodface

That not unusal for any email provider. I got 10 emails this morning for enlargment pills.

Spam is an increasing problem for most email accounts, it's just that they noticed a sudden upsurge in it which coincided with the webmail hacking incident that affected Plusnet customers.

Originally Posted by woodface

Say a provider offers a 2meg 4meg and 8meg package. You could go for the 2 meg and norm after a month or so upgrade to the 4 or 8meg. You will prob find you have problems going from 8 or 4 meg down to 4 or 2meg.

It's something work asking them when you call.

Also just because you subscribe to the 2 4 or 8 meg package doesn't mean you will get 2/4 or 8 meg.

Have you gotten you MBs and GBs messed up or are you talking about broadband speeds? As I'm sure robd was asking about usage.

I've got a PAYG broadband package, £15 a month inc. 1 GB, then I get charged £1/extra GB I use. Handy for me as I don't do that much downloading at home and rarely go over 1 GB.

A good suggestion is to maybe go for a mid range broadband usage and check how much you've used over the first couple of months (most ISPs will tell you how much you have actually downloaded each month) then change accordingly. A lot of ISPs have cheaper introductory packages with good usage allowances that can give you a better idea. As long as you can change the package your on during your contract.

Another thing to beware of is the activation charge, BT charges ~£56 to change a telephone line over to a broadband line. Some ISPs will charge you up front, others as like Plusnet can include it as part of your monthly charge, some like Virgin bury it in T&Cs and will charge you it if you leave within the first 12 months. Freeola is offering a reduced charge at the moment of £38.

[Beowulf]

Originally Posted by pmjd

Another thing to beware of is the activation charge, BT charges ~£56 to change a telephone line over to a broadband line. Some ISPs will charge you up front, others as like Plusnet can include it as part of your monthly charge, some like Virgin bury it in T&Cs and will charge you it if you leave within the first 12 months. Freeola is offering a reduced charge at the moment of £38.

Actualy plusnet allow you to switch for free. What they do is they charge you say £56 as you say but write off so much of that each month. If you stay with them for a year it's written off completely and therefore free.

Or is that for home moves? I think it applies to either but I'd have to check that.

All the spam I get from Plusnet is send to my default address which is a blackhole address anyway. My real email address gets negligible spam .. in fact I would go as far as saying I get practically no spam at all.

Plusnet have taken steps to prevent this happening again and as such are now going to be more secure than others. it was a hitherto unnoticed bug in their webmail system that allowed the hack. Trust me , as a software engineer there is no such thing as bug free software.

As for the losing of emails at the change over. That didn't effect me one iota. it was unfortunate but they've had a change of management since then and recently I got an email from head of Referrals talking about the upcoming changes.

Last year, following the disruption caused by Upto-8Mb upgrades and badly managed LLU migrations, our call queues were often over an hour long. Today, they rarely breach 10 minutes. I'm proud to see that the results of our Customer Satisfaction Surveys are improving month on month, with May's result showing that 63% of our customers are either "Very" or "Extremely Satisfied" with their service.

I'm a geek. I'm not going to keep my account with a "can't-be-trusted" ISP. But I'm still with them and I voted Very satisfied in that survey.

I've also recently switched my phone to them as well and am saving a packet.

BTW.. if you want to put my name down as a referral (please do I get 50p of my monthly bill for you saying I sent you there) then my Plusnet username is the same as my Forum name here

[pmjd]

The activation charge is for new broadband lines, most ISPs allow you to migrate to one another free of charge. I was guessing that as robd had only just moved house and was looking to setup computer stuff again that he didn't take his previous ISP with him and would be starting from scratch.

BTW I don't have a Plusnet vendetta, I'm just warning of any pitfalls

Out of curiosity how many Plusnet referrals do you need to get your broadband for free then

[robd]

Originally Posted by pmjd

The activation charge is for new broadband lines, most ISPs allow you to migrate to one another free of charge. I was guessing that as robd had only just moved house and was looking to setup computer stuff again that he didn't take his previous ISP with him and would be starting from scratch.

Correct. Was on NTL dial up in my penultimate previous house then had no connection at all in my previous one so have had to call BT this morning to get the line activated for voice so I guess I will need to pay whatever this activation charge for broadband is in whichever way my chosen provider levies it. Plusnet seem to do a number of 'freebies' if you agree to stay with them for 12 months.