Which broadband provider is best?

Testee

At long last my exchange has been upgraded to broadband - yippee!!

So I am trying to work out who to go with - at the moment I have dial-up with One-tel at £13.99. I have looked at Tiscali as they provide all the bits and pieces for free. But who provides the best deal at the moment. I can only get 512bps or possibly at a push the 1mgbps no-one seems to know for sure - BT said 512 but Tiscali seemed to think we could get 1meg.

I don't profess to be an expert at this - in fact very much an ignoramus. I seem to remember ages ago there was a website that was recommended which compared all the providers. Can anyone help me out with a link to that website and/or give me some ideas as to where to go?

Thanks

blinky

Depends how much you intend to use broadband, what speed you want, reliability of service and how much you want to pay.

https://www.adslguide.org.uk is the best place for info.

Personally I'm with Pipex. Not the cheapest but they do have a large amount of capacity and redundancy in their network so their service is very reliable, which is important to me as I work from home in an internet based business.

kido_2

Steer away from tiscali their billing system is bad and customer services bad search for tiscali sucks on the web and see what you come up with.
I was with them for acouple of months and they never took money from my account for 6months despite me appealing for them to take their moneyfew months later they took payment for 7 months.
Their broadband speed is a joke i paid for 512 and what i got was far less than dialup.
If you are aheavy user they will kick you out despite claims that their service is unlimited.
I am on aol i am happy i just don't use their browser.

margaret_3

I agree with kido. Tiscali are appallingly bad! Keep away from them!

peter_the_planter

kido wrote:

Steer away from tiscali their billing system is bad and customer services bad search for tiscali sucks on the web and see what you come up with.
I was with them for acouple of months and they never took money from my account for 6months despite me appealing for them to take their moneyfew months later they took payment for 7 months.

Exactly the same for me, avoid them like the plague. Joined Metronet in August last year and never been happier. Not the very cheapest but customer service great. Instant invoicing by e-mail and confirmation that money taken.

rizla01

Hi,

Worth looking at E7EVEN.

pretty new and Emails responded to very promptly but BULLDOG are now offering a massive 4Meg. (sick) after I just signed up for two years at 1 Meg.

Leave AOL alone too. Screws up your system and thats from personal experience.


Riz

theloft

blinky wrote:

Depends how much you intend to use broadband, what speed you want, reliability of service and how much you want to pay.
https://www.adslguide.org.uk is the best place for info.
Personally I'm with Pipex. Not the cheapest but they do have a large amount of capacity and redundancy in their network so their service is very reliable, which is important to me as I work from home in an internet based business.

The adsl guide gives you facts & figures, but these threads tell you who is a satisfied customer and who isn't ! It appears that AOL & Tiscali are to be avoided, but we still don't know who is the best for somebody migrating to BB from dial-up. First time users so to speak. Is there an expert who could summarise, taking start-up costs into consideration etc. It seems that most of the deals lock you in for 1 year, so you need to be pretty sure. Also if moving from dial-up, then speeds of 512kb are adequate I assume, as that would be much faster than the old steam dial-up (which I am on). Also routers, filters etc. sound good, but to most of us it is techno-speak !! :eek:

gavinp

Testee,

Further to the comments on Tiscali, it is worth bearing in mind that you cannot migrate from Tiscali - if you wanted to change ISP, you would need to cancel your ADSL line and pay for a new installation again - along with at least a week of no broadband access.

http://support.metronet.co.uk/sales/adsl.xhtml1#trans-tous

In my opinion, the best options if you don't have broadband already are:

https://register.tesco.net/online/

or

http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/time/broadbandaccess

Both offer free connection and free modem on a 12 month contract.

Tesco's £19.97 price is for 512K with no download limit
Wanadoo's £17.99 price is for 1024K with a 2Gb (theoretical) download limit.

If you already had broadband, I would go for Metronet.

Thanks

Gavin

margaret_3

Thanks for that information . However, I don't really know what I want!!!!
We are geting broadband here in April. I don't download lots of stuff. I am on the PC quite a lot but just for e-mails and newsgroups. What should I be looking for?
Thanks.
Margaret

gavinp

Margaret,

If I were in your position, I would go with Tesco initially which is a safe choice and then after the 12 months is up, you will be in a better position to judge which features are important to you.

Thanks

Gavin

theloft

margaret wrote:

Thanks for that information . However, I don't really know what I want!!!! We are geting broadband here in April. I don't download lots of stuff. I am on the PC quite a lot but just for e-mails and newsgroups. What should I be looking for? Thanks. Margaret

Margaret, You are in the same position as myself, more or less. I don't download masses of stuff but would like to speed up net browsing as it is sometimes agonising waiting for pages to load. I would be averse to signing up for 1 year with Tesco, as there have been better deals on offer. If you are not in a hurry, wait and keep looking on these posts. E7even had a spectacular offer last week-end but I missed it. Another one recommended on the forums is https://www.efhbroadband.com £9.99 per month for 512kbps ! But there is a start-up fee.