new Broadband

Rex_Mundi

Hi

Well I've got my MAC number in hand and am now looking round for a new ISP. Rather than just comparing on price, I'm after speed, reliability and no limits. This is the most important thing to me. I've been with Freeserve/Wanadoo BB for over two years now and I must say, I've not had one lost day with my connection.

My line has tested for 2megs and would like this sort of speed if it's available. No limits is important to me. I run a network at home and do a lot of downloading myself as well as the boy in his room.

Reliability has got to be the most important factor though. I'm studying for an honours degree in computing with the Open University. All of my tutorials are online and all of my exams are submitted online. It would be a nightmare if my connection dropped just as I need to submit my work.

I would rather pay more for reliability than go for a cut price deal. I'd consider anything up to £40 per month.

Any recomendations? I've looked at the comparison sites, but this is a 'cold' way of judging which one has a decent service. I much rather hear from someone that gets excellent service from their ISP, preferably with the above specs in mind.

mike_paterson

Check out http://www.net4nowt.com http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ and http://www.dslzoneuk.net/index.php for reviews etc.

bunking_off

I use Nildram and have had only one outage (this last weekend - caused by BT and affecting 69,999 other people as well!) in two years.

I would seriously take a look at whether you truly need an uncapped service. If your son's spending all his waking hours downloading MP3 files (and anything else that boys download from the internet...) then fair enough, but to be honest I'm in the situation where both me and my wife work from home, are connected to work VPNs all day (and do all office phone calls via VoIP client), and frequently surf the net at night...and it only adds up to a few Gigs a month. So, we do bust our download cap and have to pay for additional transfer, but the cost of a capped service + additional transfer is far less than going for uncapped.

You're in the fortunate position of already having an existing connection : suggest you check your router stats (or do Wanadoo provide a connection stats page?) to see how much data you actually get through : you may be surprised.

andy88_2

Rex you don't look too dissatisfied with where you are; are you just flirting with changing?

pin

I use NDO (https://www.ndo.co.uk). People at ispreview seem to rate it pretty well. I can't really complain abou the service, has been pretty good. Also I think they offer a fairly decent migration package.

Rex_Mundi

Thanks for all the replies people. I'm still looking into it and the recomendations certainly help me in making my mind up.

Bunking_off. I'm after no limits for a couple of reasons. Every now and then I grab whole DVDs. These come in at approx 4 to 4.5gigs each. The boy has recently bought himself Final Fantasy 11. This is played online and I know there is going to be a lot of background chatter with this. He has left school and is not working at the moment so god knows how much traffic he is going to use up. Also, with the way that internet technology is going. If I tie myself into a new twelve month contract, I don't want to find myself limited or paying extra to try out new technology that I come accross and want to try out. Every now and then I download whole sites as part of my studies. Sometimes this can come in at a fair bit of material. I'm also currently working on a web based project. For this a few of us use spare computers as servers then try to 'break' the technology. We are doing this as a test before we go live.

andy88. Yes I have been very happy with the service I've had from wanadoo. However, I'm still on my old 512 connection from freeserve. At £28 a month I know I'm paying over the top. They can upgrade me to 1meg, but only with a download limit, I currently have no limits.

bunking_off

Rex_Mundi
Point taken, just thought it worth asking the question. I think Nildram's pricing for 2M is £31.98 + £1.75/GB (first GB is free), capped at £45.99/month max ("PAYG"), or unlimited at £44.99/month ("Classic").

They're not the cheapest, but as I say they are reliable (I always feel that I should add the financial services rider on that, past performance is no indication of future...). Minimum contract is 1 month if you need to bail.

As I said, I have their Broadband 2g0 service : £17.99 for 2M plus same per GB pricing as above. I figure that to get to £45.99 I'd have to get through 16GB a month, which in my case is pretty unlikely, so I don't need the safeguard of a price cap.

NB I have seen some mails elsewhere on MSE that indicate there may be a pricing review at the end of the month, so these figures may change.

mike_paterson

As is my wont, I should mention that I have had great service from e7even who also do some incredible deals from time to time. Shame you just missed out on 2 years for the price of one offer that closed on Monday. Maybe there will be another offer like that soon.
Rgds
Mike

Rex_Mundi

Thanks for the replies people. I'm sort of holding out for a bit longer just weighing things up and hoping a deal is in the offing (the MAC number is valid till about the middle of March).

bunking off........I'm very tempted by their 2 Mb service. I would go for the 'classic' unlimited service as I worked out the PAYG would only allow 8gigs to hit the limit, I'd definately do this every month! As I said cost is not the main issue for me.

mike........When I first looked at e7even, they only offered 1Mb speeds. However I've just seen they are offering to double the speeds for free if I sign up by the end of the month. Very cheap too. I will look into this a bit further. Every other ISP tells me my line is OK for 2Mb, but their test came back as 1MB, it's worth a call I think.

Decisions decisions decisions!!! lol

Shawz

It might be worth looking at

http://www.efhbroadband.com/

Unlimited 512k broadband for £9.99* a month

• 512k ADSL Broadband
• NO Download Limits
• NO Time Restrictions
• NO Premium Rate Support
• 3 Month Contract Commitment
• Connect as many PCs as you like
• £9.99 per month
• Price guaranteed for 12 months
• Limited to the first 1000 customers
  per month

Rex_Mundi

Thanks for the reply shawz. I already have 512K unlimited broadband. I'm looking for more speed really. As I said in my OP, cost is not so much the factor, rather speed and reliability.

From the answers already posted. I've decided I'm not going to go for any less than 2Mb. For me £40 to £45 per month is not so much of a problem.

I will probably make my choice this weekend.