Cheapest Broadband Provider Discussion Area

pennymakespounds

excuse my ignorance .......

but if my daughter is sharing a house near uni with 4 others ,,,, and they have no live phone line ..... but have had ntl broadband put in ...

firstly............. am i right in saying that they should be paying the £17.99 normal ntl rent per month between them .. for the service

and

secondly ... ntl advertise for £24.99 broadband PLUS unlimited landline phone calls ..... BUT is it just £24.99 or do we have to organise BT phone line and pay them their £10.50 ? per month line rental in addition ??

thanks.

gary38uk

excuse my ignorance .......

but if my daughter is sharing a house near uni with 4 others ,,,, and they have no live phone line ..... but have had ntl broadband put in ...

firstly............. am i right in saying that they should be paying the £17.99 normal ntl rent per month between them .. for the service

and

secondly ... ntl advertise for £24.99 broadband PLUS unlimited landline phone calls ..... BUT is it just £24.99 or do we have to organise BT phone line and pay them their £10.50 ? per month line rental in addition ??

thanks.

if you have ntl you do not need bt.

FL

For all the novice BB people like myself I have just signed up to Wanadoo BB. They had an offer at Dixons where the 1st 2 months are £17.99 in total including a modem, 2 filters and connection charges 1MB deal. This offer is not available on the website. You are committed to a full year though (at £17.99 per month min after the first 2 months). I thought it was a good deal as I was thinking of joining them anyway.

Although this site mentions alot of BB providers I don't think the average user really knows who they are. I was also put off that you have to pay connection charges and for modems etc with alot of them. I think these are worth considering after the first year when hopefully I will be a bit more clued up.

patrickroc

Patrick.. please could you give me some tips on how to get my MAC number from virgin..i also want to migrate to metronet, from virgin, but have emailed virgin a number of times, but they've yet to reply!!
Can you help??!

sorry for this v late reply - i hope virgin have cooperated with you by now. they were very quick getting me my MAC. i just called their technical support 0906 2170001 and they sent an email to my virgin.net webmail 2 days later.

alanjarrett

I read Martins article months ago and every time I get around to signing-up the deals change and I start looking again!

I took the plunge this morning with Tiscali. I read the earliest and more recent pages of the posts, but skipped the middle chunk. I saw some negatives about Tiscali and was going to opt for metronet, but someone at work said they had had no problems with Tiscali and he has been with them for years.

As a newcomer to Broadband I figured that Martin's advice in the article made sense - go for a bundle at first, but change to Metronet at the end of the contract. When the 12 month contract expires I can review my useage and other requirements and see how things have moved on.

Tiscali have a 'limited' offer of £15.99 for a 1mbps connection with a 2Gb download limit, connection charge and an ADSL Modem included.

gary38uk

you are not going to do much with a 2meg limit!
if you are a low user, metronet seems best.
do not get tied to a 12 month contract.

mike_paterson

Gatita,

You can have as many POP3 email accounts, as you like, each of them can have forwarding or auto-responding facilities if required. All emails are scanned for viruses and a high level of anti-spam filtering is also done on email coming in and going out of our servers.

E7even.com offers an SMS email notification service, which allows you to receive an SMS on your mobile phone when an email arrives in your POP3 mailbox.

You can set up as many different filters on each POP3 account as you like, each of them can be based on a matched pattern in the senders email address, the subject of the email, or even the main body content of the email.


So, in brief ... YES

mike_paterson

I would like to change from a dial up connection to Broadband and feel overwhelmed by the choice. What can you suggest? Metronet or e7even? What do I need to do? DO I need a new modem? Please help? I need to get speedy .
I don't play games online or download games, films or music-yet!
What I do need is a faster connection so that things like photos on pages download quicker.
Hope someone can help me get inot the 21st century.

Lellabelle, you will need a new ADSL modem (or DSL if you choose a cable isp) to replace your current modem. These can be internal (i.e a card in your pc) or external. I would recommend an external one. Lots are available on ebay as many people are upgrading to a wireless network, and then sell on their old ADSL modem. I'd also go for a brand name such as ALCATEL or Hayes.

Alternatively you can opt to go wireless - which is a little more involved (not loads tho') but can be useful if you want to connect from different places in your house without needing to lay cables.

Good Luck

I do not know much about Metronet but am very happy with e7even!

Lellabelle

Thanks Mike for tht info.
Another question- my friends signed up with Virgin but have since moved and now have cable so don't need the modem. Are they all the same and could I use this one for a connection to e7even?

Lellabelle

BlueVinney

There are many threads asking for costs and recommendations for a broadband isp. To help anyone currently choosing one I've calculated the cost of such a service from some of the more popular suppliers as at 12 January. The information has been gathered carefully but I can't guarantee its accuracy. If you intend to order from any isp mentioned then please validate the information before commiting yourself.

Each line of the table shows

ISP__Speed__Cap__Cost__Contract where

ISP is the isp and service
Speed is 512k or 1Mbps
Cap is either No cap or volume eg 3G = 3Gb in a month.
* means extra Gb can be purchased as used.
Cost is the total cost of first year's use, including connection, ADSL modem, subscription and any capacity cost for the cap level shown.
Contract is minimum length of contract


ISP_________________________Speed_Cap____Cost___Contract

Tiscali______________________1Mbp__3G*__£209.88__1 year
Supanet_512__________________512k__No___£215.88__1 year
Wanadoo______________________1Mbp__2G___£215.88__1 year
AOL_Silver___________________512k__No___£215.88__1 year
E7Even_Annual________________512k__No___£235.00__1 year
Virgin_Plan_2________________512k__3G___£235.88__1 month
Demon_Home_512_______________512k__No___£239.88__1 year
Pipex_Xtreme_Solo_512_Lite___512k__2G___£263.76__1 year
BT_BB_Basic__________________512k__3G___£263.88__1 year
Metronet_____________________512k__3G*__£295.13__3 months
Freedom2Surf_Lite____________512k__2G___£295.76__1 year
Plusnet_ADSL_Home_Lite_______1Mbp__2G___£306.38__1 month
Metronet_____________________1Mbp__3G*__£315.53__3 months

(Sorry for the bad layout. If anyone can tell me how to print a table from my ss in a post which looks ok I'd be really grateful)

The table sequence is by annual cost with lowest first and does not imply a recommendation of any isp. Rating and other information on isp's is available on https://www.adslguide.org.uk and many other sources.