Cheapest Broadband Provider Discussion Area

Roger_Rampant

I respectfully suggest that Martin's article is a bit more categoric than is justified

Yes, maybe it should be renamed *Cheapest 512k ADSL Provider*

I am an NTL (cable) customer, I dislike lots of things about BT (including them insisting on checking with CRAs before taking you on as a customer), and I have no wish ever to be a BT customer again. As far as I can tell, it is a pre-condition of ADSL that you must be a BT customer

I play lots of online internet games in the middle of the night. I work 2pm-10pm, and tend to play online between midnight and 4am. I accept that my requirements are quite unusual, but in my position it may be possible to find a great deal, as my heavy bandwidth requirements are at a time when most ISPs would have surplus bandwidth. It almost certainly won't be 512k ADSL, though

I believe AOL broadband is possible without being a BT customer, and I wonder which other broadband providers accept NTL customers?

gt94sss2

I believe AOL broadband is possible without being a BT customer, and I wonder which other broadband providers accept NTL customers?

None - only NTL and AOL offer a cable modem service to NTL's customers.

Regards
Sunil

joe2cool

Plusnet provide an excellent service, been with them a mth , Broadband 1Mb starting from £14.99. .......superb support, answer every query, extremely quickly.........

Check article "PlusNet the latest to drop its prices"

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/

bowlingdandy

8)

Telecoms giant BT faces regulatory penalties and the likelihood of enforced price reductions for its residential broadband internet services.
Following up a complaint from Freeserve.com (now known as Wannadoo), telecoms regulator Ofcom announced on 1 September that it intended to rule that BT had infringed UK and European competition law through the abuse of its dominant position in the internet marketplace.

CabritoJoven

Hello again
Thank you for the confirmations to ADS or https://www.adsbroadband.com (I called them e7even before)

They (E7 ) have been on to me to tell me that they will honour the £10 voucher which I set up if people stick in the code of 500012 when they are signing up and a few people have tried

I have had a read of other posts here and one of the things that seems to irritate is caps on downloads and other restrictions ADS does not have these and hey things are only going to go one way the more people do business on line the more you will need to down/upload just to keep up.

Another thing is buying mega bit lines
please be careful alot of this is great if your line is enabled but many do not have this capability on their exchange and it is compression rates that you should be worried about ADS are great for this!!

The current sale is on until 5th September check out
https://www.adsbroadband.com
for what I think, are the best ISP around

and don't forget that code

carry on surfing and saving
enjoy!!
Cab

Finishrich

I'm happy with Metronet. First month in and looking at £13 for the month. Cheaper than the dial up with wanadoo. Although I'm using a dial up just now as metronet's system is down, but at least you don't have to phone India a get someone who knows nothing about what's going on. It's just a case of checking out the network status from their website and it gives full details of what the problem is and it's updated regularly.

cloud_dog

Posted the below on the "Cheapest ADSL 13.99 / Month" thread but, thought I'd re-post it here for peoples interest (or not).

---

Ok I've sighed up for broadband with E7even.

They have offers on until 5th September 2004.

I've signed up for their bi-ennial 512Mb package (for two years - just trying to be clear), no download limit, cost £300 with no connection fee.  The £300 equates to £12.50 per month.  Take off the connection fee (e7even charge £50 normally, others charge more) and the saving is even greater - equates to £10.42 pm.

Would have been slightly less but I had problems entering a referal code.

I have been evaluating broadband suppliers fro soooooooooo long and I felt the offer was too good to waste.  Paid for it by credit card so hopefully if there are issues I can claim back fro the cc company.  But have done my homework via ISP Review and ADSLGuide and a collegue at work has been with them for nearly a year and says he has never had any issues.

I am *not* selling e7even to anyone and I appreciate that there is a risk with what I've done, i.e. the company could turn out to be c**p, or go bust but, life is about taking chances and with this the risk / reward was good so I took it (most decisive of me).

So here goes, hopefully pretty soon I'll no longer be on the world-wide-wait.

cloud_dog

---

p.s. CabritoJoven, the referer code was your's but as I said it quoted £290 but the final screen showed £300 - I'm ok with the £300 but £290 would have been nicer :-)

Allexie

Another satisfied customer of e7even
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

irenemac_2

so can anyone tell me if I have to be a BT user to use any of these 'super' broadband deals or as I have NTL cable am I teid to using thir broadband services??
many thanks if you can enlighten me peeps ???

BaritoneUK

Hi there.  I just wanted to say that not all the cheap deals for broadband are always that good.  Be careful to look at the small print.

Important things to look at:

Download speed- This is the speed that you can download off the internet (including webpages and files) Should really be a minimum of 512Kbps (ie 512,000 bits per second).  You can get broadband connections of 128 and 256- but these don't give huge increases on normal dial-up connections.  You can go for 1Mbps and 2Mbps uploads but these are quite expensive.

Upload Speed- This is nearly always lower than the download speed (this is what the A in ADSL stands for- Asymmetric) Usually this will be 256kbps which means that you can upload material at half the speed of a 512kbps connection.  The fact that is lower isn't so much of a problem as most people tend to upload that much- but if it is something you want to do- make sure you have at least 256

Contention Ratio- This is how many will actually 'share' your broadband connection.  If 50 people around you are using the same line for broadband internet then this will effectively slow down your connection by 50.  Of course it never usually gets like this.  Make sure the contention ratio is at least 50:1.  You can pay more for 20:1 and 10:1 which means that your line is only shared between 20 and 10 respectively.

Bandwidth Cap- this is very important.  Some cheap companies (Wanadoo for example) give a cap on how much you can download per month)  Really there shouldn't be an upper limit, but some are introducing it.  Some may say there cap is 2Gb per month - which might sound a lot- but you could get upto that if your downloading videos, sound files and updates for windows (Microsoft, don't you love them...)  If you are saving your pennies then maybe this could be for you- but make sure you don't go over the limit!

Installation time-  How long do they say it will take them to get you on broadband.  Shouldn't really take more than a week or two...

Back-up dial-up account- do they offer a backup dialup account should broadband be down.  This isn't really that important as many people will already have one, but it could be something of concern...

Tech Support-  Do they charge you loads for calling them?  If it is an 09x number then if something goes wrong then you will pay loads for calling them.  Most companies will have free email support- but this isn't always convenient.  Some companies will have a 08x support number which is much cheaper.

Extra features- email, newsgroups, webspace-  these shouldn't make your decision as you can get most of these free from places such as Yahoo etc., but could be useful

Always on?-  Most broadband actually isn't always on- you do have to connect- but once your on, you are on, but if you get disconnected that is bad.  Make sure that when they say always on, they mean always on.

Contract- what kind of contract are you in? 12 mths?  What if the service is pants?  Some companies actually offer 1 mth- but this rare.

Connection charge-  some don't charge a thing, some charge a lot.  Don't be put off if they charge, just add up the figures and all ther other points.  The companies have to pay for it, they either get you to pay for all or some or put it on the monthly subscription.

Do they offer equiptment?- beware if they do - make sure that it is decent stuff, many companies say 'FREE ADSL MODEM' and give you rubbish stuff.  And make sure that you have ADSL Filters for all phones in your house!

Hope this all helps!

PS some other articles which might be of use-

http://comment.silicon.com/0,39024711,39123478,00.htm

and

http://www.networkitweek.co.uk/comment/1157466