Cheap Broadband - V21 £16.99 for 512k unlimited

stinky

Hi

Looking for ADSL for a friend in London. Cable is not available nor is Homechoice, so its down to ADSL. I don't like the services with limits on them plus he wants to play online games and I can't see the point in Wanadoo cutting him off after 1.5 hours etc. Although I do know that these limits are probably not currently enforced.

Cheapest I've come across so far is V21, who are offering unlimited 512k service for £16.99/month. £69.99 connection fee is high, but still works out cheapest over the year. Also offering first 2 months at £9.99/month.

Anyone tried their service or have any experience of V21? Personally I'd never heard of them until today?

regards Paul

mm66

one way to avoid their connection fee is to join virgin broadband for one month. no connection fee and no contract and a monthly charge of 17.99 for the 3gb capped service. as soon as u connect ask them to cancel and give 30 day notice and ask for MAC for transfer to v21. The connection charge when transferring to v21 is £10 rather than £69.

By the way beware that v21 charges £30 if you want to transfer out of them for any reason.

Toxteth_OGrady

Hope you don't need to use their Tech support at £1/min!!!

Taken from V21 website:

Support Helpline
Telephone support is available from the V21 Technical Support team, from 8am - 8pm, 7 days a week, for problems in the following areas:
Connecting to the Internet
Internet Explorer 5

Please call 09067 365521 Lines open 10 hours a day, 7 days a week (Calls are charged at £1 per minute and may be monitored for training purposes)

chateau42

Got plusnet, 1Mb, £14.99/month, virus and spam protection, domain hosting etc, not too familiar with all technicalities, to be honest. Limited to 1Gb /month, but if I use more , just charged extra until I reach unlimited tariff, no more then. Seems fair to me, unless I am missing something. Like being on metered water but better. Am not an agent Oh, must add, if you are not happy within a reasonable time, they will move you for free. Have not moved.
I am not too familiar with how this allies with online games. But just trying to help. ???

stinky

Hi

mm66

Thanks for the helpful hint. Great stuff, I would never have thought of that.

Regarding the £30 transfer fee they charge. What would this be for exactly? I read on another thread about this and someone mentioned transferring MAC addresses. However this doesn't make sense, a MAC address is determined by the network card in the computer, not the ISP. Surely cancelling the contract ends the agreement. What would I need from the ISP to keep? I wouldn't need an e-mail address or anything its not like transferring a telephone number is it?

Also regarding the £1 a minute call charges. That another post mentioned, surely all ISP's charge rediculous rates for help, the only ones I've noticed that don't are the ones that charge a fortune upfront. Plus hopefully, from my personal experience with broadband, there isn't really much to go wrong. Basically if the service goes down, there is nothing the ISP can do to help (apart from fix it), any connection issues, they usually don't understand and these can more easily be fixed by a little googling.

Regards the £14.99 service. That is only £2 a month cheaper. That's only £24 a year cheaper for a 1Gb limited service, that cost more if you go over it. My question would have to be, how often do you go over it? and how much does that extra cost? I know the sites about saving money, but saving £24 a year doesn't seem worth it for a limited service?

regards Paul

Toxteth_OGrady

MAC - same acronym, two entirely different things. The one you are alluding to is physical address or machine access code of a network adapter and has nothing to do with ADSL account transfers. The other meaning is Migration Authorisation Code. This is forwarded on request, via you, from your old ISP to your new ISP.

stinky

Toxteth

Thank you for the clarification. However, I'm still a little confused. What exactly would one need to migrate, from one account to the other? I've just migrated my mobile phone from one supplier to another and I had to used a migration code, to keep the same phone number, that makes sense. But I'm not clear as to what I'd need to keep from one ISP to another? Surely my ISP just supplies me with a connection, when I quit the contract (after its 12 months or whatever, the terms were), I'm free to take up with another ISP. What would they be migrating exactly?

regards Paul

Toxteth_OGrady

See here

It's a measure put in place so you don't have to end service ("CEASE") with your old ISP then place a new order with another ISP ("PROVIDE") thus waiting for 2 - 3 weeks without being online. The downtime involved in migration is about 20 -30 minutes.

Notwithstanding free offers, migration is typically one third of the cost of the connection fee you might have to pay with a new order if you were to go down the cease/provide route. Bottom line - it saves money.

stinky

Toxteth

Thank you again. The penny has dropped (finally). Of course, its because ADSL uses your phone line and so two ISP's can't use the same phone line at the same time. Hence the migration period. And the time it takes to set up a new service. Thanks again

Paul

Toxteth_OGrady

@STINKY

np - it's a bit of a minefield for the uninitiated. I've been using broadband internet for 8 years now with five different ISPs.

If I were you, for complete peace of mind, I would unreservedly recommend you go with PlusNet Home 500 Premier.

Yes, it's 5 quid a month more than V21 but you can go on a monthly contract then migrate away from them for free if you don't like it. Alternatively if you are a light user you can go on a 2GB capped for £16.49 a month. See here for typical useage. More info here.

It's worth bearing in mind that V21 is one of the few ISPs still using the older technology Datastream product rather than the better and faster IPStream (Google for these).

The most cost effective way of getting connected would be to take up mm66's suggestion of connecting for free to Virgin and then migrating to PlusNet (or V21).