We're moving house soon and leaving our Virgin Media cabled area that provides telly / phone / broadband in one package.

The area we are moving to is a long way from the exchange and uses old tech. wires so max braodband speed is 1 Mb.

I was just looking for suggestions as to the best quality (rather than price) providers of a phone / broadband provider. I think I'm keen to avoid download limits but having said that we don't do much music and no film downloading.

Present provider at new house for both is BT.

[Edited on 1/4/08 by Nick Skidmore]

I'm with Talktalk who seem to be pretty good (although not everyone thinks the same) and at £19.99 pm for BB and free UK & international calls I reckon it takes a lot to beat.

Tiscali have now got a similar deal which includes line rental so they might be worth a look too.

If you can avoid it do not use Tiscali. They are alright for web access but if you wish to do anything remotely technical they are pants and the support is non-existent.

We have just completed an awkward diagnostic process where customer VPNs suddenly ceased to work. The common factor was Tiscali broadband at the affected sites. It turned out that Tiscali have an error (? or policy) in part of their network which was dropping VPN traffic.

We had to get round it by routing our traffic via a different Tiscali peer. For over a week Tiscali refused to even acknowledge they had a fault despite the fact we could prove where the blackhole was. They then stated that VPNs weren't supported. Muppets.

I can recommend PlusNet. They recently came top in a poll of broadband providers and I think their service is brilliant.

My package does have a download limit but you can exceed this if you like (and you get charged reasonable rates). However if you want to download a lot of data then there aren't any limits if done during their off-peak times (i.e. night time).

Their support is very good as well.

p.s. if you do go with them then they have a 90 day guarantee where they will refund upto 90 days if you're not happy with their service.

p.p.s. I also get a couple of quid if you mention my username when subscribing! but that's not why I'm recommending them!

I'll second RazMan.

I certainly would not recommend my BT Broad band, its slow and clunky. Some times I can't even log in at all 'Network service unavailable' the little box thing gets so hot its scary I'm amazed the plastic has not melted!

I have however got their freestyle phones (walk about the house kind). The range they have is fab even when I'm off out in the garage with them, clear as a bell.

[Edited on 1/4/08 by Mr Whippy]

PlusNet -- the are actually Bt but run as a seperate company -- good deals and very reliable.
Also spam filtering, multiple mail boxes & decent ammount of web space and they give you a decent wireless router (Thompson SpeedTouch).
see http://www.plus.net/residential/bundles.shtml


My broadband supplier on my other broadband line is O2 very good deals also --- worth switching your mobile to o2 also as you get a massive discount. The big plus with O2 is they are ADSL2+ which is twice as fast as ADSL (ie ADSL2+ can be up to 20 b/s) over the same distance.
Same Speedtouch router as Plusnet.

http://broadband.o2.co.uk/

You could try a 3g dongle? THREE are doing a good deal, ultimate portable mobile (if your in a 3g area...) IF you plan to move often its a good solution.

I used NTL for ages then sky knocked the door and offered a deal - I bounced them off each other than got £20 a month for fast broadband and unlimited phone calls from ntl and £30 a month for skyplus with everything but sports with all the indian chanels for SWMBO.

Moral of the story - play them off against each other, they drop their prices loads.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dangle_kt
You could try a 3g dongle? THREE are doing a good deal, ultimate portable mobile (if your in a 3g area...) IF you plan to move often its a good solution.

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