So who should i choose,

AOL is crap full stop, had nothing but trouble from day one, time to change.........

i would say avoid NTL too, i've had no good service from them. line seems very slow too.

I use freedom 2 surf. 22.50 a month, monthly contract, no limits, no hassle, can connect more than 1 computer, highly recomended

I've got Pipex xtreme solo. It's £19.99 per month and it's not bad.

eclipse.net here, great service, not the cheapest

I have had ntl broadband for nearly 3 years. I guess its been down a total of 4 or five days in that time.

generally, its a good service when working, but i have heard customer support isnt great. same for other i guess

atb

steve

Try www.metronet.co.uk They are pay as you go broadband £10 a month with a max of £25
I am on all day everyday and my monthly bill is around £12. also only 3 month min contract. i cant praise them enough

Cheers, keep em coming, anyone else on AOL?? Been with them a year, had very poor service, lots and lots of downtime and at the mo its at its worst, if it stays on for 2-3 mins its a record, they have told us we can have 2 free months but what use is two free months of nothing ??

My son uses ebay a fair bit, he's had to stop cos it dissconects before he can get a item listed, writing e~mails is a pain too, it allways goes just b4 you finished, this time of the morning it don't seem bad, but this evening if the last couple of months are anything to go by, forget it.
Oh there techies have told us, "sorry, we give up on this one" "do you want the cansalations number?"

They are PANTS, not recomended.

I'm on PlusNet - they have a whole range of broadband packages from £14.50 up to around £25, according to how much data you want to ship per week/month. Top package is totally unlimited 512Kb broadband.

Service-wise they're one of the best (tons better than BT Internet!), plus they also respond to service requests and queries very rapidly, not using premium-rate lines. E-mail queries get answered within about 6-7 hours. Oh - you get to talk to people in the UK as well!

You can also see their service status by looking on their website - they're very open about any problems they're experiencing.

David

quote:

---

Originally posted by David Jenkins
I'm on PlusNet: Oh - you get to talk to people in the UK as well!

---

im on pipex 1MB realy fast no problems and helpfull support staff. unlimited downloads and only£25 + vat a month

Not strictly a recommendation, altho' the service has been OK so far.
Customer support - totally different matter. More like "customer dissatisfaction service".
I'm using the cheapo 256k version, £17-99 pm, but you get to use the phone as well.

another AYE for pipex 2½ years - no probs

Another factor to think about is the contention rate... IIRC BT ADSL is 50:1 and NTL is 5:1 !!

I have been using NTL's 600Mb (now 700Mb) serivice for 2 years and have no trouble whatsoever. excellent speed, clean and simple. I have heard that the helplines are bad but I have never had to ring them.....

My company will be launching an ADSL service on 1st September if you can wait that long? There will be some deals for the first few people who connect too

Chris

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

I'm on freedom2surf like hortimech. It's their £22.50 uncapped 512k package but they do some cheaper 1gig ones now with 1meg and 5meg limits.

I've been using NTL broadband for about 2 years and before that NTL dial up. The only problems that I have had so far have been related to virus's. Recently I traded up to the 1meg service and I still have no real complaints.

I think its a bit like buying a car, you can pay a lot of money with high expectations and end up with a pig that just won't ever drive right.


Enjoy. Hope this helps.

To be honest, most people here seem to be happy with their current company. Perhaps this thread would be more useful to everyone if we listed the companies to avoid.

I'll start the ball rolling with BT Internet - indifferent service, incompetent impossible-to-contact support staff only available via premium-rate lines, gross card-debit mis-management (they debited £150 off my credit card six months after I left them! I threatened them with a report to the banking ombudsman, leaving the whole organisation open to loss of their credit card functionality - or at least severe embarrasment in the eyes of the banking establishment).

David

[Edited on 23/7/04 by David Jenkins]

to avoid:

BT openwound
BT yahoo
BT nexttradename
freeserve/wannadoo

and anyone else who's gonna be bringing bandwidth caps in.

BT provide an obsolete broadband system, the least they could do is make it cheap or faster without caps

/rant

if you have cable in your area i would recormend buleyonder

I use aol 1 meg, never gone wrong but, I connect through a dialler with my own modem ( not there crappy usb one) and then use Internet explorer. I dont start there software at all.

I'm using AOL broadband,no problems here jon.

I've been with Pipex Solo for 2.5 years and although BT have screwed my line a couple of times, Pipex have given excellent service.

Costs me £23.44 inc vat per month for a 512k (50:1 contention) connection.

Pipex are consistently 5th or 6th fastest out of dozens of ISP's if you look at the www.adslguide.org speed tests and they have a bigger customer base than almost everyone else. They have massive network infrastructure which gives them excellent resilience in the event of a failure of part of their network.

HTH,
Craig.

I've been with Telewest since they first started and have absolutely no complaints. Customer service has always been great, its faster than anyone elses and there is no download cap. Also their contention ratio is much much lower than anyone elses. This is the maximum number of users directed down the same line at the same time. All ADSL that connect through the telephone use BTs network which has a contention rato of 50 to 1, which means you can have a maximum of 50 users accessing the net through the same node. The more users the slower your connection becomes ( remember 512k is the theoretical maximum speed!). Telewest and NTLs range from 20 to 1 right down to 8 to 1. This means that cable will usually appear to be faster than ADSL.

As a side note I had to move to an area with no Telewest for 9 months and so went with BT Internet. They were absolutely dreadful. Always having connection problems and their customer support didn't know the first thing about how their system works. I used my own internal modem as at the time they wanted over £100 for theirs.

When I phoned them as I was having connection problems the woman who answered said "Have you checked the USB plug?"
"No," I said. "It is an internal modem."
"Never heard of that make," said the woman. "Unplug the USB lead and plug it back in".
"It doesn't have a USB plug," said I.
"How does it connect to your computer?" she asked.
"It's internal," I explained." It is connected straight onto the motherboard."
"That's clever," she said. "Where does the motherboard plug into the telephone socket."

I rest my case.