Searching through the archives, Metronet was the people's choice in
2005. What's the best way to go in 2007 when we also have joint deals with telephone/TV etc.
I don't need TV, rarely use a mobile, don't use the telephone much, but use the internet a lot and would ideally like something faster than my present AOL (=A319.99 pm) at stated 2272 kbps. On the other hand, a cheaper and reliable broadband would suit fine. AOL technical support is good, so I'd like decent support since things do go wrong at times.
Thanks for that, but I would also like to hear the experiences of this newsgroup, since its members are pretty savvy about everything, and obviously we all have experience with different ISPs.
Since in the vast majority of cases everything goes via BT anyway, there isn't really a penny to choose between them. As far as the 'broadband'' bit goes.
What you are really asking even if you don't know it, are issues that are irrelevant to broadband, like news and mail servers, international bandwidth and peering arrangements, customer service and so on.
here you need to refine the question into what you want to do with your internet connection, and how savvy you are at fixing it.
I use IDNET, the big plus with them is the fast response of their help desk. Also I have found them very reliable. Yes BT is involved but they are not the best.
Hmm. There's contention internal to the ISP but imho the most important concerns are reliability & customer service for when things go wrong, /even if a subsequent problem is BT's/. Having an ISP with good service is essential as you have no direct contact with BT & rely on your ISP to keep hassling them.
FWIW I always recommend Zen.
An important question is estimated download requirements per month as they'll vary much between users.
Any good ISP should meet reasonable requirements for mail & peering. Similarly, if you want binary news provision, virtually every ISP will fail to offer reasonable retention & completion - for binaries I'd always go with a third party such as Giganews or a reseller (I'm currently with PowerUsenet).
I'll cast my vote to Andrews and Arnold. If you want a pipe to the Internet they ar egood. These days, they are doing more (mail servers and suchlike). Cons: they are small and do 9-5 support. Pro: If you do have an issue[1] then they do pick up the phone in less than 10 seconds IME and the person knows what they are talking about.
Cheers
Tim
[1] When I upgraded to ADSL-MAX, the bandwidth cap wasn't getting automagically raised after the requisit day or two. After my second call to them (the first was the obligatory "give it another 24 hours and see", I had a BT engineer call me back on my mobile requesting some speed tests whilst he reset stuff at their end. 10 minutes later all was well. Best of all, I didn't have to ponce around for 15 minutes pretending to reboot my "windows PC" that I don't have.
So is the question whether to have a BT connection or a cable connection or a satellite connection? what are the pros and cons of those? I have had cable before, with Cable and Wireless (cable and hopeless at the time) so the connection does exist.
It's been a while, but last time I looked into satellite broadband services, the initial setup costs were very high (relative to ADSL/Cable) and, due to the fact the satellite is in geostationary orbit, the latency is increased simply because of the time it takes for the signals to travel there and back. However, if you're in a completely rural area and have no other options, then it's certainly viable.
I've been using Entanet for the past couple of years (there are a bunch of resellers for them -- ukfsn seems to be one of the more popular choices. Read more about them here:
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also comes very highly recommended:
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As for cable? I left NTL a number of years ago due to terrible service, although experiences seem to vary. I can't really comment on how good they are (or not) now, but personally I'll never go back to them.
There are more subdivisions and technologies than that. I have three "broadband" connections using different technologies.
The vanilla DSL services offered by virtually every ISP and using BT as a front end mainly differ by the contention ratio offered but more importantly by the nature, number and count of upstream connections that the provider has.
Many of the providers peer at internet exchanges which is relevant for traffic within the UK. For their international traffic, the smaller ones buy transit bandwidth from the larger carriers and specialist transit operators (e.g. Level3). So if most of what you want to do results from internatiional traffic, it may well be the capacity that the ISP buys from the transit operators that has the largest influence.
So you have those factors and then the common factor of BT.
Another flavour of DSL service is offered by some ISPs who install equipment in BT exchanges - known as local loop unbundling (LLU). Basically here you connect to the provider's network earlier in the chain rather than going through BT's DSLAMs and other environment first. This allows some providers to offer more leading edge services and perhaps to have less conservative bandwidths than are offered with a BT front end. It may also provide a faster time to fix than if the ISP has to call BT to fix their part. Whether it results in better service overall, is less clear. At the end of the day, if the wire from the exchange breaks BT still gets involved.
I have a DSL service which is about to move to LLU, so I'll see. I am not expecting there to be a large difference in reliability, and certainly no perfromance difference.
I have an NTL cable connection at 10Mbits/sec. It is less reliable in terms of up time (and I measure this) than the DSL connection, but does deliver what I would expect out of a 10Mbit connection accounting for the protocol and other overheads etc. However, it is limited in two significant ways. a) It is highly asymmetric - the upload speed is around 300-400k and b) it has single dynamic addressing. For my purposes, this limits its use severely and it is really only suitable for volume downloads, basic web access and multimedia. To be fair to them, Virgin Media don't sell it as anything else.
The third connection is a wireless DSL service. This was introduced by Tele2 in the late 90s before DSL has really become widely available. It is implemented in a few regions and involves the use of a special antenna on the roof directed to a base station. It gives me 1Mbit in both directions, and the technology will go to 2Mbits each way. Unfortunately, the installation cost for the provider in terms of equipment was high and so it became impossible to compete with DSL for home users. The service was most recently acquired by Pipex and as far as I know, they are not taking new orders for it. Businesses are being more attracted to DSL services (ADSL and SDSL) anyway. Ultimately, I expect that there will be Wimax or equivalent as an alternative. Nonetheless, this is the most reliable of the three connections.
I have been involved in satellite provisioned internet services in the past. These have been offered in places where even DSL is not possible. The downstream data is provided over a satellite transponder along with TV services and the signal delivered to a special set top box. The upstream connection is via telephone line and is thus limited to 56k. This technology is hopeless for anything interactive because the latency up and down to the satellite is substantial. Therefore, it was mostly pitched for bulked and batched downloading. Because this is not very commercially attractive, I am not sure that there is anybody left offering it.
If you were thinking of satellite in the sense of Sky's offering, then this is a DSL service offered following their acquisition of Easynet who use LLU and BT services.
So it all depends on what you want and what you want to pay - e.g. what kind of internet access and for what purposes; bundling with video and TV services and perhaps telephony. There are certainly deals to be had if you want to buy one of the triple play bundles for example.
I don't think there is one.. they all seem to have their own set of problems!.
Though Entanet and Zen broadband are very good, but aren't cheap.
Ntl if your in one of their areas can be very good sometimes better then what ADSL is but ntl's customer service can go rather wrong sometimes;!.
However if its ADSL then your limited in how far you are from the serving exchange and that is why your speed may be no more then the
2.272 K you describe.
We have several services at different locations with Eclipse who do a good service for £15 a month but in recent times their customer service isn't quite what it used to be having become rather "jobsworth" in approach, but I haven't heard anyone say anything good about any low cost ADSL service for quite some time now. Its coming down to you get what you pay for!.
I don't live in the UK, but my sister-in-law in Manchester has had endless problems with Onetel, now run by Carphone Warehouse. It has been a sort of Orwellian farce. Applying for ADSL had the immediate (and only) effect that her email was cut off.
I've had similar problems with Telecom Italia (in Italy); when I try to get ADSL they deny that I am a customer, although they send a bill every 2 months.
Why is it that communication companies are the worst offenders when it comes to communicating?
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