I am moving out of the clutches of Hull's KCOM and into BT land in Lincs and was wondering what was on offer for a basic phone line/internet package up to 100MB per month - I currently pay £50 pm to KCOM.
TIA.
I pay about 35 for unlimited broadband, PAYG phone - which I rarely use. And fantastic support.
And my own IP address. IDnet.
And givenm that its talken 3 engineer visits to get (nearly) all the crackles off the line, that support is key.
See
Plusnet are not mostly owned by BT, how come they can actually offer more.
I'm more or less on the same as the writer but for virgin. One issue generally is that nasty little word upto in the terms.
Brian
The problem with talk talk is that, yes they are but they do tend to have a lack of joined up thinking and never learn from their mistakes. People have been cut off by so called improvements and suddenly lose email etc. They need to get their act together more. Brian
Mainly because they don't do their support from some third world country using a VOIP with almost zero bandwidth. You get to speak to real people in the UK who might or might not have a Yorkshire accent.
The trick is to wait for one of the deals to come along and then switch to take advantage of it. I got my mum's switch from old legacy BT POTS to Plusnet ADSL with the same weekend calls and a net saving!
OK - Will do.
almost everyone does unlimited now
and usually at much less than 50 quid
what special service are you currently buying that costs that 50 quid?
Plusnet are definitely the sweet spot being being reasonably priced and offering good service for basic domestic needs - 30 quid, landline with unlimited BB. If you are in a region that can have fibre it's (about) an extra tenner,
but if you do need some special, more professional, service then Andrews and Arnold is the place to go
both are just rebadged BT lines with better customer service
tim
I understand that Plusnet is actually owned by BT. I have been very happy with their service over number of years, though of late they have messed up their billing system, though that now seems sorted.
But be aware that, unless things have changed recently, Plusnet have two different tariffs. The price you see in the adverts is for the the majority of users who are on "low cost" exchanges. If you live out in the sticks then, like me, you might be on a "Market 1" exchange and Plusnet will charge you more.
Because of Plusnet's higher charge for my area I found Zen to be very competitive at £35.40 per month for unlimited 17Mb/s ADSL and unlimited inclusive phone calls to 01,02 & 03 numbers. I've found the UK based tech support from Zen to be good with people who appear to know what they're talking about.
In message <pvidob$lr4$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Broadback snipped-for-privacy@j-towill.co.uk> writes
I'm also happy with Plusnet, and I know of several others round here with them, all happy, as well. Their rebadged BT router denies you the option of a local network in the 10.x.x.x range caused a bit of hassle here, though.
I have a good friend who has been with at least 5 ISP's over the last few years, and I've had to try to help him out a few times with visits where I had to take over the support calls. The dire ones were Talktalk and Onetel. I forget which one of those it was that said " Oh where it says underscore in the username in the letter we sent you, it should be a dot", but both were awful. He had problems with Sky, I think mainly with accounts and increasing charges. He is currently with Virgin on fibre, which works well and has been reliable. The fibre drop across his front lawn was a bit of a gruelling bodge job, though
plusnet are owned totally by BT...
However they do seem to have retained some of their independence.
Physics is a bitch...
I think brian mis-typed "now"
Personally I would avoid sky (basic service not too bad, but a bit limited for more serious use),
talktalk (for all round general fuckwittery!)
Not had much dealing with BT recently, so can't comment other than there are better deals to be had. Their support was poor, but IIUC has improved a bit.
Virgin business is ok (ish) if you can get cable.
IME plusnet are not bad - although support is not as good as it once was.
IDNet are very good, good support with a personal touch.
Zen & A&A also have very good reputations for support and quality of service.
Since many are reselling the same physical service based on what openreach can provide, it really comes down to service in the end.
Service means different things to different people, but at a basic level they need to be good at the process of getting faults fixed.
Also note that the included offerings vary with providers...
Some can't offer fixed IP addresses (will not matter to many but important to some).
Some don't include things like access to email servers.
Some will only do tech support if you are using their router.
Very few offer bundled usenet (plusnet being one of the few that still do).
Some go out of their way to make business use difficult - sky for example supply a router than can't route VPN traffic.
The larger ISPs also tend to subscribe to the various blocking requests from the powers that be. The smaller ISPs can claim exemption. So if you want to access torrent index sites etc, that may be relevant.
yes. Everybody uses BT openreach cable for the last whatever BUT the two things that differ are how much contention they put on and how good their support is.
Another strong vote for Zen here. As well as great service, they keep on forgetting to raise their prices...
None, but living in the Hull area, I am tied to Kingston Communications so have to cough up whatever they are offering. See:
In message <pvij3q$l6q$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, The Natural Philosopher snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid writes
+1 for Zen. Don't often have problems, but when we do, they are on the ball, and the help people are in the UK. We pay around 50 per month for phone and unlimited FTTC broadband.
The one thing Virgin often do very badly is the drop cable from the street to your house. Mine got cut by a contractor, and the replacement was basically dropped accross my drive and the stone chippings swept over it.
And don't forget traffic shaping. If you start with hardly any bandwidth (600kb/s on a good day) traffic shaping can cause connections to drop even when the ADSL doesn't. I know this because my ISP was taken over by Talktalk.
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