UK Interwebz recommendations
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I'm finally free of the turd that is BT broadband and their shoddy hardware, customer service, etc. (Sidenote: Interesting, when you Google for "cancel bt broadband" sans quotes, not a single result relates to an official BT page, removing the word cancel gives you every BT page under the sun... and to find the phone number to call to cancel is another adventure, buried in some deep dark corner). I currently plan to go for O2's top package, which would save me £11 per month, put me on a smaller contract, and hopefully get a working router. Who else would people suggest? Or are O2 as good as they claim?
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
I use O2 every day. The broadband package is fairly cheap - it works out cheaper if you have a phone with them as the provider. The router's fairly good. I've got it set up at the front of the house and can access the internet from the back garden. Some notes on it though: 1. It's set up to use WEP encryption as default, but it supports WPA2 2. The encryption key is printed on the bottom if you ever lose it 3. There's a reset button on the back if you ever feel the need to reset every setting to default 4. The web interface by default is a little poxy - to get to the best options log in as SuperUser 5. At the start, it needs a direct Ethernet connection to the computer 6. It has a one-touch wireless setup button on the front - I didn't use it but I hear its rather good 7. You need to have a power socket rather close to the phone socket - the cables are a little short
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I'm finally free of the turd that is BT broadband and their shoddy hardware, customer service, etc. (Sidenote: Interesting, when you Google for "cancel bt broadband" sans quotes, not a single result relates to an official BT page, removing the word cancel gives you every BT page under the sun... and to find the phone number to call to cancel is another adventure, buried in some deep dark corner). I currently plan to go for O2's top package, which would save me £11 per month, put me on a smaller contract, and hopefully get a working router. Who else would people suggest? Or are O2 as good as they claim?
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
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I'm finally free of the turd that is BT broadband and their shoddy hardware, customer service, etc. (Sidenote: Interesting, when you Google for "cancel bt broadband" sans quotes, not a single result relates to an official BT page, removing the word cancel gives you every BT page under the sun... and to find the phone number to call to cancel is another adventure, buried in some deep dark corner). I currently plan to go for O2's top package, which would save me £11 per month, put me on a smaller contract, and hopefully get a working router. Who else would people suggest? Or are O2 as good as they claim?
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
O2 bought out bethere.co.uk who were started by Swedes(I think) and provide the internet service for O2. I have been with BE for about 3-4 years in London, there internet speeds and reliability are great, as well as their service and technical support. Go for it!
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I'm finally free of the turd that is BT broadband and their shoddy hardware, customer service, etc. (Sidenote: Interesting, when you Google for "cancel bt broadband" sans quotes, not a single result relates to an official BT page, removing the word cancel gives you every BT page under the sun... and to find the phone number to call to cancel is another adventure, buried in some deep dark corner). I currently plan to go for O2's top package, which would save me £11 per month, put me on a smaller contract, and hopefully get a working router. Who else would people suggest? Or are O2 as good as they claim?
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Check out who's got their kit installed in the exchange (LLU). If no-one has then every ISP will be using BT wholesale and will throttle your connection in some way or charge you a fortune. I'm currently with Virgin and paying £10 a month for unlimited 8 Mb/s broadband and free evening and weekend calls. No problems with the service after 10 months and they are upfront about their throttling policy. Just make sure you're looking at the ADSL policy and not the cable policy (80Kb/s vs 1Mb/s!).
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TalkTalk are.....cheap. Pretty fast and reliable provided I leave my modem on all the time. I think the problem with all broadband suppliers is that you only tend to hear about the people who have problems, positive reports online are hard to find.
Talk Talk..... arrrrrrggggggh no.. Customer service is shocking.... Basically I moved house June last year and thought Talk Talk would be an alternative to BT. Long and the short of it is that 2 days before they were scheduled to activate I ring them up to find out where the kit is, to be told that they never set up the account and that it would take a further month activate. When asked if I had an account they said “no and no further action was needed”. To my surprise a month later when I'd already opened and account with BT and Tiscali my number is slammed by Talk Talk. 4 monhts later and an ever escalating bill from Talk Talk (£200 ish) while still with Tiscali and BT, I get them to admit their mistake and cancel the bill, and revert back to Tiscali and BT. I must have wasted hours of my life on over 40 calls to Talk Talk... The only way I could get sense was to talk to a director on the phone... Talk Talk more unpleasant than being kicked in the knackers by rugby player hob nailed boots on……
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Check out who's got their kit installed in the exchange (LLU). If no-one has then every ISP will be using BT wholesale and will throttle your connection in some way or charge you a fortune. I'm currently with Virgin and paying £10 a month for unlimited 8 Mb/s broadband and free evening and weekend calls. No problems with the service after 10 months and they are upfront about their throttling policy. Just make sure you're looking at the ADSL policy and not the cable policy (80Kb/s vs 1Mb/s!).
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I'm finally free of the turd that is BT broadband and their shoddy hardware, customer service, etc. (Sidenote: Interesting, when you Google for "cancel bt broadband" sans quotes, not a single result relates to an official BT page, removing the word cancel gives you every BT page under the sun... and to find the phone number to call to cancel is another adventure, buried in some deep dark corner). I currently plan to go for O2's top package, which would save me £11 per month, put me on a smaller contract, and hopefully get a working router. Who else would people suggest? Or are O2 as good as they claim?
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Not many positive stories - so here is one. BT at 8M, in the depths of Cambridgeshire, unlimited traffic, pretty good to me. The customer service is pretty iffey, but apart from the company that looks after my coffee machine, so is everone else. So is the grass always greener on the other side of the hill?
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Not many positive stories - so here is one. BT at 8M, in the depths of Cambridgeshire, unlimited traffic, pretty good to me. The customer service is pretty iffey, but apart from the company that looks after my coffee machine, so is everone else. So is the grass always greener on the other side of the hill?
I used to live a bit more out in the sticks last year and got 6.5 out of the "up to 8". It was ticking along OK, most of the problems were after the move. After switching to HomeHub2 for the range, sure it might have great range, but it constantly loses connection with every machine on the network and sits there idle, with it's lights stating everything is hunky-dory, when it actually requires a restart. BT's order page tells me where I am now I should get 4 of the "up to 8", but I only get 1.4, and I live no more than 200m from the exchange.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
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Dave Parker wrote:
£130 new line activation each time I move to a different flat.
I had to pay this last time I moved, they told me I was required to be in the property between some vague time of like 12-6. So I sat there all day, with nothing to do in an empty flat. No-one ever came, and my line magically activated the next day without anyone actually being there. I felt like billing them for my wasted time. Cable isn't available here either :(
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Yeah they cancelled my line installation the first time as well without telling me in advance so also had a wasted day. http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/bt-delighted-with-latest-monopoly-200903041620/[^]
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That is the info I was talking about and you seem to have a lot of options. If you can get Virgin's cable service I'd probably go with that. Currently running at 20Mb/s looking to increase to 50Mb/s I think and ADSL isn't going to be upto that speed any time soon. Alternatively pick one of the ISP's that have their kit in the exchange. They'll still limit your connection speed at certain times of the day but they can probably charge you less for it. Virgin cap me from 4:00pm to 1:00am if the exchange gets busy and if I've downloaded over a certain amount during that period.
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I'm finally free of the turd that is BT broadband and their shoddy hardware, customer service, etc. (Sidenote: Interesting, when you Google for "cancel bt broadband" sans quotes, not a single result relates to an official BT page, removing the word cancel gives you every BT page under the sun... and to find the phone number to call to cancel is another adventure, buried in some deep dark corner). I currently plan to go for O2's top package, which would save me £11 per month, put me on a smaller contract, and hopefully get a working router. Who else would people suggest? Or are O2 as good as they claim?
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
I highly recommend O2. I am paying £10 a month for a 16Mbps line, which is a pretty good deal (for the UK at leasr). I actually get between 12 and 14Mbps, depending. The O2 service is basically Be Online who they bought a while back and both services are constantly rated the best on UK DSL sites. The router is a rebadged Thomson SpeedTouch and it easy to setup and administer. I switched to O2 from BT and it became immediately apparent that BT throttles BitTorrent traffic. I went from a 6Mbps BT connection to a 14Mbps one but my BitTorrent download speeds went through the roof - from 60Kbps to 1Mbps! I still get phone calls from BT's Indian call centre begging me to come back, which just makes me angry and even less likely to use any BT services in future. :)