BT Broadband sucks. New ISP suggestions please?

[mateykatie]

We have BT broadband.

It used to be OK but I have noticed they throttle the connection speed a lot more now, especially in the evenings. Sites like iPlayer and Youtube are always playing up.

Their customer service is terrible too.

Our contract is ending in the next month. We live in a very urban area very close to a telephone exchange.

Any recommendations?

O2 broadband very cheap if you are an O2 customer. I am with them and customer services all very friendly and helpful Have not had any problems yet but haven't been with them long. I get about 5Mb download speed and that is on wireless, also router not in the master socket (which means it could be faster than that) - that is faster than we used to get with BT and we were on their highest package, I am on O2's most basic one.

Not an O2 customer unfortunately. With Orange for my mobile, and very happy there for now.

You can still get O2 broadband if you are not a mobile customer, it's just 25% more expensive or something. I think Orange do home broadband as well though - worth checking out?

Alternatively just buy an O2 sim from a pound shop and give them that number when they ask if you are an O2 customer.

O2/Be/Waitrose are all the same service provider underneath the brand IIRC. They have a pretty good reputation.

Zen are supposed to be very good, but I don't think they are cheap.

Try www.SamKnows.com and use their Exchange Search link down the left side.

Enter suitable info (phone number or town name) and it should come up with the local BT exchange you are on.

From that, you can see a list of alternative suppliers (in the lower right hand side, marked LLU - there may be from 1 to nearly a dozen, rural areas unfortunately sometimes have no alternative firms). One disadvantage of using an LLU firm, however, is that it might be more awkward to switch to another ISP some time in the future if you decide to change again, so do also look at ThinkBroadband (link below)

As CAUP says, BE (unlimited/O2) has quite a good reputation, as does Zen, but cost wise there are many other options.

Look at www.ThinkBroadband.com and there's an ISP search facility, so you could look for ISPs which don't lock you into long term contracts (some are now tying new customers for 12, 18 or even 24 months).

You can also do a comparison of up to 6 ISPs, and will be shown graphs of the speed, reliability and customer service rankings for them for the previous 6 months or so, just so you can see whether existing customers are generally happy - it sometimes shows quite large differences between ISPs, and expensive does not always guarantee a better/ faster/ more reliable service.

Avoid Virgin they are shite - no service for six hours yesterday, and off for three hours on New Years Day

Thanks WebDude, that is really helpful.

MadameOvary, yes I have heard awful things about Virgin.

I am on Sky - it is very good. I had some problems with my router before Cjristmas, the bloke on customer service went through troubleshooting with me and was really helpful. So I recmmenend them.

Re BT Broadband... here's another reason to give them a wide berth!

The info was first reported in The Register about BT snooping on customer LANs (ie they can and have scanned the equipment connected to the customer's router , so they can tell if you have Apple iPhone and other devices in use... pretty nosy in my view!)

not once but more times, for them to be aware that equipment has not been unplugged!