Broadband/ Bt any good?

[Jzee]

I'm thinking about changing to BT broadband - does anyone have it and if so do you have any complaints? I'm currently on telewest which is fine, but they won't put an extension in without running a huge cable around the house and I don't like that idea.

Jzee

I currently have BT Broadband and have had a cable modem previously.

I haven't had any problems with the ADSL line from BT except a slight drop in voulme on the phone line.

You can get cheaper broadband from other suppliers - but still using your BT line (ie they wouldn't have to lay a cable like Telewest).

Essentially, if BT have "enabled" your local exchange (ie if THEY can offer it to you), then ANY of the broadband suppliers can offer it to you - and depending on the package that you go with, it may actaully be better service than the one you would get from BT (things like contention ratio, in other words, how many other people MIGHT be using the capacity at the same time as you, so potentially, how much it might slow down by at peak periods)

I actually work for a company that supplies broadband, but dh won't use them (even though they've got a good reputation) because he's been so happy with the service we've got from Tiscali. I have to say, my experience of the Tiscali broadband at home has been excellent. It's so fast! The phone is still fine as well, although intially there was a slight hum, but that's been sorted.

We've used both Cable (telewest) broadband and BT and the BT one is much more stable and doesn't seem to have any problems with the contention ratio.

I'd go for it

HI all,
I have just had broadband installed from ntl, we didn't pay any installing or for the modem/box, I think bt are a rip off. there are more better deals on
I could be completely wrong, so apologise if I am. just my opinion.

I'm about to get BT broadband on the recommendation of a mate of mine who knows about these things. I keep confusing it with BTopenworld broadband which is dearer.
One caution I was given - there is a conflict with some cordless phones. I spoke to BT and their warning is that Cable & Wireless cordless phones may not be compatible with broadband (even after the standard filters have been fitted to phone sockets). They also advised not to position any cordless phone base station close to the PC.

that probably what i was thinking of then, sorry,

If you are still considering alternatives to BT, I have just signed up with Tiscali which is both cheap and good!

My friend has bt broadband and it is much slower than my telewest connection - but I'm not sure if that's because of her computer itself. Having said that, I think Telewest advertise as the fastest connection.

Willow2

TW do two different versions one at the standard speed of 512kb and one at 1mb.

If you use telewest, does it still use BT 'line' (apologies if that's terribly un-techy) ? Because when we had Sky installed, they insisted it had to go thru BT line, so I've always assumed we're stuck with BT as long as we have Sky. Do Telewest do a digi TV package too ? Does it have Cbeebies ?! That's about all I watch these days :0

If you go through a cable company for internet they hook you upto their cable system for internet access you do not need a phoneline of any sort.

This is a direct cometitor to ADSL which is BT's way of offering broadband access over it's phone system.

I dont know we are with ntl at the moment who seem quite cheap in comparrison to the others. But we are moving shortly and I dont think there are many, if any, independant providers down where we are moving either - so I will be very interested in the replies!

We're with Vispa and are delighted ! Very good (actually excellent) and cheap! We've been with them for a long while now too.

ks (nice to see you're back btw!) do you need lots of space? If not you can have a 2MB address free with hotmail. I'm surprised BT want to charge extra though (but then hotmail try to, they also do a huge capacity one which you do have to pay for and when you go looking it looks like that's all they do).

We're with AOL Broadband, £27.99 a month including 7 email addresses. So far so good - although it doesn't like Adobe Acrobat, it'll fetch it for me and downloads quite fast but then sulks and I have to go out and come in again. (Suspect there is a more technical term for this procedure!)

Also AOL's helpdesk online is great.

JanH, I'm sure there is but your description made me smile !

We're with Demon + BT ADSL for £25 a month in total, gives us 'unlimited' email addresses, which is important to us for software testing reasons. The service as been less than perfect recently but that's been due to BT upgrading their systems, and seems back to normal now.

Through Demon. We get one bill a month from Demon for £25 and one bill every 3 months from BT for around £28 which is their line rental charge. Although BT provide the broadband bit, it was all set up via Demon and they are our point of contact if anything goes wrong.

We have a separate telephone line which is used for domestic calls, with its own bill.