Broadband - what's the best deal?

[Cha]

After having my inbox clogged FOR DAYS with a massive email sent by someone who I was writing an article about and having to spend £££ phoning India (at 50p a minute) to get the ruddy thing deleted off the server...blah blah blah... am finally considering getting broadband.
I understand there are different 'speeds' of broadband - am I right? And that's why some cost more than others?
I need to receive large emails for work (freelance journalist working from home) but apart from that, don't think I will be watching lots of porn or downloading the latest tunes, so maybe the fastest, most zappy one is not necessary. I am with BT at the moment and am reluctant to change my email address - will they re-route emails if I change my ISP? Anyone know what they are talking about or have experience of this broadband thingy?

Hi Cha - I've got a 1Mb broadband service from ntl, which costs £35 a month. Although ntl are notorious for their crap customer service, I haven't got any complaints - it's been pretty reliable. I think the 128Mb service is about £18 a month with them. Don't know if ntl operate in your area though?

Hi, Cha. We have AOL normal (512?) broadband - £28 a month - they do also have superfast now, think it's £10 more. Customer service is pretty good. They provide all the hardware and get you connected for nothing - I think BT make you pay a bit.

We get 6 email addresses with that and they seem to have limitless capacity - you can have all incoming mails sent to your Personal Filing Cabinet and it will warn you when you are close to a limit you choose yourself - just tracked through the size setting box and gave up looking at 300+MB.

I don't know if you can keep/enlarge your BT inbox if you switch ISPs though - maybe better speak to them?

tiscali are doing one for £15.99 a month at 3x dial-up speed.

Cha, am also considering broadband so watching this thread carefully. Freddiecat have you got Tiscali ?

Yeah - that tiscali looks too good to be true. What's the set up costs? £15.99 is what I pay for my BT Anytime dial up! What's the catch?

Anybody out there with Tiscali ? Help !!!

bumping this up as i am looking at tiscali for both b/band and regular phone calls. won't go near npower and ntl and we don't have telewest. anyone subscribe to tiscali? praphs this is why offer is so good- noone's got it!

after a truly horrifying customer service experience with ntl, which i won't bore you with, i can't talk to them ever again. isn't that one with tiscali tho still quicker than dial-up? must say, it's the lack of worrying over how long i stay on it during the day that attracts me more than the speed of "always open" things

We're with Tiscali (although the higher bandwidth, 512k for £25/month). We've found them very good - and the customer service has been excellent.

The service from ALL of the service providers is "up to" whatever level of bandwidth of service you have signed up to. There is something called the "contention ratio" you need to check out. For example a contetion ratio of 20 means that 20 users are "allocated" the same bandwidth, so if you are unlucky and the other 19 are looking to download at the same time, your service will slow down.

Some of the cheapest service providers have a high contention ration (eg 50 users might be "sharing" ). From memory, Tiscali is about average.

madgirl, yes it's "up to" 3 times faster than a 56Kbps modem connection, so it looks to be a good deal. When it says "up to", it means you are actually sharing your 150Kbps bandwidth with other customers (this is the contention ratio, I think it's normally 40 on a domestic service, so you're sharing with 40 other customers - it might be less though, I can't find that info on the tiscali site). So the speed you get depends on how many of the other 40 people sharing the bandwidth are using it at the same time.

I've heard the same about ntl, although not had any bad experiences with them yet myself

oo snap JanZ!

I've checked out the contention ratios: just about everyone has a contention ration of 50:1 - unless you are prepared to pay extra from a couple of supliers who have a "plus" service with a contention ratio of 20:1.

Personally, I don't think it is worth the extra unless you are using it for business purposes where speed is of the essence.

Tiscali still looks like one of the best deals - although Bulldog is slightly cheaper, but I don't know anything about them. My brother recommends Metronet as the cheapest - they have a variable rate which means that you pay £10/month for the first 200Mb that you download and then a small amount per Mb downloaded, to a cap of £23.99 - but with no cap on how much you can doowan load. It looks like quite a good deal - dh may even decide to change over to them. Details are here . You do need to buy your own modem though so need to budget in £50 for the modem and £2.50 for each filter you would need for your phone line.

We haven't got any broadband at all but I too was attracted by the cheaper cost. The Metronet one looks interesting - will check that out.

Someone at work said that the Tiscali one uses a USB modem which isn't as reliable as a modem which uses a network card. However I reckon that if the connection keeps cutting out then I'd just cancel my contract with them.

For me, speed of connection is not paramount, but would like to be able to keep the phone line free and be always online.

I pay the 17.99 one from ntl and it is fine, dont notice that it goes slow at all, that includes modem hire, free fitting, email address and webspace. I think BT have started doing one for 18pound now though

Freddiecat do they let you cancel the contract tho due to a modem not being up to scratch? also does Tiscali provide it? i reckon i am going to go for the £15.99 deal. i am a cheapskate

We've had the Tiscali USB modem for over a year now and never had any problems with it.

Connection is currently free on Tiscali - which includes the modem and filter. You do need to sign up for a 12 month contract though.

That's good JanZ. Re. contract Madgirl - I would have said that if a provider was not able to provide an adequate service then they are not upholding their side of the contract so why should you uphold yours...

We have 512 bit from a company called "NDO" - go and online and you will find it. It is £22.99 a month, and we are not tied to a 12 month contract. I.e if find we don't use it.

Service has been very good.

We got an email address as in XXXX.co.uk and anything that is headed this comes to out mail box. I.e [email protected] and [email protected], so can have an address for specific things like friends or work

In terms of what speed you need, I work from home regularly and get emailed items up to 15MB - which the computer has no problems with. It may take a few minutes sometimes, but compared to the 1 day previously it is a miracle.

One wee word of warning though - check whether the "headline" amount includes VAT or not, when you are doing your sums to compare the different options . The metronet deal doesn't - although it's still a good deal. They also charge for intitial set up - although to be fair, it is because BT charge them, and they are only holding you to a three month initial contract.

Anyone else use one of the cheaper broadband servers with a Mac? The tiscali offer excludes macs, & we can't get ntl. I'm not bothered about speed but I'm fed up with ringing home to get just the 1571 message because someone's taken root on the internet (1 hour last weekend waiting to be picked up from the hairdresser... grrrr...). Also my tesco ISP has an annoying habit of disconnecting on a regular basis- usually just as I've finally got to the page I need.

We have Macs, but use BT broadband, with relatively few, (well no), problems. Had a company pc laptop for the last 6 months connected to Tiscali and found it totally crap. It is so slow and cuts out all the time.

We're on Macs and have been with VISPA for 3 years - VERY pleased - very fast - superb service when we moved to broadband as BT said in 2 letters there was no way we could get Broadband... Vispa delivered in 3 days!
I don't know their contention ratio though.

Thanks for that. I will check out Vispa.

The BT deal - £18.99 - does it have a connection fee, do you know? I presume it would mean I could keep my email address the same, already dial up with BTopenworld.