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Original poster

Broadband recommendations?

20 replies

PicadillyCircus · 13/07/2004 13:43

Thinking of getting broadband as I always seem to be on the internet and people do try to phone occasionally.

(1) What speed is best ie 3, 10 or whatever speeds they are. We aren't likely to be downloading music.

(2) Don't want to pay too much - currently paying £12.49 a month for unlimited ordinary useage

(3) Which providers are best?

Thank you everyone!

OP posts:

sponge · 13/07/2004 13:57

Broadband is fab. Defintely get it. Not just for the being able to phone at the same time thing but also for the speed of connection etc.
Go for one of the major providers - BT Internet, Wanadoo (ex Freeserve). Don't go for AOL - I've heard many bad reports of them.
You won't need 1 mg unless you're going to be downloading video, sneding huge data files full of pictures etc. 512 (which is the standard one most suppliers offer) is plenty fast enough.
You can get 512 from Wanadoo for £17.99 per month. There are some limites on usage on this price but they're quite enough for most users and apparently they have no way to enforce them anyway.I did hear from a friend who works on the Wanadoo business that if you can hang on til mid August they will be offering 1 mg for £17.99 - depends if you want to wait.

Fio2 · 13/07/2004 14:15

Bt are a bit erm well crap for the money

ntl were better and cheaper I found

soyabean · 13/07/2004 14:28

Thanks for the Wanadoo tipoff Sponge. We might think about it in the summer so that wd be fine.
Whats wrong with aol btw? We have it (normal dial up) at the moment and it seems OK. Pretty much always able to connect, good advice lines etc. But so Slooow..very frustrating so we will def. need broadband before too long.

carwillin · 13/07/2004 15:23

There is also a little known provider called metronet, they charge £10 per month plus what you download. There is a calculator on their site
to give you an idea.

We pay on average £15 per month and that is for business and personal usage downloading a LOT of software and music/radio streaming etc. For the lowest package the price is capped at £23.99 so you know you will never pay more than that (only the price is capped not connection or usage).

I promise I don't work for them, I have just been very pleased with the service and value for money.

poppyseed · 13/07/2004 15:32

We have BT and it's fine - no problems here. It means I can be on mumsnet for ages at a time!!!

Fio2 · 13/07/2004 15:33

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Tissy · 13/07/2004 15:53

carwillin, thanks for the tip about metronet- it seems just what i am looking for- would probably work out cheaper than my BT dial-up connection at the minute!

Tissy · 13/07/2004 15:56

I'm being a bit thick here, so will someone explain in words of one syllable....
currently my ISP is demon and I pay £11.75 per month. On top of that I pay BT a local call rate for the time I spend online, so if I change to metronet (for example) do I still have to have Demon or can I lose that charge as well? It would mean changing my email address as well- not sure I want to do that...

tamum · 13/07/2004 16:01

Tissy, I don't know anything about metronet specifically, but if you change to another provider you wouldn't have to pay anything to demon, nor would you pay for your calls. You probably would have to change your email address though. It seems to me that there's relatively little difference in the cost of dial-up and broadband now, really, and the gain in convenience is huge.

FWIW I use Telewest and am very happy with them; I have had two "down" periods in over 3 years.

spacemonkey · 13/07/2004 16:03

i've just signed up with telewest, but metronet looks cheaper ... have looked at their website but it seems a bit unclear on whether you have to have a BT line?

tamum · 13/07/2004 16:05

You do need a BT line by the looks of it, spacemonkey, I just copied this:

NB: Your ADSL service is tied to both your phone number and the physical telephone circuit. This means that if you move house, even if you keep the phone number, or remain at the same property but change the phone number, you will lose your ADSL service. Also remember that if you fail to pay your BT line rental and BT turn off your phone line, your ADSL service will be terminated. To re-activate the line, in all these cases, you will need to place a new order for the full £59.

carwillin · 13/07/2004 17:18

As with most broadband connections you will need a BT line that has been upgraded, again the BT site has an availability check where you put in your postcode or telephone number and it will tell you whether or not you live in a Broadband area.

Tissy - Can you change your demon account so it is purely pay-as-you-go?. I keep a PAYG BT account open aswell so I can keep using my email adddress. All I have to do is dial-up every six months and stay online for a minute to keep the account active. It costs me nothing to keep the account just the cost of a 1 minute phonecall every six months and BT even send you an email warning you that your account will be suspended in 90 days if you don't access the account.

HTH

spacemonkey · 13/07/2004 17:20

i'll stick with telewest then! actually they are offering a pretty good package - less than 35 quid for phone (unlimited evenings and weekends) + 256K Broadband + free cable tv for a year

carwillin · 13/07/2004 17:22

Wow SpaceMonkey, that is a good deal if it includes cable tv for a year aswell!

THERESA · 13/07/2004 18:22

We've got Tiscali. I'm no expert, dh sorts it all out. It's about £17 per month unlimited usage. The speed is meant to be somehwere between 'ordinary' internet & 'proper' broadband. I don't think it's much quicker but it's really good that people can still get through on 'phone which is what we really wanted it for.

tamum · 13/07/2004 19:39

That's a really good deal, spacemonkey, much better than the one I'm getting, although I get 1Mb. I keep meaning to change the phone, because it would cost nothing, effectively.

Carwillin, you don't need a BT line with Telewest because it's cable.

KangaMummy · 13/07/2004 19:53

We have got TISCALI x3 up to 150kbps. The screen says 2.3Mbs.

We have probs that on one day it stays connected all day then on another it won't connect for even a couple of secs.

Anyway finally they have arranged to get BT to come and check connection to house.

He came today and told me that we are past the area where broadband will work.

I have to wait for TISCALI to ring me later tonight.

My advise would be check the customer service phone number because if it is in INDIA you may have probs, they just want to take you through a flow chart. They could not get what I was trying to say happened.

BTW the phone line was checked b4 I transferred to Broadband.

SofiaAmes · 14/07/2004 02:39

This site has impartial info and reviews of all the providers.

DSL is great and well worth the extra cost over dial up. It's a flat monthly fee regardless of how much you use it and there are no call charges on top of the monthly fee. You do however have to pay a monthly rental for your BT phone line, which you would pay anyway if you have a land line at home. When you are online with dsl you are not tying up your phone line.

I have ZEN and highly recommend them. They are friendly and helpful and when I had a problem that turned out to be a wrong setting on my modem and nothing to do with them, they sorted it out for me in minutes anyway. I don't think the service has been down once since I signed up almost a year ago. I have 512k which is probably more than sufficient unless you are doing specialist stuff.

Earlybird · 15/07/2004 17:48

I am tired of missing calls when I am online, so have been contemplating an upgrade to broadband. I travel a great deal, and have found that AOL is great for access from various locations around the world. It's very easy to simply plug the phone line into my laptop, find a local access number, and dial up wherever I am.

Maybe a stupid question, but can you use broadband when you travel? If so, how do you access it? What ISP do others use for remote access? Must confess to being a bit of a technophobe, so even though I'm unhappy with expense, slowness and inconvenience of dial up - it works, so have hesitated to make a change. Advice of other wise mumsnetters needed and appreciated please!

sponge · 15/07/2004 18:16

You won't be able to use your broadband when you travel as it is a physical connection. You will however be able to dial in to your e-mail account etc if you wish but of course at dial up speed.
All providers, unless they are cable, require you to have a BT line which you will of course have to pay for but you will only be paying for your normal phone line.
If you access via cable they will normally package broadband up with your phone calls and cable TV access but IME you either get limited channel choice or pay more than Sky for the TV and our TV did go down fairly regularly. However it's a couple of years since I ditched NTL so they may have got more competitive.
We've had Freeserve (Wanadoo) for 2 years. It has never gone down and their customer services have sorted out any problems very quickly and efficiently.
The thing with AOL is that apparently their installation process plants cookies onto your system that make it pretty near impossible to get rid of them. They've had bad publicity for this.

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