Broadband providers

I am currently on NTL. To be honest I don't have much trouble with them but the bills are topping 60 quid a month and I can't really justify this.

My intention is to get a set top box for visual crap and ditch the phone line as we both have mobiles with great deals.

However I must have broadband and am happy to pay up to 30 quid a month. However the ones I am interested in all want me to have a BT phone line. Now this is equal to at least £10 more a month.

Why do they need this? What are NTL using they don't need a BT phone line?

I also need to have a erthunet modem connection, I havn't got the USB space or desire.

Any help or expereince would be welcome.

 

there own cable network,why not cancell evreything but the broadband with ntl?cost me around £25 a month

is that a new mac standard? think it meens a network conection

 

ntl broadband is their own cable system.
pipex or nildram or anyone else needs a BT line, with that line activated by BT with ADSL. different system entirely.
pipex is £23.44 a month and BT is another £10 a month. only way to ditch ntl is to pay provider + BT for the line rental.

 

Stick with NTL if I were you, because I heard the cable providers were about to give their customers an extra 50% bandwidth for free.

 

garyi, if you want some comparisons/advice on the brodaband packages that are available then check out www.adslguide.org. They've got a bit on the front page about the cable services from NTL and Telewest that might be of interest (http://www.adslguide.org/newsarchive.asp?item=1639). Hope this might be of some use.

BL21DE3

 

Garyi, I'm looking for a Broadband provider at the moment.
Did you find a decent one yet ?

 

I am on freeserve dial up, and had virgin, not bad..

Freeserve service seems very good, no complaints, I went to tiscali for their 3x broadband as it was only £1 more.

It was dire, the system suffered from other users I think slowing it down, or something wasn't configured right.

I returned to my freeserve and its now better with dial up.

I have heard good news about blueyonder, but avoid AOL like the plague.

The tiscali service I phoned 12x on a sunday nite, and simply got a message saying...we are sorry no operators available, call back later, and it went dead., after 2 mins in a queue. that is atrocious.

note I tried a tactic to ring the new sign ups no. and guess what?, got through right away...I had expected better of tiscali, and dumped them .....get em in easy and quick, then when problems happen/need customer service, don't spend cash on the back up. Dreadful and hateful.

avoid plusnet, too, they billed me even though I had terminated and you can't even talk to a manager, they hide, and you get these useless customer service types. It took 6 months of hassle to get a partial refund, I was going postal with them.

 

Bllox, I can only receive BT due to the location of the flat .

 

Voodoo, if you want ADSL i'll happily recommend Eclipse & Pipex. was with Pipex for over 18 months and moved to Eclipse when i moved last november, been happy with both.

Gary, you're best bet is to stay with NTL, and strip your plan back to the bare essentials (the phone line & 600K). i assume your cable tv box doubles as the cable modem? (iirc from peeps i've talked to on NTL) if so they'll probably replace it with a seperate cable modem (which should have both USB & ethernet connections). best bet is to phone them up and ask

 

Allthough I don't have a broadband account in the UK I would happily recommend Demon Internet. Pretty much the first "proper" ISP in the UK and still one of the best. I first had a Demon dial-up (SLIP) account in around 1990 and it was £10 a month. 14 years later their basic dialup account is still just £10 a month . I still have a dialup account that I use when I'm in the UK and have never had any problems with them. I don't see why their broadband accounts should be any different.

Michael.

 

I'm with BT Yahoo! Broadband and I can't honestly say I'd recommend them. The ADSL service works fine and seems reliable, here at least - I gather from the news groups that others have problems elsewhere.

However, their customer service leaves something to be desired. I was with BT Internet dial-up and they automatically migrated me to Broadband. They cancelled the old dial-up account but kept billing me for it until I rang to complain. They sorted that out straight away though.

The other problem was the software they give you to install. It is rubbish! You have to install it in order to get the connectin configured right, but then you should de-install it and use Outlook Express/Internet Explorer or whatever your preferred browser is. The BT Yahoo! software just didn't work. At all. Complete pants!

It was only after the third call to customer service that someone actually admitted that the software was pants and told me that I could uninstall it.

So after a rocky start it's been good. I still think £30 a month is too much though.

 

i suggest pipex (been a subscriber for 2 years no complaints) or nildram (2 friends of mine swear by them) or zen (heard good things about them)

 

Another vote here for Eclipse. Have had a basic 512 connection for about a year now and its been rock solid. Use it for work - freelance designer - and so it needs to be fast and reliable (which it is). No contract either which is a bonus, and all for £23.95 a month uncapped.

 

Another vote for Pipex here, been using them for 2 years. With their basic 512K uncapped package I've had no major problems whatsoever.