14 replies to this topic

[SEO-Richard]

Can anyone on the uk advise me on a decent broadband supplier? BT Openwoe is, of course, reviewed as woeful. I've heard good things about Nildran, though apparently it's getting too big and is going down the chute; and Biscit (all spellings my own, they're a close approximation) which unfortunately wants a 12 month contract - and I don't, in case they're useless.


Looking for 512 k download, not bothered about the upload, and about £30 a month.

RELIABILITY, RELIABILITY, RELIABILITY is what I want and decen customer support. Nothing else is important.

Anyone out there able to help me?

[OldWelshGuy]

There you go Rich,

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/

lots of stuff on there, unfortunately, whilst where i live is a treasure of Wales, we will not ever get broadband, so we are having satellite broadband but it does have a 4mbs speed which will be nice when we get it early next year, but at £1,300 for the equipment, and £125 a month it is a bit costly. Thankfully our Welsh assemble are meeting 50% of the cost through their broadband Wales initiative.

On an aside, are you near Sheffield? cardiff v steelers was a great game, god i love ice hockey.

[McFox]

RELIABILITY, RELIABILITY, RELIABILITY is what I want and decent customer support. Nothing else is important.

OWG gave you the adsl guide.

Personally, I would recommend AOL. They get slagged off a lot but support is free and very few glitches.

Only problem is the lack of AOL SMTP but if you can use your own site's SMTP there shouldn't be a problem.

Price is about what you were looking at. Modem is free.

Depending on the number of users in your area, your download speed is 512k (ish). Obviously if lots of people are going for huge downloads all at once, then it will bottleneck the system but if there isn't a huge load on the line, you should get a fairly consistent 512k download speed. I think the upload is about 256k.

McFox

[OldWelshGuy]

I have heard nothing but good things about AOL B/B its just that thing it does with your system and the dll's i worry about, why? WHY? WHY?? why do they do that thing they do with your puter when all you want is a connection the web? IMO AOL would get a low more subscribers and take them past Freeserve if they offered the package without that damn browser and stuff.

[SEO-Richard]

Thanks OWG, unfortunately that's one of the guides I've already looked at, things change so fast in the ISP world that I wanted personal recommendations, half the recommendations on the various sites are either 6 months out of date, a bit spammy, or are indicating that the ISP might have been good a year ago but is not beginning to look dodgy. Not enough credible information to go on, in other words.

Hey, I'm in Sheffield, they have a lot of ice-hockey here, but I've never been to a match. Can barely skate. I see the stuff on T.V where they slam at high speed into each other, sometimes chasing the puck, and it frightens the life out of me. (!)


McFox - I had AOL - my very first connection. Damn if it didn't have the weirdest browser and eveything. Finally figured a way to by-pass all the c*** hoops they wanted me to jump through every time I wanted to go online, and open an IE browser, but it was unreliable. I had to insert their CD every time things crashed, other times I couldn't get rid of icons and (sob) eventually it was all too much for me. I finally swore - DEFINITELY - never to use them again. A bit like BTOpenWoe, I got to a stage where the sheer aggro of it all has drilled it into my head that on principle I shall never, ever go back to them.

Which is a shame, because as OWG says they often do a reasonable package as far as connecting to the internet goes.

Dinosaur. May they rot in ****

[BrianR]

Richard

I've been on freedom2surf.com broadband for 18 months or more now - rock solid reliability and all for £22.50 per month (I think) - can't be bad!

BrianR

[McFox]

McFox - I had AOL - my very first connection. Damn if it didn't have the weirdest browser and eveything. Finally figured a way to by-pass all the c*** hoops they wanted me to jump through every time I wanted to go online, and open an IE browser, but it was unreliable.

That was probably about the time when AOL took over Netscape and tried to take on Microsoft's IE.

For a while AOL, or was it Microsoft, were refusing to let the other's software integrate properly with the other. It was a bit of a nightmare. You couldn't launch IE without collapsing AOL. If you did, things crashed or went haywire.

It's not like that any more. AOL finally gave up the battle.

Admittedly, the walled garden browser of AOL is kind of annoying. Just use IE or whatever your preferred browser is instead and it's fine.

Free online help, free phone helpline, free modem and a respectable £27.99 p/m.

There are minimum system requirements but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

All in all, I would recommend AOL without reservation. I've been using the service all through the 'browser wars' and things have definitely improved from the 'bad old days'. (Even in the 'bad old days', AOL outshone BT Openwoe by a mile)

McFox

[SEO-Richard]

Thanks Brian and McFox, that's what I'm looking for - personal experience from people I can trust.

I shall go investigate.

And OWG, I'm now a limited company! (After your advice on co. formation) Quality Internet Marketing Ltd (nobody seems to have had the brains to register it, more fool them)

[GeordieSEO]

AOL - Can't use Network based ADSL routers and can be tricky to share on a internal network due to proprietry connection protocol (Need to run a proxy server). Also the connection software is poor and prone to crashing.

Pipex - Generally good, been a few problems with the mail servers last week and some problems with the new home 1Mbs service (but this may be BT related). Technically not tied to a years contract. I use them on my home 512Kbs ADSL connection and never had a problem.

ZenADSL - Very good. Offer 10 static IP addresses for free

Plusnet - popular

www.adslguide.org.uk is probably the best resource for information.

You could also consider cable broadband (Can't remember if it is Telewest or NTL - it was still Yorkshire Cable when I lived in Sheffield).

[printerbase]

I was in a similar situation about 6 months ago, I had a short list of the following:
Zen
PlusNet
Pipex
Nildram

I went with Zen in the end and have not regretted it, no problems at all.
Zen were not the cheapest but at the time I felt they were the best after looking through adslguide and various newsgroups, they also do a monthly contract so if you don't like them after a month or so you can cancel without having to wait for 12 months.

Peter

[McFox]

AOL - Can't use Network based ADSL routers and can be tricky to share on a internal network due to proprietry connection protocol (Need to run a proxy server).

That's a good point about AOL. Connecting multiple machines can be problematic.

McFox

[SEO-Richard]

Thanks!

Yeah, I shall be using multiple machines

[OldWelshGuy]

Richard take a look at this..

http://www.southern-...o.uk/broadband/

[printerbase]

I think it's only available in Winchester and Stonehaven (Aberdeenshire) on trial.

And if BT or the Radio hams have anything to do with it it will not get any further.

Apparantly Stonehaven is a very rural Scottish town which has suddenly had it's exchange ADSL enabled by BT since the trial by Scottish and Southern Electric.
http://news.zdnet.co...39117713,00.htm

And the radio hams don't like it because it is going to cause all sorts of problems with radio signals.

I can't quite find the story now but apperently the idea was also trialled in Japan but got dropped due to various problems.

I like the idea though, would certainly save having to look for a telephone socket and trailing wires all over the house.

Peter

[JamesW]

Hey

I managed to setup a wireless network with four machines connected to the router/4-port switch using NTL, which worked fine - though I'm not so sure about the technical support as I don't beliee I ever had to contact them!

For personal use, I have previously trialled Freeserve without a problem.

Cheers

James