Searching through the archives, Metronet was the people's choice in
2005. What's the best way to go in 2007 when we also have joint deals
with telephone/TV etc.

I don't need TV, rarely use a mobile, don't use the telephone much,
but use the internet a lot and would ideally like something faster
than my present AOL (£19.99 pm) at stated 2272 kbps. On the other
hand, a cheaper and reliable broadband would suit fine. AOL technical
support is good, so I'd like decent support since things do go wrong
at times.

Recommendations?

In article .com,
Eusebius writes:
Searching through the archives, Metronet was the people's choice in
2005. What's the best way to go in 2007 when we also have joint deals
with telephone/TV etc.
I don't need TV, rarely use a mobile, don't use the telephone much,
but use the internet a lot and would ideally like something faster
than my present AOL (£19.99 pm) at stated 2272 kbps. On the other
hand, a cheaper and reliable broadband would suit fine. AOL technical
support is good, so I'd like decent support since things do go wrong
at times.
Recommendations?

Recommend you post the question to a broadband newsgroup,
such as uk.telecom.broadband.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Recommend you post the question to a broadband newsgroup,
such as uk.telecom.broadband.
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Thanks for that, but I would also like to hear the experiences of this
newsgroup, since its members are pretty savvy about everything, and
obviously we all have experience with different ISPs.

Eusebius wrote:
Recommend you post the question to a broadband newsgroup,
such as uk.telecom.broadband.
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Thanks for that, but I would also like to hear the experiences of this
newsgroup, since its members are pretty savvy about everything, and
obviously we all have experience with different ISPs.

Since in the vast majority of cases everything goes via BT anyway, there
isn't really a penny to choose between them. As far as the 'broadband''
bit goes.


What you are really asking even if you don't know it, are issues that
are irrelevant to broadband, like news and mail servers, international
bandwidth and peering arrangements, customer service and so on.

here you need to refine the question into what you want to do with your
internet connection, and how savvy you are at fixing it.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Eusebius wrote:
Recommend you post the question to a broadband newsgroup,
such as uk.telecom.broadband.
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Thanks for that, but I would also like to hear the experiences of this
newsgroup, since its members are pretty savvy about everything, and
obviously we all have experience with different ISPs.

Since in the vast majority of cases everything goes via BT anyway, there
isn't really a penny to choose between them. As far as the 'broadband''
bit goes.


What you are really asking even if you don't know it, are issues that
are irrelevant to broadband, like news and mail servers, international
bandwidth and peering arrangements, customer service and so on.

here you need to refine the question into what you want to do with your
internet connection, and how savvy you are at fixing it.
I use IDNET, the big plus with them is the fast response of their help
desk. Also I have found them very reliable. Yes BT is involved but they
are not the best.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Eusebius wrote:
Recommend you post the question to a broadband newsgroup,
such as uk.telecom.broadband.
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Thanks for that, but I would also like to hear the experiences of this
newsgroup, since its members are pretty savvy about everything, and
obviously we all have experience with different ISPs.

Since in the vast majority of cases everything goes via BT anyway, there
isn't really a penny to choose between them. As far as the 'broadband''
bit goes.

Hmm. There's contention internal to the ISP but imho the most important
concerns are reliability & customer service for when things go wrong,
/even if a subsequent problem is BT's/. Having an ISP with good service
is essential as you have no direct contact with BT & rely on your ISP to
keep hassling them.

FWIW I always recommend Zen.

What you are really asking even if you don't know it, are issues that
are irrelevant to broadband, like news and mail servers, international
bandwidth and peering arrangements, customer service and so on.

here you need to refine the question into what you want to do with your
internet connection, and how savvy you are at fixing it.

An important question is estimated download requirements per month as
they'll vary much between users.

Any good ISP should meet reasonable requirements for mail & peering.
Similarly, if you want binary news provision, virtually every ISP will
fail to offer reasonable retention & completion - for binaries I'd
always go with a third party such as Giganews or a reseller (I'm
currently with PowerUsenet).

--
Michael
m r o z a t u k g a t e w a y d o t n e t

Broadback wrote:

I use IDNET, the big plus with them is the fast response of their help
desk. Also I have found them very reliable. Yes BT is involved but they
are not the best.

I'll cast my vote to Andrews and Arnold. If you want a pipe to the Internet
they ar egood. These days, they are doing more (mail servers and suchlike).
Cons: they are small and do 9-5 support. Pro: If you do have an issue[1]
then they do pick up the phone in less than 10 seconds IME and the person
knows what they are talking about.

Cheers

Tim

[1] When I upgraded to ADSL-MAX, the bandwidth cap wasn't getting
automagically raised after the requisit day or two. After my second call to
them (the first was the obligatory "give it another 24 hours and see", I
had a BT engineer call me back on my mobile requesting some speed tests
whilst he reset stuff at their end. 10 minutes later all was well. Best of
all, I didn't have to ponce around for 15 minutes pretending to reboot
my "windows PC" that I don't have.

On Fri, 18 May 2007 15:28:45 UTC, Tim Southerwood wrote:

Broadback wrote:

I use IDNET, the big plus with them is the fast response of their help
desk. Also I have found them very reliable. Yes BT is involved but they
are not the best.

I'll cast my vote to Andrews and Arnold. If you want a pipe to the Internet
they ar egood. These days, they are doing more (mail servers and suchlike).
Cons: they are small and do 9-5 support. Pro: If you do have an issue[1]
then they do pick up the phone in less than 10 seconds IME and the person
knows what they are talking about.

Seconded. Find them at:

http://aa.nu

or

http://sod.ms
--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

declared for all the world to hear...
Searching through the archives, Metronet was the people's choice in
2005. What's the best way to go in 2007 when we also have joint deals
with telephone/TV etc.

I don't need TV, rarely use a mobile, don't use the telephone much,
but use the internet a lot and would ideally like something faster
than my present AOL (=A319.99 pm) at stated 2272 kbps. On the other
hand, a cheaper and reliable broadband would suit fine. AOL technical
support is good, so I'd like decent support since things do go wrong
at times.

Recommendations?

posting in uk.telecom.broadband and not here?
--
Regards
Jon

Jon wrote:
declared for all the world to hear...
Searching through the archives, Metronet was the people's choice in
2005. What's the best way to go in 2007 when we also have joint deals
with telephone/TV etc.

I don't need TV, rarely use a mobile, don't use the telephone much,
but use the internet a lot and would ideally like something faster
than my present AOL (=A319.99 pm) at stated 2272 kbps. On the other
hand, a cheaper and reliable broadband would suit fine. AOL technical
support is good, so I'd like decent support since things do go wrong
at times.

Recommendations?

posting in uk.telecom.broadband and not here?
Probably wrong group. Must be one discussing ISP's.
Which is the actual issue here.

posting in uk.telecom.broadband and not here?
Probably wrong group. Must be one discussing ISP's.
Which is the actual issue here.-

Yes. As Above.

So is the question whether to have a BT connection or a cable
connection or a satellite connection? what are the pros and cons of
those? I have had cable before, with Cable and Wireless (cable and
hopeless at the time) so the connection does exist.

Eusebius wrote:
So is the question whether to have a BT connection or a cable
connection or a satellite connection? what are the pros and cons of
those? I have had cable before, with Cable and Wireless (cable and
hopeless at the time) so the connection does exist.



It's been a while, but last time I looked into satellite broadband
services, the initial setup costs were very high (relative to
ADSL/Cable) and, due to the fact the satellite is in geostationary
orbit, the latency is increased simply because of the time it takes for
the signals to travel there and back. However, if you're in a completely
rural area and have no other options, then it's certainly viable.

I've been using Entanet for the past couple of years (there are a bunch
of resellers for them -- ukfsn seems to be one of the more popular
choices. Read more about them he

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist... sed&sb=5&o=0

Zen also comes very highly recommended:

www.zen.co.uk

As for cable? I left NTL a number of years ago due to terrible service,
although experiences seem to vary. I can't really comment on how good
they are (or not) now, but personally I'll never go back to them.

HTH,

Styx

On 2007-05-19 11:16:51 +0100, Eusebius said:

posting in uk.telecom.broadband and not here?
Probably wrong group. Must be one discussing ISP's.
Which is the actual issue here.-

Yes. As Above.

So is the question whether to have a BT connection or a cable
connection or a satellite connection? what are the pros and cons of
those? I have had cable before, with Cable and Wireless (cable and
hopeless at the time) so the connection does exist.

There are more subdivisions and technologies than that. I have three
"broadband" connections using different technologies.

The vanilla DSL services offered by virtually every ISP and using BT as
a front end mainly differ by the contention ratio offered but more
importantly by the nature, number and count of upstream connections
that the provider has.

Many of the providers peer at internet exchanges which is relevant for
traffic within the UK. For their international traffic, the smaller
ones buy transit bandwidth from the larger carriers and specialist
transit operators (e.g. Level3). So if most of what you want to do
results from internatiional traffic, it may well be the capacity that
the ISP buys from the transit operators that has the largest influence.

So you have those factors and then the common factor of BT.

Another flavour of DSL service is offered by some ISPs who install
equipment in BT exchanges - known as local loop unbundling (LLU).
Basically here you connect to the provider's network earlier in the
chain rather than going through BT's DSLAMs and other environment
first. This allows some providers to offer more leading edge
services and perhaps to have less conservative bandwidths than are
offered with a BT front end. It may also provide a faster time to fix
than if the ISP has to call BT to fix their part. Whether it results
in better service overall, is less clear. At the end of the day, if
the wire from the exchange breaks BT still gets involved.

I have a DSL service which is about to move to LLU, so I'll see. I
am not expecting there to be a large difference in reliability, and
certainly no perfromance difference.

I have an NTL cable connection at 10Mbits/sec. It is less reliable
in terms of up time (and I measure this) than the DSL connection, but
does deliver what I would expect out of a 10Mbit connection accounting
for the protocol and other overheads etc. However, it is limited in
two significant ways. a) It is highly asymmetric - the upload speed
is around 300-400k and b) it has single dynamic addressing. For
my purposes, this limits its use severely and it is really only
suitable for volume downloads, basic web access and multimedia. To be
fair to them, Virgin Media don't sell it as anything else.

The third connection is a wireless DSL service. This was introduced
by Tele2 in the late 90s before DSL has really become widely available.
It is implemented in a few regions and involves the use of a special
antenna on the roof directed to a base station. It gives me 1Mbit in
both directions, and the technology will go to 2Mbits each way.
Unfortunately, the installation cost for the provider in terms of
equipment was high and so it became impossible to compete with DSL for
home users. The service was most recently acquired by Pipex and as
far as I know, they are not taking new orders for it. Businesses are
being more attracted to DSL services (ADSL and SDSL) anyway.
Ultimately, I expect that there will be Wimax or equivalent as an
alternative.
Nonetheless, this is the most reliable of the three connections.

I have been involved in satellite provisioned internet services in the
past. These have been offered in places where even DSL is not
possible. The downstream data is provided over a satellite
transponder along with TV services and the signal delivered to a
special set top box. The upstream connection is via telephone line
and is thus limited to 56k. This technology is hopeless for anything
interactive because the latency up and down to the satellite is
substantial. Therefore, it was mostly pitched for bulked and batched
downloading.
Because this is not very commercially attractive, I am not sure that
there is anybody left offering it.

If you were thinking of satellite in the sense of Sky's offering, then
this is a DSL service offered following their acquisition of Easynet
who use LLU and BT services.


So it all depends on what you want and what you want to pay - e.g. what
kind of internet access and for what purposes; bundling with video and
TV services and perhaps telephony. There are certainly deals to be
had if you want to buy one of the triple play bundles for example.

In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2007-05-19 11:16:51 +0100, Eusebius said:

posting in uk.telecom.broadband and not here?
Probably wrong group. Must be one discussing ISP's.
Which is the actual issue here.-
Yes. As Above.
So is the question whether to have a BT connection or a cable
connection or a satellite connection? what are the pros and cons of
those? I have had cable before, with Cable and Wireless (cable and
hopeless at the time) so the connection does exist.

There are more subdivisions and technologies than that. I have three
"broadband" connections using different technologies.

I have been using Demon at work because they have a "companion" system,
where I get a diallup connection included, so I can access from anywhere
with a phone line.

They do seem to be stuck in a time warp, I'm paying £300/year for a 2
meg connection and they are messing me around ATM

What's the best option for a general use small business solution ?


--
geoff

On 2007-05-19 20:51:12 +0100, raden said:

In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2007-05-19 11:16:51 +0100, Eusebius said:

posting in uk.telecom.broadband and not here?
Probably wrong group. Must be one discussing ISP's.
Which is the actual issue here.-
Yes. As Above.
So is the question whether to have a BT connection or a cable
connection or a satellite connection? what are the pros and cons of
those? I have had cable before, with Cable and Wireless (cable and
hopeless at the time) so the connection does exist.

There are more subdivisions and technologies than that. I have three
"broadband" connections using different technologies.

I have been using Demon at work because they have a "companion" system,
where I get a diallup connection included, so I can access from
anywhere with a phone line.

They do seem to be stuck in a time warp, I'm paying £300/year for a 2
meg connection and they are messing me around ATM

What's the best option for a general use small business solution ?

Demon are a bit of an anomaly - they have quite a number of parts to
their service that date back to when they were about the first
commercial ISP and which others don't implement e.g. SMTP delivery of
mail.

They have become something of a nightmare with billing arrangements and
if you want a VAT invoice etc. Call centre in Mumbai I think.

Do you want an ADSL type of connection? Do you need symmetrical
bandwidth (SDSL costs quite a bit more)? Other functionality?

Are you looking for a business type of contact hours and responses or
is domestic enough?

On Sat, 19 May 2007 19:51:12 UTC, raden wrote:

What's the best option for a general use small business solution ?

AAISP.

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

In article ,
"Bob Eager" writes:
On Sat, 19 May 2007 19:51:12 UTC, raden wrote:

What's the best option for a general use small business solution ?

AAISP.

Subject to AAISP's rather low download limits, and support only
9-5 Mon-Fri, I agree. Support is excellent for clued-up customers
and AAISP are extremely good at identifying BT/Openreach issues
and getting them sorted, which is something most ISP fail on.
They are very strict about being paid on time, and advise
companies which have problems paying their suppliers on time
not to use them. (They actually publish some quite interesting
advice for other companies on getting payments on time, and
details of some of their court cases.)

I have 3 ADSL lines with them. I believe you can use your ADSL
login/password with dialup and it takes over the routing on your
ADSL line, although I haven't tried this.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2007-05-19 20:51:12 +0100, raden said:

In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2007-05-19 11:16:51 +0100, Eusebius said:

posting in uk.telecom.broadband and not here?
Probably wrong group. Must be one discussing ISP's.
Which is the actual issue here.-
Yes. As Above.
So is the question whether to have a BT connection or a cable
connection or a satellite connection? what are the pros and cons of
those? I have had cable before, with Cable and Wireless (cable and
hopeless at the time) so the connection does exist.
There are more subdivisions and technologies than that. I have
three "broadband" connections using different technologies.

I have been using Demon at work because they have a "companion"
system, where I get a diallup connection included, so I can access
from anywhere with a phone line.
They do seem to be stuck in a time warp, I'm paying £300/year for a
2 meg connection and they are messing me around ATM
What's the best option for a general use small business solution ?

Demon are a bit of an anomaly - they have quite a number of parts to
their service that date back to when they were about the first
commercial ISP and which others don't implement e.g. SMTP delivery of
mail.

They have become something of a nightmare with billing arrangements and
if you want a VAT invoice etc. Call centre in Mumbai I think.

Do you want an ADSL type of connection? Do you need symmetrical
bandwidth (SDSL costs quite a bit more)? Other functionality?

Are you looking for a business type of contact hours and responses or
is domestic enough?

I just need a cheap and cheerful way to read emails for CET and access
the web

nothing special

--
geoff

In message , Andrew Gabriel
writes
In article ,
"Bob Eager" writes:
On Sat, 19 May 2007 19:51:12 UTC, raden wrote:

What's the best option for a general use small business solution ?

AAISP.

Subject to AAISP's rather low download limits, and support only
9-5 Mon-Fri, I agree. Support is excellent for clued-up customers
and AAISP are extremely good at identifying BT/Openreach issues
and getting them sorted, which is something most ISP fail on.
They are very strict about being paid on time, and advise
companies which have problems paying their suppliers on time
not to use them. (They actually publish some quite interesting
advice for other companies on getting payments on time, and
details of some of their court cases.)

I have 3 ADSL lines with them. I believe you can use your ADSL
login/password with dialup and it takes over the routing on your
ADSL line, although I haven't tried this.

I'll take a look

cheers


--
geoff

On Sat, 19 May 2007 20:48:15 UTC, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

In article ,
"Bob Eager" writes:
On Sat, 19 May 2007 19:51:12 UTC, raden wrote:

What's the best option for a general use small business solution ?

AAISP.

Subject to AAISP's rather low download limits, and support only
9-5 Mon-Fri, I agree.

It does depend on whether it's strictly office hours you need, I agree.
But they do operate an 'overdraft' facility on data transfer, and there
is no effective limit outside the office hour band. In practice, support
for many incidents happens well outside the published hours.

Support is excellent for clued-up customers
and AAISP are extremely good at identifying BT/Openreach issues
and getting them sorted, which is something most ISP fail on.
They are very strict about being paid on time, and advise
companies which have problems paying their suppliers on time
not to use them. (They actually publish some quite interesting
advice for other companies on getting payments on time, and
details of some of their court cases.)

I have 3 ADSL lines with them. I believe you can use your ADSL
login/password with dialup and it takes over the routing on your
ADSL line, although I haven't tried this.

I have, and it works fine. I have a firewall machine between the network
and ADSL router, and I just dial up on that and it happens
automagically.

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

On 2007-05-19 22:09:10 +0100, raden said:

In message , Andy Hall writes

Do you want an ADSL type of connection? Do you need symmetrical
bandwidth (SDSL costs quite a bit more)? Other functionality?

Are you looking for a business type of contact hours and responses or
is domestic enough?

I just need a cheap and cheerful way to read emails for CET and access the web

nothing special

My DSL ISP is Eclipse at present and has been OK - i.e. no particular
complaints.

Apart from the lowest tariffs there are no data volume limits. For
my business requirements that's a necessity because I need to move very
large data files around.


One thing that I have noticed with the review sites like adslguide is
that they create a kind of positive feedback effect. In other words,
ISP gets good review because he doesn't have too many customers or has
a low price. Then a lot of people migrate and bandwidth and service
suffer.

In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2007-05-19 22:09:10 +0100, raden said:

In message , Andy Hall writes
Do you want an ADSL type of connection? Do you need symmetrical
bandwidth (SDSL costs quite a bit more)? Other functionality?
Are you looking for a business type of contact hours and responses
or is domestic enough?

I just need a cheap and cheerful way to read emails for CET and
access the web
nothing special

My DSL ISP is Eclipse at present and has been OK - i.e. no particular
complaints.

Apart from the lowest tariffs there are no data volume limits. For
my business requirements that's a necessity because I need to move very
large data files around.

£20 unlimited, 8 meg , certainly sounds better than £25 for a 2 meg
connection

Demon do seem to be dragging their heels




One thing that I have noticed with the review sites like adslguide is
that they create a kind of positive feedback effect. In other words,
ISP gets good review because he doesn't have too many customers or has
a low price. Then a lot of people migrate and bandwidth and service
suffer.





--
geoff

raden wrote:
In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2007-05-19 22:09:10 +0100, raden said:

In message , Andy Hall writes
Do you want an ADSL type of connection? Do you need symmetrical
bandwidth (SDSL costs quite a bit more)? Other functionality?
Are you looking for a business type of contact hours and responses
or is domestic enough?

I just need a cheap and cheerful way to read emails for CET and
access the web
nothing special

My DSL ISP is Eclipse at present and has been OK - i.e. no particular
complaints.

Apart from the lowest tariffs there are no data volume limits. For
my business requirements that's a necessity because I need to move
very large data files around.

£20 unlimited, 8 meg , certainly sounds better than £25 for a 2 meg
connection

Demon do seem to be dragging their heels


I migrated to another ISP for a variety of reasons - cost being one of
the least important, however, when asking for the MAC code the first
question the guy on the phone asked was, "if we can reduce your cost,
would you stay?" - by the sounds of it they were able to drop my tariff
at the time (think I was paying £30/mo. for 2MB/Unlimited)

In message , Mike Dodd
writes
raden wrote:
In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2007-05-19 22:09:10 +0100, raden said:

In message , Andy Hall writes
Do you want an ADSL type of connection? Do you need symmetrical
bandwidth (SDSL costs quite a bit more)? Other functionality?
Are you looking for a business type of contact hours and
responses or is domestic enough?

I just need a cheap and cheerful way to read emails for CET and
access the web
nothing special

My DSL ISP is Eclipse at present and has been OK - i.e. no
particular complaints.

Apart from the lowest tariffs there are no data volume limits. For
my business requirements that's a necessity because I need to move
very large data files around.
£20 unlimited, 8 meg , certainly sounds better than £25 for a 2 meg
connection
Demon do seem to be dragging their heels


I migrated to another ISP for a variety of reasons - cost being one of
the least important, however, when asking for the MAC code the first
question the guy on the phone asked was, "if we can reduce your cost,
would you stay?" - by the sounds of it they were able to drop my tariff
at the time (think I was paying £30/mo. for 2MB/Unlimited)

Well, I'm on 2 meg unlimited, but the past couple of months I've had a
major amount to download

Thus have sent me a ****ty "fair usage" email


--
geoff

In article .com,
Eusebius writes
Searching through the archives, Metronet was the people's choice in
2005. What's the best way to go in 2007 when we also have joint deals
with telephone/TV etc.

I don't need TV, rarely use a mobile, don't use the telephone much,
but use the internet a lot and would ideally like something faster
than my present AOL (£19.99 pm) at stated 2272 kbps. On the other
hand, a cheaper and reliable broadband would suit fine. AOL technical
support is good, so I'd like decent support since things do go wrong
at times.

Recommendations?


I don't think there is one.. they all seem to have their own set of
problems!.

Though Entanet and Zen broadband are very good, but aren't cheap.

Ntl if your in one of their areas can be very good sometimes better then
what ADSL is but ntl's customer service can go rather wrong sometimes;!.

However if its ADSL then your limited in how far you are from the
serving exchange and that is why your speed may be no more then the
2.272 K you describe.

We have several services at different locations with Eclipse who do a
good service for £15 a month but in recent times their customer service
isn't quite what it used to be having become rather "jobsworth" in
approach, but I haven't heard anyone say anything good about any low
cost ADSL service for quite some time now. Its coming down to you get
what you pay for!.

And most all are dependent on good old BT!......
--
Tony Sayer

raden wrote:

Are you looking for a business type of contact hours and responses or
is domestic enough?

I just need a cheap and cheerful way to read emails for CET and access
the web

Generally avoiding the mass market big ISPs would be a way to get better
support, and especially steering well clear of things like TalkTalk.

I still use plusnet, and have often recommended them for that type of
use, in that they tick most of the boxes (24/7 support not on premium
rate and the support used is usually reasonably clued up), and the
packages they produced were quite good value etc. In a way they started
out a bit like Demon of old. Having said that I usually use POP3 email
boxes bought externally (from pipex ultimately).

However they have had a number of technology stuff ups in the recent
year and also support responsiveness fell of a bit which will have put
some off. They have just revamped their package range and deleted the
PAYG one that was particularly attractive to more serious users. They
were also recently bought by BT, which may mean they can invest more or
it may mead they just get absorbed by the Borg, so I will reserve
judgement for a bit. They do still have business packages at reasonable
prices though.

The usual problem seems to be the smaller ISPs win in terms of support
and flexibility, start growing, but can't afford to invest enough in the
infrastructure and soon become attractive targets for acquisition by one
of the big boys. In the case of being bought by someone like Tiscali
that usually spells the end of any individuality they may have had as
they are just used to add numbers to the portfolio, and their staff etc
get replaced by call centres. Getting bought by BT however (so far at
least in the case of plusnet) do seem able to leave the bigger companies
acquired alone to trade on their own brand and merits.

Of the budget ISPs I have also heard a number of reasonable comments on
Madasafish...

(A difficulty you find when researching these things is that much of the
stuff written in "review" of ISPs is shaped by a particularly vocal
group of users who primarily want a way of slurping P2P video content
24/7, and hence are always bumping into the ISPs fair usage policies.
Needless to day if your needs are different it can be hard work getting
the info you need).

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
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tony sayer wrote:

Recommendations?

I don't think there is one.. they all seem to have their own set of
problems!.

Though Entanet and Zen broadband are very good, but aren't cheap.

I don't live in the UK, but my sister-in-law in Manchester
has had endless problems with Onetel, now run by Carphone Warehouse.
It has been a sort of Orwellian farce.
Applying for ADSL had the immediate (and only) effect
that her email was cut off.

I've had similar problems with Telecom Italia (in Italy);
when I try to get ADSL they deny that I am a customer,
although they send a bill every 2 months.

Why is it that communication companies
are the worst offenders when it comes to communicating?


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail (80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

In message , Timothy Murphy
writes
tony sayer wrote:

Recommendations?

I don't think there is one.. they all seem to have their own set of
problems!.

Though Entanet and Zen broadband are very good, but aren't cheap.

I don't live in the UK, but my sister-in-law in Manchester
has had endless problems with Onetel, now run by Carphone Warehouse.
It has been a sort of Orwellian farce.
Applying for ADSL had the immediate (and only) effect
that her email was cut off.

I've had similar problems with Telecom Italia (in Italy);
when I try to get ADSL they deny that I am a customer,
although they send a bill every 2 months.

Why is it that communication companies
are the worst offenders when it comes to communicating?

That's exactly the question I asked NTL yesterday ( got through
immediately - I phoned just after the FA cup started)

They have twice in succession failed to do what they promised, but have
now offered me 10 meg / family pack / free calls evenings and weekends
for £28 / month for 6 months, ... sounds OK to me


--
geoff

On Sun, 20 May 2007 12:46:47 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

raden wrote:

Are you looking for a business type of contact hours and responses or
is domestic enough?

I just need a cheap and cheerful way to read emails for CET and access
the web

I still use plusnet, and have often recommended them for that type of
use, in that they tick most of the boxes (24/7 support not on premium
rate and the support used is usually reasonably clued up), and the
packages they produced were quite good value etc. In a way they started
out a bit like Demon of old. Having said that I usually use POP3 email
boxes bought externally (from pipex ultimately).

However they have had a number of technology stuff ups in the recent
year and also support responsiveness fell of a bit which will have put
some off. They have just revamped their package range and deleted the
PAYG one that was particularly attractive to more serious users. They
were also recently bought by BT, which may mean they can invest more or
it may mead they just get absorbed by the Borg, so I will reserve
judgement for a bit. They do still have business packages at reasonable
prices though.

Up to very recently I was recommending PlusNet for low/medium users.
However after the recent security incident and the associated spam
problem I will reserve judgement as well.

M