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Thread: Student house internet

  1. #1
    Squirrely tigerboyce's Avatar
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    Student house internet

    Ok know this gets asked alot, but its the first time myself and my flatmates will be doing it and we have pretty much no idea apart from the rumours of Be and Virgin being great. so were looking for a hand on what's the best deals and services to get our new house connected to the internet. Im sure there's probably a few other hexus users in this position so hopefully it will help them too.

    Our rent started this sept so were looking to get things sorted asap.

    There is 6 of us in the house and all 6 are heavy users of the internet, mostly all are pretty heavy gamers too so were looking for a fast provider with good usage policies obviously as cheap as possible.

    I have just been on samknows and this is what ive got available:

    ADSL available at ~6.5Mbps
    BT Total broadband
    TalkTalk LLU (8M is free)
    Sky LLU (2M is free, 8M is £5pm)
    AOL LLU (£10pm discount)
    Pipex broadband
    Plusnet broadband
    Tiscali broadband
    Tiscali TV
    And many more...

    ADSL2+ available at ~16Mbps
    Be Unlimited
    O2 broadband
    UK Online (incl 20M packages)
    Sky Max (LLU) (16M for £10pcm)

    Cable services available
    Virgin Media broadband (20M)
    Virgin Media digital TV
    Virgin Media phone


    cheers!
    Last edited by tigerboyce; 03-09-2008 at 01:15 AM.

  2. #2
    chown -R me ./base BlackDwarf's Avatar
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    Re: Student house internet

    Go for Be. Outstanding ISP, and if you're reasonably close to the exchange, your connection will fly along. You could then possibly get Fastpath turned on to reduce pings for gaming too, however I never had any problems at my old flat and where I only got about 6>7Mb.

    I'm gonna get my new student house Be, and we're 500m down the road from the exchange too

    *drools over the thought of 20+mb*
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    tigerboyce (03-09-2008)

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    Re: Student house internet

    Since most of your flatmates are heavy game users, you have pretty much narrowed the ISP down to Sky or Be (from your list), as all the others have throttling on their bandwidth once you have reached their limits (You really don't want high pings for your games ). Unless you have the Sky package, then Sky won't be any use to you. Be has been rated by quite a few people and as far as I know, they don't throttle their network usage ...yet .

    I'm currently with Sky and I live qute far from the exchange, max is 3.5mbs , but it is much better than when I had NTL/Virgin (on the 4mb package).

    Others may be able to recommend other ISPs here.

    Good luck!

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    Squirrely tigerboyce's Avatar
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    Re: Student house internet

    100m from the exchange so i guess it makes sense to go with Be

    so its £18/mo for the pro package but then i would need to get a phoneline on top, from what i can make out its £10.50 a month from bt with the possibility of a £124 connection fee :O

    totals £28.50/month


    compared to from what i can make out on virgin is,

    £21/month for broadband+phoneline rising to £31 after 6 months

    or £29 for cable


    i think be seems like a better choice...

    Is that £10.50/month for phoneline the cheapest possible?


    cheers

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    Lover & Fighter Blitzen's Avatar
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    Re: Student house internet

    The BT phoneline will cost £124.99 yes...there is no escaping that.

    Think though...do you REALLY want a virign line and end up with 6 of you sharing half a meg between ALL waking hours?
    Last edited by Blitzen; 09-09-2008 at 03:46 PM.

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    Re: Student house internet

    Are you or any of your flat mates on O2 mobile service? Makes sense to go with O2 if they are, saves a bit of money over Be for pretty much the exact same service.

    That close to the exchange you'll get full speeds unless you have a electromagnet lined cable running to your house

    I know it may be getting a bit old me saying this but DO NOT GO WITH VIRGIN! Such a bunch of cowboys they make John Wayne look like an Indian. As Blitzen said, Could you deal with a 4/5Mb service during the day?
    "I've heard there is a common problem with this item from forums" - If you read some forums they believe Elvis was abducted by aliens, doesn't mean it's true.

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    Re: Student house internet

    I know most people here seem to hate virgin.. but.. I've been using their 20mb package for a couple months now and I don't think it's that bad..
    I suppose the only places I'm able to compare it to are really awful dsl connection in villages that were in the middle of nowhere and the uni that capped our connection to 0.1meg and didn't allow anything other than port 80..
    I think torrents arn't great on virgin, but for the price (if you don't have a landline + you can get the quidco cashback ) it's not that bad.

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    Re: Student house internet

    If you are moving into a house that has had a phone line within the last 12 months BT will connect you for free
    Twigman

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    Re: Student house internet

    Sky has just announced that they have DROPPED their fair use policy! So it would seem Sky Broadband is the best bet for the type of students who enjoy watching 100 episodes of Lost illegally!

    The downside is the contract length and the fact that you have to take Sky TV too.

    My latest edition of Web User magazine recommends students ask themselves the questions laid out in this student broadband guide for 2008 (chooseisp.co.uk/broadband-guide/articles/the-students-guide-to-broadband.html), as there is in fact quite a bit to consider.

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    hexus.zombeh! format's Avatar
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    Re: Student house internet

    Quote Originally Posted by Blitzen View Post
    The BT phoneline will cost £124.99 yes...there is no escaping that.
    Actually... it's not.

    We had no socket installed, just wires poking out of the wall.
    We decided to try it ourselves and made a decent job of it - we could receive internet through it, but with very poor stability.
    Not knowing the socket was the problem, we submitted a problem ticket to Be* and after going through all the standard procedures, they detected 'a fault' with our line.
    They sent down and payed for a BT engineer to properly wire it, and he even relocated it to a more convenient position!
    ~'Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence--those are the three pillars of Western prosperity'~ Aldous Huxley




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    Re: Student house internet

    Im with F2S and ive had no problems with them since its been taken over 23.99

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    Re: Student house internet

    Call Be* - they may help you out with the phone line issue, you never know.

    As for Sky, they offered to pay for my brother's phone line connection (the £125), you pay it yourself then claim it back (new build house though).

    edit: I think also for Be* you can use Quidco to get £40 back.

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    Re: Student house internet

    Spend the extra £4/month and get the Be Pro package if your line is that short. It gives you a lot more headroom on the upstream for very little money - ideal for a shared connection.

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    hexus.zombeh! format's Avatar
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    Re: Student house internet

    Quote Originally Posted by chadders View Post
    Call Be* - they may help you out with the phone line issue, you never know.

    As for Sky, they offered to pay for my brother's phone line connection (the £125), you pay it yourself then claim it back (new build house though).

    edit: I think also for Be* you can use Quidco to get £40 back.
    That deal was for september only IIRC. I might be wrong though.
    ~'Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence--those are the three pillars of Western prosperity'~ Aldous Huxley




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    Re: Student house internet

    If you go with Virgin, I believe they are now offering Solus broadband, which means you do not have to have phone or tv to get the internet....

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    Squirrely tigerboyce's Avatar
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    Re: Student house internet

    thanks for the info guy's, went with VM in the end. Phone and 20mb broadband package @ £21 for first 6 months £31(?) after. Main reason there was no phone line box just cables sticking out. and the fact that were only here for 9 months were trying to keep costs as low as possible.

    I'm pretty happy with it either way, its definitely near the top end of the speeds it should be giving most of the time.

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