Broadband Choices, help!

[Cozwin]

Hi everyone, as you may have seen from my network section thread my VM connection has massive issues, and contract is up in Jan.

So looking to move, well possibly, the issue is we are students so can't spend more on the whole then we do now (£35 a month for 50mb) but we have no phone line, so cost must include installing a phone line, other issue is we all move out in September, so can only be a 9 month contract basically.

Other possibility is to stick with VM and drop down to 30mb to save a little money and keep what we have.

So ideas?

[Zak33]

Zen

1 month contract.. including the ability to have a phone line through them too...also on a 1 month contract.
their phone line is per second billing now and is a tad cheaper than bt anyway.

their broadband is more.. but it's proper proper fast. No shaping.

[Cozwin]

Zen

1 month contract.. including the ability to have a phone line through them too...also on a 1 month contract.
their phone line is per second billing now and is a tad cheaper than bt anyway.

their broadband is more.. but it's proper proper fast. No shaping.

No can do, need big download access usage. And cheapish

[Spud1]

As much as I hate to say it, with 9 months to go you are best sticking with Virgin/NTL. The problem is your lack of a phone line - for most (all?) providers you need to take out a 12 month contract minimum when you get a new line installed, or else you will be usually expected to pay a connection charge of around £100..so this just makes the whole thing too expensive. That combined with the huge risk of getting slow/unstable adsl2+ which may be no better than your cable connection, just screams no to me.

I would put up with cable until you move out, and look for a better connection/service at your next place.

[Dareos]

I'd agree with Spud mate, but only if the planned maintenance and upgrade goes ahead, if it doesn't... well you know the state of your own connection I don't have any experience of BBI in your area, and each area is different, best to ask around, maybe a local pc store or something could help.

[Whiternoise]

Would Be do?

Pretty cheap, great customer service and no connection issues. They also have the usual no download limit, but you may be stuck with "slow" 24mb. Can you be more specific about what you need - speed or bandwidth?

They do 3 month contracts at £25pm and a £25 connection charge. If you go 12, you pay £20pm and free connection charge so it's 12x20=240 or 9x25+25=250 so you may as well take the hit and go for a year.

[Pob255]

I'm on BE and I like them however I'm not doing VM with massive amounts of traffic.
The issue is however that you'll need to have a BT line in the first place, yes you can get the phone contract through them as with most other ISPs however it still relies on a physical BT line which will cost you to have installed.
Although you might actually have a BT line it just might not be active, which would be cheaper to get set up.

One thing I'd say to be wary with on virgin is the contract length, check the small print, some of them are 3 years not 12months.

[kissenger]

Virgin do have a lot of problems but they don't last forever and when their service works, it's the best.

[Sputnik]

Virgin do have a lot of problems but they don't last forever and when their service works, it's the best.

Not when I had it! It was appalling and that was when you actually had a connection in the spaces between outages.

[Macman]

To be fair, with Virgin I don't have any complaints, got the 30mb/s package.

[lowkifan]

Had a few problems with Virgin before but in my area nobody else provides fibre optic broadband so i would only get like 1.5mb if i leave fibre optic.

I would check what speed you could get via the BT website first but without a phone line you would be paying a initial cost to get your line connected and long contract so you would be best off negotiating over the phone with Virgin by telling them you are considering leaving because of the problems experienced.

[rymilky]

virgin would be your best bet im only on 10 meg which is ok but i wish i was on the 50 meg and there services are rather good buts coz im right by the HQ in basildon so we get it pretty good service wise

[Macman]

To be fair, with Virgin I don't have any complaints, got the 30mb/s package.

Call it a coincidence...

Last night, couldn't connect my Xbox to the router via wireless, on checking the router, I killed the power, still couldn't connect to the internet.

Checked Service status in my area via my iPhone, all good...

Looked up router settings via the Manual, discovered my Wireless connection had somehow been switched off... anyone had this before?

P.s. Sorry for thread hi-jack.

[Sass]

I'm with ADSL24 1 month contacts, But Talk talk just put LLU in my exchange so I jumped on it seeing as my exchange is a cow shed in a field! Epic fail it's taken 9 weeks 3 mac codes and still no live date and they had the cheek to charge me!