Which ISP

[scaryjim]

Doesn't seem to have been on of these threads for a little while!

I'm moving (rented) properties soon, currently with plusnet and have been pretty happy with their service, but before I get them all prepped for the house move, figured I'd poll the Hexus faithful and see if anyone knew of any choice deals.

AFAICT, new house is *not* on Virgin cable, but *is* on fttc. I need a decent download allowance, and preferably unthrottled bandwidth (big advantage of staying with plusnet would be the option of using their Pro add on which gives you unthrottled (although not uncontended, obviously) line speeds at all times of day). Static IP address would also be nice, particularly with a fttc provider that doesn't throttle upload bandwidth (tempted to start hosting some of my own web / mail services).

So, who's good and how much do they cost?

[dave87]

I'm with BeThere at the moment, and I don't have any complaints (well, except for the robustness of the BeBox and its inability to reliably forward ports for xBox Live).

That said I'd be interested in the thoughts of members too - the physical install of the FTTC equipment seems to be progressing nicely at my local cabinet (the additional FTTC Cabinet is in, they've got power to it and they've dug the pipe for the phone line to go down from the existing to the new cabinet) so I presume it is just BT roll out/exchange changes that need to happen before its available. That and BeThere seem to show no signs of investing in FTTC except for a small staff led trial.

[chrestomanci]

How long to you anticipate staying in your rented property? How long is your initial tenancy agreement? Be aware that all FTTC services have a fairly long minimum contract. With BT it is 18 months, with most other ISPs it is 12. I doubt that anyone will give you a shorter contract because BT wholesale imposes a minimum term of their own.

I am with Zen internet, but on standard ADSL, not their FTTC service (though I am in an FTTC area). Zen do give out static IP addresses as standard. I have a /29 from them, though I think their policy has changed and they are less willing to give those out. Zen are fairly expensive, and they don't have an uncapped service. My current ADSL service costs £25/month with a 50Gb cap (which I have never hit). If I wanted the cap on FTTC it would be £36/month. There is no cap on uploads.

Zen's FTTC page: http://www.zen.co.uk/business/broadb...broadband.aspx

Personally I am happy with a capped broadband service because I think it is more honest. Uncapped services always come with some sort of fair usage policy which means an effective cap that is hidden from you, and the ISP can change their definition of 'fair' or add packet filtering any time they like. If there is a stated cap then it is contractual, so the ISP can't change it on a whim, they are also much less likely to add filtering because they don't need to.

[Flibb]

I am currently with bethere, and I do hammer the connection at times with large file colections of around 30 gig. Havent had any signs of throttling. Have looked at BTs FTTC offerings, but they have cut back on the cashback deals. Actually its not that bad, a bit of cashback and paying the line rental up front for 12 months makes it pretty good. Should get 40Mb here for around the same I pay BE for 16, the wifi minutes look handy a well.

[ristac]

Don't move into the new house unless it has Virgin Media

[peterb]

I recently moved house and my ADSL speed has dropped, however my mew house is in an FTTC area, so I will be upgrading soon. I have been with Zen for ages, and as my useage is relatively low, they moved me to a lower cost service. However, their FTTC service seems expensive, so I will probably move to BT, where I can get a similar service for about 2/3rd price.

[scaryjim]

We're hoping to stay in the new place for over 2 years, and the landlord seems a reasonable chap and wants to let to a settled family, so I don't think we'll have any issues with that.

I agree that capped services are more honest, and would be very cautious about "unlimited" broadband. plusnet's fttc service comes with either 40GB or 120GB, which is a pretty reasonable choice. Zen sound pretty expensive: I can get plusnet's 120GB fttc with the Pro add on (so you always get full line speed) for £26.49/month. Static IPs are an extra on plusnet, but it's a one off setup fee of £5 so over 2+ years it'll be near enough free.

BT's offerings look reasonable, but they do limit the upload speed unless you get their super-expensive top end package. Not sure they're quite as good a deal as plusnet, although the free openzone / Fon minutes could be useful... depends what I do with my phone package I guess!

ristac: a god broadband connection is definitely something to consider when moving house, but I hardly think it's a good primary reason to choose. If I was that bothered about Virgin I wouldn't be moving to the house, would I? Besides, now fttc is being rolled out Virgin's offering isn't quite so comparitively spectacular. Plus I'm somewhat sick of Virgin announcing ever-increasing speds when they can't even service big chunks of residential Greater Manchester. So I'd be disinclined to go Virgin even if I could, tbh...

EDIT @ peterb - have a look at plusnet's offering before you commit. I've been with them > 4 years across 2 different houses, and the service has always been pretty good (a couple of drops in that time, but never for long and they've always had people on the problem when I've rung to report it). Their basic package (40GB usage, unlimited between 12am and 8 am, and they actually publish their line management scheme) is only £16.49/month...

[paul_norman_81]

+1 for BeThere, brilliant service and support. I spend a bit of time at a friends house with Virgin and I can comfortably say that 12Mb with Be feels faster than the 50Mb+ that Virgin claim purely due to throttling and overloading.

I've also only experienced bad things (well, slow speeds) with PlusNet.

[ristac]

ristac: a god broadband connection is definitely something to consider when moving house, but I hardly think it's a good primary reason to choose. If I was that bothered about Virgin I wouldn't be moving to the house, would I? Besides, now fttc is being rolled out Virgin's offering isn't quite so comparitively spectacular. Plus I'm somewhat sick of Virgin announcing ever-increasing speds when they can't even service big chunks of residential Greater Manchester. So I'd be disinclined to go Virgin even if I could, tbh....

It was said tongue in cheek

I am pretty lucky here as the Virgin Media service is first class. Trust me, nobody is ever going to get anywhere near Virgin Media for speeds, my area is being doubled in September to 100mb anyone relying on a BT line will have to wait 15 years for them to catch up with that.

+1 for BeThere, brilliant service and support. I spend a bit of time at a friends house with Virgin and I can comfortably say that 12Mb with Be feels faster than the 50Mb+ that Virgin claim purely due to throttling and overloading..

The Virgin 50mb package has no throttling? I complained because I was getting 35mb at one stage, an engineer came out that day did a few checks on the outside box and replaced something and sure enough my speeds were back up to 50mb so I really can't fault them

[Biscuit]

The story is always hit or miss with Virgin. It seems you have about a ~30% chance they will actually look after you as a customer.

They were utter pants with me!

I have been with BE/O2 for a while now and the service has been pretty good. The routers are a bit unreliable and as Dave mentioned, the settings within it are pretty pants, it just doesn't do what you tell it too!
I have had issues with contention and there seems to be little movement on their progression to fibre (its been in trials for ages!) so i think im going to move to plusnet very soon!

[dave87]

Just dealt with BeThere technical support over a setting I needed (my fault entirely - write things down before you go attempting to change them) and not only did the first person I speak to know exactly what I needed, but I didn't have to wait in a queue to talk to them.

Within 5 minutes I had spoken to the person, input the settings I needed and was up and running again - not many ISPs I know of do you get that level of support with.

[Mapester]

I am with BE* as well and would highly recommend them to anyone who needs an ISP on a BT phone line, Ive had no issues with them at all. I dont use their supplied Bebox, and use a Netgear router, but u can use any Broadcom chipset based router with Be* I believe. Other nice touches are if there is a planned outage, they send a SMS msg to you at least 24hrs b4 it happens and I have only had ones that happen at anti social hours anyways eg. 2am to 6am, so they have not affected me at all, those have only been for example my local exchange has had hardware upgraded.

[mepsipax]

I'm with Virgin, and find them to be pretty reliable tbh.

I was with NTL years ago, and they were awful, so I was dubious about using Virgin a few years later.

No regrets though, I am on 50mb broadband, and rarely have any problems.

[scaryjim]

... new house is *not* on Virgin cable ...

I'm with Virgin, and find them to be pretty reliable tbh.

Thanks for trying to be helpful, but if you'd read my original post you'd see that Virgin isn't an option. So it doesn't really matter how reliable people have found them

[Sputnik]

I was with Be and they were very good, I really could not fault them. I used to get a rock solid speed of 10Mbps with no caps and a static IP address.

Unfortunately where I am now, Be cannot provide service (they don't have any equipment in the local exchange) So I have had to go with BT.

I was dreading using BT due to data caps and possibly bad speeds. The local exchange is ADSL only but, I do get the maximum speed for ADSL (8Mbps). However, I really do notice the slow upload speed (0.3Mbps compared to Be's 1.3Mbps)

I did have a problem with BT and they had service restored in about 3hours so I was suitably impressed.

Never had a problem with Be except for when some scumbags stole the copper cables near the exchange and it disconnected the phones for the whole area.

[ristac]

Thanks for trying to be helpful, but if you'd read my original post you'd see that Virgin isn't an option. So it doesn't really matter how reliable people have found them

But in fairness, anyone searching for Which ISP arriving at this thread will give an opinion on which ISP. The title doesn't say Which ISP Excluding Virgin