Which provider?

[bindo]

I've just moved into a new flat, it's got phone sockets in....but i don't think it has a bt line active yet. I wanted to get Broadband to the flat..preferably 8Mb/s. I've done a check on the area and was told the place could receive 6Mb/s, so that's fine.
I've been looking at some providers and they want to charge me an arm and a leg for this speed, or just cap my usage at 20Gigs..and what use is that when it'll be so fast.
So my question is do i have to pay BT for the phone line and what's a good provider for this speed, i don't really want to spend more than 25 a month.
Thanks for any help
Ali.

[Splash]

Your best bet will be to check out ADSLGuide - just about all providers are now either capping your data transfer, shaping your bandwidth or charging a fortune. You need to decide what your priority is to be!

[greektony]

Unless im mistaken, i believe that NDO are one of the few providers who dont cap your line or use traffic shaping. If anyone know otherwise please post here, as I will probably be order their service in the next few days, as i too have just moved house. They are a bit more than most isps tho....but if what i said above is true you get what you pay for.

Also they are a offering 8mb service

[vaio]

I use Freeola.

There is a cap but it is a reasonable one.
40gb per month peak (8am-10pm) and 300 gb per month off peak.

Also, they offer the service as a 3 month trial,at the reduced price of £15, after which you can go elsewhere if not satisfied.

Also, the service is being upgraded from 2mb to 8mb (local availability permitting)

Normal monthly cost after trial is £25.

Anyway, here is the linky

[greektony]

not meaning to hijack this thread, but what are peoples opinions on zen internet and especially nildram. They seem to be very competitive. Also any views on UKOnline?

[bindo]

NDO/names.co.uk, we use them at home..they do seem very good, a fast service and very rare drop outs, might have to have a look at their packages again.
As greektony said anyone know if either zen internet or nildram are any good?
Cheers

[explicitlyrics]

Zen are superb, CS is fantastic and they are the top quality ISP out there. But that does come with a price.

Im with Be* at the moment and that seems brilliant to me (touch wood), Ive not had a dropout yet and get a steady 140kb/s upload and 1.8mb/s download.... Unfortunately you have to live in one of their enabled areas to get it. If you are in their area then feel free to message me any questions, and get in touch for a code to give free activation and a referral for your first month free.

[mart_haj86]

I have been with Nildram for 3ish years now and tbh they have never let me down, customer services is spot on and i have never lost my connection. Nildram FTW!

Edit ---- > also if you play alot of multiplayer over the internet there are a lot of jolt.co.uk servers which are all hosted by Nildram,, so expect really nice low pings

[Clingy]

Just migrated from f2s to Zen. Nildram was a close 2nd and for your £25 limit they must be the best. From my research all appear to have some form of cap....except Eclipse who do an uncapped service for the same price as the capped service. All a bit weird and it was very difficult to understand the differences. Reading between the lines it looked like the uncapped service had high contention and therefore pretty useless for gaming.

I have switched ISP a few times now and if I can give one bit of advice it would be to go for an ISP that shows a consistent high score on adslguide.

[Ant]

I've had nothing but great service from Zen for the past few years, as a home user and business user. Never had any dropped connections, and everytime I've contacted them, they have been very helpful and polite on the phone. They also seem to get things done very quick!

I've actually just regraded my home connection from their 1MB uncapped service to their 8MB 20GB cap service for £25 a month which I don't think is that bad tbh - £5 a month cheaper than it used to be too. Couldn't recommend them enough.

[Bellboy]

Use Bulldog myself, no complaints so far. Service is totally unrestricted, and I believe its now £19.50 a month for the £8mb package (I pay £21.50). Only downsides are that I believe you now have a minimum 6 month contract (I got in when it was 1 month), and you need a bulldog phone line (same price as BT's). Oh and the customer service is supposed to be a bit rubbish, but I haven't had to deal with them yet *touches wood*.

If not them then Be* are the other company i was thinking about, their 24mb service is nicely priced at £24 a month. Again, though, fledgling company gonna have some problems, and apparently their cs is even worse than bulldog's! However I looked into them again recently for a mate and they seem to be picking their act up.

These are bth the cheap options; the expensive one is Zen. Depends if you're willing to pay that much ...

[EtheAv8r]

I have been with F2S for 2 1/2 years now - started at 512 unlimited and then changed to 2Meg with a 10 Gig Cap after 13 months for no charge and a reduction of £5 per month. I used th thing they were really good support-wise but since being taken over by Pipex this seems to have gone to the dogs. However as my link has been pretty good and reliable so far this has not been an issue - and F2S lost the opportunity (and fees) of providing me SMTP feed email rather than me having to collect from POP3 mail box.

Following this post I found I could now regrade with F2S up to a 4 meg link for another £5 reduction per month... so I have!

[neonplanet40]

Im liking the look of this NDO. Unlimited transfers on 8mb for £39.99 a month?

Im sold lol

Anyone know anymore about this or these ppl?

Neon

[drbob]

I'm with Demon and pretty happy. Their homeoffice package isn't the cheapest at £24.99/month but offers a fixed ip, webspace and no traffic caps or blocked ports. If you don't need more than 2Mbps check it out.

The service is generally pretty reliable, apart from a couple of years ago when their email servers were completely overloaded for a couple of weeks.

As a general point - it's worth registering your own domain name and use that for email. A .co.uk name is only £1.99/year with free forwarding of mail to the address of your choice, it frees you to change ISP without having to tell all your contacts about a new email address.

[Clingy]

Im liking the look of this NDO. Unlimited transfers on 8mb for £39.99 a month?

Im sold lol

Anyone know anymore about this or these ppl?

Neon

I used to be with them on dial-up. They had good service and connection. Consistently high scores on adslguide over the years. One of the top 5 IMHO.

[dangel]

Im liking the look of this NDO. Unlimited transfers on 8mb for £39.99 a month?

Im sold lol

Anyone know anymore about this or these ppl?

Neon

"Generally, we would view data transfer of 60GB or more per month (as is a common limit with other ISPs) to be excessive and reserve the right to discuss this usage with the user concerned."

Unlimited my ass.