Hello chaps, What's the best ISP (uk) for very heavy usage. We've always got torrents running, and download a lot through iTunes and what-not. We're with Tiscali at the moment, and they're utterly shite - not only does the connection drop quite often, but they've capped us to about 20k/sec from 6pm-midnight daily. Any advice? -a
Meant throttle, many apologies. I've not had any problems with Virgin myself, since I work most of the time I don't have issues with even getting the throttle and when it does hit it doesn't affect my pings for online gaming.
It sucks if you ever download anything. VM are now constantly slow. NTL was actually good, probably one of the best.
Out of interest, does anyone know what happens if you move or whatever, and want to end the contract? Do most of them allow you to cancel with notice, or with a small fee? Or what?
I totally agree. We used to be on NTL and it was great. Then they became Virgin Media. The connection kept getting worse and worse until it would literally stop for 30 seconds to a minute every minute or two. Numerous phonecalls and emails to customer support and they kept fobbing us off by saying it must be a fault in our network. We tried everything including taking everything offline and plugging directly into the connection. No good. Same excuses. We switched to Sky Broadband and its been far better. Also proves there was nothing wrong with our network.
The problem with people moving from NTL to Virgin is that they should have changed all the boxes as the new firmware has issues with some of the older NTL ones, my friend had exactly the same problem as you guys until I asked an engineer that I know if he could get the box changed, two days later and with a new modem his connection was sorted and has been as perfect as mine ever since.
...I think VM are just plain rude...when we signed our contract with NTL 6 years ago, we got an "unlimited" 512kb broadband connection, in the true meaning of the word. download as much as you want, no worries. now that VM have taken over they have capped us!!! aparently they are allowed to do that though...sigh!
If anyone can, get Be*. They must be the most computer-geek friendly ISP in the UK with no cap and great speeds. Their customer service is also great, when we had a problem with payment and they cut us off we phoned up and once payment was verified they re-connected us within 30 seconds. Even if you are able to get higher speeds with VM, be* is still better.
The VM package that I'm on (20Mb) has a 5GB cap between 6pm and midnight, outside which you're free to download as much as you want. If you exceed that they knock you back to 5Mb (IIRC) for a few hours, which isn't unreasonable IMO. The quality of service is just as good as it was with Telewest, with the download speeds at about 17/18Mb/s. I don't know if that differs if you're not in an ex-Telewest area.
Be* needs 3 months notice. Virgin wont let you out until the end of your contract. (Unless you can trick an online help chat person to say that "it is probably our equipments fault" ) Most of the big ones are the same as Virgin.
I have used Zen internet for a good few years now and they have always provided me with a first class service, only complaint is they can be a little more expensive compared to the rest of ISP`s out there. http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ this is a wonderful website to help you decide normally it`s Zen and Nildram at the top of the comparison charts but have a look for yourself.