Aloha, im currently living in England, and will be moving back to the city of plymouth in september. question is, are there any internet service providers you would recommend? any deals you've recently seen? or any bad experiences? rules to the treasure hunt are, no download or usage limit, has to be atleast 6meg. i care not for "free modems and wireless". ps. im not making other people do my leg work, i am researching for myself, but its always nice to have a second oppion.
I'm with virgin, they throttle your bandwidth at certain times if u go over a certain amount, and they are brininging in anti piracy crap apparently, but at the end of the day they are still fast and reliable, and most other ISP's are going down the same route, encryption is your friend, they are upgrading their 4mbit packages to 10mbit, and their 10 to 20 as well, which is always nice
if you can get cable I would say that it's worth getting over ADSL. If you have to get ADSL I would suggest Be/O2 (same company but slightly different packages).
i also looked into be, the unlimited package seems best, and not too worried about price as its being split among 6. thanks for the confirmation. soon as i get the keys i'll order i guess.
i've had Tiscali, AOL and O2. so far, Tiscali is a 100% no-go. AOL is okay, more reliable than Tiscali. O2 8Mbps is the best at the moment, had problems but after changing from AOL filter to O2 filter, not a single drop in 2 month so far
I have Tiscali at the moment, and just gave notice yesterday. You don't get what you pay for at all. The foreign customer service people are useless, and the connection is restricted right throughout the whole day (YouTube videos do not stream at all). The only time I can actually stream videos is at around 5 in the morning. Be/O2 are apparently great. I will be switching to one of them within the next couple of weeks.
I left Tiscali to go to Eclipse. As has been mentioned above Tiscali has shocking customer and technical support. Ultimately their answer to the problems I was having was to offer me a MAC. Eclipse on the other hand have been great. The only problem with Eclipse is they no longer offer unlimited packages.
if you are splitting between 6 go for the 20mbit cable from virgin assuming you can get cable that is
From what I have heard, the restrictions that Virgin place are tight, and the speed isn't up to par with the claims. Best bet is to stick with O2 or Be, TBH.
Not really, if you need to do any heavy dl-ing just schedule it to do it over night, admittedly i was very annoyed when they first brought it out, and to an extent i still am, if their network cant cope with the amount of traffic, they should upgrade their network, not degrade the quality of service people are paying for (if im paying for an unlimited 4mbit connection, i should be able to dl at 4mbit 24/7). I'm only on the 4mbit connection, but the speed never wavers, always rapid, most problems with virgin are probably from users who get it through the telephone line and not cable, but obviously i cant comment on any service apart from the one im getting
That is exactly what I am talking about. But, as you say, at least it is consistent, and it works. Note that you won't get restrictions with Be/O2 (sounds like I am advertising them lol. I am just going from what I have read from happy customers).
here at summer placement, the house's Virgin ADSL is crap! just had stopped working last night. god knows that speed landlord has payed for, sometimes getting 10Mbps while others hardly getting a connection (tested using computer and iphone, so can't be the wireless fault) O2 is my favourate, followed by AOL (i've also heard a lot good things about BE). i say again, NEVER go with Tiscali for the last 3 month, O2 has never capped me and my flatmates. it's always 6Mbps (bought 8, but they say exchange is a bit far away. so 6, still, it's a constant 6)
Do NOT sign up with Orange. If you have Sky TV, getting the internet through them is a no-brainer. It's a fiver a month for a maxdsl connection.
When I had Sky do a TV installation I found them to be dire. It took 8 months for them to get it right including technicians not turning them being put to the back of the queue for a revisit. Ever since then I have avoided Sky like the plague.
from everything ive read, i belive that BE will provide the best package for me. 24meg unlimited download + use. recommended by many, questioned by few. BUT i did read there fine print and find out its not truly "unlimited" they say that if you are extremely excessive and abusing your connection then they can disconnect you at there discretion. but they usually warn first. im guessing every provider has this back up rule to stop someone downloading teh hole interwebz! but with a house of 6 and all with pc access to the internet, im slightly concerned we might break there limit by accident.
which is why i suggested virgin, because when u go over the limit during peak hours, they only throttle you to a slower speed, a speed which will still be more than ample for 6 people browsing, off peak you can dl as much as you like
