Good people of NSC, who is your ISP and do you recommend them?

[Poyetry In Motion]

Afternoon all. Hope you're enjoying your rainy Sunday.
I need the advice (gulp!) of all you wonderful NSCers.
My ISP is currently Sky and I'm on Unlimited broadband "up to 20MB ", but after 16 months of slow, unreliable speeds and crappy customer service, I've had enough and wish to move to another provider.
Can any of you in recommend a decent ISP?
Cheers guys and gals

 

[bhaexpress]

I'm currently with TalkTalk and although I wouldn't say they are brilliant I did have to call them over a line fault last week. They now have a call centre in the Philippines and although the people there have American accents there's no problem understanding them unlike some and for that reason alone I can recommend them. Having said that there's a lot to be said for using Virgin if you have access as their cable system is reputed to be the most reliable. I wouldn't touch BT with a sterilised barge pole, they're a joke.

 

[tedebear]

Afternoon all. Hope you're enjoying your rainy Sunday.
I need the advice (gulp!) of all you wonderful NSCers.
My ISP is currently Sky and I'm on Unlimited broadband "up to 20MB ", but after 16 months of slow, unreliable speeds and crappy customer service, I've had enough and wish to move to another provider.
Can any of you in recommend a decent ISP?
Cheers guys and gals

We were originally with Tiscali who got bought by Talk Talk I believe some time ago. Until about 3-4 months ago it was very good and very reliable. They did some sort of upgrade over which time we had no broadband for about 5 days!!! and the service ever since has been patchy and juddery. Drops out each evening around 7pm and comes back immediately but its getting very annoying. We called to complain and got a month free over the outage but it was very difficult to deal with them as English isn't their first language and you need to be careful which line to call as one isn't free!!

Not really very impressed with them anymore and we were going to check out sky!

 

[Lady Whistledown]

I used BT previously, the service itself was mainly OK, can't really say I had a lot of issues with it. They do use a call centre abroad for their broadband issues though, so if you're the sort of person who's bothered about having a foreigner on the other end of a line, you might want to give it a swerve. Personally I only had to call them once in three years and they were fine.

 

[Colossal Squid]

I'm with Talk Talk and fairly happy. The speeds are very good and my connection has never dropped in the year I've been with them.

Can't get cable on my street and I wasn't prepared to waste money on a BT line so Talk Talk was the natural choice. Annoyingly they don't offer an unlimited use package however I frequently go over my limit and they've never charged me extra. In fact I went through almost 200gb last month and they've not questioned it so perhaps they don't really mind.

Good, reliable service

 

[Gazwag]

Which recommend Zen Internet as the best.

With an overall Which? customer score of 88%, Zen truly deserves its Recommended Broadband Provider status. Zen has been among our top broadband performers since 2005, and this time round received top marks (five stars) for connection reliability and speed, falling down only on value for money, for which it got three stars.

I am with freedom to surf, how were taken over by Tiscali, who have been taken over by Talk Talk, not had any problems but wouldn't necessarily recommend them

 

[Paskman]

We are on Sky. The service is fine. We live in a rural area so don't have the fastest broadband, I don't believe that is Sky's fault as they don't provide the cable. It would make no difference whoever the server was.

Sent from my Desirable Android thingy by Tippy Tappy.

 

[Norman Potting]

With TalkTalk having been with their predecessor Tiscali since I first got a 'puter in 2004. Used to get a fairly regular Monday morning deadspot of around 30' nearly every week (presumably they polish the circuits or something) but not for a good 18mths or so and I perceive that the service has got a bit faster. Was paying £14.99 pm (solely for broadband) until I rang and made changing provider noises when they dropped the price to just over £10pm.

Customer helpline is pretty hopeless, fortunately haven't had to call it for a while, and I know of someone nearby who had appalling problems with them and left. I am loathe to change because I am online all the time as I work from home and am not prepared to risk a cock up for a couple of pounds a month savings, the same comments apply to my 'phone line.

 

[Easy 10]

I am just emerging from the mother of ALL internet probs with Virgin. Bought a new laptop (after my old Dell got appallingly slow), and within 3 days I had NO internet. The service has been patchy for a while, I'm supposed to be getting 10mb but the signal was so erratic that on speed tests it was often coming out at about 500k, ridiculously slow. Then the connection went completely, so after umpteen calls I ended up with a new modem and then a new router from them. It worked for a day, then went down again completely. After some frigging about I've got it back online now, but the speed is still very erratic, sometimes 9mb, sometimes 3-4mb, so an engineer is coming out tomorrow to snort it.

INTENSELY irritating.

 

[Poyetry In Motion]

I'm currently with TalkTalk and although I wouldn't say they are brilliant I did have to call them over a line fault last week. They now have a call centre in the Philippines and although the people there have American accents there's no problem understanding them unlike some and for that reason alone I can recommend them. Having said that there's a lot to be said for using Virgin if you have access as their cable system is reputed to be the most reliable. I wouldn't touch BT with a sterilised barge pole, they're a joke.

ah......I was thinking of BT infinity too.
According to their line assessment thingy, they estimate I can get 28.4MB. Sky only estimate 2MB! I'm actually getting between 0.1 - 0.8MB, so anything in the higher MB's is a vast improvement.

 

[Easy 10]

ah......I was thinking of BT infinity too.
According to their line assessment thingy, they estimate I can get 28.4MB. Sky only estimate 2MB! I'm actually getting between 0.1 - 0.8MB, so anything in the higher MB's is a vast improvement.

You might as well go back to dial-up !
0.8 is pitiful. I share your pain though, mine is all over the shop half the time. Although typically, now the engineer is coming out tomorrow I've had 6-9 MB all weekend.

 

[Poyetry In Motion]

You might as well go back to dial-up !
0.8 is pitiful. I share your pain though, mine is all over the shop half the time. Although typically, now the engineer is coming out tomorrow I've had 6-9 MB all weekend.[/QUOTE]

lol. sods law isn't it? I have to say that I wouldn't bother finding another ISP if sky were interested in finding a resolution, but they seem to be ignoring the issue therefore I've decided to bail out. It's not just me either. There's a big discussion about this on the official sky forum, so at least i'm not alone!

 

[Spun Cuppa]

We were originally with Tiscali who got bought by Talk Talk I believe some time ago. Until about 3-4 months ago it was very good and very reliable. They did some sort of upgrade over which time we had no broadband for about 5 days!!! and the service ever since has been patchy and juddery. Drops out each evening around 7pm and comes back immediately but its getting very annoying. We called to complain and got a month free over the outage but it was very difficult to deal with them as English isn't their first language and you need to be careful which line to call as one isn't free!!

Not really very impressed with them anymore and we were going to check out sky!

Don't know if it's connected, but I had a similar thing with my BT broadband. After calling India several times and having a BT engineer shortening the cable at the exchange, which had no effect on the problem, I did some internet searching re: my router, to find it had a lifespan of about 18 months. Apparently the diodes would burn out, giving the problems you outline. Mine would muck about at around six p.m., which I put down to high demand...

They upgraded my router, and it cleared the problem...

On topic, I offed BT and went back to Virgin, which has not missed a beat

 

[DanielT]

I am on Virgin 50meg and have no complaints. Easy 10, are you testing the speed using an ethernet cable into the laptop? (to rule out dodgy wifi)

 

[Beach Hut]

Was freeserve which was swallowed up by Orange.

Not bad as they dropped their monthly charge a year ago but if you have problems which we have had twice very poor. When I moved to wireless it was very difficult and the Indian help desk was crap. This meant they got a final warning however that was around 3 years ago and been fine ever since.

 

[Laughing Gravy]

Virgin 30 Meg Goes like a rocket

 

[Fungus]

ah......I was thinking of BT infinity too.
According to their line assessment thingy, they estimate I can get 28.4MB. Sky only estimate 2MB! I'm actually getting between 0.1 - 0.8MB, so anything in the higher MB's is a vast improvement.

We moved to BT Infinity recently, and get around 34mb, previously 3.6mb with Zen. Main reason for going with BT was to avoid the ISP blaming the line provider if there were any problems! Fine so far...

 

[Rowdey]

With Zen, who have really great support (if you ever need it) and are Apple friendly.
Not cheap, but highly reliable, and the awards are deserved.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

In terms of service, I had to call BT today as I closed my home phone & broadband account with them at the start of May, but they mysteriously decided to debit my account for a payment today, despite the final payment being settled a month ago. Waited 20 minutes to speak to an advisor, a most helpful Scottish lady who agreed that it appeared to be an error, but said she'd have to transfer me to their payment and accounts department in order to clarify and refund. So she passes me over to a call centre, and a most apologetic advisor, who stated he couldn't deal with me as my account was closed, and wasn't able to transfer my call back, so I had to hang up.

So far, after dealings with various other utility companies this afternoon (it's just not my day I think), I have entirely lost the will to hang on BT's customer service line for another twenty minutes, and nearly the will to live

Anyway, I recently changed my ISP, which appears to be the source of most of these problems, and I'm fed up with it and going to cancel the agreement. So I'm now with the first poster, and looking for recommendations as to the best ISP around.

 

[Tomnorthi]

Virgin media all day long if your area has fibre optics.