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

[tedebear]

We ditched BT about three years ago when we tried to move to their complete home broadband, mobile and landline service, can't remember what its called now as I've tried to forget the nightmare. Basically the first month they direct debited us £178 and then the second was £360. We then cut the direct debit when we got told that my husband had gone over his 30 minute talk time on his mobile and it was all international calls. When we produced the paperwork which stated he had 600 minutes a month and showed that he had made 3 EU calls for the two months, they tried to tell us that the tariff we signed up to shouldn't have been sold blah blah blah...We complained bitterly and refused to pay the whole lot, simply offering to pay the £60 per month and asked to cancel without penalty (they wanted to charge us the full 12 months). They threatened debt collection and we said stood our ground. They eventually sent a letter accepting our offer and we parted ways. I will never go back again.

 

[beorhthelm]

if you are changing because of "slow, unreliable speeds" and get only 0.1 to 0.8mbit/sec, i suggest you dont bother. the customer service is another issue, though if you think its poor because they cant resolve the above, again dont bother if its no cheaper elsewhere. you are likly a long way from the exchange and/or have some crappy cable. a new provider will be using the same cable to the same exchange, probably terminating with the same kit. try finding any problems in your house, dodgy bells or phones, cable from master socket to where ever you plug in the modem/router

more generally, if you have trouble with performance with BT/Sky/others then changing to an alternative that have put kit into the exchange might improve the situation. Talk Talk and BE do this. just about everyone else will be using the same kit and nothing will change except who bills you and the customer support number.

you might want to consider mobile broadband if you have a strong signal and in 3G coverage area.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

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

I live in Burgess Hill and we've only just got colour TV.

The new Betamax is working a treat though.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

...

 

[happypig]

Switching provider won't make a ha'porth of difference to the speed it synchs up at, they will be pretty much dependant on your line length. Contention ratio will make a difference, as will the provider's bandwidth from the DSLAM to the backbone.

I'm with o2 and they are pretty good.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I live in Burgess Hill and we've only just got colour TV.

The new Betamax is working a treat though.

You should try living out here (two miles from BT's Ripe exchange). As far as I can tell, everything is powered by a bloke on a bicycle.

According to Broadband Speed Checker - THE UK's No.1 Broadband Speed Test
some properties manage to achieve more than 2.0Mb. The advertised speed is 8Mb.

The BEST deal available at my address apparently offers 0.5Mb - 4Mb

 

[Easy 10]

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)

Believe me, I have stuck every cable into every orifice these last 2 weeks, and yes, including modem direct to laptop. The speed has been all over the shop whether it be wifi or direct cable.

I had 8mb this morning. I've just ran a test now, and got 1.4.

Shabby.

 

[brakespear]

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

This, been with ntl/Virgin Media for six years now and had no major issues (couple of service outages due to infrastructure issues, none longer than a few hours iirc) and had three free speed upgrades. No download cap either.

 

[Seagull on the wing]

Been with AOL for12 years,now it's Talk Talk,not quite as good but OK.Do turn off router about every month to clear static and have little to no problems.

 

[1066familyman]

PLUSNET.....for value and reliability, it's the best I've ever had.

 

[seagullondon]

o2 a world that revolved around poo.

 

[Mileoakman]

Been with AOL for12 years,now it's Talk Talk,not quite as good but OK.Do turn off router about every month to clear static and have little to no problems.

Yes I will second that about the router. I'm with Sky and its always steady at about 3.5 to 4mb, which is fine as I'm some distance from the Portslade exchange. Its also better than I was getting with Tiscali 3 years ago before I changed. However i have noticed that if I don't power the router down about once a month the speed starts to drop. A quick off and on and it leaps back up to my normal 3.5 to 4mb and is fine for another month. The other big plus with Sky for me is that its only £5 per month if you have their TV/phone package which saves me a good tenner on what I used to pay.

 

[Poyetry In Motion]

hmmmm, interesting reading. This distance from the exchange thing, where the further you're away the weaker the signal...is it true does anyone know or is it another smokescreen? I currently live in Hangleton, quite close to blatchington windmill, so i'm not exactly in the centre of Hove, but i'm hardly in timbuktoo and it just seems odd that I'm getting such poor speeds, especially when a friend of mine lives in Isfield ( mid sussex for the non locals! ) and gets a better service than me!

 

[wehatepalace]

Recently changed from sky to BT infinity and can honestly say it's the best thing I've done, much better and more consistent speeds.

 

[KNC]

This, been with ntl/Virgin Media for six years now and had no major issues (couple of service outages due to infrastructure issues, none longer than a few hours iirc) and had three free speed upgrades. No download cap either.

Ditto, this

 

[slinky]

Been with Virgin for years (Cable & Wireless / NTL / Virgin Media) i am on 50 Meg BB now, after being on 20 meg for years....

Never had any major issues, maybe 2 outages in the last 4 years. It goes like a rocket, and i would seriously recommend them.

I am pulling over 30Gb of data every month, never even got a warning on data usage....

 

[clippedgull]

Currently coming to the end of my 6 month free trial with SKY Broadband Unlimited and it's the dogs bollocks, 16mb consistent download speed. Will see out the next 6 months at a tenner a month.

 

[Spun Cuppa]

...and when I left BT to go back to Virgin, the villains charged me £25 to disconnect their service, probably on the basis that if I went to another ISP that used the BT line, they would still get a cut of the money

 

[Seagull Steve]

I have been with Virgin media for a good few years now. I used use BT, but had loads of problems. I have just run the speed test that Lord B posted, and I am only getting 2mb, when it is supposed to be 10mb.

 

[Gwylan]

Switching provider won't make a ha'porth of difference to the speed it synchs up at, they will be pretty much dependant on your line length. Contention ratio will make a difference, as will the provider's bandwidth from the DSLAM to the backbone.

I'm with o2 and they are pretty good.

To a certain extent this is true - I live in Coldean and we're on the furthest reaches of human society, at least as far as line speeds are concerned.

However, it's noticeable that Sky and Talk Talk regularly perform badly - the worst I've seen is 300Kbps on a connection that's supposed to be 8Mbps.
Use Lord B's link and have a look at who gives the best performance in your area, but bear in mind that, in some cases, service is going to be poor whoever you go with.