SO what says you?

Got rid of Sky, built a media centre with a freesat card for the tv usiung the existing sky dish so just need phone and broadband.

My work pays for phoneline and calls. I know I could get a good deal on phone and bradband together but my eployers are monkeys and it would be way less painful to have them seperate so I can just give them the bill fopr the phone and have no dealings with it.

So come on… what you suggest?

have a fair bit of downloading going on so what something fairly quick and unlimited…

Plusnet fibre optic is pretty good.

Have a look on samknows.com to see what LLU etc providers are in your area, that’ll give you a starting point.

Define “unlimited”; it’s probably changed now but last time I checked the only truly unlimited service in the UK was Sky.

Another vote for Plus Net fibre here. Notice that they don’t offer “unlimited” deals, they actually do it properly and fairly imo

Plus Net do unlimited for a small additional fee now.

I stand corrected in that case. Think I’ve got a 70Gb allowance, which is plenty for me

I’m on “normal” plusnet (broadband only) but considering fibre optic at the moment. I think that the one I am on is 70GB (daytime use – overnight is unlimited) but the fibre optic offer I got through is completely unlimited. Apparently (haven’t read the small print…)

I was on the 70GB to but switched over in January shortly after they introduced it (We don’t have tv so watch a lot of online stuff).

If you log into your account you can switch over your product. I think it cost me around £2.50 extra per month.

Have a look on samknows.com to see what LLU etc providers are in your area, that’ll give you a starting point.

Nearly didn’t bother, as I know we don’t have any LLU, cable or fibre here, but it turns out we’re due to get ADSL2+ in June (yes, the best we can get at the moment is ADSLmax, which gives me ~5Mb/s). So given I was thinking of changing my provider now, and looking at ones with 12 or 18 month contracts, will those upgrade to faster speeds when available or should I wait?

Also is Orange broadband any good, as it looks like the best deal might be with them?

…also for those on +net, do they not do traffic shaping any more? Are there no downsides? That might be a good option if so – checking out their website it appears they do generally offer unlimited usage on their current new offerings.

Zen

200gb for £26ish

Well,

Going from ADSL “Max” to ADSL2+ lifts your maximum speed from, er, 8Mbps IIRC, to 24Mbps. But if you’re not maxing out Max (at only 5Mbps) then I wouldn’t have thought you’re going to see much of an increase on ADSL2+. If you have half a pint in a pint glass, pouring it into a gallon jug doesn’t get you more beer.

Plusnet changed to unlimited in the last few months, new customers are on it and old ones can switch. I just changed to them from sky, both of them are unlimited and don’t slow your speeds at peak times either. I went with plusnet because tthey were cheaper for fibre optic

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_management.shtml

Going from ADSL “Max” to ADSL2+ lifts your maximum speed from, er, 8Mbps IIRC, to 24Mbps. But if you’re not maxing out Max (at only 5Mbps) then I wouldn’t have thought you’re going to see much of an increase on ADSL2+.

Does anybody actually get 8Mbps on ADSL Max though – I thought 5 was actually fairly decent (when we last did a speed comparison on here mine was faster than the majority on normal ADSL max)? I mean you could well have argued that as I only got ~1.5Mbps on ADSL I wouldn’t have got any advantage with ADSL Max.

Was also being pessimistic with 5Mbps – that’s what they say I can get, though speed tests suggest more:

I mean surely they wouldn’t bother upgrading the exchange if I can’t improve on that.

Interesting to see that info on traffic shaping, though it doesn’t look as severe as it once was with +net – what are people’s real world experiences?

+1 Zen

Bulletproof and English-speaking Englanders in Englandville on the end of an 0845 number.

pfft +net do still genuinely seem to be in Yorkshire – surely you don’t get any more English than proper northern grafters?

Does anybody actually get 8Mbps on ADSL Max though – I thought 5 was actually fairly decent (when we last did a speed comparison on here mine was faster than the majority on normal ADSL max)? I mean you could well have argued that as I only got ~1.5Mbps on ADSL I wouldn’t have got any advantage with ADSL Max.

‘s a good question, and I did wonder that when I replied. Have you tried running any “what speed should I get” tools on the ISPs sites?

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_management.shtml

All networks do that even sky if the network is at capacity, which in my experience never happens. What I meant was they don’t put speed limits on p2p like some of the others

Have you tried running any “what speed should I get” tools on the ISPs sites?

Yeah – that’s where I got my 5Mbps figure from, which as demonstrated is pessimistic. I suspect we actually have pretty decent copper infrastructure here, it being a 200 house estate built ~17 years ago, which comprises a significant proportion of the capacity at the exchange, so it’s presumably all good new cabling (supposedly the whole estate has cable TV wiring, just that being out in the country nobody’s ever thought it worthwhile to connect it to anything). If anybody’s going to get good ADSL2+ speeds from our exchange it will be us.

Though having had a look into some of the deals, the issue I was already aware of with our exchange becomes apparent. Because we only have BT in our exchange, instead of the headline £5 a month for new customers with +net, it’s £17 a month. It appears this is because BT wholesale charge more when they have such a monopoly rather than because +net themselves aren’t in the exchange (they offer the lower price if any other company is also in the exchange). Surely such a situation can’t actually be legal?

Anyway – does anybody have any suggestions of good deals for when BT have a monopoly on the exchange? I don’t appear to be able to get any of the good ones, and nobody seems to do a comparison of what’s on offer for exchanges like ours.

Going from ADSL “Max” to ADSL2+ lifts your maximum speed from, er, 8Mbps IIRC, to 24Mbps. But if you’re not maxing out Max (at only 5Mbps) then I wouldn’t have thought you’re going to see much of an increase on ADSL2+. If you have half a pint in a pint glass, pouring it into a gallon jug doesn’t get you more beer.

We recently went to ADSL2+
Prev best was 5-6 on ADSLmax and the 2+ is doing up to 13 so far, FWIW
(local exchange is very close but I suspect our wiring is ancient – the house doen’t have a recognisable master socket, for example)

Addit: We’re on IDNET. I believe they “never” throttle the line. Not supercheap though

I live in the dales, I got 8M sync, 7.5 ip profile on ADSL, now on ADSL 2+ and get 17M download 18M sync. Am impressed, didn’t get that fast when I lived in Leeds.

Another plus for plus net here. they do now offer unlimited, I quizzed them on it, they said outside their peak time traffic shaping which is pretty reasonable, they do not impose any limits. Before with a 60G limit and infinite overnights, I knocked many hundreds a month and never heard anything from them about it.

This thread has come just in time to remind me about sorting out a new setup. Can I ask a numpty question?

None of the packages I have investigated mention e-mail. My account has a primary @btinternet.com address but I normally use one of the associated @yahoo.co.uk addresses. If I change provider do I have to go through the laborious process of changing e-mail address with knock on effect on multifarious websites, forums etc etc?