I’ve got to find a new Broadband deal sharpish.

We were previously with Nildram, which had some bundled calls etc. Nildram were then bought out by Opal. I had some emails shouting “upgrade for nowt” which I ignored, as I suspected I’d be tied into a 12 month contract again. The price of broadband has now risen spectacularly to approx £40 a month for a fairly standard service, on top of our BT line rental.

Now, going back to the emails I’ve had, I’ve got an offer of “up to” 24mbps broadband, with bundled line rental for £20.45. However, the previous tactics of Opal and the fact that they’re owned by TalkTalk makes me think this may be too good to be true.

Any suggestions? I don’t want all out superbargain Martin Lewis style broadband, but equally I do want reliability and a modicum of speed – Nildram were spot on for this, if a bit pricey. I live out in the sticks, and so Virgin isn’t an option.

Can you get O2?

Since Opal bought up Pipex, their service went right down the can. Dunno how they managed to cock it up so well but it almost instantly gave much slower speeds and was always disconnecting me.

It was the thing that forced me to change suppliers. With Virgin cable now.

Nope, can’t get O2. At the minute AAISP are looking as good as anyone.

AAISP are rapidly falling down the running due to a £50 setup fee as my current provider is apparently LLU. For a consumer product, this stuff is complex.

have a look at samknows.com
Try and get an LLU based product if possible, avoid talk talk / Tiscali / Opal.
Sky are good on price, but Im having issues with speed from them since I signed up with them in october.

Zen if you can afford it

Yep I was with Nildram for years but the move to Opal was the final straw. Resulted in utterly unusable speeds at peak times, so I ditched them for Zen. No regrets at all.

What Bigyinn said. Get a list of LLU providers from SamKnows, and go from there.

I moved away from Zen to Sky when I could get a better connection and Sky TV for about £2 more than I was currently paying. Couldn’t fault Zen for the time I was with them though.

At present, I have the options of Opal and AOL as LLU operators. Not going on AOL!

Rock / hard place. Looks like your options are to stick with Opal, jump to AOL, take the provisioning hit with BT Wholesale, or explore cable options (did you say that wasn’t available?). Looks like AOL’s about the best of a bad bunch there.

Not sure what I’d do in your position. Move, probably. (-: Have you tried talking to Retentions at Opal, see if you can wangle a better deal by threatening to go to AOL?

Re-reading,

Going from £40 / month to an “upgraded” £20 / month service smells like a move from BTW to LLU to me. Are you sure you’re on an LLU service currently? That’s a big saving, maybe you’re just on a really really old tariff. If your current service is acceptable, I’d do that I reckon. You’ve bugger all other option really.

I am on LLU with Opal. The £40 a month tariff is a recent price jack – I suspect it’s business as usual for TalkTalk / Opal if you don’t take up their offers. They surmise that you’re not paying attention and start racking up the prices.

AOL have horrendous reviews, so I’m not keen to go with them (and yes, Opal and AOL are the only LLU providers at present. Sky / Easynet are also available apparently, but I’ve no interest in a Sky dish, and Easynet only provide super pricey broadband with redudancy etc. for business).

Why is LLU such a big deal? I don’t really give a monkeys whether I get 8 meg or 24 meg downloads – I suspect that ultimately the speed will be limited by the fact that we’re probably on pretty old cable as until 20 years ago our house was the only one for several hundred yards.

Equally, I’m fairly happy to stick with BT for the time being on the landline.

Scrub what I said about Sky speeds, it was my wireless dongle being rubbish. 😳