Get Broadband UK?

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ShadowRider

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Hi guys.
In March I am moving to the UK, Canterbury and am looking for advice on choosing an ISP. If anybody has been over there for an extended period, lived there, or knows about ADSL there I would really appreciate any advice.

I would like to get ADSL unlimited cap or above 40GB pm + phone with free weekend or anytime, and a minimum contract length. I have a budget of £55 for the phone and Broadband.

I am interested in IDnet or BEunlimited. But am not sure of just how reliable they are or their support.

Also if anybody knows of a good UK broadband forum, Thinkbroadband.co.uk is ok but their forum is not user friendly. Suppose I have just gotten used to MyBB :D

Thanks all!
 
Unfortunatly Canterbury has no cable access and fiber is set to launch between March and April. So I have too look 4 ADSL.
 
haha yup I suppose that helps, IDnet has a 40Mb fiber service, so my thinking is they may be good to get ADSL from and then upgrade to fiber when my area gets fiber installed. Just don't really know much about IDnet.

@Rosaudio thanks for the link going to go take a good look there :)
 
I have lots of experience with UK broadband packages both for business and home.

I would go with BEunlimited. I was with them for about 2 years for my personal broadband and have to say they have the best service all round. I paid £17.50 a month(line rental is another £11, got that from BT) for 24meg down, 1.2meg up, static ip, no cap(downloading and seeding linux distros 24/7).

Very active user forum with BE staff on it all day. 24 Hour phone support to some Eastern European country with negligible holding times and very knowledgeable staff, the kind that can troubleshoot their network and isolate problems while you hold and that phone you back in 5 minutes when they say they are phoning back in 5 minutes.

Don't think I had more than 6 hours downtime in 2 years.

I was ready to start migrating companies from their business broadband packages to BE.
 
@Viisiix thanks for the info!
BE look great but I can't find out what plans they have for fiber.

Also what is BE's customer account area like such as usage, settings, etc. I find WebAfrica's dsl control panel very acurate and user friendly and seems to give you a good ammount of control over account & dsl. Becuase personaly I don't like BEs site design, however I won't judge a book by it's cover. There service is most important ;)

From what I have found out IDnet's fiber is a wholesale version of BTinfinity, can any 1 confirm this?

Also Is IDnet's AND BE's ADSL LLU or also BT Wholesale?

- Thanks all for the gr8 help!
 
ShadowRider said:
But am not sure of just how reliable they are or their support.
Click to expand...

They are all rubish at support and you have to pay for premium numbers bla bla bla. If you went for Be There you might find you are not in an ADSL 2+ so you won't get 24mbps, you will probably struggle to get 4mbps. I find most of the internet here is not too good unless you are in the city or near the exchange.

I have Virgin cable on 10mbps with phone, internet and all the premium channels and it is like £77 per month so you will definitely get it for less than your budget if you went Virgin. BT are upgrading their lines rapidly so if you went with them, I think the package is called BT Infinity and you you will possibly get upto 40Mbps and is 'the next big thing'. Plus you will get the phone too and if you stick with them you can probably get triple play and add BT vision too.
 
if you are considering having Sky for TV then Sky phone and broadband are very cheap to add. Sky have LLU in most exchanges now, so even line rental can be done with Sky (no BT involvement is a good thing).

Sky is also one of the few to be totally unlimited at all times of the day.

Unlimited broadband & free calls

Broadband Unlimited - perfect for downloading music & movies.

* Up to 20Mb download speeds
* Unlimited monthly usage
* Free evening and
weekend UK calls#
* Sky wireless router (worth £50)
* 24/7 technical support
* Free 12 month trial of McAfee Internet Security Suite
* Recommended for Sky Anytime+ TV on demand, in line with your Sky TV subscription

£7.50 a month with Sky Talk Freetime


(£2.50 extra a month without Sky TV)
Click to expand...

from http://www.sky.com/shop/broadband-talk/
 
I was there for around two years and used the orange broadband as it came with a voip phone that had free phone calls to most places in the world for up to two hours at a time. Fair use policy was around 1000mins per month but i generally used around 2500 and they only complained when one month we went over 3500!!:D:wtf:
 
I had Virgin package for 4 years and can't say one bad thing about them. I signed up when they were running a very good special for combining your packages (i.e. phone, mobile, TV, broadband). I can't remember exactly but I was getting our phone line rental & discounted calls + 10mbps broadband + mobile deal for around £25 a month. There support was top notch (interruptions were few) and whilst I downloaded torrents like a fiend and they did have a shaping policy, it wasn't as nearly as bad as what I've experienced here in SA.
 
IDnet Install Vs BT Vs BE ??

Thanks everyone for the feedback.
I would love to look into getting Virgin, but there is no cable access at the Canterbury Exchange :(

IDnet's installation fees are quite scary £130 Line Activation + £49 ADSL Activation.:wtf:
The installation is expensive and does not come with a router, so I am a wondering if maybe BE or even BT would not be a better option.:confused:

BT seems to always get slated but order Unlimited Broadband and Calls comes with free installation and if anything a pretty nice looking home router.
Is BT REALLY THAT BAD?:(

BE currently being voted best UK ISP, is charging only £86.81 for complete activation which is much cheaper than IDnet. But again no router and thats would be something else I would have to purchase on top of the activation charge for both BE and IDnet.

So what are your guys experiences with BT or is BE the one?
 
BT Business broadband is only OK. No real issues with shaping or bandwidth limits. 5 static ips per line. Local support. Stupidly high contention ratios in many areas though. You probably need to prove you are a business to get this. Routers they give you are so so. I have experienced on more than one occasion outages that last 12+ hours.

BT Home broadband is crap. Support centers are in India. They shape your traffic, have ****ty fair use, and no static IPs for home users. Routers they give you are so so. Avoid this service.

See my previous post in this thread regarding BE. I would recommend them to my mother. You can buy a Netgear dg834g for 40 squids from most places. ebuyer.com and misco.co.uk are your friends if you don't mind paying for next day delivery.
 
Thanks everyone for your feedback.

BE has been really great with support and I have been able to get an instillation from them for the 14th of Feb. :)
Apposed to the 29th of March from IDnet and BT.:erm:

I am also receiving a better installation deal that comes with a router, which I need until I get my current router.
Plus they are £13 cheaper pm than IDnet for the same uncapped service.
 
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