BE still any good?

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It's been a while since I was on the search for an ISP, but I'll be moving to a new shared house next week and need to be thinking about who'd be best! Last time I was lurking this sub-forum, BE seemed to be the recommended ISP. Is this still the case? My local exchange has BE LLU'ed, along with AOL, C&W, Orange, Sky, TalkTalk and Tiscali.

Any thoughts?

Also, for those who've started a BE contract recently, roughly how long did your welcome pack take to arrive?

Thanks!
 
I left Be* about six months ago when we moved, simply because I moved to an area specifically to be able to get 50Mbps cable. :) They were, and still are, one of the best ISPs for most users - especially high bandwidth, reliable connections that are truly unlimited. My welcome pack arrived within a week (about 5 days iirc) of me ordering it on September last year, and I doubt they've changed that much. Compared to other ISPs they're low on congestion/contention and are quick to upgrade capacity where required.

They're definitely worth a punt, though be aware of the contract periods. I decided to pay for the install and get a 3 month contract instead of free install with 12 months simply for peace of mind. Something to consider. Also, is your new house not in a cable area? 50Mbps would be win for a house share; just make sure you get a proper router and set up QoS if you take that option. The supplied DIR-615 is rubbish for all but the most basic of tasks.
 
Over a year ago I rang them to signup ... was knocked back as they said I was to far from exchange (9.5km) to offer a solid decent connection ... I then turned to ADSL24 who later offered LLU and I snapped the offer up ... guess who the LLU was with ... yip Be ! :) Like I said well over a year now and Ive had a solid stable connection with almost 1.5mb (don't laugh) speed not bad since before I was doing well to have 512kb with Orange (non LLU tho). So I'd say yes give then a try :)
 
Rainmaker said:
I left Be* about six months ago when we moved, simply because I moved to an area specifically to be able to get 50Mbps cable. :) They were, and still are, one of the best ISPs for most users - especially high bandwidth, reliable connections that are truly unlimited. My welcome pack arrived within a week (about 5 days iirc) of me ordering it on September last year, and I doubt they've changed that much. Compared to other ISPs they're low on congestion/contention and are quick to upgrade capacity where required.

They're definitely worth a punt, though be aware of the contract periods. I decided to pay for the install and get a 3 month contract instead of free install with 12 months simply for peace of mind. Something to consider. Also, is your new house not in a cable area? 50Mbps would be win for a house share; just make sure you get a proper router and set up QoS if you take that option. The supplied DIR-615 is rubbish for all but the most basic of tasks.
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Thanks mate, that's pretty much answered everything :) Will probably be getting the 12 month contract, as I'm with a pretty decent bunch of people, and it does save a fair whack. Unfortunately we don't have much cable around here. It's just down the main roads.

So how does QoS affect things then? Will the router not automatically just share out the bandwidth if everyone is raping the connection?
 
tim80bwi said:
So how does QoS affect things then? Will the router not automatically just share out the bandwidth if everyone is raping the connection?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not, especially on low-end routers (such as the dire D-Link DIR-615 given away free by VM, or the equally poor Speedtouch LOANED to you by Be*). Personally I'd say invest in a good router and either install Tomato on it and start reading up about how to configure QoS, or else buy a decent router that has easy QoS built in - such as the excellent Asus RT-N16 which literally is "point and click, we'll do the rest" for setting up QoS. :)

You likely want to give priority to http, email etc and put bittorrent, NNTP et al. at the bottom. If you are a gamer the RT-N16 also has a "gamer" profile to prioritise game traffic and keep pings low at the potential expense of webpage loading times during "connection raping" sessions in a busy house.
 
Rainmaker said:
Personally I'd say invest in a good router and either install Tomato on it and start reading up about how to configure QoS, or else buy a decent router that has easy QoS built in - such as the excellent Asus RT-N16 which literally is "point and click, we'll do the rest" for setting up QoS. :)
Click to expand...

Best tomato router too :p

http://beusergroup.co.uk/?id=366 Amused me at any rate, the top 3 particularly.
 
Azuse05 said:
Best tomato router too :p
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Indeed! The RT-N16 seems to be quite the nice bit of kit, especially at the unexpectedly low price. I suggested it apart from the Tomato recommendation because to configure QoS in Tomato you still need to know what you're doing. The RT-N16 has, apart from perhaps the beefiest specs in modern home/consumer routers, excellent built-in n00b point and click QoS called EzQoS. I figured he could rely on that, and if/when he felt brave enough he could upgrade to Tomato for even more win. :)

I'm still deciding between the RT-N16 and the Netgear WNR3500L. They both seem decent but from what I've read so far the Asus unit is pretty unbeatable. Given that VM are planning to roll out 400Mbps eventually, I want to buy something with "staying power" rather than needing to upgrade again in a couple of years. I might just build a router/firewall using ClearOS and a few spare parts, but the RT seems like it'd handle 400Mbps no sweat from what I can see.

Actually this deserves another thread. Quick! To the internet! :p
 
I am on BE, their customer support is what makes them top notch, they are very very helpful and go to full lengths to fix your issues.(i've had very few issues with them but the problems i did was minor yet solved very fast, the ways they were handled was one of the best i've encountered for a company and i was also happy with the knowledge of their tech support.)

They have livechat support on their site too which is 24/7 too and apparently they are doing new packages soon which include their own phonelines installed which seems a good deal if you need a new line or hate current. :p

Anyway i been on them 3 years, very impressed, good speed, stable line, low latency and like i said their customer support is brilliant.
 
I have been with Be since 2005 and connection is good, download speed is great until recently gaming is " CRAP " random disconnect tried with 2 netgear dg834gt and Be supplied modem still got random dc in games which is very annoying.Im not sure maybe this is because of Be shares the network with O2, and O2 got lots of subcribers now.If gaming is your main thing I say look elsewhere.
 
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i got a load of random dc's with Be to until i swapped out the router now all seems to be fine. been very happy with them
 
Unfortunately I'm just moved location so have had to move away from Be :( but was with them from the moment their enabled the Bracknell exchange and found them to be absolutely brilliant over the years with very few non-planned down days and zero throttling.

I lived very far from the exchange and BT said I would get 3Mb max - Be however seemed to give me 3.5-3.7Mb.

definitely recommended
 
I have no problems with BE at all, 2 years, 1.5MB/s download, 134kb/s upload, good ping times, no problems with gaming, max out my connection all the time on usenet :)
 
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