Any non-LLU services with unlimited or decent usage amounts.

[Mr_White]

Hello there.

Does anyone know of any ISPs that offer unlimited or a decent amount of usage?

They all seem to be LLU if they do, and I have no LLU providers in my exchange, I've emailed a few of them to see if they can offer me anything through BT wholesale, but I doubt the replies will bear any fruit.

I've found plusnet, which seem to be owned by BT, they claim completely unlimited usage, however judging by their 'Traffic Management' policy, you might as well not have the connection for most of the time:

http://community.plus.net/blog/2009/02/17/plusnet-unlimited-broadband/

12am to 12pm is the only time you actually get your line speed on all services, the rest of the time the connection is useless for anything but light browsing.

They also have an 18 month contract, so it looks like they're out.

It doesn't look like there is anyone who can offer a good service with BT wholesale, they either claim to be unlimited and have ridiculous traffic shaping, or they have an FUP that makes it not unlimited at all.

There is no cable here and there are no LLU providers, it seems the only people who can offer me a decent service are Zen for £80 a month.

It's a very frustrating situation, as all I want is an ISP that aren't completely draconian in either their policies or enforcing of them, but I get a feeling that BT have them all by the balls if they're using BT wholesale.

So any suggestions of ISP's who might be able to offer something better, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Logsi]

O2.

But at the moment the latency is an issue for me. But for the past couple of days the latency seems to have picked up and is much better!



For the past 7 months though my latency during the times of 6pm to 2am has been terrible.

 

[wij]

Look at one of the Enta resellers maybe, ADSL24 et. al. but as you say you're not going to get a decent ISP with the kind of things you're after on the cheap.

ADSL24 would do 60Gb peak and midnight - 8am free usage for £30 / month is probably one of your best bets. 1 Month contract so if the service isn't what you want then you can get out quickly.

O2's BTW service was fairly hit and miss when I was last looking at it so would certainly see if you can research the situation in your local area.

 

[Mr_White]

O2 looks decent reading through the contract, nothing hidden in the FUP, just this:

4 What about excessive network usage?

There is no limit on the monthly network usage. However if we feel that your activities are so excessive that other customers are detrimentally affected, we may give you a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, if the levels of activity do not immediately decrease after the warning, we may terminate or suspend your Services.

Which I can't imagine is going to be an issue with my usage, I don't really use that much, I just hate the way my current ISP deal with it, 50GB over a rolling 30 days, temperamental automated e-mail warning system, and you get restricted for 2-3 weeks if you dare go 1GB over the limit, which is hard to monitor as it's over a rolling 30 days and they have no tools to monitor it yourself, send no proof of your usage, and don't care one bit if their system doesn't send any e-mails and you get restricted without notification.

It just depends how O2 are in my area then, ADSL24 look pretty good as well.

 

[wij]

Be sure you're reading the right T&C's I was under the impression that the non-llu product from O2 had quite a few "restrictions".

Personally I'd go with Enta, even if its only for a month because it turns out to be no good as I'd only consider signing up to something with a 12 month contract as a last resort.

Also, check out Quidco as O2 normally have some sort of cash back deal on there - though that may only apply to the LLU service.

 

[$anch3z]

I'm in a similar situation non llu exchange but use Eclipse home pro 50gb pcm, upload is not counted, useage tracked via a control panel and qos. Outside of 9am - 11pm is totally unrestricted, with those hours it means i get decent speeds pretty much all the time as the network is'nt bogged donw by people trying to download the internet. Latency is usually good to excellent.

 

[marc2003]

o2 access isn't too great. i'd avoid them. the service can be randomly bad at peak times affect peoples normal browsing and gaming.

 

[wij]

Another nice thing about Enta is they are fairly honest and open about the state of their network.

Have a look at:

http://noc.enta.net/

Who are you with currently by the way, and if 50Gb would be enough did you look at Zen? It would be a similar 50Gb limit to how you are now but their customer portal is fairly intuitive (at least the business one I've used is) but buying extra capacity is very expensive.

 

[Mr_White]

I'm with Demon at the moment, who count usage even at off peak times, then restrict you to 128k for 2-3 weeks if you go over the limit, which is harder to keep track off as it's only a rolling 30 days, not the standard renewed usage every month.

I think I'm going to go with ADSL24 and try the 30GB package to start out with, most of my downloads are done over night, and they don't count usage from 12am to 8am, or on the weekends, which is when I use it the most, weekday peak time usage is only really browsing forums and watching one or two things on iPlayer, so I think the 30GB package might be enough, the fact it's a one month contract makes it more appealing as well.

Edit:

Seems to be a lot of bad reviews for ADSL24 this year, great ones before that, sounds like they might have gone downhill a bit

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/products/543.html?page=1

Lots of reports of traffic shaping during off peak, which will render the fact it's unlimited off peak fairly useless.

 

[marc2003]

Lots of reports of traffic shaping during off peak, which will render the fact it's unlimited off peak fairly useless.

to be fair to entanet, i actually like the way they manage their network during busy times. if they didn't artificially reduce the speeds for all users then it would become a free for all like many other isps where congestion rules and you can't even browse normally, stream and gaming pings go out the window. you can read how they do it here....

http://adsl24.co.uk/networkstatus/#qalt (check the question about the ALT)

unfortunately the periods where the ALT kicks in appear to be a lot more than they used to though. when i was a customer last year, it only really kicked in for about 3-4 hours weekdays and during the daytimes on the weekends. i can see looking at that status page above, it's still applying now during peak times. that never happened when i was a customer. they used to have a history graph where you could see 2 days previous activity but that seems to have gone.

 

[wij]

Most of the bad reports for ADSL24 and other Enta resellers were due in part to the migration to the BTWBC platform earlier this year - there were it is fair to say quite few teething problems but most of these have been sorted out now.

Also the benifit in most of the people unable to put up with a bit of disturbance for a few weeks leaving meant that the service got better for those that stayed as typically the ones complaining were the ones causing the most problems - i.e. the very heavy downloaders.

I'd agree that Enta is not as good as it was 2/3 years ago before everyone jumped on the bandwagon and damaged what was an excellent service.

But for the money IMO you'd struggle to find anything better on BTW.

IDNet would be worth a look, but they are costly too, as are Zen and AAISP which are the only other decent BTW providers IMO.

Pay your money, take your choice. In my last house I had both Zen and Be Pro, one for downloading the other for work / gaming and that worked very well but was an expensive solution.

 

[mp260767]

o2 access isn't too great. i'd avoid them. the service can be randomly bad at peak times affect peoples normal browsing and gaming.

i'd 2nd this if your into online gaming or use the likes of youtube a fair bit.

the general line speed can be a bit hit and miss but download wise not had any issues with it.

 

[Mr_White]

Heh, asking for my MAC Key has produced this:

THUS plc are pleased to inform you that the usage restrictions recently applied to your service, in accordance with the Demon Fair Usage Policy, have now been removed and your service has now been restored to its original state. Your usage, measured over a rolling 30 day period, now falls within acceptable limits.

That's the first time they've actually removed the restriction when I've disputed it, usually they just leave me restricted for about three weeks, I guess I'll wait until they restrict me again before I switch.

Thanks for the input everyone