Need a new ISP

joeyjojo · 6 Sep 2006 at 21:43

Need a new ISP. At least 1 meg, but 2 meg is preffered. I do a fair bit of gaming and p2p. What can people recommend for as cheap as possible without infringing on my gaming/downloading (ie. unlimited)?

The "up to 8mb" from Tiscali looks good at the moment, although the line can only get up to 4.5 meg apparently. However, I've read some stories about tiscali here and it doesn't look great. Traffic shaping, unfair fair usage policy, slow etc.

Need some ideas chaps.

Stellios · 6 Sep 2006 at 23:33

Dont touch tiscali with a barge pole, thats from an experienced customer with them. Seriously, if you want that route with cheapness then go talktalk, their customer service is crap, but their connection works OK for me.

Deathwish · 6 Sep 2006 at 23:44

You could try AOL, or UKFSN.

http://www.aol.co.uk/broadband
http://www.ukfsn.org/adsl/maxallowance.html

aix0 · 6 Sep 2006 at 23:46

Better the devil you know, I had enough of scouring round for a decent ISP so I just went with BT. Not the cheapest, but so far (last 1-2 months) service has been flawless!

Avalon · 7 Sep 2006 at 11:23

This was the advice I got in a similar situation, I'm not keen on AOL personally but for the money they seem to have got a good product together. They also seem to have thought about it and are giving away the DG843G if you don't mind taking a contract

Jabbs · 7 Sep 2006 at 13:32

Nildram for me fantastic service £25.99 a month upto 8 meg, 50 gig peak hrs cap and unlimited off peak(12-8am).

I was previously with zen they are another great service but now they have moved from unlimited service they just aint worth the money, £34.99 month for a 50 gig capped service is way overpriced imo.

joeyjojo · 7 Sep 2006 at 19:06

Thanks for the replies.

That's a clear no for tiscali. AOL is too expensive (2 meg for £25??) but this UKFSN looks good. Weekends are off-peak too which is nice.

I'm trying to put 30 GB peak time usage per month into context. 70 hours out of 168 are considered peak each week. A quick calculation shows that one could download at 31.2 KB/s non stop over peak time to hit that 30 gig monthly limit. It's 222.9 KB/s non stop off peak to hit 300 off peak gigs...

Gonna have to think about it while the MAC code is being sorted.

Quick edit: any Toucan users about? Their 2 meg service looked okay, they've just been bought by pipex apparently.

Jabbs · 7 Sep 2006 at 23:12

If you after just 2 meg Nildram do a 2 meg package same cap as the max products but its £22.99 month.

Jotun · 8 Sep 2006 at 00:18

Stellios said:
Dont touch tiscali with a barge pole, thats from an experienced customer with them. Seriously, if you want that route with cheapness then go talktalk, their customer service is crap, but their connection works OK for me.

I have had a few problems with talk talk, the main ones being that I get regularly disconnected, and bittorrent is restricted, even though it's encrypted. I've never dealt with the customer support, as I doubt there is much I can do when the line just goes off.