Need help choosing an ISP

Nazca

Nazca

Nazca

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Hey there. In September I'm moving to a student home. There's gonna be 5 of us. The previous residents had an NTL line and cancelled it. We want to get a BT line with ADSL.

I need help finding a decent ADSL ISP with the max speed and value, and preferable unlimited downloads. We don't to pay stupid amounts of money, but we would like to get a fast service. Other goodies such as newsgroups access, etc. would be looked upon as a plus point :P

So far I've looked at Bulldog, but I'm hearing a lot of bad stuff about them.
Zen; looks good and quite well priced. But according to samknows Zen LLU isn't supported in Nottingham.
Easynet; Seems business only, and very expensive, but heard very good stuff about them (probably avoid them still though.)
Nildram: They used to be good I hear, but now they've turned crap apparently :confused:.

Can anyone comment on my suggestions, or suggest other ISPs that fullfil my criteria?

Cheers
 
I was in a similar position but HAD to go adsl (no cable in the town i moved to), i had a look at sky 16mb unlimited download for £10 a month but again i was outside of the catchment area :( ...ended up getting Virgin adsl max unlimited downloads. As far as i know they do not block p2p or any other restrictions £24.99 a month and no contract. Pipex are similarly priced but then you have a contract :rolleyes:
 
IDNet all the way. Was with Nildram but they started to have routing problems so we switched to IDNet (thank god for 1 month contracts).
 
Had a look at IDnet. The inclusive bandwith is only 30GB for a home service. And £69 for Business service is too much for us. We need a lot more bandwith because we'll be downloading a fair bit.

Also, Zen; As mentioned before I entered the postcode in samknows. It said that the Zen xLLU isn't supported. Guessing that means we can't have Zen?

I've had more of a looky round. It seems Bulldog might be the way with the 8Mbit line, unlimited downloads, and fairly cheap.

Question is, is it actually 8Mbit or is it MAX DSL from Bulldog? Also, I've heard their customer service is pretty shoddy.

Are there any other ISPs?

Edit: Had a look at this website http://www.ukonline.net/broadband/compare_services.php?sso_auth=0
Looks quite tempting. Anyone got any experience with Ukonline?
 
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Bulldog have a *very* bad rep as far as their customer service is concerned, and didn't I read somewhere that their parent company was scaling back their activity?

There's good advice over at http://www.adslguide.org about choosing ISPs, but just bear in mind that the forums are full of people with problems, people with no issues don't have any need to post ;)
 
$anch3z said:
I was in a similar position but HAD to go adsl (no cable in the town i moved to), i had a look at sky 16mb unlimited download for £10 a month but again i was outside of the catchment area :( ...ended up getting Virgin adsl max unlimited downloads. As far as i know they do not block p2p or any other restrictions £24.99 a month and no contract. Pipex are similarly priced but then you have a contract :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

How are you finding Virgin? Any good?

Am looking for an ISP myself for our student house in a few weeks. Still no idea who to go for.
 
Nazca said:
Also, Zen; As mentioned before I entered the postcode in samknows. It said that the Zen xLLU isn't supported. Guessing that means we can't have Zen?
Click to expand...

You can get Zen without being able to get their LLU service. You get the ordinary BTw service (though the caps are the same IIRC), and you're in a dream world if you think you'll get an unlimited service over that.
 
TheVoice said:
How are you finding Virgin? Any good?

Am looking for an ISP myself for our student house in a few weeks. Still no idea who to go for.
Click to expand...

Will let you know as soon as i get connected, i have to wait for a few days for them to activate the line :rolleyes:
 
So it looks like I might go for Zen 8000 Pro. Using the compare feature on adslguide, looks like Zen is one of the best. Got to get the BT line installed first. :P

Edit: Are there any fixed 8Mbit ISPs? Not MAX DSL?
Or should I stay with NTL. And get the 10Mbps service? I've not heard much good from NTL. There's no mention of the upstream rate on that service. Anyone know?
 
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Well im in the same boat as im switching to a new isp, i have decided to go for aol as they offer uncapped downloads, no traffic shaping, monthly contract as long as you sign up before a certain date and up to 8mb adsl all for 29.99 a month. Now if zen matched that price i would go with them but i would rather just give AOL a try :) also zen cap you at 50gb and for all i know aol dont cap at all

Theres only 8mb MAX ADSL unless you go with a ADSL2 service
put your phone number in samknows.com to find out if there are any adsl2 services in your area
 
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I can't find anything about ADSL2+ on that site.

Could someone please answer this question? :

Would it be a good idea to reopen an NTL account with a 10MBit line? Or would it be better to install a BT line and go with a decent ISP?
 
Bulldog, Be, UKOnline all use ADSL2+.

It depends what your line's like for one. You could get a line that'll do >10Mbps, or you might get nothing. With cable it's a "certainty".
On the other hand, you've got a choice of ISPs (with varying pros and cons).
 
Nazca said:
Hey there. In September I'm moving to a student home. There's gonna be 5 of us. The previous residents had an NTL line and cancelled it. We want to get a BT line with ADSL.
Click to expand...

If you can get ntl cable, why not just do that?
 
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