Cheap Broadband

Have done a search but nothing came up. Did someone on here not tell us about a new company doing cheap broadband, or is my memory playing tricks?

Moving into my new flat tomorrow and want to get everything up and running asap so any hints about the cheapest would be great (minus Tiscali who I now avoid like they are BA in disguise!)

(Mods: sorry if this is the wrong place?!?)

[preiffer]

One that was discussed very recently was BE.

Although not available in all areas - a headline of "24Mb from £14/month" seems quite appealing...

[mitchja]

Here's my BT phoneline B/Band avoidance list:

Orange
Talk Talk
Pipex (as they have just been bought by Tiscali)

It really does depend on what you can get where your new flat is.

If you can get cable then Virgin Media's 20Mb package seems a good deal and is probably the fastest download speeds you can get in the UK at the moment (50 & 100Mb cable broadband are in trials and are not too far away either [:w])

You also need to look at what your going to be using your broadband for before you choose. If you just use the web & email then a cheap pacakge with a limited monthly download allowance (1 or 2Gb) is all you'll need. If you going to be file sharing/gaming/heavy downloading then you will need a more expensive product with a bigger monthly allowance.

I can quite easliy consume all of my 8Gb monthly download allowance and I only do a small amount of file sharing (P2P torrents)

I'm with Plus.net and have been for 4 years now. I'm quite happy with them and their service is pretty good most of the time. Details of their home packages are here and would be more than happy to refer you to get myself a few quid [:w]

Regards

I use BE at work, only the PRO version. Lightening fast but they use some weird settings on the ADSL lines that makes them almost incompatible with anything other than there modified and very bad Speedtouch Routers. My advice, steer clear of them for now until they sort out the incompatibilities with their Alcatel DSLAMS.

I use Talk Talk at home and I know SOOO many people have had problems with them. I have nothing but praise for their ADSL service (Their customer service sucks!). I was with BT beforehand paying £27 for a 1mb service. I now don't pay for the BB and get 6mb and no real problems (For the techies out there I am getting around 15db SNR at 6mb and I am a good 2km from the exchange)

My costs with Talk Talk are as follows:
Line Rental £11
International and National free call plan £9

My average monthly bill from Talk Talk is £25 as I make a few calls to mobiles but all my calls to the US are also free (which is a lot)

Paul

[mitchja]

Many broadband suppliers who supply their own routers/modems as part of a package deal do now lock their hardware to only work on their own network.

The BT Homehub is one example.

Paul, that's a pretty damn good speed considering your 2km away from your exchange [y]

I get about 6.7Mb down with ~10db SNR as I'm only about 200 yards from my exchange.

Regards

Ahhh BE- that is the one I am thinking of.

Having now converted to Apple am looking at getting the Airport Extreme so getting a router thrown in is not too much of an issue.

Thanks very much guys- will have a little look around.

FWIW, I'm with Be and find them entirely satisfactory. The download speed isn't fantastic - I'm getting about 8-10 Mbps download, rather than the advertised theoretical maximum of 24 Mbps - but I'm far enough from the exchange that 8-10 Mbps is probably about as good as you're going to get from any ISP. The upload speed is fantastic and fully as advertised. On the downside, the support team are in Bulgaria; in the dealings I've had with them, they do seem to know their stuff, but they're not the easiest to understand. (There's also a funny GBP 2 per month surcharge for some e-mail facilities if you aren't using web mail, which isn't fun.) The supplied router seems OK. Service reliability is not 100%, but it's certainly par for the course.

All told, this isn't a massive rave, but in these "Is it just me or is everything crap?" days, probably about as far from awful as ISPs come.

All best,
Chris

Just to give you some more info on BE. Yes their support are somewhere in eastern Europe (They actually sound Russian to me and I have a laugh with them every time I call them. (not at them, with them)). They do provide a sound service but are only set-up to deal with individuals which is why my 14 line order with them confuses things. They seem to have a problem dealing outside of the norm. You can only pay with credit card also and we had a problem using a 'procurement card' which is just a Visa card.

You only ever borrow the router so when you cease you have 28 days to return or they charge you £100 for the routers.

The speedtouch routers overheat and lock up severely needing a hard reboot.
Their are 2 hidden accounts that allow BE to automatically connect and update your router - In the past they managed to lock out almost all routers by a dodgy, unannounced upgrade.

The web interface on the Routers is abysmal. Slow, clunky and prone to breaking out of its frames and displaying partial info when the router is busy.

The closest site we have to an exchange is about 300 yards and we manage a 16mb connection (at somewhere around 7db SNR).

So in summary:
Good friendly service (as long as you don't ask for anything special)
Decent ADSL performance
VERY poor router performance with little option to change

Paul


SNMP has been frankensteined to the point where the router swallows any SNMP request. You cannot even port forward to another address.

[mitchja]

Question for anyone using BE.

Can you use your own router?

Most newer routers will work with ADSL2+ and the upto 24Mb speeds (Mine will and it's a Netgear DG834N router).....not that I can get BE where I am (or any other faster service yet)

It's worth pointing out that once BT roll out their new 21CN network most people should be able to have access to upto 24MB ADSL2+ using a standard BT line.

Regards