I'm looking to go onto broadband in the very near future and was wondering who you could recommend. Ideally, I would have preferred to go on Blue Yonder, but it is not available in my area. Can anyone recommend any other broadband service provider?

I use Plusnet and it costs £21.99 pcm. They're a Sheffield company but up until now I have had no need to go and bang on their doors.

There are others but this one came out the best when I carried out exhaustive research.

PS Awaiting DaBouncer's input.

I use Nildram (getadsl.co.uk (www.getadsl.co.uk)) this is following a lot of research and my need for speed and reliability. I was assured to see Internet Magazine this month name Nildram as the fastest broadband ISP in the country. I'm not too keen on PlusNet - they never replied to any of my pre-sales questions...

For comparisons on all providers, check out
www.adslguide.org.uk

im on BTOpenworld, and quite happy :)

I use freeserve. It is reliable and I have never had trouble connecting. The download speeds are great at best and alright at worst, which always makes me think it is the host site Im downloading from which is to blame. I have had no problems other than getting the modem to work with linux, which wasn't really that hard just took a bit of time.

You can't get broardband in the village I'm from. Fortunately the uni network keeps me happy.

I was originally on Blueyonder dial up and went broadband as soon as it became available a couple of years ago. Never had a problem. Find the service very reliable and I am satisfied with the price.

Broadband providers eh!

I use http://www.pipex.net and they are the UK's 3rd leading provider.
(Only beaten by AOL and Freeserve, due to they advertsie on TV and Pipex is all Word of Mouth).

If anyone is interested after looking at there site, please PM me as I get a month free BB when I refer someone. You will to when you refer people!

The cost is only £23.44 per month and it's fast fast fast!

Go on... you know you want to! :lol:

Nope not me yet, still on dial up. But thinking of changing soon.

If you can get cable Broadband get that, in Sheffield that means Telewest, their product is known as Blueyonder, up to 1meg is available, and I guess soon upto 2meg.

All of the other providers are really only reselling BT ADSL, however there are a few now offering Satelitte connections.

NTL and Telewest are the leaders in the Broadband Market with over 1Million customers between them.
http://www.ntl.com/mediacentre/press/display.asp?id=628

The Cable industry have been the pioneers in Broadband with BT following, but the reality is the cable market is limited as it is not available to all homes, whereas a BT Line is.

Take cable if you can get its far better.

Originally posted by "mikey"

Nope not me yet, still on dial up. But thinking of changing soon.

If you can get cable Broadband get that, in Sheffield that means Telewest, their product is known as Blueyonder, up to 1meg is available, and I guess soon upto 2meg.

All of the other providers are really only reselling BT ADSL, however there are a few now offering Satelitte connections.

NTL and Telewest are the leaders in the Broadband Market with over 1Million customers between them.
http://www.ntl.com/mediacentre/press/display.asp?id=628

The Cable industry have been the pioneers in Broadband with BT following, but the reality is the cable market is limited as it is not available to all homes, whereas a BT Line is.

Take cable if you can get its far better.
Yeah cable broadband is great with it's 1GB per day download limitations innit? And Telewest with its impossible to contact Customer Service!

You should note that MOST ADSL providers give 1mb lines now! Some even go up to 4mb! Beat that! :P

Originally posted by "DaBouncer"

Yeah cable broadband is great with it's 1GB per day download limitations innit?

Ask yourself why they have capped downloads?
Not because of capacity, but because of pressure from the Government and media companies to limit pirating of music and films ect.

If you haven't got a cap, you soon will have, thats assuming your provider stays in business long enough. :D

Have you ever tried downloading 1Gig in a day? takes some doing.

Originally posted by "DaBouncer"

Nope not me yet, still on dial up. But thinking of changing soon.

If you can get cable Broadband get that, in Sheffield that means Telewest, their product is known as Blueyonder, up to 1meg is available, and I guess soon upto 2meg.

All of the other providers are really only reselling BT ADSL, however there are a few now offering Satelitte connections.

NTL and Telewest are the leaders in the Broadband Market with over 1Million customers between them.
http://www.ntl.com/mediacentre/press/display.asp?id=628

The Cable industry have been the pioneers in Broadband with BT following, but the reality is the cable market is limited as it is not available to all homes, whereas a BT Line is.

Take cable if you can get its far better.
Yeah cable broadband is great with it's 1GB per day download limitations innit? And Telewest with its impossible to contact Customer Service!

You should note that MOST ADSL providers give 1mb lines now! Some even go up to 4mb! Beat that! :P

We are still miles off the pace. Other countries have T1 and T3+ connections as standard.

What is this 1GB per day download? I have never heard of it? I have been on broadband for 2 years and never been restircted in any way whatsoever.

Originally posted by "Lickszz"

What is this 1GB per day download? I have never heard of it? I have been on broadband for 2 years and never been restircted in any way whatsoever.
I wouldn't worry about it. Most users use less than 100mb a day (a 10th of 1GB). The restriction has been brought in recently with some providers, because people were downloading movies all day (and night) and it was causing problems for normal users. The allocation limits are so high, only a tiny percentage of people will even notice.

Think about MP3 files, they are around 3-5mb each. That means you could get around 200-300 MPs a day!

Don't worry Lickszz, unless of course you download all the latest pirated movies - which can be up to a 1gb each :lol:

Originally posted by "mikey"

If you haven't got a cap, you soon will have, thats assuming your provider stays in business long enough.
Yeah it's true. A fair few ADSL companies are using caps now. The cable companies were first because they provided 1mb lines before most of the ADSL companies. Once 1mb ADSL is common place, most providers will have caps.

Bandwidth is still quite expensive, when you consider a company with 50,000 users taking 1GB of traffic a day = 50,000gb per day! Ouch :shock:

Originally posted by "Lickszz"


We are still miles off the pace. Other countries have T1 and T3+ connections as standard.



T1 and T3 are american standards, T1 is 1.544Mb and T3 is 28 x T1's or 43Mb

A T3 would be an aimed at business.

In the uk use E1 and E3.
E1 is 2mb (32 channels of 64k 64k being a standard telephone line)
E3 is 34mb

You can get both of these in the UK and bigger pipes, its just not aimed at the home user. In time standard speeds will increase for the home user.

Right thats enough of the techy stuff, but you are right Lickszz we are generally lagging behind

I'm currently using Blueyonder's 512k Broadband service, though I still have my Dial-Up account going as backup.

Generally, I'm very happy. Though on 2 occasions, I've had problems with the service. Within the first 8 weeks of having it, it was offline for 4 of those weeks due to a bit of mud blocking the connection or something. Then a few weeks ago, the connection was lost once again, but this time only for a weekend, and it was a problem throughout Sheffield, not just my connection.

I'm still on dial up and at £15.99 a month with AOL. Of late the service has been dreadful..... being thrown out every 10mins, screen freezing, lines engaged for ages. I'm beginning to think that it is a ploy to p*** customers off so that they subscribe to broadband, which I'd love to have but can't afford. How much could I get broadband for?

on BT its around £29.99

www.adslguide.org for more detailed pricing ;)

There are cheaper monthly options by some providers but there is the start up cost for the modem to consider which may turn out to be more expensive if you choose a cheaper monthly fee to which you are fixed to for a year.

I wouldn't worry about it. Most users use less than 100mb a day (a 10th of 1GB). The restriction has been brought in recently with some providers, because people were downloading movies all day (and night) and it was causing problems for normal users. The allocation limits are so high, only a tiny percentage of people will even notice.

Think about MP3 files, they are around 3-5mb each. That means you could get around 200-300 MPs a day!

Don't worry Lickszz, unless of course you download all the latest pirated movies - which can be up to a 1gb each :lol:

im glad i didnt have broadband then as i can download 1gb sometimes in 20 minutes these days

I use Plusnet and it costs £21.99 pcm. They're a Sheffield company but up until now I have had no need to go and bang on their doors.

There are others but this one came out the best when I carried out exhaustive research.

PS Awaiting DaBouncer's input.

I'm on PlusNet and pay £14.65 per month. The download speeds have been very poor, less than 2Mb!!!

They are advertised as a local company with local call-centres but only last week I had cause to call their billing department which turned out to be somewhere near Durban, South Africa!

They are owned by BT and, although they claim to be independent, have, since I joined 18 months ago, been subjected to having their terms and conditions altered by BT.

3 Broadband. 14.68 for 15GB downloads. Cant fault it

had BT option 3 till may. should be 24.45 for unlimted, but I got it free. couldnt really fault that either.

Demon: £17.99 for up to twenty-odd Mega bits per second if you live near the exchange. I live a fair bit away and get 11 Megabits per second, which is fine. However, there have been some problems, mainly due to an Indian Call Centre with Indian staff called Laurence, David, Sally, Joanne etc., which can't be right!!! They also seem to have a lot of Dutch staff judging by the accents. Very difficult to deal with due to the language barrier and to crippling non-overridable constraints that make any attempt at negotiating utterly hopeless!

They say it's unlimited, but if you go above 50 Gigabytes in a month, you get cut back to 100 kilobits per second for a whole month as a punishment, which is dire! You can't even buy your way out of it!!! They gave me no warning when this happened, and provide no means to monitor your own usage.

Aol broadband is £24.99 a month with free landline calls but then you have to pay BT 13 a month line rental, Im thinking of changing to sky for everything tho

Do you realise you are all advising someone who made a post 6 years ago :confused:

Do you realise you are all advising someone who made a post 6 years ago :confused:If that Hixxy had had the courtesy to sign-off by saying thank you to everyone, that would have been an end to it! :rant: