If any of you have come across a broadband provider called 'fairADSL' or 'fairBROADBAND' then my advice is steer clear.

I regularly check the ADSLguide.org forums and they have got a seriously bad rep.

I happen to know someone connected to their 'service' and they even tell me how rubbish it is.

Check out this guys impressionm of their homepage, it says it all: here! (http://mysite.freeserve.com/Tizz/pics/fairadsl.gif)

Originally posted by DaBouncer
If any of you have come across a broadband provider called 'fairADSL' or 'fairBROADBAND' then my advice is steer clear.

I regularly check the ADSLguide.org forums and they have got a seriously bad rep.

I happen to know someone connected to their 'service' and they even tell me how rubbish it is.

Check out this guys impressionm of their homepage, it says it all: here! (http://mysite.freeserve.com/Tizz/pics/fairadsl.gif)

I'd stear clear of of BT Openworld too. I've just cancelled with them and am going with Zen Internet (http://www.zen.co.uk) instead on the recommendation of a few friends that use them.

BTOpenworld is fine, BTBroadband on the other hand...

i'm with tiscali and i've never had any problems thankgod

Originally posted by RPG
BTOpenworld is fine, BTBroadband on the other hand...
Not according to my up-time stats, it's a terrible service. A couple of weeks ago, the service was unusable for around 2-3 days! The speed is usually acceptable, when it's working, although not as good as other providers. And just do a search on The Register for BT OpenWoe if you want to know what their support is like!

yeah, they were upgrading the "cards" at the exchange.

it was offline from 2am till 6am for me tho :)

only problem i had was with MTU packets, my net connection was slow for a while so they refunded me 3 months! (despite it being a week only problem)

support is crap until you annoy them enough to put a manager on :lol:

ever since then, this connection has been storming, i get around 478kbps down and a good 250 up now :)

Originally posted by ritzy
i'm with tiscali and i've never had any problems thankgod

I know many people who have had nothing but trouble with Tiscali with terrible customer service and poor internet speed performance.

I'm with Plusnet at the mo and have had no problems what so ever,its spot on speed wise and its been very reliable so far.

we are with f2s (freedom 2 surf) and it's fine we've had it for a couple of years now :)

I've heard bad things about FairADSL too. Personally, I'm with Timewarp, which I signed up for during a special offer of £17.99 a month for 512k, usually £23.50. Its a bargain considering its fast and reliable, although the customer support wasn't too impressive during a few initial teething problems. On the speed tests on ADSL guide my connection is always much faster than the averages in the Top 10 so I'm pleased.

My blueyonder is lovely and ive never had any problems with it at all - never even been cut off and it never goes slower or anything. I also recommend the cable company for normal 56k aswell cos its fairly cheap and i also never got cut off or anything. Its way more reliable than any other company ive been with and ive been with a fair few. I wonder if anyone actually still has AOL 56k version where you pay for calls and get charged on top?

Originally posted by RPG
ever since then, this connection has been storming, i get around 478kbps down and a good 250 up now :)
Yes, it has been a lot better recently. Still, I'm moving house in a week or two, so it makes sense to go with someone else in my new place. For £35 a month Zen give you 1MBit with 8 static IP addresses and excellent support. Can't argue with that. I think it is £25 for 512MBit.

yeah, ive heard all good things about zen. cant go wrong for 1mb as well

Originally posted by kittykat
My blueyonder is lovely and ive never had any problems with it at all - never even been cut off and it never goes slower or anything. I also recommend the cable company for normal 56k aswell cos its fairly cheap and i also never got cut off or anything. Its way more reliable than any other company ive been with and ive been with a fair few. I wonder if anyone actually still has AOL 56k version where you pay for calls and get charged on top?

My cable is excellent too. Continuous uptime since December last year with no glitches or failures.

Been with Pipex since March and must say they are THE best provider I have come across in a long time.

I was with Pipex in london until I moved up here a few weeks ago. Although I was relatively happy with pipex the customer service was pretty bad - taking two weeks to reply to emails if they replied at all.

I have recommended (and installed in my line of work) a dozen zen adsl lines over east london and would totally recomend them. They are not the cheapest (27.99) for standard service - with activation fee - but they are very very good and you get a fixed ip address too.

I ordered my service when we moved in and five days later it went live. Because we might be moving in less than a year another advantage of zen is no 12 month contract - you can leave with a month's notice.

With the broadband scene set to change soon it makes sense to me to not get tied in to any one ISP - even one as good (now) as Zen.

Oh yes - another benefit is that as zen is mainly a buisness network the contention after hours is minimal!

So - empty your mind and embrace Zen!

(I don't work for them or get commision btw!)

Happy Pipex subscriber here.

Excellent value at £23.48 inc. VAT per month for 512 Kbps. The 1Mbps service at £28.95 per month is looking very tempting!

Couple of complaints though: the news server is pretty poor (use http://www.claranews.com, http://www.easynews.com or similar), and they're not good at responding to support/accounts emails. Phoning them is best.

http://www.computershopper.co.uk/?news/news_story.php?id=47132

Bolldog are doing <£30 for a 1M connection.

Nomme

Pipex are doing 1 meg for £28!

There is o<n>ly o<n>e ADSL provider in the UK.

Voted the fastest ADSL provider o<n> ADSLguide.

A<n>d, o<n>nly £22.99 a mo<n>th too! :)


I wo<n>der who it could be? ;)

Does your broadband provider give you 1 months FREE Broadband service when you recommend a friend?

NOPE!

Mine does!

Plusnet is Sheffield based and provides 512k at only £21.99 pcm. Plus, you get 50p off every month for every user who you've recommended, forever, not just for 1 month.

Originally posted by max
Plusnet is Sheffield based and provides 512k at only £21.99 pcm. Plus, you get 50p off every month for every user who you've recommended, forever, not just for 1 month.

Arrgh..... now that is very tempting.

Nomme

Originally posted by nommedenet
Arrgh..... now that is very tempting.

Nomme

If you do decide to go with plusnet pm me so I can get the 50p, please.

Originally posted by max
If you do decide to go with plusnet pm me so I can get the 50p, please.

Lol.
Will do.
I'm giving it some thought at the moment. I'd probably have to upgrade the harddisk too as 'the boy' would fill up the current one 10 times faster with music & pictures.
:)

Nomme

2 of my friends are on plusnet, very bad for newsservers, but if u r not into download huge amounts of binary files over newsservers than im sure it will survice for ya

Originally posted by max
Plusnet is Sheffield based and provides 512k at only £21.99 pcm. Plus, you get 50p off every month for every user who you've recommended, forever, not just for 1 month.

so if you recommend 44 people do you get it free forever???

Well I'm still on good old dial-up.

I was with BTOpenworld and got sick of
a) constant barrage of viruses and spam
b) variable connection speed
c) awful customer support
d) too expensive!!
e) time limit on how many hours you can be on per month

So I did some research and decided to change to Onetel. However half way through the application form I found out you had to change your phone provider to them too, so I cancelled it.

Then I went with Tesco.net cos it's only £12.49 a month for unlimited access, no time limit.

It has been great for the past few months, but the last week or so has been terrible!! Virtually no emails will send (they are having problems with their smtp servers, and I phoned them today and they said it would probably go on for *a few weeks*?!) and I'm receiving double copies of the ones I receive and all in the wrong order.

I'm really hoping this is a temporary glitch and not representative of things to come...

Originally posted by kittykat
so if you recommend 44 people do you get it free forever???

Surely if you recommend 44 people, they actually pay *you* 1p a month to keep using it!! :))

Since there have been a couple of positives comments about Blue Yonder (former Yorkshire Cable) I'd better correct the impression.

I was perfectly happy with them too 'till things started to go wrong. I have cable TV, and their phone service as well as broadband. I look forward to a month when all three services work faultlessly. The phone has just recovered itself after taking a day off, broadband disappears for an hour or two most days, TV's been OK for a couple of months but before that it spent 6 months being very unreliable. It wouldn't be so bad if you could get through to support without 10 mins of music on hold, and I'd not mind that but support is a euphamism for a brainless moron who wants not just account number but address, name, postcode, phone number (which must all be on their computer system and are too readily available to third parties to be regarded as "security checks"). After establishing that yes the computer is plugged in and switched on (well done guys I'd never have thought that could be why I can't see the internet!) you get transferred to "faults" - you guessed it, another 10 mins of music on hold and then they ask all the same identity information. On one occasion I was quoted 3 weeks wait before they could fix the fault (and not even a reimbursement of my subscription for the time spent off-line).

Today (telephone fault) "faults" said the system management computers were down so he couldn't do anything, would I mind phoning back in an hour (...and getting another 20 mins of music on hold and paying over the odds as I had to use my mobile to make the call). I suggested the rather novel idea of writing down my phone number and fault and typing it into the computer when it was better. He said it would be better if I called back (I think he may have meant he couldn't be arsed).

The blueyonder.feedback newsgroup leads me to conclude that I'm not alone in believing them to be a bunch of utter incompetents. The only thing that keeps them in business is that the only real competitor (!) for providing the local loop (the wire between the exchange and your house) is BT!

I could go on like this for hours but you and I have more interesting things to do.

Originally posted by robh
support is a euphamism for a brainless moron who wants not just account number but address, name, postcode, phone number (which must all be on their computer system and are too readily available to third parties to be regarded as "security checks").

Like I have already stated I have had few faults in the 3 years I have been with them. On the occasions I have called support I have become annoyed with all this OTT secuirty checking like you mention and even a password check has been added now.

In answer to the 44 users & then it's free question, I don't know.

As far as support goes I've never had to use it. On the 2 occasions in the 12 months since I joined that there has been a problem I've simply used dial up to access their support site which has a real time report of any issues. On both occasions they were aware of the problem already and had an estimated fix time of under an hour.

Plus they're Sheffield based and we should support local industry.

You could try a company called SOLIS - Sheffield Internet.

As the name suggests they are based in Sheffield and have been around for a good few years now, longer than plusnet.

They are a small company with good customer service and a friendly informal manner.

I'm with blueyonder broadband. I had a few teething troubles to start with but they fixed things quite fast. Service has been very good and relieable scince.

If I was to consider broadband, I would only use a reputable supplier!!!

We have 2 pc's in our house, the main one is on Freeserve BroadBand and the other one (mine) is on AOL dial-up

Originally posted by wizthebest
We have 2 pc's in our house, the main one is on Freeserve BroadBand and the other one (mine) is on AOL dial-up
Why not just hook up both from your ADSL modem? You could have broadband access on both yer PC's!

Hmm

Ive done the network thing before with 2 pcs and the internet (one pc on ntl i think it was and the other on aol) and it was a pain cos if I was online and the X wanted to go on I would have to log off so he could log on for me to log on through him etc .... which got to be a pain in the ........

I think we will probably leave the pcs as they are because I dont do much on mine apart from chat and do my websites whereas J downloads music etc .... Plus we dont have to disconnect either pc if the other person wants to go online (sounds gibberish but I know what I mean but I cant write it properly)

There is a way round that AFAIK. So you can log both PC's on at the same time.

Try http://www.adslguide.org.uk maybe one of the staff could help you there. They have a wealth of information.

Top 10 Fastest Broadband ISPs for January 2004

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=1545