British broadband options

Norgoth

So, recently I moved into my first flat with my fiancée, and I'm looking to get a broadband connection. Obviously I'm looking for the cheapest possilble, but there's some problems.
A) I need unlimited downloads. Regardless of whatever the li
it is I WILL hit it. God damn you steam!
I don't have a BT landline. Nor am I particually happy about the £112 pound connection charge.

Fellow PAers, tell me your recomendations for suppliers, any deals you got and so forth.

Prime

Where you living? City? Town? Wilderness? makes a huge difference to what you can get.

BobCesca

Right. You will have to get a phoneline. If you want unlimited downloads without a "fair usage" possibility of cut off, that means getting a BT line (as the other options are Virgin and Sky).

Otherwise, you're left with a variety of options. BT themselves, though again they have the fair usage crap, and loads of others for which any general search will give results.

We're currently with BE (https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/homepage) who have a proper unlimited option and are fairly good (they also do shorter contracts if you don't want to put yourself in a 12-24 month deal from the off).

EDIT: japan sorted all of our internets. I'll point him in this direction when he gets up.

Norgoth

Prime wrote: »

Where you living? City? Town? Wilderness? makes a huge difference to what you can get.

I live in Cardiff, so I'm city based. I looked at BT, and although they wave the connection fee, the month to month price seems prett expensive compared to other providers. I considered virgin, thier current deals mean they work out fairly cheaper than BT over the year, but exactly how strict is the fair usage policy?

Technicality

My house is with virgin. We tend to go through phases of a few months heavy usage/light usage. Our connection seems to me to not really be affected by how much we use it, but simply what day it is. During the week we can get 800kb down 35kb up, but at the weekends its more like 200/10. My parents get a much more steady supply though, so I think it depends on your area.

I really like not having to pay for a landline, but virgin seem to have inherited ntl's terrible customer service. They are pretty much my least favourite, most confusing people to talk to. I once got an email from richard branson (heh) telling me how wonderful it was that I would be getting a bandwidth boost for free, and then got called up a month or so later by a virgin employee trying to sell me same bandwidth boost. I get more junkmail from them than anyone else but they have the cheek to tell me they are charging for paper billing to save the planet.

ok, I'm gonna stop ranting now.

japan

Your options for unlimited are either Be or Virgin.

Be is £17.88 per month for 24Mb down, 1.3 Mb up, unlimited, plus BT line rental (which is about £12.00), or £21.97 for 24Mb down, 2.5 Mb up unlimited, plus BT line rental. You need to sign up for 12 months for those rates, they do shorter contracts but they're more expensive.

Be is run by Telefonica, which also runs O2, which stopped offering unlimited packages a while ago. They've stated that they have no intention of doing likewise with Be. Take that as you will.

Virgin seems to do (12 month minimum contracts):
10Mb down for £12.50 per month, plus £11 for a phone line or £20 per month with no phone line
20Mb down for £20.00 per month, plus £11 for a phone line or £30 per month with no phone line
50Mb down for £28.00 per month, plus £11 for a phone line or £38 per month with no phone line

Virgin is cable, so you're more likely to be able to get the advertised rate. I'm paying for a 24Mb package with Be, but they were very upfront about the cabling being bad in this area and us being quite far from an exchange. They reckoned we wouldn't achieve higher than about 14Mbps, which was pretty accurate.

To be honest, I would have gone with Virgin if it weren't for the fact that their customer service is famously awful, they were involved in the Phorm mass-surveillance scandal, and for political reasons like the fact that they seem very keen to support "three strikes" measures in the UK. I appreciate not everyone will necessarily have these hangups.

Pretty sure all the other good ISPs (Zen, Eclipse, Nildram, etc.) have started capping.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the BT connection charge doesn't always apply if there was an active line before, and if you are stuck with paying it (I was) you don't have to pay it in one go, you can add it to the direct debits over a few months. They will give you serious hard-sell about the fact that they'll waive it if you take out BT broadband.

Szechuanosaurus

Worth noting that with Sky you will have the BT connection+monthly line rental on top of the Sky broadband monthly fee. It rides the BT landline. As far as I'm aware, Virgin is the only option that won't require the BT landline costs on top of the broadband service costs because it uses cable instead. (excluding satellite which ironically sky doesn't offer and is terrible and slow and not recommended unless you live somewhere that doesn't even have landline or cell service anyway).

Depending on your exchange you might not be able to get a decent broadband speed over the landline in your area. The only way of knowing this seems to be to get the landline installed and then tested. Even although we're in Edinburgh, the particular exchange we're attached to can only deliver the slowest BT/Sky broadband speed. Which also costs more last time I looked at their packages.

Adda

I can chip in and reccomend BE. I download like crazy with them so it is well worth the price.

Grenn

I'm with PlusNet, who are now owned by BT but thankfully seem to operate seperately. PlusNet have provided without a doubt the best customer service I've ever had from an ISP. Very pleased.

They're probably not The Best providers around but the suit my needs and I'm happy to stay with them.

The only downside is that you have to have a BT line and BT are the shittest and most frustrating company to deal with in the UK.

DarkWarrior

Sky offer line rental for £11 which is instead of BT and which I think is a bit cheaper than BTs line rental and for unlimited up to 20GB, its £10. Ive never had anything slowed or cut off and I can hit it hard sometimes. With Sky you'll also get either the free phone service which is something like free weekend and evening calls and decent (not great) mobile call costs. Then you can get the cheapest sky package for £17 so you're set for everything for like £36 I think.

You can get the full phone package for £5 which includes weekday calls and international calls for free. So you can call America or whatever. I actually think the max net package with Sky is £15 but it knocks £5 off when you get the phone service, even the free one.

Lord Lycan

I'm with O2 broadband. It's unlimited and the monthly price is discounted because I have an O2 contract mobile. Never had any problems with them and the speeds are consistent although I do live close to an exchange so ymmv.

mere_immortal

Another vote for Be here. I pretty much leave something downloading evey night and its been fine.

Just a point, you have to pay a few quid for an email address. Not really a deal breaker but worth mentioning.