Internet

Author
Discussion

R360

Original Poster:

4,335 posts

207 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
Need some advice regarding ISP's, i am currently with o2, but have just requested a MAC code as i have been having so many problems with them.

Now im not sure who i should go with, i want someone who is good and reliable, my BT line does not support speeds of more than about 4mb due to the distance from the exchange and im looking at paying upto £20 a month, most important thing is that i do not want to have to pay an extortionate amount for a connection fee.

I have been told Zen are good but have never heard of them before?

Plotloss

67,280 posts

271 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
Eclipse are ace if you're a heavy user.

Davi

17,153 posts

221 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
IDnet have been fantastic for me - I wanted someone with very efficient customer service for when things go wrong, so went with IDnet based on reports. Only thing is it's run faultlessly so the only contact I've had with customer service was the first few setup calls! (which were, admittedly, excellent)

eightseventhree

2,196 posts

205 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
i use ADSL 24 after lots of bad experience with lots of ISPs.

There "Home 30" package usually fits most people at 19.99 and there UK customer service is great answering the phone after a few rings

Edited by eightseventhree on Tuesday 13th May 11:47

sublimatica

3,196 posts

255 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
I'm with Zen and their customer service is perfect. They're not the cheapest but they're not persuing that market.

You'll get good and bad stories about all of them, I'm sure. Just be prepared to ring India for technical support if you choose based on price alone.

Captain Beaky

1,389 posts

285 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
Another vote for Zen thumbup

Psychobert

6,316 posts

257 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
Plotloss said:
Eclipse are ace if you're a heavy user.
Was just about to advise not to touch them with the proverbial.. I guess you pays your money etc etc..

tvrtim

438 posts

263 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
Orange are great if you are fluent in Punjabi.

kybo

1,166 posts

196 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
I used 'The HOFF' (Pipex) for 5 years without an outage. Not the cheapest while I was using them but I believe (just days after I left) they have 'relaxed' their prices.


Ian_T

258 posts

212 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
I was just about to move from Pipex to O2... what problems did you have with O2?

madrob6

3,594 posts

221 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
Another vote for Zen, they were brilliant when I was with them and you can also see all the statistics of your usage on the online control panel.

R360

Original Poster:

4,335 posts

207 months

Tuesday 13th May 2008
quotequote all
Ian_T said:
I was just about to move from Pipex to O2... what problems did you have with O2?
Main problems I had with o2 was being given an IP range (93.96.***.***) which has known issues with a lot of websites. There is a lot of info in various forums about this. One of the websites I could not access was my work one, meaning I could not connect to my VPN when at home. Took o2 6 weeks to get back to me to inform me of the 2 options, option one is to pay for a static IP address but I am not guaranteed to get an IP address range different from the above, option 2 was for me to contact all of the owners of the websites which I can not see and get them to authorise my IP address.
The tech support no is free which is good, but in my experience 1st line support is ok for general issues but cant help with this, 2nd line are a little better but even they needed to escalate to network managers who are useless and based in India.
A temp fix for me was to reboot the router until I got an IP address which did not start with the above numbers, but unfortunately the connection seems to drop off every few days meaning you have to do this pretty frequently. On a few occasions I had to reboot the router 20-25 times to get a different IP range.
I would recommend having a look at a few of the forums and reading some more about this problem.


Edited by R360 on Tuesday 13th May 15:34

bigdods

7,172 posts

228 months

Wednesday 14th May 2008
quotequote all
I was with Griffin, they are a business service and have fantastic tech support. But they only offer up to 8Meg (of which I was getting about 3Meg due to line quality issues). I changed to BE 24Meg and now get 7Meg which is a big improvement (ok its not 24 bvut line quality is crap)and 1.3Meg upload - and its £18 per month

They use their own equipment in the BT exchange so you need to check if they have done your exchange yet https://www.bethere.co.uk/

oldskool

317 posts

231 months

Wednesday 14th May 2008
quotequote all
eightseventhree said:
i use ADSL 24 after lots of bad experience with lots of ISPs.

There "Home 30" package usually fits most people at 19.99 and there UK customer service is great answering the phone after a few rings

Edited by eightseventhree on Tuesday 13th May 11:47
+1. Good bandwidth tracking/logging features too.

okgo

38,119 posts

199 months

Wednesday 14th May 2008
quotequote all
zen/idnet

All I would reccomend, and I have had a few over the years.

Silverbullet767

10,714 posts

207 months

Wednesday 14th May 2008
quotequote all

Smifffy

1,992 posts

267 months

Wednesday 14th May 2008
quotequote all
Another vote for bethere.co.uk

I have the 24 mbps service. I also get about 8 mbps now which is pretty bloody fast.

MrBennett

382 posts

210 months

Wednesday 14th May 2008
quotequote all
I'm currently with O2 too. Main problem I have is that the connection drops once every 30 minutes or so, and doesn't come back up for about a minute. Not a big problem for casual browsing but a huge problem whilst playing online games or using MSN etc. Not sure if the dropouts are caused by the free O2 router or not.

wiggy001

6,545 posts

272 months

Thursday 15th May 2008
quotequote all
Been with UKOnline for a 4-5 years now without any issues. Never had to call customer support but it is a free number if you do.

£15, £20 and £25 a month for 2, 8 and 16 meg connections, assuming your exchange has been unbundled.

emicen

8,599 posts

219 months

Thursday 22nd May 2008
quotequote all
R360 said:
Ian_T said:
I was just about to move from Pipex to O2... what problems did you have with O2?
Main problems I had with o2 was being given an IP range (93.96.***.***) which has known issues with a lot of websites. There is a lot of info in various forums about this. One of the websites I could not access was my work one, meaning I could not connect to my VPN when at home. Took o2 6 weeks to get back to me to inform me of the 2 options, option one is to pay for a static IP address but I am not guaranteed to get an IP address range different from the above, option 2 was for me to contact all of the owners of the websites which I can not see and get them to authorise my IP address.
The tech support no is free which is good, but in my experience 1st line support is ok for general issues but cant help with this, 2nd line are a little better but even they needed to escalate to network managers who are useless and based in India.
A temp fix for me was to reboot the router until I got an IP address which did not start with the above numbers, but unfortunately the connection seems to drop off every few days meaning you have to do this pretty frequently. On a few occasions I had to reboot the router 20-25 times to get a different IP range.
I would recommend having a look at a few of the forums and reading some more about this problem.
I wouldnt have the first clue what forums to look on for such an issue, got any links?

What kind of websites are we talking about? Commercial/business or social/recreational?