Just wondered... who do you use in the UK for broadband and what do you think of them?

I notice a lot of packages now offered by broadband suppliers now have a usage policy, limiting the amount you can download a month too.

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Provider: Eclipse
Have been with them for 6 years and they've been great. Fortunately, I got the package before they changed to a usage policy system and it's been excellent.
Cost: £15/month

I am on Sky. I have that Sky package where you get TV, phone and broadband. Not sure how much we are paying monthly, certainly more than 15 pounds a month since we are paying for all three services, rather than just the internet.

It's very good though, not had any problems... touch wood!

I use Eclipse too, get 50GB on peak, and no FUP off peak, bit pricey though, £29.95 a month.

I download ALOT, and as far as I know, its the cheapest package available that gives you no FUP.

You get what you pay for I guess, I get top notch service from them.

Quote from danowat :

I use Eclipse too, get 50GB on peak, and no FUP off peak, bit pricey though, £29.95 a month.

I download ALOT, and as far as I know, its the cheapest package available that gives you no FUP.

You get what you pay for I guess, I get top notch service from them.

that's good to know. I can't get much more than 1.5 meg dload speed due to where I live but I have the old evolution2 package and thats unlimited.

I too had the old evo product, but I moved house and they made me have one of the new products.

I get about 6mb, so thats not too bad.

Had Be while I was living in Southampton, around 16Mb, something like a 300GB fair usage, 10GB/day is quite a lot to be downloading though.

This is the thing you see, having a LLU exchange, or cable, changes the goal posts, for boggo standard ADSL, you tend to get screwed on the FUP.

BT here and although people complain about them I've never had any problems. If I have a download limit, then I've never hit it. I tend to average about 6Mb/s of a possible 8Mb/s.

I have the top BT package, it's not that fast out here in the villages but it has no daily limit - and my work alone tends to put me over the allowance of the next package down within 2 days of use.

I used to have Virgin (NTL) and was entirely happy with the download speed, but upload is very slow.

Neither have had much problems with dropping connection, although NTL was more reliable in this sense. In my old house the broadband (BT) was laughable, but that was a locational issue as I was so far in the sticks the carrier pidgeons carrying my data where being eaten by yokels with webbed feet.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

BT here and although people complain about them I've never had any problems. If I have a download limit, then I've never hit it. I tend to average about 6Mb/s of a possible 8Mb/s.

You don't have a "limit" per say, you have a F.U.P., which IMO is worse, because the goalposts can (and do) move at anytime.

2 lines here - 1 ADSL2+ LLU O2 (a rebranded Be There) connection and 1 VirginMedia cable line. The O2 line I use for work purposes and the VM line is used as backup, and is the primary connection for my housemates.

I cannot speak highly enough of the O2 line. On the other hand, the VM line is terrible. The VM network is consistently unstable and very obtrusively shaped. Were it not for the cost of adding an additional BT phone line I don't believe that we'd be keeping the VM connection.

If anyone can point me in the direction of a cheaper, non F.U.P., high download limit, and preferably no limit overnight, ADSL2 product, I would be a happy bunny

Quote from danowat :

If anyone can point me in the direction of a cheaper, non F.U.P., high download limit, and preferably no limit overnight, ADSL2 product, I would be a happy bunny

have a look at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

The problem I have is location, rather than my ISP (which is AOL, and despite what has been said, is not all that bad. No conection issues) the speed is low bu as stated thats due to distance rather than anything else.

Quote from danowat :

You don't have a "limit" per say, you have a F.U.P., which IMO is worse, because the goalposts can (and do) move at anytime.

Meh. Either way it doesn't incovenience me.

I use Sky. £10/month gets me 16Mb (and we sit around 12-14) and uncapped downloads. Never noticed any kind of peak time shaping or anything.

Was a pain to set it up when we moved in (our address change with number retention caused weeks of delays), but since it got switched on it's been fantastic.

Quote from danowat :

If anyone can point me in the direction of a cheaper, non F.U.P., high download limit, and preferably no limit overnight, ADSL2 product, I would be a happy bunny

http://adsl24.co.uk/broadband/home/
Usage limit only applies 8am-midnight on weekdays, other times you are unlimited.

Also, https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/beunlimited

Quote from pb32000 :

10GB/day is quite a lot to be downloading though.

I think its 10 gig a month usually!

I'm on a Virgin 10Mb cable connection.

The connection is fantastic...always runs at full speed and has only had about 10 mins downtime in the last year. I've never been discoed from a game on this connection.

They do have limits on how much you can download during peak hours (10am-3pm and 4pm-9pm) without getting your connection throttled, but i find the limits quite acceptable and can easily work around them. I've only been throttled once in a year. You can download as much as you like off peak.

As long as you can work around the peak time limits it's a fantastic connection.

Quote from pb32000 :

10GB/day is quite a lot to be downloading though.

I don't think so these days. An hour of HD content on iPlayer is 1.5 gigs. I watch all my main TV on TVCatchup, couple that with a couple of HD movie downloads a day and its easy to do 20 gigs a day without any effort

That's a lifestyle issue. We Sky+ everything so don't need to do catchup on PC, and on the rare occasion we have, we don't bother watching in HD anyway. I download the odd bit here and there (mainly demos and stuff on the consoles these days and the odd Steam game), but probably don't come close to 10Gb per month.

So what you need depends on what you do. If you download all your games and you buy new ones weekly, 10Gb would be gone really quick. If you prefer physical media and have a DVR of some kind, odds are you won't need it. We pay the extra fiver so we don't need to think about it

BT Broadband - option1talkplusmatesratesdoodaawhateverpackage thing i dunno...Got the fancy looking wireless router home hub thing with the little tacky phone and a unique broadband number.

Not great, not bad. Paying for 8mb only getting 6.5mb, which i'm not too impressed with, considering i can see the exchange from my kitchen window.

The worst thing by far is customer services. Sorry, but talking to some little Indian girl who's quite clearly reading from a set script is about as effective as the Australia batting lineup at the Oval today. You might as well sit by the M25 and shout at passing motorists for advice.

It's defo not the best value for money, and if i wasn't stuck in an 18mth contract i'd probably look elsewhere.

I changed to O2 after a horrendous 3-4 years with Wandadoo/Orange. My area is very slow, but at least with O2 the speed is higher than what I previously experienced. We're only paying £8/mo for the service, which is fine value IMO. The only complaints I have is that the website is godawful and spends half its time breaking; and the router you get as standard might as well be made of butter because it seems to enjoy melting its insides, switching off, recovering and continuing as if nothing had happened.

Good customer service, mostly, some of the best I've encountered from any company. They're also my mobile (phone) provider because you get a hefty broadband discount if you also have them on your mobile.

EDIT: So far as shaping goes, it seems that I get my highest speed after midnight, up to early-ish morning. 1.7mbps at that time. For most of the day it's at 1.3 with a couple of hours at 1.4.

Quote from Mazz4200 :

Paying for 8mb only getting 6.5mb

If your area isn't on fibre optic cables then every ISP will be the same, copper phone lines aren't designed for the super high speeds which fibre optic cables can offer.

Quote from spiderbait90 :

If your area isn't on fibre optic cables then every ISP will be the same, copper phone lines aren't designed for the super high speeds which fibre optic cables can offer.

Granted Fibre optics can handle stupidly high speeds, but good old fashioned copper wire should still be good enough for 40 - 50mbs (according to Ofcom)

Back in Plymouth I was on a Virgin 2mb cable, but now living out in the sticks we're limited to ADSL. Went for o2/Be as they were cheapest and so far so good. The only thing that's bad is the modem/router combo, especially for wireless.

They told us the maximum connection we'd get is 1.5mb and after a few 'speedtests' it's at around 2.5mb, which I can't complain with. No download limits and no peak time capping etc. I think it's something like £12 a month, with the first 2 months free.