ISP - Who to get in a ruralish area!

Chrispy2

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Hello all!

I need to get broadband for my new place in a village. First choice was Sky's mid (£5) package as I had it at my previous home and was satisfied. However, i can only get Sky Connect (8mb speed, 40GB limit) in the new place (at £10 instead of £17 for first 12 months). Will this be as good? I am guessing not as it will come through BT (despite being the same speed and limit). There are no plans I can see to upgrade my exchange and my phone line will support 4.5-5mb speed.

So my alternatives are Virgin Beyond Cable Broadband (8mb, Unlimited) again through BT (£7.50 first three months then £15.00), Tiscali (8mb, Unlimited) (£6.50 first three months, then £14.99), which I read bad things about on here, or BT themselves, who would charge £25 for the unlimited download limit (8mb) which as I regularly play PS3 online I guess I will need.

My usage is general mostly, but often. My girlfriend will be downloading uni work/articles etc. We shop online, she likes to go on youtube and download the odd song and I game regularly on my PS3 (a few hours a day). I am thinking we will need more than a 10-15GB download usage which turns me of BT when you see the massive price differences.

I can't get Be or ADSL24 and TalkTalk is over £30!

My thoughts are Sky or Virgin. Thoughts of you wonderful people please?!

Thanks!
 
Hello all!

I need to get broadband for my new place in a village. First choice was Sky's mid (£5) package as I had it at my previous home and was satisfied. However, i can only get Sky Connect (8mb speed, 40GB limit) in the new place (at £10 instead of £17 for first 12 months). Will this be as good? I am guessing not as it will come through BT (despite being the same speed and limit). There are no plans I can see to upgrade my exchange and my phone line will support 4.5-5mb speed.

So my alternatives are Virgin Beyond Cable Broadband (8mb, Unlimited) again through BT (£7.50 first three months then £15.00), Tiscali (8mb, Unlimited) (£6.50 first three months, then £14.99), which I read bad things about on here, or BT themselves, who would charge £25 for the unlimited download limit (8mb) which as I regularly play PS3 online I guess I will need.

My usage is general mostly, but often. My girlfriend will be downloading uni work/articles etc. We shop online, she likes to go on youtube and download the odd song and I game regularly on my PS3 (a few hours a day). I am thinking we will need more than a 10-15GB download usage which turns me of BT when you see the massive price differences.

I can't get Be or ADSL24 and TalkTalk is over £30!

My thoughts are Sky or Virgin. Thoughts of you wonderful people please?!

Thanks!
You can get ADSL24. Think you've gotten yourself a wee bit confused over your options. ADSL24 or O2 Access would probably be the choices I would be looking at. Both are via BT Wholesale but there can be vast differences between BT Wholesale based ISPs, there are a few good ones. BT retail are not one of the better BT Wholesale based suppliers in my opinion (confusing innit?).

Sky LLU is excellent but Sky via BT Wholesale is not so good.
 
Yes, not in right area so can only get the O2 Home Access Product which is £22.50 unfortunately.

What are your thoughts on Virgin, or Sky? Everything I can get will basically come through BT from what I can understand. Virgin and Sky will be much cheaper than BT for the same service I imagine. Tiscali sound like they are to be avoided!
 
Oooh heck!

I can indeed get ADSL24 but think I would need the 30GB peak and 300GB off peak as I cant see 3GB peak being nearly enough! That would be £20, which is hard to swallow when I was initially budgeting for £5! :-(

Would Virgin non cable be any good or same as Sky Connect?

Thank you!
 
Would Virgin non cable be any good or same as Sky Connect?
Virgin non-cable (ADSL) is dire & to be avoided. As is Tiscali & quite a few others. Sky connect is better than those 2 but they recently introdced peak time traffic management.
Cheap, quality BT Wholesale based ADSL is hard to come by to be honest. You either have to pay a bit more or take a rubbish service.

If you can live with £18/month then Newnet's Home M with 12 GB transfer is a good choice. Then again an extra £2/month gets you 30/300GB on ADSL24.
 
Thank you again!

I've learnt a lot since that last post!

I think I will try Sky Connect, though I have a whole other problem with whether or not I can actually get Sky! I can't put up a dish, but my landlord has a dish with a feed coming off it which is connected up to my place, so in theory Sky should just be able to plug their box in, but alas, they don't like doing that and will add the box as a multiroom box to his account, which means no phone or broadband for moi, or so I was told by one representative. Mine and my landlord's feeling is to order it as a normal install and then get the engineer to just connect the box to the feed and my phone line and keep his dish in his van. Whether that will be successful who knows!

Failing Sky Connect, Virgin now appears out of it, so am I down to BT themselves (unlimited but throttle, etc), O2 (or will the £22.50 service be not good?), or ADSL24 30/300. I don't have any equipment though and currently have no knowledge of setting up wireless routers and such like, so am naturally scared by ADSL24 and the need to buy bits and bobs and self install, gulp!

I appreciate they are a better deal but I am a simpleton in internet network terms! So I guess that makes me BT or O2, if I can't get Connect, unless you have any more wonderous suggestions!

Thank you so much for your input again! Much appreciated!
 
There's really not much to setting things up yourself and you usually have to set up yourself even when the ISP supplies the equipment. I'd say its on the same level as buying a DVD player & setting that up yourself. Also you don't have to go wireless. Its easier & better to keep things hard wired if possible.

O2 access & ADSL24 would be the 2 on my short list if I were in your shoes.
 
First of all you will get 'UP TO 8mb/s. I live in a rural area and the subscribers round here fall into two groups: Those who live close to the exchange who get very good speeds (7 - 8 Mb/s in most cases.) and those who don't who get dreadful speeds. (It is because the exchanges are closest to the clusters of habitation.)

Most of the large ISP who remarket BTW products are OK until you have problems and then they are truly dreadful. Look on these forums to see who are the worst. I have heard good things about O2 but I have no idea if that is because their business is largely LLU or that they are still small enough to care.

So the speed you get will be the same no matter who you choose which leaves: Price/Allowance/Free Kit and Customer Service.
 
I'm 2.68km from the exchange which I imagine is fairly bad?

Have you heard of Demon?

Up to 8mb's
Fair useage policy if you download more than 50GB's in thirty days (9am-11pm) - I will not download that much and it will allow me to keep my speeds if I download say 2/3 PS3 demos in a day, which other restricting ISP's would punish you for!
£17.99 per month
Free Alcatel Speedtouch 510 router and two microfilters - is this wireless though?

Sound any good or not?

Thanks!
 
Demon are about average. Have a look through the demon forum at thinkbroadband.com

Not many saying brilliant, but not many saying dire. Used to use them at the place I work and average sums them up.

One year contract though if I recall correctly....ADSL24 only tie you in for 1 month then you can move on if you wish.
 
I am in a similar position and have been looking at ADSL24 after the good reviews given on this site.

How would you calculate your download useage?

I tend to use the PS3 online, Download 10 - 30 music tracks per month + usual usage by 2 other PC's.

Also just a quick poll... ADSL24 or 02 Access?!?
 
How would you calculate your download useage
ADSL24/Entanet have online portals that allow you to see your usage. You can also use the unofficial Entatool software.
 
I am currently with ADSL24 but am not happy with the service. Although I am quite far from my exchange (another few hundred yards and I would be on a different exchange altogether!) my line speed is supposed to be around 1Meg - however it swings anywhere between 1.2Meg and 130k!!!! I used to be with Metronet (Plusnet) and although I rarely got above 600k it NEVER dropped below 512. I really can't be arsed paying £16.50 a month for such crap speed, because once it drops it can take days before it recovers to a decent level.

I am planning on going over to Sky, but as I use TalkTalk for my phone service, I don't know if they will accept the line or not.

Either way, I wouldn't recommend ADSL24.
 

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