Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Cyberus on August 09, 2004, 01:44:49 AM
-
They all seem much of a muchness to me...
Any UK users recommend any good value ones?
Thanks
-
Broadband usually starts at £20 a week for 256k, maybe there are some even cheaper ones. However, I'd avoid any that look too good. They can often have download caps and time limits.
I'm happy with Telewest blueyonder. No 24 hour cutoff, virtually no downtime, no caps or limits, £28/month for 768k.
-
If I could get Blue Yonder here in Peterborough I'd go for it.
I hate t say it but BT Is now offering a 1meg line for £29 which is what a half meg line was costing.
-
The_Editor wrote:
If I could get Blue Yonder here in Peterborough I'd go for it.
I hate t say it but BT Is now offering a 1meg line for £29 which is what a half meg line was costing.
My brother worked as telephone support for BT broadband for 6 months. He says to avoid them like the plague.
Given my experiences with BT I'd say the same - I had my phone service limited to incoming calls only for a week because I hadn't paid a bill which hadn't even arrived yet. Finally the bill arrived in the post, I paid it the same day, and had the use of my phone again for a whole day before the phone line developed a fault. I reported it on the 27th July and here I am, 14 days later, still waiting for the engineer to come out and fix it.
In the meantime they've sent me another bill and a red letter, threatening to "limit my service" if I don't pay right away. At the moment, I can't make any calls and I can't receive any calls because as soon as I pick up the receiver I just hear a wall of static. Can my phone service really be limited more than "completely unusable"? I'm intrigued to find out.
Anyway, I went a bit OT there but as for broadband in the UK I am very happy with Zen (http://www.zen.co.uk). They aren't the cheapest (I pay £39 for a 1mBit line or they do a 256kBit line for £19.99 and 512kBit for £27.99.) but they have very good customer service and tech support and I have not had a single problem in over a year.
-
PlusNet (http://portal.plus.net/my/mydiscount_info/landing_page.html?zWVl6A8AruuylVaHtkq2oTa2s3ZtoMsEpFANHoQMl5A%3D) do a low cost 512Kb for £14.99, going up to £31.99 for 2Mb - there are download limitations in the cheapie accounts though - all-you-can-eat is an extra £7.00.
I'm on the 2Mb all-you-can-eat. Fast and cheap.
-
NTL 600k £25, no major problems apart from the stb freezing now and again (press OK, LEFT, TV on the front of the box to reset it) they have restricted newsgroups (heavy duty warez groups are missing but a few decent ones for films/software still exist and more or less contain everything you need).
I recommend NTL for broadband (not their wanky phone service).
-
Try Demon or pipex, both are around £25 a month for 512k, none of them are capped and demon even give you a static ip address, with demon you will have to pay a connection fee and supply your own modem.
-
@Cyberus
Well just to plug my tiscali broadband; :-D
Tiscali Broadband (http://www.broadbandvalue.co.uk)
I was with BT for 3 years - no major probs - when I changed to tiscali it was up in a week. I have had no problems whatsoever.
If you're using AOS or Morphos you will need a router.
I would recommend a router anyway - with windows it's essential!
If you sign up with tiscali, I would recommend the £24.99 uncapped or £17.99 uncapped - if you use my link please feel free to email me and get my phone number for support with routers and broadband in general - I'm a cisco CCNP!
[End of shameless plug!]
-
Ntl are now offering a 300k service for £17.99 a month and the 600k is going upto 750k for £24.99 there page is here http://www.home.ntl.com/icat/broadband&source=googlebroadband60days&wg=83 (http://www.home.ntl.com/icat/broadband&source=googlebroadband60days&wg=83)
-
http://www.giointernet.com/
I've been using there £19.95 a month 512k service for a year. Not a single problem. Theres cheaper £15.95 150k or £17.95 256k services if you prefer. The best thing is there are no bandwidth or port restrictions.
-
BTYahoo and BTB do have quite a good price on there 1mb lines now but not without a small catch.
As of January '05, there 512k Lines will have a 15 GB monthly cap, the 1mb line will have a 30 GB.
I'm with BTY atm as i have been for quite a few years, this caping is of no use to me so i will prolly be going elsewhere...
Plusnet have free Migrations?
Nildram was my first choice but it seems they have now been acquired by Pipex :-o
Also, if you could never get ADSL before because of range/DB reading, your luck may be in. it's set to go up to at least 75db for 512k, 1mb will change from 41db to 60db, 2mb will remain at 41db.
All this seems to be effective within the next month or two.
Happy days.
-
MicroMart did a review of broadband suppliers about two months back (sorry, don't have it anymore, but they may have it on their website or something).
NTL have been fine here, the modem they supply has an RJ45 socket, and after the first connection it'll work with any computer (ie. Linux & Amigas no problem). Their web hosting has always worked well, too :-)
I've helped my neighbour with his BT connection, the helpline was better than NTL, but the modem supplied and special software used were both bad. They also have a bad rep for reliability (caused major problems at work with links through the county).
-
I connected to Pipex 512k (uncapped) last week via my AmigaOne and OS4, and it flies! It's like reading a web page from your hard disk :-)
Visit http://www.adslguide.org for ISP comparisons - Pipex came tops in all... You pay a bit extra than you would for BT or Wanadoo, but it's worth it for the service.
-
Metronet do an amazingly competitive pay as you go for £11.75 for the first 200mb. My aunt uses them and has had no problems. check them out at:-
http://www.metronet.co.uk
my isp Nildram (highly reccommended) has just launched it`s own PAYG starting at £15.99 for the first gig.
Personally i`m on their 1mb classic service at £34.99, though the 1mb PAYG looks good too.
http://www.nildram.co.uk
-
Hum,
why has no-one mentioned Wanadoo, which starts at £17.99 a Month?
See! (http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/time/broadbandaccess/)
BTW the word on the street is that Tiscali is in financial trouble and consolidating their operations in the UK
-
why has no-one mentioned Wanadoo, which starts at £17.99 a Month?
Well, they have low caps (capping is dire) and wanadoo/freeswerve are not particularly cheap.
BTW the word on the street is that Tiscali is in financial trouble and consolidating their operations in the UK
The word on the street is wrong. Tiscali is the 3rd largest ISP in Europe and the fastest growing ISP in the U.K. They decided to get rid of some NON ISP loss making operations.
:-)
-
Hum,
i wonder why Tiscali are selling?
They plan to sell its operations in four European countries as part of an effort to repay an outstanding bond...
Bad news here. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3542080.stm)
Yeah, the lowest price (17.99) only does 2Gb per month...which is fine for gaming and occasional use - 30Gb is what a heavy user should go for...
-
Colin_Camper wrote:
The word on the street is wrong. Tiscali is the 3rd largest ISP in Europe and the fastest growing ISP in the U.K. They decided to get rid of some NON ISP loss making operations.
:-)
Well their share price seems to be at a 5 year low
Reuters (http://reuters.co.uk/financeQuoteLookup.jhtml?ticker=TIS.MI&qtype=ric&qcat=riclist&months=6&chartSize=250x184&duration=5year)
And their (incomplete) fundamentals don't look good...
Fundamentals (http://www.research.reuters.co.uk/Research/Fundamentals.asp?ticker=TIS.MI&country=IT&mxid=100203608&companyName=TISCALI+SPA&sym=RE)
if 'the word on the street is wrong' how come they're seemingly in so much debt? I've just had a glance at the figures (they don't appear to trade on LSE), but what I could gather doesn't look good.
Many companies do operate with a large debt pile (NTL and TWT for example), but their share price hardly shows investor confidence...
-
blobrana
Yeah, the lowest price (17.99) only does 2Gb per month...which is fine for gaming and occasional use - 30Gb is what a heavy user should go for...
No, no! No caps at all! 2GB is for old grannies who occasionally email their nieces in Australia and check their pensions have gone in to their on line bank. It's NOT ok for gaming at all! 30GB will not be enough for even a moderate user - fedora ISO's are 5GB, divx's are a gig etc etc.
Cyberus
if 'the word on the street is wrong' how come they're seemingly in so much debt? I've just had a glance at the figures (they don't appear to trade on LSE), but what I could gather doesn't look good.
Most telcos are laiden with debt. Look at France Telecom(Wanadoo) - who cares - it's customer service and value that count. I don't care who owns it or what deals they get up to.
btw - Your site is fantastic - a real credit to the Amiga Scene. I spent hours and hours looking at it when I came back to Amiga (1999 after 9 years!). It's a shame it isn't a top profile link off all the forum sites - returning and nostalgic amigans might miss it!
-
Dont forget Force9's £14.99 packages which are good value.
-
Hum,
yeah, that`s the occasional use i ment.
Though i`ve a gut feeling that (say) playing quake only sends a small amount of bytes of data. ( i imagine that 1.5 Mb are used up every hour with normal surfing as well).
i think that the latency has fooled you into thinking that a lot more data has been sent/recieved with a broadband connection.
Anyone know the typical packet size of quake (1500byte/sec?)?
(which may add up to 5 mb per hour-->er, thats works out at 13 hours a day for fragging, with 2 Gb cap...)
Go for it granny...
-
Yeah, 33.6k modems used to be enough to play Quake over, it was all on the ping time!
-
blobrana wrote:
Anyone know the typical packet size of quake (1500byte/sec?)?
(which may add up to 5 mb per hour-->er, thats works out at 13 hours a day for fragging, with 2 Gb cap...)
Go for it granny...
:lol:
-
Anyone know the typical packet size of quake (1500byte/sec?)?
Quake! That's so last century, Grandad... :-o
The average map for UT2k4 Onslought is around 10Mb and bandwidth required for play around 50Mb/hour it wouldn't too take long to reach your 2Gb cap.
-
Hum,
i suppose that it depends on whether you are hosting and how many people are being hosted.
i guess that these new fangled modern PC games do recommend a bandwidth of around 64Kbits/sec per player (if you are the server), which equates to around 8Kb/sec max, (but in reality 3-6Kb/sec sounds right ), thats still about 100-200 hours per month on a 2 Gb cap...
Which isn`t obviously what granny wants...
Check out this online calculator (http://www.telecom.co.nz/chm/0,5123,203152-202479,00.html)
And this postcode comparison (http://www.broadbandchecker.co.uk/?GTSE=espot>KW=broadband)