Broadband

[mispy]

I'm about to move into a house and I have no idea what to do about setting up an internet connection. I think the phone line has never been used, but all the providers I've looked at have 12 month or even 18 month contracts with early disconnection fees. The house is left empty for the three months it isn't let to students, so we can't pass the contract on to anyone. Who do the LovelySinners use, or ought I to go into the library every time I want to check webmail?

[jollytiddlywink]

In my flat, we used pipex which worked fine. We had the same problem, with 12 month contracts, but we discovered that it was (slightly) cheaper to get use nine months; after the nine months were up, we cancelled the contract and paid the cancellation fee, which was a bit less than three months worth of fees.
So, you're right, long contracts aren't ideal, but if you shop around and find a contract with a cancellation fee lower than 3 month's service, then you have a cheaper option than paying for three months of internet you won't use.

[donpablo]

Broadband is a total nightmate in this country. It is quite shameful how far behind the rest of the world we are. If you can get cable broadband get it. ADSL (through the phone line) is a complete postcode lottery. Cancellation fees are sadly probably a given. I had that problem last year. Couldnt get cable. Got crap Virgin ADSL. Barely capable of 0.5meg let alone the super 50meg their adverts cream about. We actually complained that much they offered us a huge discount to stay. It's such a shame there is no way to try before you buy. Instead you have to commit to these ridiculous contracts and then see what you end up with.

If you just use Webmail then it might not be worth getting any at all. If you have student neighbours maybe they will let you piggy back on their wireless connection for a small fee (assuming you don't have unsecured access to a nearby one muahaha).

FYI they dont consider your connection unreasonable unless you consistently get less than 200k which is frankly a joke when they claim to provide 6.5 out of the 8mb they said they would and you end up with 0.5.

[orudge]

ADSL24 is the provider I've used for the past couple of years. They have no minimum contract (although they do charge a connection fee if your line has no broadband on it at the moment - you can't have it both ways!), and generally provide a very good service - nice and fast, without the traffic shaping you get on most big ISPs these days. They are a bit more expensive than most ISPs though, depending on your usage.

[donpablo]

That looked like a great service until I saw the Monthly Allowance column and the price of what I typical get through. On further investigating though the business packages might be better so I would still give this consideration. The no minimum contract might just swing it along with no shaping and such. My current ISP at times will try to limit p2p traffic which is all fine but I use it for a certain online game not downloading!! I like the no nonsense ISP's like this one just in a perfect world usage would be unlimited. Can't have it both ways I guess like you say.

[orudge]

We used the Office package in our flat last year. Initally we were on Office 45, but found ourselves (a flat of 5, with some heavy downloaders) going over that too often, so went onto Office 90. Certainly more expensive, but with so many of us the cost per person wasn't too significant. With people scheduling most downloading for the off-peak hours, it was fine enough - and we got through a pretty large chunk of bandwidth over the course of the year!

[mispy]

Brilliant, lots of help, thank you all very much. I'll be able to get cracking as soon as my lease starts which has made me much happier.

[DanboDaxter]

That ADSL24 service looks pretty brilliant, to be honest. With a free allowance period, I expect you could pretty easily get by on a pretty small allowance even if you're a heavy user, and £1.20 for an extra gigabyte is pretty decent when you consider the horrible mobile broadband I'm on now, which rarely works and is £10/GB, £15/3GB, £25/7GB.

Wish I had heard of them a few months ago!

[Freaker (going undercover)]

Also have a look at Plusnet. We went with them last year and were generally happy, although they were a bit slow at times. If I remember correctly it is around 14 pounds for 15GB allowance per month, with free allowance between midnight and 8am. Once you run out, your connection will be limited to 128kbits, unless you allow them to add usage allowance at 1 pound per GB.

Best of all, their contract runs monthly (with one month's notice to cancel) and, if you sign up through Quidco.co.uk, you get 28 pounds back as well.

[donpablo]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8248056.stm

That just cracked me up. Thought it might be appreciated in here

Certainly seems faster than my old provider.

[orudge]

With a suitably large memory stick, a pigeon would probably be faster than lots of UK-based broadband, too. The issue with that though is the latency rather than the bandwidth. For most people, it'd be quicker to buy a box set of DVDs from Amazon and have them posted out first class than it would be to download all the DVDs individually, for instance. Still, a fun little article.

[joeatodd]

BE Broadband offer 9 month contracts and megafast connection!