A sad day :(

beady

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Well guys,
not only am I having to move down to Preston for various reasons (work, girlfriend and others), leaving the North East which I've grown to love. To top it all off, I can't get cable where I'll be :(. No more reliable broadband. No more laughing at other peoples dropped connections and pathetically slow speeds.

I've been with **********/****** for 7 years, and I can honestly only remember one time I've had a problem with the service. It went off at 10pm one night (they were doing some planned work), but by 8am the next day it was back. Never had to ring customer support, it's always just worked. The bandwidth shaping was a bit of a pain, but compared with the problems my non-cable mates have it was nothing. And to top it all off, I never even got the free 4mb to 10mb upgrade :Angryfire

So, what I'm really after is some advice as to which adsl broadband to go for. Tiscali is the cheapest, but judging by reviews on the web it's terrible. I was thinking maybe O2. Anyone have any thoughts? Since I use Linux mostly, I want something that will work from a router, without having to to install the companies 'support software' (aka pointless bloat/spyware).Preferably with a router with customizable firmware.

And for anyone else who's had to move from cable to 'peasant' broadband, how did you cope? I'm starting to have panic attacks. lol.

Thanks in advance
 
I moved to BT after falling out with vermin, I havent noticed a great difference really, I do my downloading late at night while I'm at work so don't notice, and normal browsing is the same as any normal cable usage, In the 8 months since the switch I've only had to restart the home hub once
 
Only ever had ADSL...

Also with BT, I know they look expensive compared to others.

But worth noting option 2 and 3 get the home hub for free, and option 3 customers taking an 18 month contract also get the vision box for gratis.

There's no need to install the BT yahoo browser.

Access to Giganews' European servers as they host BT's newsgroups included in the price too. Option 3 is unlimited, and whilst BT's t&cs state they traffic shape, my speeds on newsgroups are fairly steady.

I've only had about 48hrs downtime in 6 years, and they were due to problems at the local exchange.
 
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Well guys,
not only am I having to move down to Preston for various reasons (work, girlfriend and others), leaving the North East which I've grown to love. To top it all off, I can't get cable where I'll be :(. No more reliable broadband. No more laughing at other peoples dropped connections and pathetically slow speeds.

I've been with **********/****** for 7 years, and I can honestly only remember one time I've had a problem with the service. It went off at 10pm one night (they were doing some planned work), but by 8am the next day it was back. Never had to ring customer support, it's always just worked. The bandwidth shaping was a bit of a pain, but compared with the problems my non-cable mates have it was nothing. And to top it all off, I never even got the free 4mb to 10mb upgrade :Angryfire

So, what I'm really after is some advice as to which adsl broadband to go for. Tiscali is the cheapest, but judging by reviews on the web it's terrible. I was thinking maybe O2. Anyone have any thoughts? Since I use Linux mostly, I want something that will work from a router, without having to to install the companies 'support software' (aka pointless bloat/spyware).Preferably with a router with customizable firmware.

And for anyone else who's had to move from cable to 'peasant' broadband, how did you cope? I'm starting to have panic attacks. lol.

Thanks in advance

could you not just get a new job and a new girlfriend and keep the cable? :proud:
 
Thanks Busta and Pob, I'll take a look at BT. The newsgroup access sounds good. The virmin newsgroups, despite the crap retention, was fine for my needs.

could you not just get a new job and a new girlfriend and keep the cable
Lol, I suppose it's an option. We'll have to see.
 
I must agree, BT is by far the best ISP I have ever had. I live quite close to the exchange, so speeds are good. I got a free vision box with Setanta and free evening & weeked calls with the hub phone.

Cant complain.
 
My brother in law has just ditched vermin as where he lives, he's unable to get digital tv or bb down his cable (old type of coax apparently)

He originally went for the tiscali 8meg offer.
They didn't send him his router/modem, wouldn't return calls and were generally shite.
In the end he gave up waiting for them so has gone for sly tv and bb.
Sly can't even give him bb for 2 weeks as they have to wait for tiscali who have put tags on his phone line, despite never giving him any service!!

Another option is move to Bolton lol
We have cable and we're half an hour from Preston :)

Curly
 
Thanks all for the advice. We've got a house already, but don't have a phone number (only postcode), so I can't check to see what speeds I'd get. The annoying thing is that other bits of Preston have cable, so I just assumed the house would. Never bothered to check.

As for leaving the modem on, I always leave it on 24/7 anyway.

As a side note, I'm a bit worried about the 'security' of the Home Hub. Judging from all the flaws that've been found so far (see for example the links in here) I'd like to have a router I can control myself. Anyone know if you can use a general adsl router with BT?

Cheers again.
 
i'v never had cable :(
i'm currently waiting to get tiscali put bk on after a quite crappy experience with talktalk

i never thought i'd be glad going back to tiscali.

wish there was cable where i am :CRYBABY:

talktalk it ultimate in rubishynest
 
If you use VoIP or want the Vision Box you'll need one that supports QoS other than that any ADSL modem/router will sort you out.

BT have 'BT certified' modems in their online shop - NB 'BT certified' seems to mean nothing more than BT sell them in their online shop ;) as it doesn't appear on the boxes.

Take a look at the model numbers and buy from elsewhere if cheaper e.g. aria, ebuyer, scan, dabs (ironically owned by BT), overclockers, amazon, play.com etc, even pc world might have it cheaper....
 
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If you are getting Sky TV get SKy internet otherwise O2/Be/Easynet
If none of the above are available try an Entanet supplier (eg ADSL24)
 
Glad to see BT aren't being called worse tha sh*t, been with them for years no probs,on top broadband with free Vision PVR etc etc you only get wot you pay for.
 
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