Home interenet packages

[C.A.R.]

Right,

I've got about 4 & ½ weeks until I move out and haven't the foggiest about home broadband.

Me and my girlfriend watch a lot of telly on-demand via my PS3 or the laptop, via a VGA cable on the big telly.

Not least this, but I regularly like to play online with my PS3 (which admittedly might have to change somewhat when the baby arrives)

Basically, I need an internet package. I don't know what a 'good deal' is, I've no understanding of what line rental is, I don't particularly want a home telephone as we both have mobiles for that and I'm not interested in a TV package as we have freeview built in the telly and rarely watch anything else but mainstream channels.

So, onto the things I do know-
I don't want Virgin f*cking Media. Not only are their call centres full of useless apes, their technicians don't know a modem from a router and their online 'forum' is a massive pile of w*nk. Lots of people have subscribed to VM locally and as such the download speeds vary wildly depending on what time of day you want to go online. This has meant that I can no longer stream videos from YouTube after about 5pm or at all over weekends.

So, who's the best company to go with for my requirements?

[Eeyore]

yes i would also like to know all this as ill be getting my house in liverpool in a few months time!

[lolsteve]

We're with orange home broadband, if you got an orange phone or buy a sim card and £10 top up you get it for £5 a month less. so it's £5.00 a month(if you're on orange), plus £13.50 line rental. Which is the cheapest we found when moving in on September, it gives us unlimited downloads and the speed is pretty damn good, gotten 1.8mb/s on utorrent.
Includes unlimited UK Off Peak Calls and a free wireless box which is really good signal throughout the house

[C.A.R.]

Thing is, despite looking at the comparison sites and so on (uSwitch, Comparethemarket...) all the providers only ever seem to get bad reviews.

I've come to the conclusion that people only write these reviews if they're upset with the service they're receiving.

[Niall]

I would recommend virgin. They offer the highest speeds (if you want them), it's fibre optic so none of this loss of speed due to cable ect. We've had it for 5 years now and I could count the downtime in minutes on 1 hand.
Only thing that does let it down a bit is the router they provide but rumour has it, they have changed it now.

[C.A.R.]

I've had such a terrible experience with Virgin Media I wouldn't go near them with my own money!

They have over-subscribed in my area so usage is extremely limited especially at peak times. I can't even stream a YouTube video using our home VirginMedia 30mb fibre optic connection. It's crap.

The technicians don't know what they're talking about either. We even got a technician to admit that the 'Superhub' was actually not any good if you want to connect more than 1 device wirelessly. He suggested that we bypass the wireless functions and bought our own router seperately.

[Niall]

I've had such a terrible experience with Virgin Media I wouldn't go near them with my own money!

They have over-subscribed in my area so usage is extremely limited especially at peak times. I can't even stream a YouTube video using our home VirginMedia 30mb fibre optic connection. It's crap.

The technicians don't know what they're talking about either. We even got a technician to admit that the 'Superhub' was actually not any good if you want to connect more than 1 device wirelessly. He suggested that we bypass the wireless functions and bought our own router seperately.

That's what we have done but we only did it straight away because we already had a time capsule which we used because it automatically backed up all of our computers/devices.
We've never had a problem with them but everyone has bad experiences I suppose!

[hbomb1905]

We have VM 30mb fibre optic as it was the easiest way to have the internet (didn't want a phone line or to have to pay line rental)
Got a 12mth contract with the first three months subsidised and the price is £30 a month. A lot more expensive than it should be but made sense after you take line rental into account. Connection is brilliant but router is shit as you mentioned above. We hammer it with PS3 online gaming, downloads, streaming, etc etc and never hit any limits etc.

[C.A.R.]

Hmmmm

I've been hunting around and I think that maybe Sky might be our best option. They're also doing a 6month offer right now (assuming the contract is 12 months...)

Has anyone got any experience with Sky internet?

They claim to never limit your speed. Is that because it's shit to start with?!

[Jenkosowls]

O2 for me I'm an o2 customer last year I was paying £21 for home phone with free evening and weekend calls 100gb download limit this also included line rental. After a year they gave me a discount I'm now paying £11 for the same package that's cheaper than bt's line rental on its own

[Fooby]

long as you can get SKY LLU then go for it, i had SKY LLU in my old place and it was pretty good tbh.

Dont go with any ISP that Uses BT because they are all much of a muchness and shit and congested.

If you drop me a PM with the postcode of where you are moving too, i can tell you what ISP's are active on your exchange

[C.A.R.]

^ Done'd

[silverzx]

Don't go with Virgin Media, thats all I'm saying.. xD

[darrenjlobb]

Really just depends which companies have gear in your exchange, if none, your screwed...

[cwspellowe]

:roll: at the Virgin comments...

There's a reason why people think it's shot, they don't understand what they're subscribe to. Traffic management is everywhere now, it's nothing to do with being oversubscribed. But if you're a heavy user we also do package that aren't managed.

Noone can touch us for either download OR upload speeds at the minute, and ping times I've been seeing on my installs have been sub 30ms. Show me ANY other provider that can match what Virgin offer and I'll eat my hat.

As for the call centres and technicians, every company is the same. Everyone has bad experiences and only the disgruntled pipe up about them. Ive had fibre optics in my life for the last 15 years or so and can't recall any real issues.

As for the superhub, I have my own opinion on that. But as far as I'm concerned any all in one piece of equipment for a provider will have been designed to be as cheap as possible, companies bid to make the equipment and Netgear would appear to have dropped a bollock with the manufacture of them, the dlink 615 we used to provide was miles better and any installs I do where the customer still has one I use that as the router and set the hub to modem mode.

Anyway, I'm obviously biased, but you'll get horror stories with any provider. Fact of the matter is that the science doesn't lie, HFC broadband is far superior to ADSL, why do you think BT spent so much on Infinity?

[stevieg]

can say nothing but good things about virgin media. had their cable tv and broadband for about 10 years years now. all this bull people give them is bull itself. the only time its properly dropped out (phone, tv and internet) was a few years ago and i think it turned out to be that an excavator pulled up the fibre optic cable. other than that its faultless, the only drop outs we get now are fixed by a router reboot

[C.A.R.]

Cwspelloe - I appreciate you trying to uphold Virgin Media's name as you are an employee, but the reality is that the service we have received is abysmal and we are not an isolated case either - a quick browse of the VM forums reveals the problems are very widespread.

At present, any internet provider who can buffer a 2 minute Youtube video is significantly better than VM fiber optic service. The connection speed is terrific - don't get me wrong - we have seen 20-30mb on our line at times, but if it can't sustain a constant connection to buffer HD video via BBC iPlayer or Youtube, it's backwards technology. I have at times disabled the wifi on my iPhone so I can stream a video via 3G connection in better quality.

It truly sucks. If they're traffic monitoring then they're doing a very bad job of it. If they're not traffic monitoring then they're just providing a very bad service.

[Matt]

My VM connection is faultless. Bloody good. Only thing that lets it down is our router. Can only connect one computer wirelessly. Rest have to be connected by wire.

When connected though it's bloody brilliant!

[cwspellowe]

I've five wireless devices connected to the superhub and I'm using the former 50mb service with no traffic management. No issues at all here. Agreed the superhub can be wank but it's hit and miss it seems.

Slow speeds could also be caused by poor upstream levels, traffic management you should still get around 10Mb so id be inclined to say it's an install issue rather than management if you can't buffer videos.

And don't be blinded by forum talk. It's an industry where everyone shouts from the rooftops if they have problems, noone signs up to a messageboard to say "oh by the way, everything's fine".

To put it in perspective, I do roughly 100 new installs in a calendar month and leave my work number with everyone. I maybe hear back from about 2 people a month who have issues.

[procta]

iam with virgin media, i have to say over the last few years its starting to crash more often. it was spot on when it was NTL, we had that modem in until 2009 when it died. so they gave us a new virgin one. since then its not been as stable as it used to be.
my mates brother inlaw says the same thing too as he lives on the same road as me about it been unstable.
could be that our line in our area needs a upgrade.
also getting support from them when things go wrong is unreal! they charge you for the call, used to be free support.

[silverzx]

I've been with Virgin Media a year, they charge me £21 a month for a 10mb connection that is crashed 10% of the time.

I get multiple disconnections at peak times 7pm ~midnight.

Also get really bad speeds quite often which leave me lagging out on CS, D3 etc.

Not saying this is the case nation wide but I'd be looking at an alternative such as Sky or BT when I next have to sort out an ISP.

[Connor]

Ive been on VM since the days of blueyonder, only problem Ive ever had with them, is that when my mum died and all the bills were put into my name, except not virgin media (funny how all the other bills were changed with no problems...) and I only found out when the TV and internet stopped working... So when I phoned up to sort it out they pretty much denied all knowledge, so I had to start a new account, which was annoying because we previously had the XL TV package as a loyalty thingy, which they never transferred :/

[cwspellowe]

For all those complaining about your connection speeds and dropping out, can you send me information about your signal levels, SNR and upstream power levels? Depending what modem you have, you can find the info by browsing 192.168.0.1 or for the superhub, 192.168.100.1 with login details admin and changeme

O/T sorry...

[Fooby]

i have to say my poor virgin media connection gets totally bummed, im very happy with it although i was concerned.

They tried to traffic manage me, but i can get around most of that


Edit: oh and to actually be on topic, im happy to talk to anyone about internet issues, i find it really easy to if you do bump into me just ask.

You could send me PM's or create threads but im not always around, i will get back to you

[C.A.R.]

As someone with no background in internet-tery I have no idea how to find out the information you say above.

Can I still log into my superhub even though I'm running a seperate Belkin router?

[cwspellowe]

Yep, 192.168.100.1 for the superhub, 192.168.0.1 for the belkin.

Sign in with username admin and password changeme. Go to advanced settings, left hand side you'll see a tab that says connection, pm me a screenshot and I'll have a look