Go with BT, the rest are second rate.

sure in some respects BT may be a bit more expensive in some areas depending on your package/usage, but at the end of the day you get what you pay for, ie good customer service and knowledgeable engineers.

I work from home over a VPN and would never consider moving from BT, it's just too important to be messed about by amateurs.

Iain

Would have to disagree with you there Iain, BT home broadband is exactly that, home broadband, if you are working from home over VPN get an ISP that specialises in small business, ZEN are a good one, as is plus net business.

At the end of the day they all use Open reach connections to your household, but the difference is when it gets to the server that provides your connection, BT have a very highly subscribed network and have to aim at providing the best service to as many people as possible, there are many much better isps out there and wouldn't choose BT over them.

Jon Freelander 2, 2014 Dynamic SD4 Santorini Black

Cheers fellas

Re data allowance I like the fact that you get an of peak no limit option to do down loads - the problem with sky connect is that the 40gb is pro rated so if you use 1.3 fb in a day the next day you are throttled.

Interesting you should say contention is less. 1/50 is norm for residential BB - do you know what PN offer?

What you said about slow browsing is usually down to rubbish DNS - I think most ISPs are guilty of this, so as long as you can change it for something like google DNS in your router then browsing speed always improves! Freelander 2 TD4 Auto, SE, Narvik Black, Alpaca full leather, Rear Headrest Entertainment System, 6 CD, 18 HSE Wheels, Privicy tints

Thanks plattj

Will take read of your post when I get a minute - out shopping now  Freelander 2 TD4 Auto, SE, Narvik Black, Alpaca full leather, Rear Headrest Entertainment System, 6 CD, 18 HSE Wheels, Privicy tints

Iain, I have to disagree with your analysis. In my experience (& that of colleagues who, like me, have depended heavily on a broadband connection from home to work with colleagues across Europe) BT are no better than other ISPs, and on many measures they seem to underperform.
Try calling BT when you have a problem. Then compare that experience to Plusnet.
The customer experience, connection reliability, admin simplicity, etc is way better with Plusnet IMHO... ...

Be true to yourself. That way happiness lies...

Quote:

Interesting you should say contention is less. 1/50 is norm for residential BB - do you know what PN offer?

I agree with BT comments, whilst not the worse ISP, they are not the best. People seem to forget that whilst it is BT plant and kit, BT retail are not affiliated nor should they get better service. I also agree that they are probably over prescribed. Freelander 2 TD4 Auto, SE, Narvik Black, Alpaca full leather, Rear Headrest Entertainment System, 6 CD, 18 HSE Wheels, Privicy tints

Mypostoffice

Have had for 3 years now, first 3 months connection was a bit iffy after midnight but has been good and reliable since.
Constant 6mb download 1.3 mb upload which copes with i player son on comp all day and normal comp stuff as well, un limited usage though I think there is acheaper limtied option

Have looked at others but has have realiable service and cost is pretty good as well have stuck with it as I know it works and not just an empty salesmans promise

So, I moved to Plusnet just over a month ago now, and what can I say - it has been the best thing I did.

I got a good deal on price, not the cheapest, but cheaper than BT. Free router (with contract) which is functional and it was all sorted within a week.

Being the geek I am I checked it all over when it was connected and initially I was syncing at 4MB down and .5MB up but getting much better throughput than ever before. I was however getting slightly slower upload speed so I posted on their forums and literally within the hour someone responded offering to remove the cap on my upstream connection and even move me onto ADSL2+ (using BT 21CN) despite being on a long line. This was done within 24 hours and during the training period the connection got faster and faster and I am now syncing at 5Mbps - Bonus! That and the fact they have transparent traffic management policies and the option to go to a premium service for just a fiver a month is just excellent.

Also I now have all the tools to monitor my connection allowing me to see what is going on which is another bonus and really useful.

In summary - I would not hesitate to recommend Plusnet to anyone, and in particular, anyone on Sky's connect (non LLU) package, I recommend you cancel your contract (I think you still might be able to do this without costing you as they recently upped their charges) and move to someone else because it is simply an awful service with very misleading and poor traffic management policies which is just not worth the money. Freelander 2 TD4 Auto, SE, Narvik Black, Alpaca full leather, Rear Headrest Entertainment System, 6 CD, 18 HSE Wheels, Privicy tints

Well my 78mbps btinternet is great throughout the day full speed, uploads and downloads, but me and about knows how many more are suffering a drop to something in the region of 7-16mbps downloads on a evening from 6ish to midnight

It's obvious BT can not cope with the capacity and are overloading but they done all about it

So it's an evening thing, but they are sending an engineer out thought the day when speeds are normal  Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Have you checked it is not a traffic management policy? You'll be surprised how much throttling they do during peak hours! Freelander 2 TD4 Auto, SE, Narvik Black, Alpaca full leather, Rear Headrest Entertainment System, 6 CD, 18 HSE Wheels, Privicy tints

Supposed to be totally unthrottled for browsing etc, but do throttle p2p Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Clearly just the capacity coming out of your exchange then - inevitible I suppose if you are going to give people 70Mb connection Who needs that much anyway!? Freelander 2 TD4 Auto, SE, Narvik Black, Alpaca full leather, Rear Headrest Entertainment System, 6 CD, 18 HSE Wheels, Privicy tints

Me! Have you seen how much time I spend on line


 Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

I'm with Talktalk at the moment. Their service is slow and I wouldn't recommend. Will hopefully change to BT or SKY soon as I am hoping to move house on Tuesday. I phoned up Talktalk today and threatened to change providers, but they did me a good deal of £4 off my bill each month and free connection at my new house as it is a new build.

I want to see if the Internet is any better otherwise I will be changing.