Broadband Recommendations

[Ronski]

We're (finally) going to be moving to Sydenham soon & I was wondering if anyone has any Broadband Recommendations?

I found out on the Sydenham exchange
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LSSYD

There are a couple of operators with their own equipment, Be, Tiscali: & Bulldog which I imagine gives them a better connection, is anyone using them in Sydenham with an 'up to 8mb' speed connection? Any thoughts appreciated.

many thanks

[leenewham]

Apparently the exchange deals with up to 4.5mb.

I used to live in a 6mb area with a 24mb bethere connection.


I have a talktalk 8mb connection and to be honest I cant tel the difference between my current connection and the old one.

Having heard a lot of bad reviews about talk talk, i'm pleasantly surprised. So far it has worked 100% reliably and its only 15 quid a month including bt line rental and free evening & weekend calls to any uk landline.

I do not recommend V21, Tiscalli or be there having used them in the past.

[GLOBAL THINKER]

If you get Sky the bundle with includes broadband and sky talk is quite good value.

[The Eagle]

Apparently the exchange deals with up to 4.5mb.

I am on the Sydenham Exchange and I get the FULL 8 Meg and I do not live next door to it.
I am with BT Broadband and get the FREE BT Vision box.

At the end of the day it really depends what you want to use your broadband for..................is it just to surf the net and get emails, or do you intend to upload/download lots of stuff?

[admin]

In this market you do tend to get what you pay for. I use broadband for my business. Reliability and expert support are paramount.

I use Zen. More expensive but always the tops in reviews and the experts choice. I get 6Mb about half a mile from the exchange (however a higher connection speed is no advantage if the ISP can't backhaul it - see the actual performance figures for downloads in comparison tables).

Zen have no 'profiling' and uploads don't count against traffic limits - important if you use P2P stuff. And no blocks port or other mangling of your traffic.

If an ISP is good then a monthly contract is no risk. Whereas 18/24 month contracts should send a warning signal. Even if they are alright now - will they be Ok for that time period? Remember if you have all your customers 'locked-in' the imperative to fix a problem is not acute as with customers who can cut'n'run.

Amongst my customer base both BT & Orange/Freeserve have had widespread and bad problems in the last 12 months with low levels of service.

If privacy or ethical behaviour is required you may also wish to check out your prospective ISP's position on Phorm - there are some good links from here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/14/bt_phorm_2007/

Admin

[dickp]

I've been with both orange and tiscali, and both have started OK but gone on to dropping service on a regular basis. Because I work from home and depend on several remote access services, that really irritates.

Good news is I'm about a mile from the exchange, and 8mb is fairly constant.

[Ronski]

thanks for the replies everyone. Zen sounds pretty good, I'll investigate a bit further. I just want a broadband connection & no cable/phone features, some p2p would be good so Zen sounds worth looking at.

I've been with Pipex for years but they've got slower after Tiscali took them over.

Cheers

[Andwar]

I would recommend Plusnet ( www.plus.com ) I have been with them for 3 years and the quality of the connection has always been excellent.

I used to be with Tiscali and when I moved house and wanted to change ISPs, Tiscali were so obnoxious and it took me 6 months for them to finally cancel my monthly contract and release the line for my new ISP to take over. I will never use them nor recommend them to anyone no matter how cheap they are. Someone's got to pay for all those adverts!

I am about to move my phone to them from TalkTalk as with PlusNet you don't pay the line rental to BT.

[Ronski]

Well I've taken the plunge & signed up to o2 broadband, they use the same equipment as Be at the Sydenham exchange. If you have a payg phone you save five pounds a month so up to 8mb is only 7.50 a month & it's unlimited usage - bargain. There's a 50 day full money back guarantee to quit, if it's rubbish I can just try another one.

I agree about Tiscali since they took over Pipex its been downhill ever since.

I'll let you know if it's any good in a few weeks.

Oh one other question, has anyone used homeplugs before like www.solwise.co.uk
Sounds too good to be true using the house electric cables to get a faster wireless connection.

Cheers

[admin]

PlusNet is now part of BT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlusNet
Be is now part of O2, O2 is part of Telefonica: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Unlimited
Orange is now part of French Telecom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_UK

A choice of three former state monopolies

Admin

[Ronski]

PlusNet is now part of BT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlusNet
Be is now part of O2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Unlimited
Admin

They are part of o2 but the customer service of Be is in Bulgaria (o2 is UK) & a few other things. Good comparison between the two here...
http://www.beforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8858

[maximax]

There was a thread about Be at http://forum.sydenham.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1684 where I outlined my experience with Be. I did not bother to reply to the 4.5MB comment which came up again on the top of this thread from the same author. While I have no knowledge of the exchange other than that it is located around the south end of Lawrie Park Rd/Penge West Railway Station, the quoted speed (4.5MB) sounds unlikely to me and I definitely&consistently get the speeds I mentioned in the other thread. Be has been fairly reliable so far, there were a few (2/3 times) very brief connection outages, maybe for a few seconds, while my previous provider (BT, other parts of London) sometimes had longer outages.

Haven't used homeplugs but it is an established technology which has been around for many years.