BeThere.co.uk ADSL
BeThere.co.uk ADSL
Does anyone on this forum use BeThere? It's ADSL2.
yes I have had it for a long time.
It was really good.
Now it isn't.. The service has gone downhill (again it used to be very good).
If you want to cancel, you HAVE to give 3 months notice. 3 Months! If you want to cancel earlier they charge you £50. You also have to send the modem back at your own cost, even if you are moving and you want to use them at your new home.
Very often the internet goes down and doesn't work. This happens A LOT. Again it never used to.
Speeds are NOT 24MB, although that's what you pay for. I was expecting the internet to be super quick visiting web pages. It isn't. Downloading files, mp3's etc is quick, viewing pages isn't.
If you had asked me 2 years ago when I first started using it, I would have said yes, use it.
Now I don't recommend them at all. Poor service, poor speeds at times, expensive and poor customer service.
Basically it all went bad when 02 took it over. Shame.
It was really good.
Now it isn't.. The service has gone downhill (again it used to be very good).
If you want to cancel, you HAVE to give 3 months notice. 3 Months! If you want to cancel earlier they charge you £50. You also have to send the modem back at your own cost, even if you are moving and you want to use them at your new home.
Very often the internet goes down and doesn't work. This happens A LOT. Again it never used to.
Speeds are NOT 24MB, although that's what you pay for. I was expecting the internet to be super quick visiting web pages. It isn't. Downloading files, mp3's etc is quick, viewing pages isn't.
If you had asked me 2 years ago when I first started using it, I would have said yes, use it.
Now I don't recommend them at all. Poor service, poor speeds at times, expensive and poor customer service.
Basically it all went bad when 02 took it over. Shame.
Thanks for that Information, I used Bethere about two years ago in New Cross, when it first came out and I got 12meg which was pretty good for the money that you pay.
However I noticed that now I'm about a 1Km from the sydenham exchange (which I think is at the bottom of Lawrie Park Road). So I thought I could maybe get 15meg.
But thanks for the low-down on BeThere. I guess it's Virgin Media than.........
However I noticed that now I'm about a 1Km from the sydenham exchange (which I think is at the bottom of Lawrie Park Road). So I thought I could maybe get 15meg.
But thanks for the low-down on BeThere. I guess it's Virgin Media than.........
-
danstevens
- Posts: 116
- Joined: 6 Oct 2004 09:46
- Location: Sydenham
i'm on virgin medias XL package (20mbs), which is £29 for the first year. Contract is for one year. It wasn't too clever at first but now i regularly hit the full 20mps.
However i know many people who are less that pleased with the service. Seems to be pot luck. You can cancel in the 1st 30 days though.
You might want to read some posts in here:
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist.ph ... d&sb=5&o=0
cheers
Dan.
However i know many people who are less that pleased with the service. Seems to be pot luck. You can cancel in the 1st 30 days though.
You might want to read some posts in here:
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/postlist.ph ... d&sb=5&o=0
cheers
Dan.
I have recently finished my contract with BeThere and it feels like being released from prison. They advertise 24Mbit but I rang them to see what I would realistically get and they said 8. I got 2Mbit and no option to cancel. Recently the quality of the line has really deteriorated so that it frequently hangs. My advice is avoid them.
-
claviclaws
- Posts: 1
- Joined: 25 Jan 2008 10:10
- Location: SE26
It's worth noting that the quality of the line has nothing to do with the ISP - between the exchange and your home it's all to do with BT (and they will only fix problems with voice calls, so there's not much you can do about it).
Having said that, ADSL2+ services such as Be, Bulldog, TalkTalk, are far more sensitive to bad lines, even bad weather. So if you've a dodgy line and/or a long way from an exchange, you may be wasting money with ADSL2+ (you should also ensure that your internal wiring is in order - something you are free to deal with).
The following two tools can give an idea of what you can expect:
http://www.dslzoneuk.net/distance.php
http://www.dslzoneuk.net/maxspeed2.php
The maxspeed2 test corresponds to what I get from Be - a solid 14100kbps. I can squeeze another 1500kbps out if I drop the SNR, but then the line becomes unstable in the rain. Ping times to British servers are consistently around 17ms with around 90ms for transatlantic traffic.
I've been with Be since October 2006 at the Forest Hill exchange. I can't recall a major outage in that time. Neither has the quality of service changed since the Spanish buyout. Prices have recently dropped and, whilst there customer service appears to be variable, it is easy to take problems to senior members of the team. Moving house remains a mess, so avoid if you're likely to move in the next year, but otherwise they're the fastest and most consistent ISP I've had since 2000 (nor do I work for them).
Bottom line - it's a lottery. If you've got a decent phone line from BT and a reasonable distance from the exchange, you'll get good results. If your line is bad - avoid ADSL2+.
Having said that, ADSL2+ services such as Be, Bulldog, TalkTalk, are far more sensitive to bad lines, even bad weather. So if you've a dodgy line and/or a long way from an exchange, you may be wasting money with ADSL2+ (you should also ensure that your internal wiring is in order - something you are free to deal with).
The following two tools can give an idea of what you can expect:
http://www.dslzoneuk.net/distance.php
http://www.dslzoneuk.net/maxspeed2.php
The maxspeed2 test corresponds to what I get from Be - a solid 14100kbps. I can squeeze another 1500kbps out if I drop the SNR, but then the line becomes unstable in the rain. Ping times to British servers are consistently around 17ms with around 90ms for transatlantic traffic.
I've been with Be since October 2006 at the Forest Hill exchange. I can't recall a major outage in that time. Neither has the quality of service changed since the Spanish buyout. Prices have recently dropped and, whilst there customer service appears to be variable, it is easy to take problems to senior members of the team. Moving house remains a mess, so avoid if you're likely to move in the next year, but otherwise they're the fastest and most consistent ISP I've had since 2000 (nor do I work for them).
Bottom line - it's a lottery. If you've got a decent phone line from BT and a reasonable distance from the exchange, you'll get good results. If your line is bad - avoid ADSL2+.
I moved to Sydenham in December and went for Be. Activation went flawless, the line was up even up shortly earlier than it was supposed to be. I live off Lawrie Park Road and they told me that I could get a max speed of 16meg as I live less than 1km from the exchange. I opted for the 8meg contract (14 quid a month) instead. However for the first month or so I was definitely on full speed as downloads using a download manager went to around 1.6mbyte/s, but now they are around 830kbyte/s so they seem to have realised their mistake, or maybe that was done intentionally to get me addicted to speed. Those speeds correspond to the maximum you can get at 16/8meg. The line has been stable so far, and some people, well those who truly need that much speed, will appreciate that Be does not employ traffic shaping. This speeds up a certain type of internet activity much more than the actual bandwidth, and also that the upload bandwidth is 1meg, 4x the normal speed. But normal web surfers will not notice much of a difference to a 2meg line. Back to the topic, I am fine with Be thus far, but have only been with them for a short while.