Uk Users: Which Broadband provider do you find the best?

[Baldy]

Which provider do you use? Share your good and bad experiences.

 

I'm with Talk Talk, being in a relatively rural area I achieve really high speeds compared to my old Tiscali connection, which is weird really considering they are now the same company.

[t.]

I'm with Virgin Media. I live in the suburbs and ADSL here gets no higher than 2MB. Thanks mainly to congestion and awful old phone lines. So if you want to go any faster then cable is really your only option. I pay £35 (Well I don't, I have a referral scheme discount, but otherwise I would pay £35.) which is in comparison to some a lot, but my tariff is 20MB and as you can see even over Wi-Fi I achieve the best of that.

 

The original install was a bit of a cock up with Virgin not realising I had no previous cable services and just sending a man with a router instead. However one phone call later and I had a priority install on the Saturday at no cost and all my phone calls refunded.

 

All in all, happy.

 

[Also worth noting I reside in Hampshire, identified as one of the worst counties in the UK for broadband speed]

 

[Baldy]

I'd love to go cable, but it's not a cabled area, and I doubt it ever will be :(

[Pherelas]

We're with BT. I live up a small privite road so they won't put cable in, really annoying. Also in Hampshire with a really bad phone line so our internet is rubbish. Well saying that it never ever goes down, just slow.

[GTAMADDOG]

I'm on BT also.

 

Never loose connection unless my router has a hissy fit.

 

Download speed varies quite alot though which can be annoying. We're on Total Broadband and I've seen as low as 0.5MB Download speed using SpeedTest. Today it's been a steady 5MB though.

[MCW]

I'm with BT. The Home Hub is hideous and doesn't like Gaming and the speeds are crap even for a rural area.

[macd79]

I'm with BT. The Home Hub is hideous and doesn't like Gaming and the speeds are crap even for a rural area.

+1 I used to be with BT but left because The Home Hub was so unreliable and all the customer services are in Bangladesh.

 

 

 

Im on TalkTalk. Its as good as a chocolate teapot. HUGELY unreliable connection, high latencys, work let you use p2p or torrents, rubbish router that has hissy fits constantly, constantly d/c's me from game servers, HUGE lag, if you have more than 2 pcs on the network its slows to a crawl.

 

Im almost 400 miles from Manchester :S

 

Speeds look reasonable on paper yet I never see more than 200kb/s D/L even on servers that are hosted on 100 MB/s lines

 

Frankly i would never touch talktalk again with several barge pole strapped together.

however my mother doesn't seem to car as all they use it for is e-mails so Im stuck with an awful connection.

[The Queen]

+1 I used to be with BT but left because The Home Hub was so unreliable and all the customer services are in Bangladesh.

 

 

 

Im on TalkTalk. Its as good as a chocolate teapot. HUGELY unreliable connection, high latencys, work let you use p2p or torrents, rubbish router that has hissy fits constantly, constantly d/c's me from game servers, HUGE lag, if you have more than 2 pcs on the network its slows to a crawl.

 

Im almost 400 miles from Manchester :S

 

Speeds look reasonable on paper yet I never see more than 200kb/s D/L even on servers that are hosted on 100 MB/s lines

 

Frankly i would never touch talktalk again with several barge pole strapped together.

however my mother doesn't seem to car as all they use it for is e-mails so Im stuck with an awful connection.

 

Completely agree with you on this. TalkTalk is absolutely crap with the service I have had with them and will be moving to another provider soon as myself and my parents are sick of it. :rolleyes:

 

 

I usually get around 270kb/s and with using IDM I get 330kb/s which isn't really that great if i'm honest.

[mistermojo]

I'm on Toucansurf, which I have to say are terrible. (Toucan, Tiscali, and TalkTalk are all basically the same thing, so I sympathise with you macd)

 

Frequent internet dropouts, latency spikes and they now have a thing where during peak times they block certain ports, meaning I can't use Steam (and therefore half my games) during said times.

 

I doubt my ISP is gonna change anytime soon cos the rest of my family seem fine with it.

[Baldy]

Must just be me that is having a good talk talk experience

[GTAMADDOG]

We don't use the Home Hub with out BT Total Broadband. I somehow persuaded my dad out of it even when he was in a gadget buying stage.

 

We just use two NetGear 'wireless' routers which in our case aren't actually wireless because each computer is linked to the routers by a LAN cable.

[macd79]

Must just be me that is having a good talk talk experience

 

yup. in the entire world

[Pherelas]

We don't use the Home Hub with out BT Total Broadband. I somehow persuaded my dad out of it even when he was in a gadget buying stage.

 

We just use two NetGear 'wireless' routers which in our case aren't actually wireless because each computer is linked to the routers by a LAN cable.

 

Yer we don't use the home hub either, don't see the point in it. We have a phone and we have a router, don't need both together.

[beem3r]

Do you guys have Telenor?

 

Just dropping mine by, to see how crap it is, i know it's not uk..

 

[Baldy]

yup. in the entire world

 

All my neighbours use it too, we all think it's great

[GTAMADDOG]

Suprised at this result for this time of day.

 

[t.]

40k upload, is that alright for gaming? I'd imagine it's about the lowest you could get away with..

 

My old 2mb ADSL connection managed 50 - 60 up.

[And3rs]

Do you guys have Telenor?

...I do :p

 

[Camel]

O2 all the way, perfect service. Pity our exchange is now overloaded during peak times.

 

[Sponge]

Rofl @ ping... Ghey.

[GTAMADDOG]

40k upload, is that alright for gaming? I'd imagine it's about the lowest you could get away with..

 

My old 2mb ADSL connection managed 50 - 60 up.

 

 

Seems fine for gaming for me. Never caused any problems.

[mistermojo]

This is the only time of day I get anywhere near 2mb.

[iBilo]

I'm with Virgin Media, they're really good, very very very fast. Hugely recommend them. I'm using 20Mb.