What ISP should I change to?

Hello,

At the moment i am with force9 www.f9.co.uk which is a part of Plusnet. For some time their service has been bothering me. They introced managing of traffice aka "throttling" - but they dont use that word . So i get brillaint speeds for surfing/gaming/etc but poor speeds for p2p from 06:00 to 24:00, and good p2p speeds 24:00 to 06:00, but the thing is im not nocteral.

I dont download copious amounts, i just want to download quick wen i want a song/video in the day.

So im looking for a new ISP with actual unlimited download and speeds, i had a look here:
http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/Bad_ISPs
I want one with all red, right?

I had a look at bulldog which looks good, but i wud need to change my telephone line to their service, dont wanna do that...

Plusnet is very good value if you are a gamer/surfer but not if u want P2P.

Please give me some options, i would like one around £25 per month, at least 2mb with their service looking to be upgraded soon to 4mb/8mb.

Remember im in the UK!

Thanks!!!!!

I'd say Blueyonder (I've been using them since I was on dialup with them, and to my knowledge up/downloads really are unlimited)...

I'm on up to 10Mbits/sec for £35, but I know they do cheaper options - my mum gets something like up to 2meg for £14.99...but then, we both have other Telewest services, not sure what their prices are if you want internet only!

I'd recommend them because (here in the south west at least), their downtime is pretty much zero.

Just one of many opinions to come, I'm sure.

That does look very good, but i cant get telewest here, so no broadband from them..... how strange as i do live in the 4/5th biggest city in England, Sheffield. I am thinking about Zen... but ive tried my availblity for it, and it says the one i wud use is the one im using at the moment, but it says it wud only go up to 1meg not 2meg which im getting on the same exchange atm....

How about Tiscali £18 a month for 2MB. I do not know if it meets your needs.

Like Arachne I'm with Telewest broadband so I do not know how good Tiscali is.

It has a fair usage policy.... no good

Thanks

Try NDO / Namesco

Not the cheapest but, in my experience, one of the quickest and most reliable.

You can compare ISP Speed etc based on real user expereinces here

One word of warning. Although they don't 'CAP' usage they do operate what they call FUP (Fair Usage Policy) - If you usage exceeds 30GB per calender month they will question what you are doing as possibly restrict your bandwidth.

This link is also OK for ISP reviews.

Thanks, thats look VERY good, yet they say they can only supply me 1mg even though im currently on 2mg, i may call them up.

Great!

Give them a call. I could only get 512 according to BT's line check, which I think is what all ISPs initially use.

In my case they were willing to give my line an independent 'ping' test and guess what - 1GB

I use Fast24, and there is no caps on their service, though they may have introduced a fair use policy of 30Gb but as far as I understand it they only throttle at peak times if you exceed it. It does not affect me as it did not exist in the contract when I joined.

Most don't like AOL but they have unlimited and uncapped service. If you don't want to use the interface you can connect direct with the modem.

To be honest though you will be lucky to find any without a cap or throttle fair use policy nower days as the number of people on bb has shot up in recent months and so they are all introducing it.

I'd have a look at Blueyonder, Pipex and Bulldog.
//Danne

The original poster is in the UK, here Bulldog have a cap on many of there services now and is not country wide, you have to live in certain areas to get it. A friend was on Blueyonder but they have introduced a fair use policy too so he moved.

I'm with AOL with a 2 meg connection. I can download whenever I like and reach speeds upto 230 kb/s. I am thinking of switching though, because the AOL customer support is crap and it seems to be getting worse. What's more - they think CD Freaks are affiliated with spam and they blocked the site from sending me 'notification of reply' emails.

Have you looked at NTL.

http://www.home.ntl.com/icat/broadband

I'm with them. i think the service is quite good.

A lot of e-mail providers have the auto-notification service from forums classed as spam, so it isn't an AOL phenomenom. Whenever I joined a forum I have to check the bulk folder to get the activation e-mail. You should have an option to either add cdfreaks to your address book or make it as a trusted (thus not spam sending) service.

To change from what you se as a good service for one reason is not always a good idea, because as you said AOL is unlimited, you are going to end up having a hard time finding any that don't limit the service on the the cheaper packages.

NTL requires a cable line and cable coverage in the UK is pretty patchy.

I'm also pretty sure NTL is capped, just like BT. So many gigs per month allowed etc.

Not 100% sure though...

And yeah, I think Blueyonder have added stuff to the Fair Use Policy...but AFAIK, they only query your use if you're seriously going overboard (in case you have a virus etc - they have been known to suspend service of folk found to have a virus that eats their bandwidth).

I'm on this, 2MB and pay £20 a month , this extra £2 is for all UK phone calls anytime of day, excluding mobiles of course.