ISP for Home

[Hightower]

I've just phoned the Post Office and they did a line check there and then. She said the line was connected but not active and they therefore can activate it for free. Thanks for the suggestion, but to be honest for £12 a month including line rental, free evening and weekend calls, and free weekend calls to mobiles and international calls too I might just stick with them!

 

If the service is bad there's no contract length so I can swap at any time. If not, I'm on to a winner, especially considering most companies charge £10 or £11 for line rental.

[elsiegee40]

My BT broadband is absolutely RUBBISH. I am totally pigged off with their overseas call centre (India) and and am fed up to the back teeth with them. I am fed up with going through the same things time and again, have upgraded the router, used my next door neighbours router and his spare. The engineer who visited prevented the line from dropping so regularly and got me up to 2.5 Meg which lasted 10 days and now I'm back to 0.73Meg. I've run out of patience with them and wish I knew what argument to try with them next. BT Broadband and BT phones are run as separate businesses and they play you off against each other. Neither accepting responsibility for any problems

 

My next door neighbour gets 5.5Meg, I get 0.73 Meg and am told they can't do anything. I am looking forward to moving to Sky as soon as my contract with BT expires. It cannot be any worse.

 

/rant over

 

Feel a bit better now... I wouldn't touch BT with a barge pole if there's the slightest chance of problems, in case you hadn't gathered.

[powdarrmonkey]

To maximise your internet connection, try and connect your router to the Master Socket, and disconnect the bell (ring) wire. See here plus if you must have extensions, use CAT5E cable!

 

Oh, that reminds me: opening and tampering with the master socket is not permitted because BT own it. They are responsible for everything up to and including the master socket; after that it's fair game. Their responsibility is what you pay line rental for.

[glennda]

I had bt broadband was total rubbish, they only said that we could get an up to an 8mb conenction as to far away from the exchange, 02 said we could get 17mb, we do only get 13mb but it shows bt just either didnt have the equipment at the exchange or where fobbing us off! so we swapped over and its been fine (there DNS servers are rubbish but so are most ISP's!) using google atm and its fine. there support is ment to be excellent aswell. a ex co-worker of mine was having real problems live 400m from the exchange as was only getting about 500kb/s! but they sent out an engineer who found a fault in the cable coming into the house (bt's cable) o2 had them out the cable repaired/replaced and he was getting 16mb!!

[IanT]

Sky are good, I put my parents on that, also Zen Internet are good

[Hightower]

Sky are good

 

I've had a look at Sky and can't figure out where you get phone/broadband without buying into sky TV too!

 

Anyone got any thoughts about Post Office for phone?

[sandeep2504]

Been with Virgin Media/Blueyonder for six years now with their cable internet access.

 

I've only had one problem in those six years and i've always found their speed to be 100% accurate.

 

I would happily to recommend them!

 

Bare in mind they do throttle internet speed after you download x amount of data.

[MYK-IT]

Oh, that reminds me: opening and tampering with the master socket is not permitted because BT own it. They are responsible for everything up to and including the master socket; after that it's fair game. Their responsibility is what you pay line rental for.

 

Removing the face plate (bottom half) is permitted, and if wired correctly, all extensions should be connected to the connections at the rear of the same face plate. That is where you check that the Bell Wire is not connected.

 

(Some households may have the older master socket, with no removable faceplate, so then it is not-permitted to tinker)

[powdarrmonkey]

Removing the face plate (bottom half) is permitted, and if wired correctly, all extensions should be connected to the connections at the rear of the same face plate. That is where you check that the Bell Wire is not connected.

 

Sorry, I should have been more explicit: removing the faceplate to test the line with the engineer's socket is generally accepted, but tampering is not. The article linked advocates re-wiring it, which is (probably) illegal, and certainly will result in a bill from BT if they ever find out.

[IanT]

When I brought my place I had to activate my BT Line..........the engineer came and did his bits and changed the entire socket over with there new BT Openreach one, its one of them removable ones, I brought my self a ADSLNation XTE-2005 to replace it! works wonders

 

ADSLNation XTE-2005 Professional Quality Master Faceplate Filter

[m25man]

Im a VirginMedia Convert, after years of struggling with poor BT ADSL lines I switched and never looked back.

I still have the BT Phone line but run 6 SIP Trunks and two home based businesses over the 10mb VM cable (there goes the AUP)..... all for £20 per month

Maybe I've been lucky but no technical issues in the last 2 years.