ADSL provider - recommendations?

[old.Reverend Flatus]

I just rang BT openworld to enquire about ADSL, the conversation went something like this...

Me - I'm interested in ordering ADSL.
BT flunkey - Yes sir, no problem. (Launches into sales pitch).
Me - Er, could we cut the sales patter and get down to the details?
BT flunkey - Yes sir, no problem. Payments are by Visa or Mastercard...
Me - Stop right there. Are you telling me that you only accept payments by credit card?
BT flunkey - Yes sir, unless you buy our business package...
Me - Er, hang on. I don't have a credit card and I am not a business.
BT flunkey - No problem sir, you don't have to be running a business. For a little extra cost you can subscribe to...
Me - Goodbye.

So basically, I am not a "preferred customer" i.e. I am not running a business and I don't have a Visa or Mastercard, so I can either pay more or fuck off. Well BT, you can fuck off, fuck off and die.

Can anyone recommend another ADSL provider? I have been checking through some stuff I found at adslguide.org but it's all a bit confusing. Any help appreciated.

P.S. Don't you hate it when customer services people keep saying "no problem" in complete defiance of the facts?

 

[old.Reverend Flatus]

Hello? Anyone out there?

 

[luap]

Easynet is ok, I'm a little spoiled as it's a 2mb Business ethernet 20:1 connection but it's a good service.

 

[Speccy]

Im happy enuf with Easynet but they expect you to pay a year up front for their non-nat adsl

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Nildy appear to be the best ADSL provider, after hearing reports from many people with different companies.

 

[old.Reverend Flatus]

Thanks chaps. I shall check out Easynet. Zen looks reasonable too and apparently their support is pretty good.

 

[old.Delboy]

Almost signed up with OpenWorld, but having looked around properly I went for Nildram. I'll pay the extra for a consistently good service and static IP.

http://www.adslguide.org.uk

 

[Sawtooth]

adsl from BT.......I'd sit in a bath of tarantulas

I gave up on BT-openworld as their service is crap. Support is non-existant and they promise one thing and deliver something else. I had mine removed after it became clear that they couldnt provide a working service (their modem shut my pc (athlon) down) I have a nice cable modem (NTL) and it was an easy install and the service is better....nice low pings.


SawTooth

 

[old.Reverend Flatus]

I'd go for cable modem if it was available here.

I finally put my order for ADSL in today, I went for Nildram as they seem to be ok. I thought I'd have to wait until August 23rd, which is when I thought my contract with BT ended. I turns out they lied (what else is new?) and my contract has already expired

 

[old.nephilim1k]

I went with Freeserve, 39.99 a month.

They turned up on the day, installed in 1 hour, tested and left. That was feb 9th this year. Since then I have had no problems whatsoever.

There was a 2 hour outage back in march, we were emailed about this a week in advance.

All in all, compared to the nightmares I hear about BTOW, this is a dream.

Also, the install guy saw I had a network and said "but of course you won't let them use the same line will you.... grin". Of course not. Uh uh. Not me.

I have heard FS is increasing the price. However for existing subscribers, they retain the old price for the contract.

Nice

Nephilim1k

 

[SoWat]

Had ADSL installed yesterday (BTOW). The conversion from Home Highway to ADSL took about 30 minutes, and I was up and running another 10 minutes after that.

It's early days of course, but it all works as advertised. Downloads come in at about 55k a second, but pings are only slightly lower than my old ISDN (No, EMB, DO NOT post your ping result here )

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by SoWat
Had ADSL installed yesterday (BTOW). The conversion from Home Highway to ADSL took about 30 minutes, and I was up and running another 10 minutes after that.

It's early days of course, but it all works as advertised. Downloads come in at about 55k a second, but pings are only slightly lower than my old ISDN (No, EMB, DO NOT post your ping result here )

Yeah ADSL/Cable seem to ge the same dl speeds and also the same pings...makes ya happy to have fatband eh

 

[Wazzerphuk]

I've found I ping at around 10-15 less than all ADSLers I know

 

[Embattle]

I've heard a few people say that...hope I do

 

[Perplex]

Cable pings lower than dsl (best I've seen is my ping bounce down to 7ms on a BW server...although as we all know, CS displays fake pings) Still, impressive to see, and never seen it before

 

[Wij]

Originally posted by Wazzerphuk
I've found I ping at around 10-15 less than all ADSLers I know

U never fail to mention it too

 

[Kempo]

BAH!

GGGGgrrrrrrrrrrr,
I have BTO, its ok, get kick ass dl speeds ( especialy after 56k modem ) but... I live in Aberdeen, and my ping sux, i get pings of 40 to 60, which is totally gay -raGe-Adam who lives in birmingham gets a ping of 20 to 25, i am seriously pissed off, he is BTO aswell, he pays exactly the same as me every month but because he lives nearer to london he gets a service which is twice as good, i wouldnt mind it if it was a smaller difference but having twice the ping of someone who is paying for teh same service as me really pisses me off, GET CABLE IF U CAN PPLLLLLZZZZZZZZ ( well if u live in north england/scotland coz adsl that far from london is a waste of money tbh

 

[d@ m@d m00]

Those results seem to resemble the pings i get in CS for 40-60, and in something like Q2/Q3A for 20-25... Maybe that's the case for you as well?

 

[Kempo]

...

I dont play cs but i have tried Q3A and the pings i get in that r slightly better but it can still sometimes got 60+

 

[Mr_Horus]

NTL Cable rocks for gaming now as a few days ago, they installed direct peering between NTL and Level3 <BarrysWorld's host>, so your traffic no longet goes through above.net to get to BW.

Ping statistics for 213.221.174.4:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 26ms, Maximum = 28ms, Average = 26ms

Cable Modems rock no matter where you are <im in Scotland>

 

[d@ m@d m00]

How many hops then Horus? Go on, boast about it

 

[Embattle]

This is mine to BW:

C:\>tracert www.barrysworld.com

Tracing route to bwserver31-1.barrysworld.com [194.88.93.43]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 10 ms 20 ms 10 ms 10.87.16.1
2 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms gsr01-nm.blueyonder.co.uk [62.30.112.129]
3 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 172.18.10.37
4 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms atm7-1-cro-hsd-gsr-linx.cableinet.net [194.117.1
58.142]
5 10 ms 10 ms 20 ms e41-isp1-gw1-uk.cableinet.net [194.117.140.9]
6 10 ms 11 ms 20 ms GigabitEthernet5-0.linx1.lon1.level3.net [195.66
.224.77]
7 10 ms 20 ms 10 ms so-4-2-0-0.mp1.lon1.level3.net [212.113.0.114]
8 10 ms 20 ms 10 ms 212.187.131.7
9 10 ms 10 ms 20 ms 212.113.11.134
10 10 ms 10 ms 20 ms 194.88.93.43

Trace complete.

 

[old.Butchy2000]

Personally I think the BT service has come on loads since it started. At the begining you couldn't sign in on busy hours and the 'modem' didnt work properly on some Via chipset Athlon M'Boards (cut off the entire USB) and didnt work on ME, but since the new drivers came out its fine.
My transfer rates are usually about 50-60 k/s and ping is 30-40 on good servers, sometimes 25 on Barrysworld.

 

[Mr_Horus]

10 hops

 

[Kempo]

I Agree

Yeh,
You are right butchy the service has definately improved recently, but it is still no where near as good as i was expecting

 

[Embattle]

Re: I Agree

Originally posted by Kemposaur
Yeh,
You are right butchy the service has definately improved recently, but it is still no where near as good as i was expecting

Whats up then?

 

[Kempo]

Just my ping really, i get pl sometimes, but i think that might be cause of shit serves rather than anything else, and i get pjed sometimes, but as i say, its deffinately getting better

 

[SoWat]

The BW servers seem to be particularly bad at the moment, with up to half the players on 999 (as on the ctf server today).

 

[d@ m@d m00]

Yeah, I was noticing that playing CS earlier... I couldn't be arsed to check it out though, cos I expected it to be BT, and no matter what you do, BT won't fix it

 

[old.Reverend Flatus]

I couldn't be arsed to check it out though

What a surprise!