Another Broadband thread

[Cadelin]

I am moving back to the UK and I suddenly find myself with a huge choice of broadband providers, (as opposed to France and Switzerland where there was only ever one provider)

I phoned up BT and they estimated my max speed for the line would be about 6MBit (no idea where they got that number from). I want a 12 month contract. I do a fairly larger amount of downloading (around 60GB per month, Legal downloading related to my work) and I play a few online games so I want a decent connection.

The cheapest by a long way is O2 which would cost me just £66 for the year (not including line rental) but I am concerned because of that it will be shit. I have noticed that lots of people seem to recommend BE and that is available in my area but the basic package is £162 for the year (not including line rental). There are a whole host of others too, from Orange, PlusNet, Talk Talk, Virgin, BT, AOL, Tiscali and there are a whole lot that do broadband that I never heard of before like, the post office, waitrose, etc!

Any suggestions?

 

[Kryten]

If you're looking at an LLU phoneline, the O2, despite being cheapest, will also be one of the best you can get. Especially if you've a mobile contract with them.
Be is the same company therefore you'll get near identical performance. Sky also a good bet if you've got Sky TV.

 

[nath]

Go for O2 - as Kryt says it's the same company as BE so it'll be the same service. Fantastically cheap, blisteringly quick and no download cap. It's a total no brainer really.

 

[Cadelin]

If you're looking at an LLU phoneline, the O2, despite being cheapest, will also be one of the best you can get. Especially if you've a mobile contract with them.
Be is the same company therefore you'll get near identical performance. Sky also a good bet if you've got Sky TV.

Blimey that was a quick response!

Would you be able to tell me what an LLU phoneline is? (I did a quick google search and I found it means Local Loop Unbundling) Or rather how can find out if I do have one of them? I am a tenant at my new property and according to the contract I have to pay BT line rental (or if I switch to another provider I have to foot the bill of switching back at the end).

And yes I am an O2 customer which is why its so cheap. Also I did look at sky and it seems that even if you have their TV package their broadband package isn't that cheap? It was still £15 on top of everything else for unlimited downloads.

 

[gunner440]

Go for O2 - as Kryt says it's the same company as BE so it'll be the same service. Fantastically cheap, blisteringly quick and no download cap. It's a total no brainer really.

And if you ever have to call up customer services (which is very, very, very, very, very rare for me) you get to talk to lovely people like Pavel and Szofia and not to window lickers who call themselves John and Martin.

 

[Syri]

Blimey that was a quick response!

Would you be able to tell me what an LLU phoneline is? (I did a quick google search and I found it means Local Loop Unbundling) Or rather how can find out if I do have one of them? I am a tenant at my new property and according to the contract I have to pay BT line rental (or if I switch to another provider I have to foot the bill of switching back at the end).

And yes I am an O2 customer which is why its so cheap. Also I did look at sky and it seems that even if you have their TV package their broadband package isn't that cheap? It was still £15 on top of everything else for unlimited downloads.

LLU is basically where another provider has installed their own hardware in the local BT exchange, so they can offer a direct service, rather than just acting as a reseller for BT, which most broadband providers do.
With a normal ADSL account, you still use BT's infrastructure, but your provider just handles the assigning of an ip address, and things like routing and bandwidth management, dns and all that. Because the infrastructure is all BT though, it means that the bandwidth to the exchange is shared between all of the BT connections, regardless of who the reseller is.
With LLU, you use the other companies infrastructure all the way, so you don't have to compete with all the BT customers for usage of the bandwidth to the exchange. Basically results in a faster connection, so they can offer higher speeds.
Hope this helps explain it. If you want to find out if your line has any LLU companies available, have a look at SamKnows, you can look up the local exchange on that page, and see which providers have their own hardware in your local exchange.

 

[Cadelin]

Samknows website information.

So it looks like O2 has their own LLU service. Does it matter if my Line rental is still with BT?

So final question is about the routers. Is there anything particular to look out for with the routers? I am slightly concerned that I may have to connect my desktop via wireless and therefore it would be better to go for a more expensive router for gaming. Anyone know if the O2 routers are anygood?

 

[gunner440]

Does it matter if my Line rental is still with BT?

For O2/BE that's fine.

 

[Zenith.UK]

All I would say is avoid the following:
BT
Tiscali
AOL
Orange
Sky

The problem with a large company is that they try the hardest to skimp on customer service. Going with a smaller company might be a few £'s more per month, but the customer service is so much better.

That said, it sounds like a no-brainer in your case... O2 all the way.

 

[GReaper]

Make sure you take advantage of free BT installation if you haven't done it already. 18 month contract for your BT line and you have to make so many calls per quarter, but at least you don't have to pay the rather large installation fee.

If you're going with O2, make sure you use Quidco. £50 cashback at the moment!

I think that'll reduce your broadband costs to just £16.06 for the entire year

 

[Cadelin]

Make sure you take advantage of free BT installation if you haven't done it already. 18 month contract for your BT line and you have to make so many calls per quarter, but at least you don't have to pay the rather large installation fee.

If you're going with O2, make sure you use Quidco. £50 cashback at the moment!

I think that'll reduce your broadband costs to just £16.06 for the entire year

Awesome info! I hadn't heard of Quidco before but I signed up and hopefully will get my £50. The order hasn't appeared on my quidco account but it says that may take between a few hours and several days.

I didn't have to pay to activate my BT line as the previous tenants had had a line.

O2 said my maximum speed could be 14 MBits so I went for the slightly more expensive package, still it will only be £38.11 for the year. (assuming the quidco thing works)

Thanks for all the help.

 

[gunner440]

O2 said my maximum speed could be 14 MBits so I went for the slightly more expensive package, still it will only be £38.11 for the year. (assuming the quidco thing works)

Thanks for all the help.

O2 / BE tend to be quite accurate when predicting maximum speeds. Make sure you make every effort possible to facilitate this (connecting to the right sockets etc.)