Spec me an ISP bitches!

[mrbobbins]

Don't get excited, you probably won't get a referral.

I think I already know the answer* but here's the question anyway:

How can I get fibre internets without having a landline?
I need internets in my new house but I don't want a landline, mostly because of the line rental costs. Most ISP's that will provide fibre require you to take their landline rental, usually about £15 a month, if I can not have that and just pay for fibre that's ideal.

I know it's because it's mostly FTTC then phone line into the house, I don't fancy paying for line rental though so what are the options? (Other than the answer down there)

Thanks!




*Virgin

[Thompy]

http://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/guide ... phone-line

Cable giant Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com) is the only top UK provider able to offer broadband without a telephone line.

Guess that's that then!

[Joose]

I think you may have specced yourself there, Bobbins.

[mrbobbins]

I thought so, are they shit?
Not sure I've heard anything good about them

[spoodie]

I'm generally happy with Virgin, a good service in my experience. I've seen a couple of privacy concerns in the news, but I'm sure all the big ISPs have issues in that regard.

[Dog Pants]

My service is pretty patchy, with outages probably a couple of times a month on average (although they seem to come in clumps). They also ripped me off with the small print and try to sell me mobile phone contracts at every available opportunity. And they throttle the shit out of your connection at peak times. Other than that they're fine.

[HereComesPete]

My service is pretty patchy, with outages probably a couple of times a month on average (although they seem to come in clumps). They also ripped me off with the small print and try to sell me mobile phone contracts at every available opportunity. And they throttle the shit out of your connection at peak times. Other than that they're fine.

Are you not on asdsdlsls? Virgin cable broadband is pretty much run as a separate entity with its own issues. I've not been throttled in ages (not got the money to pay the whores for the 'special') and the couple of outages I've had in the 3 properties and 6+ years I've been supplied by them have been fixed within 24 hours. I did have that recent nightmare with the customer service but it's not like I talk to them much and I did get cut price interwebs and some free time.

[Joose]

I think a lot of it depends on what package you have with Virgin. We have the "give me all the fucking internets" package: We very rarely have outages, and I cant remember the last time an outage lasted more than 30mins. I do get throttled during peak times, but only after I have downloaded a great many gig in one go. Even then, all that happens is my speed gets halved. When its this fast to start with, its almost never an issue.

Like Pete says, if you cant get cable, Virgin is not a great choice. Their ADSL and cable offerings are utterly different though.

We don't get much spam letters from them (not enough to notice it amongst all the takeaway menus and local newspapers, anyway) but that could be due to the fact that mrs Joose already has a mobile contract with them.

After helping various relatives/friends with broadband issues of all sorts recently, I think hoping for an ISP that doesn't do some sort of throttling and never has outages is extremely unrealistic. I wouldn't want to change to someone else, but im a speed whore and in that regard there is no contest at the moment. BT Infinity is getting there, but I gather its wobbly as fuck for a lot of people at the moment.

[Dog Pants]

My service is pretty patchy, with outages probably a couple of times a month on average (although they seem to come in clumps). They also ripped me off with the small print and try to sell me mobile phone contracts at every available opportunity. And they throttle the shit out of your connection at peak times. Other than that they're fine.

Are you not on asdsdlsls?

Nope, cable. But as Joose says, I'm on the prole package. Can't have filthy poor people like me stinking up the middle class internets.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I never had much trouble with virgin adsl, but I was on the massive expensive tariff, and it was the only decent adsl2 I could get there.

[Thompy]

ISP reviews must come top and near the top of things that generally get low scores. People are much more inclined to bitch about things online than come and praise. I know I wouldn't bother telling people that my internet is fine (but then I don't post anywhere on the internet other than here). Product reviews on shopping sites tend to go both ways but I just don't think people are bothered about going to 3rd party sites to highly rate an ISP. Point is, take all the crap you hear about them with a grain of salt, chances are you will fall into the vast majority who never have a problem.

[buzzmong]

Apart from my recent gripes about being a bit swindled and not having the proper connection speed, and the fact they've got dire* customer service, Virgin Cable are actually rather good from a reliability point of things in my eyes.

*I need to qualify it's only their first line cust service somewhere in Asia that are dire, if you get put through to the UK, either for their small general call centre or to speak directly with the engineering staff regarding faults that can't be sorted by first line, they're actually super friendly and helpful.

[Jimmington]

I have Virgin fiber 30mb package and was expecting to have most of the internet downloaded by now, however it actually appears to be slower than my BeThere connection on the telephone line. Of course there is probably rose tinted glasses involved there, but speedwise BeThere ran at 17ish and Virgin is supposed to be 30 but hmmmm. In the yearish i have had the package, there has been one patchy period where I was losing connection quite late at night for a week or so - helpdesk were not aware of issues and were unable to help or advise if there was maintenance work - other than that it has been fine since. I do find it odd that the BBC online telly thing freezes and spazzes out as i thought it should be smooth as a peach, but that is not the case. There again i am quite cynical of the whole world and his dog appearing out of your telly set via streaming, because like most things in the UK, the infrastructure supposed to do it that we have in place is wank.

[FatherJack]

I have Virgin, it's mostly ok, probably the best speed I can get, certainly without a BT line, but there are a few things:

- It isn't fibre, not to your home, just to the street hubs. I happen to have a hub resting right against my front wall, but they should be every 500m or so, so it's not a big issue for most.
- The first-line support is not very good - to Virgin's credit its much better than NTL or the other various local cable providers from which they bought the infrastructure, but it's common that you spend a long time on hold, hanging on the phone or having to redial again - though stuff does tend to get sorted in the end. With a Virgin phone line, these calls are free so to me it's not that irksome - without one though, it could end up costly.
- The set-top iPlayer/OnDemand and so on shouldn't use your broadband connection, but the cable one. If it's slow then there may be problem with the box. I've always found it really good, except at some times when the whole infrastructure is overloaded - though this usually manifests itself as a 'currently not available' message, rather than slow playback.
- It's best to use OpenDNS, at the least as a backup if not your primary DNS. That's the thing that's 'down' most often when the internets don't work.

[buzzmong]

- It's best to use OpenDNS, at the least as a backup if not your primary DNS. That's the thing that's 'down' most often when the internets don't work.

I'd forgotten about that. OpenDNS all the way when using Virgin.

[deject]

I'll go you one better and recommend using DNS Benchmark to find the best DNS servers to use.

[Dog Pants]

Bloody DNS! That's why the iPad can run like shite while the desktop is fine.

*changes ipad DNS*

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Can you not just set the dns on the router?

[deject]

Can you not just set the dns on the router?

Most routers are designed to basically serve as a DNS cache for whatever you set on the WAN side and pass the results of DNS queries through. Depending on your router, this could add 10, 50, or even 100ms (in real bad cases) to getting DNS requests. Generally, it's better to do at the client level if possible. If you don't care about DNS performance though, doing it on the router should be fine.

[Joose]

If you don't care about DNS performance though, doing it on the router should be fine.

Except if you are onvirgin cable you have to use thier "Super Hub" router for the faster stuff, and you cant change the dns servers on that.

EDIT: Interesting. According to that DNS Benchmark, the best DNS servers for me are the ones Virgin has given me already.