I can't believe I'm getting just 1/10th of some of you lot with your 50Mb/s cable connections. Ah, well - one of the costs of living in a pretty village...
In summary Old: Virgin 10mb package,. Max/consistent speed 8mb down, 512k up. Customer service was extremely pants. Tie in period = 12 months. 28 per month (incl phone and basic poop tv - worse than freeview) Never again... Now: PlusNet value (up to 20mb, with 10gb quota) 6.49 per month for net alone. Max speed 7mb. Average speed 5mb. Lowest I've recorded (only for 10 mins then it jumped back up) 2mb. Upload of approx 512kb. Customer service = great. Tie in period = zero if you use your own ADSL modem. Then add 11.50p/m for a good phone package (incl free weekend/evening national & 200mins international calls) with PlusNet and 10p/m for a Sky+HD special offer for 12 months (after which I'll cancel and just use the kit for FreeSat+HD lol). Total cost 28p/m for 12 months, with better TV, better phone package, slightly slower internet, much better customer service. After 12 months, we'll just be paying the 18 for phone/internet. PlusNet's internet performance is really quite good considering how much I pay! The bandwidth is capped depending on when/how you use it (i.e. gaming, vpn, general browsing, media streaming all have different limits) which has not been a problem - both me and the wife can both be working from home at the same time, and at the same time I can 'youtube' on android phone using wifi without any problems. I've not used it for online gaming though so cannot comment on that. If you upgrade your package, the traffic management settings are changed to allow for better performance in various areas - but again it will be limited by your max line speed anyway. Lots of information on the PlusNet website if your interested. PlusNet give you money off your monthly bills for referrals - for as long as the referred person is still a customer! I've got one referral so far saving me 0.75 a month lol. Your referral discount varies depending on the type of package taken by your referral. There is no limit to how many people you refer, so in theory you could get your service for free if you sell hard enough to friends/family! If your feeling kind and want to earn me a referral - drop me a note lol.
At the moment I am probably paying well over the odds for my Eclipse service. Off the top of my head, it might be 15 per month or something. On top of that we are paying Sky for their standard Sky phone rental. The reason I stayed with Eclipse was for two reasons: the static IP address that they provide, and because I didn't want to lose my ISP's email address. Well, I'm using Gmail now, and given DDNS can be used when I'm running a web server, I suppose you could argue that a static IP is no longer essential either. So, perhaps I could just use Sky's broadband service instead. Our village's local exchange just has ADSL Max. No LLU. I'm very very close to the exchange but getting 6Mb/s. Are Sky any good?
Yepp, worth it when the bill is split 6 ways We even have a fancy TV package with a wall projector to watch the sports on!
Ive just moved to a dynamic IP at work and im using DynDNS for remote connections. Seems tto be fine at the moment
Yep, I have an account with these too. It's just my server had a problem running the DUC client and my router (netgear) only supports update with dyndns so had to use these instead.
I get mine throught the post office. 25 for home phone and wireless broadband. I have never in three years had any problem. Never had to call them for technical issues. Never lost speed or connection they have been ace. When you do call them they are either Irish or Liverpudlian which makes a refreshing change for call centres. So they are pleasant to deal with to. Speed is aroung 6, but depends where you are from exchange, luckily im quite close
I am now on Sky after taking ages to install! Not very happy with that, already had a call out last week and they said they fixed it but still crap and the phone line doesn't work either! They said something wrong at the openreach end. Should have stuck with virgin to be honest at this rate. Not happy with the service but the Sky TV is amazing!! Although this isn't bad: considering it must be a very kind neighbour who unsecured their router while we're here does anyone know how to get a dynamic ip address whilst using sky broadband?
The BT engineer has just this minute left having installed Infinity at mine. It`s fibre-optic to the cabinet at the end of the street (about 100 yards away) and I`m only a couple of miles from the exchange. Apparently it`s currently `choked` until he signs the job off, then they`ll open the taps up fully, and I should see 40Mb download, and 10Mb upload...can hardly wait!
