Broadband: Help me, please!

[cat]

Right, good people, you're my last hope.

Having spent most of the day talking to worthless types in call centres, who are determined on selling me their product rather than providing me with any reliable information, I turn to you.

Simply: I am moving into a house at the start of August with 3 others. We want broadband.

Ideally, we would just like broadband -- we're not wanting a phone service that offers us free calls, or evening and weekend national rate for 5p an hour, or whatever. Just the internet. We have mobiles for that sort of lark.

Is the following possible:

A broadband internet connection without a BT residential line?

I mean, never having dealt with this sort of thing before, it struck me as odd that you need to go through BT to get anything done, even if you don't want to call anybody. Can I not get everything done through NTL? Do we have to have a BT line and a package from another company on top of that to provide us with broadband?

If I do have to have a BT line, then what is the best provider to go for?

Tiscali seem to be very tempting, but I'm a bit baffled by the whole thing.

I do not want 512 speed thingybob, that's too fast/expensive. We are looking at the lower to lower-middle price range.

I am quite genuinely flummoxed. I need your help.

[Gavin Scott]

If you have a local cable provider in the area (such as Telewest Broadband), you can sign up for a broadband service with no other services necessary.

They will install a box in your house which would also feed a digital television box, but it also works alone with the cable modem they supply.

No BT line needed. This is the service I have used, and I didn't have a land line at all.

They may suggest that you would be better off getting a phone + tv package, and will wax endlessly about how cheap it is. Do not waver. Insist you want broadband only.

Cost is £27.99 (approx) if you pay by any other means than Direct Debit. I think you get a £2.00 discount if you set up a DD mandate.

That price used to offer a 1/2 MB connection, but has recently been changed to a 3/4 MB line for the same price.

EDIT: Having re-read your post you say NTL are in your area. Their system is likely to be the same. Go for the connection I mentioned. It really genuinley is worth the small amount it would be (split 3 ways).

[Chris]

EDIT: Having re-read your post you say NTL are in your area. Their system is likely to be the same. Go for the connection I mentioned. It really genuinley is worth the small amount it would be (split 3 ways).

I wouldn't go with ntl. Their broadband service is pretty shite IMO.

Also their billing department is useless too...

And also steer clear from Tiscali too - they have a bad reputation for customer service and actual QOS.

[Gavin Scott]

EDIT: Having re-read your post you say NTL are in your area. Their system is likely to be the same. Go for the connection I mentioned. It really genuinley is worth the small amount it would be (split 3 ways).

I wouldn't go with ntl. Their broadband service is pretty shite IMO.

Also their billing department is useless too...

Explain how. Remember to show your workings.

[cat]

I am in the NTL area, not a Telewest one.

Phoned them up. Spoke to a disinterested arse.

"You either have phone and internet, or nothing. We don't do just internet."

So that was me told.

Either way, it'll probably work out cheaper to get an NTL connection at 30 quid a month for phone and internet, rather than get BT line plus internet.

[Gavin Scott]

I am in the NTL area, not a Telewest one.

Phoned them up. Spoke to a disinterested arse.

"You either have phone and internet, or nothing. We don't do just internet."

So that was me told.

Either way, it'll probably work out cheaper to get an NTL connection at 30 quid a month for phone and internet, rather than get BT line plus internet.

Interesting.

I was quite insistent about what I did and didn't want with Telewest. I was told that having the phone would only bring the total up to £30 per month. I still didn't want it. Come to think of it, the man who installed the box went as far as leaving a bare ended phone line, awaiting termination, hanging from my wall. I can see it goading me from here.

He seemed perplexed that I was having "one without the other". I wasn't thinking too much about it as he had asked me to hold on to his legs as he leant out of my first floor window to drill a hole. So many technical questions flew out my head that afternoon, let me tell you.

Unless the previous poster can say why NTL shouldn't be touched, (and I would be interested to hear the detail), then the £30 deal you have been offered sounds like a winner.

[Chris]

Unless the previous poster can say why NTL shouldn't be touched, (and I would be interested to hear the detail), then the £30 deal you have been offered sounds like a winner.

Why shouldn't ntl be touched?

Here are the reasons ...

Quality of service from ntl. Their email was pretty much always down or having problems, their newsgroups had dreadful completion and were having problems or not working at all. Their DNS is flaky and service status page full of vague excuses as to why the service is not working. To give you an indication of how bad their email is, it took 3 days to deliver one email from college to home - although sending the same email to another account took minutes. These "issues" have been around since last year and do not appear to have been fixed.

Unlike other ISP's, they have what's called a proxy server. A proxy server, in layman's terms is a computer which sits between you and the internet, and whenever you request a page the server makes the request on your behalf to the site in question and saves the contents on its hard drive, and then serves them to you.

Aside from the privacy implications this may have, when the proxy breaks down, you lose all contact with the web. And in true ntl style, they break down often and cause various problems. For example, when I tried to click the pay now button on eBay to send a payment to a selller, it took 4 changes of proxy to get to the 1st stage. The game of musical caches continued until I got to the final stage, 7 changes later. Repeating the same process from a dialup connection with a different ISP resulted in no problems with smooth progressing from each stage, and no proxy changes required. Also when I got the service, the proxies tried to cache multimedia streams, causing degradation of the stream quality or it not to work at all. For example only a selection of the clips on the BBC's top 40 chart site would work when on dialup they would work fine.

Last thing is billing. They seem completely incapable to bill you properly. They charged 'odd' amounts to my mum's card when we were on ntl - not £24.99 per month - some months were £78, others £15 etc. I've heard of cases where people haven't been billed for ages and then a large bill for all their usage has suddenly landed on their doormat.

Oh, and also you're locked into a 12 month contract, so you can't go anywhere if you find the service is crap without penalties.

We have mobiles for that sort of lark.

Ah, but why a cellphone? Surely it is more expensive to call anywhere from a cellphone than it is from a landline?

[Blob]

I have had ntl:Broadband for 2 years now and it is very good, if you don't want ntl email sign up with Yahoo etc.

[Chris]

I have had ntl:Broadband for 2 years now and it is very good, if you don't want ntl email sign up with Yahoo etc.

Thing is that loads of people use these services, and when they go down or whatever, people fuss and moan. It's free, so accept it if takes ages for emails to get from A to B or leave.

And they also add those adverts on the bottom of your email unless you fork out more cash, which I persnally hate, although I do see why they do it.

With ntl email the case is different, as you are paying for it as part of your subscription. Seems pointless paying for something you are not using as part of your subscription.

I do not want 512 speed thingybob, that's too fast/expensive. We are looking at the lower to lower-middle price range.

Too fast?

If this is to be shared between 3 people simultaneously on different computers, then it will slow down considerably if somebody is doing heavy downloading.

[DJGM]

I am in the NTL area, not a Telewest one.

Phoned them up. Spoke to a disinterested arse.

"You either have phone and internet, or nothing. We don't do just internet."

So that was me told.

And you were told wrong. The "disinterested arse" gave you totally misleading information. Actually you CAN
get broadband from ntl:home without signing up to any of their cable TV or telephone packages. They've
been offering a standalone cable modem broadband service since September 2002.

I was originally on the broadband service from July 2001, and my cable modem was one built into the
set top box. Back then, it was necessary to at least subscribe to their digital cable service first if you
wanted broadband. When they started offering the standalone broadband package, without the
need to subscribe to any other ntl:home service, I changed my package a.s.a.p. . . .

TBH, I've had hardly any problems with ntl:home broadband, except for RealMedia video streaming.

It's also worth noting that ntl:home are upgrading their broadband speeds soon, for no extra cost.

The 150Kbps option will increase to 300Kbps - 600Kbps goes to 750Kbps - 1MB moves to 1.5Mbps.
AFAIK, their haven't been any dates officially set for these upcoming speed boosts, but there has
been some speculation (according to a recent ISPreview.co.uk article) that they'll be starting
with the 150-300Kbps upgrade from 1st August, which is under two weeks away . . .

[Blob]

I am in the NTL area, not a Telewest one.

Phoned them up. Spoke to a disinterested arse.

"You either have phone and internet, or nothing. We don't do just internet."

So that was me told.

Either way, it'll probably work out cheaper to get an NTL connection at 30 quid a month for phone and internet, rather than get BT line plus internet.

Go to http://www.ntl.com/home and you can order just broadband there.