Metropol

Thanks all.

DJGM: after reading your comments, I did actually phone up NTL again and spoke to a slightly more interested arse.

You're right. We can, it seems, get just broadband without the telephone etc.

600k for about £19.99 a month, which seems fair to me.

With regards to the poster asking why I'd use a mobile over a landline: a) I have to have a mobile phone, so I'm not going to ditch it in favour of a landline b) it would cost me a hell of a lot more to pay for BT line rental plus calls than it would for just calls on a mobile (with 500 free minutes) that i'd have anyway, taking into consideration the amount of calls I make.

Have to say, I've heard nothing but positive comments about NTL; perhaps I'm talking to the wrong people. But from what I can see, it does seem to be by far the best deal around.

Chris wrote: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.

I did say ''too fast/expensive'' -- I'm not paying about 37 quid a month for it, even between 3.

The chances of us all using it at the same time are slim, and none of us do what you term 'heavy downloading' - whatever that constitutes.

We have NTL broadband on its own, the package that you're thinking of going for, and it's supposed to be being increaded to 750k sometime this summer for the same price per month. I shared it between three and sure, it would crawl if one of us was downloading music or movies but we made a house rule to keep that to times no-one else was in the house or during the early hours, so I think for your use, it'll be more than enough. With the cost shared out it was more than good value and if at a later date you do decide to have the TV or phone installed the cabling is already there.

People say bad things about NTL's internet service. I don't like the cacheing servers it uses which hides my true IP address from many services and doesn't always load the most recent version of some pages, but there are often workarounds for the former, and forced refresh for the latter. NTL publicise when they're doing work on the network and when you should expect it to be down. It seems to be once every two or three weeks round here and it's normally done in the early hours of the morning for less time than they expect it to take. I keep the number 0800 052 4315 to hand so when there's loss of service I can check to see if it's scheduled work before I start cursing NTL, and in most cases since, it is.

You don't have to use NTL's email account, in fact, I don't use mine at all so anything sent there gets ignored. The free webspace doesn't support PHP. You can connect to the modem via USB or Ethernet cable, and NTL recommend Ethernet for reliability (though they used to recommend USB for simplicity and because not everyone had Ethernet ports). The cable comes with modem though we had to replace ours after six months.

When you have your broadband installed it'll come with a crap piece of software called Correct Connect that tries to run itself each time you log on. You don't need it at all and can unistall it once your broadband setup is complete. It's on the CD anyway if you ever need it again.

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

I have the misfortune of being with a sub-provider of ntl - Virgin Broadband. Don't even get me started on them.

I have NTL and erm... it's very hit and miss. I have just literally got off the phone to them as the inexplicably put up my broadband charge by a fiver and backdated it. They just got an earfull, and have agreed to refund my money and put the charge back down.

NTL broadband goes through some dark patches, then is good for a long time. At the moment email is bit of an issue, i.e. if it works you consider it good, but sometimes for days in a row it just won't connect to their server. I think I need to look into another email provider.

I was one of the very first people to take NTL broadband as they ran the experiment in our town for about 2 years before NTL started to roll it out to anywhere else, long before ADSL came about (think it was 1998). On the whole it's been OK, I did threaten to leave them last year and it was amazing to see how quickly they could resolve issues when they want to.

Newsgroups are as good as non-existant on NTL. Proxy servers are a pain, but if your local one goes down, you can force your browser to point to another NTL proxy in a different area so you can get over that. Oh, and uplink speed is slower than ADSL, it's only 128k on NTL. Not an issue unless you are uploading/sharing a lot of big files (MP3's, cock pics etc).

Whatever service you use, it will never be 100% satisfactory, for £20 month I'd say it's an ok service.

Proxy servers are a pain, but if your local one goes down, you can force your browser to point to another NTL proxy in a different area so you can get over that.

Thing is you shouldn't have to keep using workarounds on the service to make it work.

They should fix it their end within a reasonable period and have safeguards in place to prevent it from constantly happening, otherwise it might be time to vote with your feet, and take your money elsewhere. :roll:

I've never had to change my proxy server.
I never use newsgroups so I wouldn't know about that part of NTL's service,

Had NTL 600k installed today.

Nice man came round; nice and early in the morning so I didn't waste a day waiting in.

He left.

Got to point of doing the CD setup on the laptop.

Discovered I'd been given a faulty CD and the wrong PIN, as well as NTL deciding that my first name should be 'Trom'.

Phoned them up. Given new PIN. Told would be fine.

Didn't work.

Phoned up someone else. (Welsh, lovely).

Took 20 minutes for him to sort it out for me, whilst I sat paying for the call on my mobile.

Customer service? Rock on.

(It obviously works, however, as I am posting this).

Took 20 minutes for him to sort it out for me, whilst I sat paying for the call on my mobile.

Why did you call them on a mobile, when they are 'kind' enough to pay for the call to customer services?

Chris wrote:

Took 20 minutes for him to sort it out for me, whilst I sat paying for the call on my mobile.

Why did you call them on a mobile, when they are 'kind' enough to pay for the call to customer services?

because he doesn't have a landline which is the entire purpose of this thread.

Would someone on BT/Yahoo broadband mind sending a 'Web Page, complete' of their custom homepage to me please? The one with "Welcome <>" and headlines, news, temperature, calendar etc..

Thanks, Asa