Carl Davey

iTrader: (3)

Does it even exist?

Since BT have started enforcing a 150hr limit on my families 'Anytime' internet package i have been told to look into getting my own ISP seperate from the parents BT deal.

I am currently considering Plus.net along with Charity Days but am concerned about their guaranteed access stats, 20hrs per week in the case of Plus.net.

I am home 50% of the time and wish to have the option of being able to have the PC online for as much of that time as possible, i am worried that i am gonna be stuck with an ISP that will not allow me to do this. I connect via BT's 64kbs HH btw.


Suggestions and recommendations very much welcome. Help!


EDIT: And because i'm only home half the time i'd like to keep the monthly fee sub £20 - tightwad.

[Edited by Carl Davey - 5/22/2003 12:52:26 PM]

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Demon Premier Connect

I'm still awaiting my first bill to check but its £9 (+VAT) over ususal charges (£20 Showroom account in my case)

+ the Anytime bit...

I've never had a 2 hr cutoff (have router & HH though, so might not notice) & Demon say that they never have a time lock-out on their servers 24/7 is there connection promise.

Guess that leaves the BT bit

Anyone else have Premier Connect?

Andrewza

Yup, never had any problems, worked from home for a few months on it hardly ever had a drop connected from 9am to past 11pm...

3times

Tiscali do a broadband access @ 256k for 19.99 per month. I have the 512k package and have not had a problem. This would give access at any time with no extra cost.

www.tiscali.co.uk

Kevin Groat

V21.co.uk

£13.99 a month. 240 hours a month, 4 or 5 hour cut-off. I'm on BT HH as well. I was on the £9.99 a month deal but we needed to up the hours as we use it for work now. Access through the day is really good. Good bunch at v21 - how many ISP's run their own bulletin board for subscribers to discuss any problems?

Kevin.

RichiW

AOL, no cut off, no time limit.

kamikaze

i wouldnt reccomend v21, who also trade under the name fast4
I and many other users have had lots of grief.
In the end I left because connection became imposible
Check out this thread. They are still rubbish

I use tiscali which is ok.Only complaint is 2 hour cutoff
AOL have always been good when I tried them and no cutoff, plus the first month is free

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/showthread.php?s=2df3bf30facb660421a5205b00b8ff4f& threadid=9317

[Edited by kamikaze - 5/22/2003 11:20:55 PM]

Kevin Groat

Kamikaze,

V21 have had their problems - I've been with them for over a year now and things have improved. Biggest difference was moving from the £9.99 package to the £13.99 one - contention ratio is much better and connection hardly ever fails now. Like I said - there's no-one but v21 that'll give you 240 hours a month with a 4 or 5 hour cut-off with a decent contention ratio (8:1 I think) for £13.99.

kamikaze

i was only with v21 until abuot 4 months ago
theywere great for my first 2 months
but then connection just became impossible 95% of time
Im guessing i was blacklisted cos i use it quite a lot.
There was no mention of any limit though.
Evn on their website now it says :
"..Our Unlimited package allows you to surf the Internet for a set monthly payment of only £6.99, with no weekly hour restrictions.."


And if they did blacklist me they could have at least told me
Just looking at the forums things dont seem to have really improved though

Kevin Groat

We upped our v21 package from the 'Lite' package to the standard package to reduce the contention ratio and to get better connection from 9-5. Since early April things in general (the old not recognising the password problem) have got much better and we hardly ever ger refused a connection between 9-5. Most nights are ok as well but for some reason (crap tv?) Sun/Mon nights can be busy but get connected after a few attempts. Looked at loads of other ISP's but for sheer value can't get anywhere near V21. We're using this for our work access as well now so don't intend to let anyone bugger us about.
Don't know about the £6.99 package deal but the £9.99 was something like 140 hours a month and the £13.99 is 240 - just checked and we've only used 68 hours this month - 172 remaining !!

Like you I was a bit miffed with them a few months ago - stuck with them (as I've moved a few times already) and things are spot on now.

Kevin.

pat

I've been a Demon customer for about 10 years now and I'm not about to change that. In the past I have used Premier Connect in conjunction with Anytime along with ISDN (not HH, but full blown ISDN) to connect, and stay connected. I think the longest it stayed connected in one go was about 3 months You can't really argue with that kind of service and reliability!

I've now got BT Business ADSL, because at the time Demon didn't have any product with similar features (better contention ratio at very little extra cost), but I still keep my Demon account. If Demon do have a product with similar or better features at the end of the BT contract I may well use them exclusively again... in the meantime I still keep the Demon account, it's damn useful for getting Internet access from my Nokia 9210

I'de certainly suggest Demon as an option, but there are more and more xDSL / Cable companies offering inexpensive access, so it's worth shopping around.

Cheers,

Pat.