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NTL Broadband
NS Dev - 8/9/05 at 09:11 PM

Just got a message from NTL broadband, wondered what you all think (I think their service is fine at the mo, no complaints now)

They are offering free upgrade (by default) from 300kbps to 1mbps but reduced allowance from 30 gb per month to 3 gb per month............................

is this an upgrade or downgrade!!!!?????

fast but less!!!!

I download some music but only say twice a week for a couple of hours.

I can opt out of the "upgrade" any time up to 21st October.

Just thought I'd see what you all thought!?

steve_gus - 8/9/05 at 09:16 PM

it really depends if you are going to use 3gb of bandwidth a month or not. Ive been told by a friend that there isnt a physical cutoff. If you regularly go over they will give your collar a tug and ask you to upgrade.

I have the 2mbit a sec 25 quid deal limited to 30gb - upgraded from 700k unlimited. No probs, virtually no downtime at all.

atb

steve

Snuggs - 8/9/05 at 09:25 PM

NTL are aiming to have 10Mb as their basic service by the end of 2006.

I changed from NTL to UKOnline cos they moved their call centre to Mumbai

NS Dev - 8/9/05 at 09:32 PM

how long ago was that?

I called them 3 weeks ago and it was very english indeed!!!

Fozzie - 8/9/05 at 09:35 PM

Every time I have had to call NTL they have been very English too!
Fozzie

Snuggs - 8/9/05 at 09:40 PM

I was told that they had moved most of the BB support to India in March.

Maybe they lost so many customers or had too many complaints that the moved it back.

chrism - 8/9/05 at 09:43 PM

Some places have support staff in England and India.


You can usually tell by the rings if your getting someone in the UK or India, apparently when you getting transferred about the ring tone changes.

NS Dev - 8/9/05 at 09:52 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Snuggs
I was told that they had moved most of the BB support to India in March.

Maybe they lost so many customers or had too many complaints that the moved it back.


might be that.

NTL seem to react very quickly to customer outcry after they nearly went bust near the beginning for their poo service!

I can only praise them I have to say. Waiting ages on the phone is a pain but I don't normally have to do it (3 times in 4 years?)

gingerprince - 8/9/05 at 09:55 PM

quote:
Originally posted by NS Dev
Just got a message from NTL broadband, wondered what you all think (I think their service is fine at the mo, no complaints now)

They are offering free upgrade (by default) from 300kbps to 1mbps but reduced allowance from 30 gb per month to 3 gb per month............................

is this an upgrade or downgrade!!!!?????

fast but less!!!!

I download some music but only say twice a week for a couple of hours.

I can opt out of the "upgrade" any time up to 21st October.

Just thought I'd see what you all thought!?


This has been going for quite some time. I was upgraded from 750 to 2Mb for free, with 1Gb/day "cap".

Don't worry though, at the moment it's not a hard cap so you won't lose out. They don't currently have the facility to monitor and cut you off - the "caps" are just to put high-usage people off. If you download LOTS (ie you have eMule etc running constantly) then they'll come down on you, but otherwise you'll be fine.

When they upgrade to 10Mb standard in the next year then that's when the caps are due to be real caps - they will charge for how much you want to download, not how fast you want to download it.

So I would definately upgrade to 1Mb, it's been available for months at that price.

Hellfire - 8/9/05 at 10:47 PM

I'm with Tiscali - I got an email saying they were reducing the price down to £17/month and taking the download cap off which was originally 15Gb. I am constantly uploading and downloading to and from our website and one accasion go over this limit. From this month I have no worries! Absolutely faultless service so far...

Volvorsport - 8/9/05 at 10:51 PM

i got in on the one year deal for 1mb at 9.99 !!

both times , i had to call them to setup , and fix a faulty modem , geeta , was answering my call !!

MkIndy7 - 8/9/05 at 11:08 PM

I got the same Email and am thinking of opting out.

I've got 3 computers on a Router all of which are used throughout the day and occasionally downloading and I have no idea of my usage.

I find web pages load fast enough with 300k which is usually when i'm researchnig stuff and just wait that little bit longer for the downloads.

For my own piece of mind I think i'm gunna opt out.

Hellfire - 8/9/05 at 11:13 PM

Volvo/MKIndy - so who r u with?

MkIndy7 - 8/9/05 at 11:43 PM

I'm with NTL, £17.99 a month 300k

Prob a rip off now but am arsed changing!

Glad it aint just me, though they might have it on record that i've gone over 3meg in a month at some point and thought they'd try and swindle some more cash out of me this way!

Hellfire - 8/9/05 at 11:50 PM

AR5E, UP and SHOVE IT immediately spring to mind - but not necessarily in that order! If you aren't tied into a contract I'd move straight away! Dick Turpin couldn't have done a better job!

Peteff - 9/9/05 at 12:01 AM

I'm with freedom2surf and have just gone to a 2 meg service with a 10 gig cap. I was previously on a 512 uncapped but their site showed the most I had ever used was 5 gig and if I want a big download between 1.00 and 6.00 am doesn't count anyway. I now pay £5 less for a faster connection

speed8 - 9/9/05 at 06:56 AM

I'm with Plusnet. It was 512k uncapped then they thought about capping it but changed their mind. They recently (couple of weeks ago) upped it to 2mb at no cost.
Only problem I ever had was when I first got it and couldn't get my modem set up (nothing to do with them, just me being a computer numpty). They talked me through it on the phone and perfect ever since.

NS Dev - 9/9/05 at 10:19 AM

quote:
Originally posted by MkIndy7
I'm with NTL, £17.99 a month 300k

Prob a rip off now but am arsed changing!

Glad it aint just me, though they might have it on record that i've gone over 3meg in a month at some point and thought they'd try and swindle some more cash out of me this way!


same here. Hellfire's Tiscali service is the first cheaper one that I have heard of. NTL is pretty good for me, but I'm thinking of the optout.

My brother has broadband via telephone line and has had BT line failures 3 times in 6 months, each time taking 2 weeks to fix, while the NTL cable has been 100% for over 4 years now.

Remember it's 3GB not 3MB!!!, guess that was a typo!

[Edited on 9/9/05 by NS Dev]

Surrey Dave - 9/9/05 at 11:04 AM

I upgraded from NTL 300k to the 1mb service, I dont download much music, and no films, I spend many hours online and have not hit the limit yet.

Donners90 - 9/9/05 at 12:22 PM

Had a free upgrade from 512K to 2Mb, still no download limt! £25 may be higher than most, but the service has be exceptional. Whenever I have had to ring the helpline it's answered within 30seconds, but usually a different nationality each time !

Gav - 9/9/05 at 12:23 PM

Just thoghut id mention im with Bulldog.
Although you have to take their landline too, tis the same price as BT's £10.49/pm or sth.
i also get unlimited (upto)8mb connection, which is nice
Although their customer service is a nightmare, for example i rang to order a fixed IP and wafte r45mins of waiting i was told that id have to email customer service, after saying how utterly stupid this was the nice lady in the call center hung up on me for being abusive! and that is quite literally what i said, "This is stupid"!.

The service is ok although id use other DNS servers as theirs seem quite flakey.
Also the server is advertised "Upto" 8mb, so it is dependant on your distance from the exchange, i live 3 km away and comfortably get 6mb which is more than enough.

edit: http://www.adslguide.org/ is an invaluable source of all things broadband

[Edited on 9/9/05 by Gav]

britishtrident - 9/9/05 at 02:02 PM

All the cheaper ADSL ISPs are rated poorly -- low price = poor customer service.
Customer service cost an ISP a lot more than bandwidth.

I use an expensive "techie" ISP Zen Internet , Zen have been consistantly rated the top adsl provider by users at the adslguide.org.uk I use and recommend them because I know Zen customer service will give an instant and knowledgeable response, also if I have a problem that looks like its a BT fault they won't stall before calling in a BT engineer.

With Zen I have had not a single ADSL outage since I switched ftom BT Internet, with BT I was getting 24 hour outages every few weeks that BT never admitted to in addition BT DNS servers would go down or days on end or simply vanish.

At the ADSL Guide ratings Zen and Pipex are always at the top, Tiscalli and Bulldog at or near the bottom.



[Edited on 9/9/05 by britishtrident]

Gav - 9/9/05 at 02:09 PM

FWIW i Used to be wih Eclispe who used to win buiness awards and were excellent, went with bulldog for speed, never had a problem with the actuall connectivity but the DNS servers are flakey as i mentioned, but because "I know what im doing"(tm) was an easy fix to use 3rd party DNS.
Eclipse also had this nice flex thing so if you were connceted at 512 you could upgrade your connection to 1 or 2mb if you wanted someting quick, iirc it was 4.5p/h and 9p/h for 1 and 2mb upgrafes respectivly.

[Edited on 9/9/05 by Gav]