Opinions and suggestions please....
 

After weeks and weeks of having problems with AOL disconnecting every 5 minutes, having my computer rebuilt at a cost of £ 130.00 and BT engineers coming to the house yesterday ( £ 50.00 call out charge then £ 60.00 per hour thereafter ) to find absolutely NO line or apparatus faults whatsoever.... AOL have graciously allowed Hells to cancel her 12 month contract 4 months early !!!!!!

The problem is now, who do I use for my Broadband connection ?????

I am still a BT customer and also use Sky Digital... Am toying with the idea of going with NTL for all 3 services..

Can anyone please pass their opinions on Cable providers and or Broadband ISP's...

I have 7 days to sort myself a new provider before AOL gets lost for good !!!!!!!!

Cheers in advance

Dave ( and Helen )

I use NTL, only probelms are with tv rather than broadband. Email occasionally falls over (tends to be every couple of months) but broadband always ok. TV does have some probelms - locking on a station, out of sync voices to picture and the interactive element often fails.

hope it helps:)

Well I'm sure your going to get 1001 replies, all suggesting someone different...but I use a Co. called Zen.

Came highly recommended by our business techie, always do well in the consumer tests, no contract (can cancel anytime).

We have been using them for 12 months now and we have had no trouble whatsoever during this period, when all and sundry around me using the usual (BT/Demon etc.) are crashing or hanging up like flies.

Their customer service/online support is great, and during the installation/set-up, their support and guidence was superb...all up and running without a hitch, not bad for a non-techie like me.

Checkout their website (www.zen.co.uk), and pick the package that suits you. I too have a BT phoneline and run Sky digital. Can't recommend them highly enough.

When you say disconnecting, is it coming up with dialogue box message or just losing it?

Just losing it... the modem stays in sync too... Have been through everything !! AOL have just told me that BT cannot actually handle the quantity of people using the internet post 17.00hs and to loose the problem for good, I really need to go Cable !

I am a telewest cable customer and am reasonably happy with the service. My pop3 server occasionally goes MIA and we sometimes have all our subscribed channels go MIA (happened 4 times in over 2 years with them).

Their customer service is good - you get things fixed on the phone pretty much straight away. I won't say excellent because you have your usual teleservice issues but I'm a pretty self-sufficient customer so I don't really rely on that. Only when things go wrong that I can't get my hands on.

When I chose them they were the cheapest because of the bundle that they did, I have TV, phone and internet with them. They have a lot of the sky channels as well.

I searched the web for 'best broadband provider' type sites before setting mine up.

Went with Eclipse because they were voted best by the majority of sites, and you only pay one month ahead, no contract. £20/month for 512/256.

My connections usually stay up for about 3-4 weeks at a time, but there are a few occasions when it'll drop twice in a day.

Good luck.

Ali

plusnet, very happy, except can't use their outgoing mail server when logged into another ISP (like when I am traveling).

Telewest. I have a 1mb wireless connection which means I don't have to shift any wires if I want to move the PC. But you need a Telewest cable tv box to go for this option.

Service has been good, so no complaints from me.

[Edited on 21-7-2004 by centurysup]

NTL for the lot, I have the analogue TV service, they keep trying to get me to go digital but I won't until I have to. I hardly ever watch TV so only have the basic package which gives me Eurosport for all the bike racing. No phone problems and very few Broadband ones-sometimes the e-mail server packs up for a couple of hours but otherwise no hassle.

John