bethere service & modem

[Ronin Storm]

The recent furore about BT price hikes set me to looking at my options. In doing so, I've realised that bethere are now in York. Hard to resist triple bandwidth up and down stream.

I know bob uses them. Are they still good? How's the modem that they offer (leased, for free)?

 

[elDiablo]

I've used them in the past, and an ex-housemate still does. He gets texts from them saying when payment will be taken out of his account, and saying when they are doing to be maintance (usually at 3am, so meh), and the service has been fine since getting it installed nearly 2 years ago now.

The modem I received (so, 1.5 years ago) was a modem. It wasn't great, but it worked. I know people who have used different ADSL2+ modems (such as Linksys) on the service, and they have had no problems, but the Be modem was just fine for me. I had to reset (power off, power on) it every now and then (like, twice in 6 months), so I don't really see that as a problem...

I loved Be. I would have got them again in this house, if a BT line was installed and cable wasn't so cheap. Be is easily one of the best companies I've ever been with, and I would definitely go with them again, unless something headline hitting happened to them.

 

[VibroAxe]

I use be still, and the bebox is actually a really nice piece of kit. (see later)

Service is usually good, however just occasionally I have had some service issues but these have always been resolved within a few minutes.

As for the bebox itself it is in essence a standard speedtouch ADSL modem/router/wifi, and makes very little effort in hiding it. It does however work very well. The modem comes with various templates for the different modes of operation and it is easy to setup and configure even for someone with little to no tech savyness.

Personally I have had some problems with my bebox occasionally seizing up (over heating/over loading) but I seem to be the only person with this problem, none of my friends have it, and it is easily solved by power cycling the machine anyway.

As far as the service from be is concerned I have no issues, they are always quick to fix any problems and the tech support is fantastic, as long as you ring in hours you actually get to talk to someone who knows what theyre doing. (Warning: Phone out of office hours and you get a monkey with a flow chart!)

Highly recommended.

As a small aside, if you happen to be an O2 pay monthly customer, consider using O2's broadband, it uses Bethere's network and is quite a bit cheaper (slightly different packaging options). However if you need a static Ip (or 8) then you need to be on be!

 

[waterproofbob]

I use be still, and the bebox is actually a really nice piece of kit. (see later)

Service is usually good, however just occasionally I have had some service issues but these have always been resolved within a few minutes.

As for the bebox itself it is in essence a standard speedtouch ADSL modem/router/wifi, and makes very little effort in hiding it. It does however work very well. The modem comes with various templates for the different modes of operation and it is easy to setup and configure even for someone with little to no tech savyness.

Personally I have had some problems with my bebox occasionally seizing up (over heating/over loading) but I seem to be the only person with this problem, none of my friends have it, and it is easily solved by power cycling the machine anyway.

As far as the service from be is concerned I have no issues, they are always quick to fix any problems and the tech support is fantastic, as long as you ring in hours you actually get to talk to someone who knows what theyre doing. (Warning: Phone out of office hours and you get a monkey with a flow chart!)

Highly recommended.

As a small aside, if you happen to be an O2 pay monthly customer, consider using O2's broadband, it uses Bethere's network and is quite a bit cheaper (slightly different packaging options). However if you need a static Ip (or 8) then you need to be on be!

what he said and a note from bob

be roxor. have only 3M down this year due to rubbish line but it is stable as you like and you get a fat up pipe.

 

[Iron_fist]

i have had very very few problems with them. Always get email if they are planning work and very seldom end up offline during that time (usually 2-6am so minimal disruption to people with normal sleeping patterns) we're currently paying about £34 for the business service with 8 static IPs ( £10 for the IPs) and considering how horrible our wiring is, the fact that we generally connect at 16\1.9 is rather nice

on to the Bebox it's basically a speedtouch reconfigured (at least ours is) it does the job, however ours sometimes to reconnect at 13\1.9 rather than full speed and we're not totally sure why, but it works well and does the job

the business service has a couple of full time engineers on the phone. we've only had to call once at about 2am as everything went belly up and the guy i spoke to found a problem at their end and had it fixed in less than an hour (i doubt many monkeys with flow charts would be able to offer some obscure settings to try with IPtables as was one of the suggested fixes )

generally i'd say that the be business service is very good and we will definatly be staying with them for the next year!

 

[Ronin Storm]

Thanks for all that feedback, guys.

Do any of you happen to know what their minimum contract length is for their top residential service is? My addled brain last night couldn't find that answer.

 

[VibroAxe]

3 months