Pipex gone down the pan, Entanet/ADSL24 any good?

[Ronin Storm]

I've been fighting uphill with Freedom2Surf, who are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pipex. For a good couple of months now they've been showing intermittent extreme latency for 5-10 minutes at a time at random points during the day. It started off as 4000ms spikes. Now it's gone to 6000ms spikes and the frequency is up from 2-3 times (experienced) in one day to 5-8 times in one day. Basically, they're down the spout and becoming useless for gaming. And they've stopped responding to support emails too. Bollocks to them.

Been scouting around. ADSL24, a VISP of Entanet, seem to get decent reviews and (currently) have a good service for a reasonable price -- currently paying £23.99 pcm for a 50GB cap, could scale that down to £19.99 pcm for a 30GB cap with ADSL24. Thing is that loads of people seem be fleeing the big networks for these smaller ones, often via VISPs, and I'm concerned that I'll move and three months down the road it'll be crap again.

Wondering about Fast.co.uk as an alternative but, for a comparable service, I'd be paying £33.99 pcm (40GB cap) and I'd lose my static IP (dubious advantage, I know). They also get good reviews and, I figure, that their prices will put the masses off.

Anyone got experiences of ADSL24 or Fast.co.uk? Any other ISP recommendations? If they're a big DSL name (e.g. Tiscali, BT, Pipex) I'm not going to touch them without extremely high recommendations.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

All I'm going to say is ntl. Tbone and myself have always had ntl broadband, and no problems hitherto. Fast, low latencies, and I think the prices are reasonable. I'm not sure if you need to get the phone and TV services as well though ... hmmmm.

It's a big company, and I'm not entirely sure where public opinion lies on the satisfaction scale, but tbone and myself have been relatively problem free when we compare to mates with BT, Tiscali etc.

 

[waterproofbob]

I just changed to "be there" in January its £24 24Meg unlimited and has been awesome from getting the transfer sorted to speed, they have a forum support as well as the usual ticket type and i have only praise for them. I'm about a mile/mile and a half from my exchange and am getting about 13/14 down 1.25 up.
the worst ping i've had to deal with since christmas was 30. I have about 6 other ppl who will also vouch for them as well. If you want a static IP then its £4 a month.

Also back at home have NTL, as tets says its awesomely stable and when i'm home the speed is less but the latencies are low and very stable. Of the two i'd go for the 'be' tho everytime.

 

[PsiSoldier]

All I can say is... Steer clear of BT! We've been having crap with them for over a year now.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Yeah, thanks for that guys. Unfortunately, BeThere isn't available for me yet. Their site claims they might be enabling near me in March but I'm moving house not too long after that so I'm looking for a quicker fix.

I did okay with NTL in the past. How's their upload these days? It was a pretty small pipe upwards, in comparison to DSL, IIRC and I use my home connection for work so that upload bandwidth is really important to me.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Oh, the upload pipe is still nonsensical. I think they have a cat stuck up there or something ... But anyway, I wasn't too bothered because I don't upload on a regular basis. If upload is your thing then you might be best to shy away from it after all.

 

[SgtFury]

I got Sky Broadband, since we already got the Tv package. Paying £5 a month for 8GB with 40GB cap and the changeover from Eclipse was flawless.

 

[Piacular]

I'm with Nildram, bit expensive. With occasional disconnects, so there are better choices out there

 

[Ronin Storm]

'round the various DSL forums, Sky gets panned pretty badly so I think I'll steer clear. I'm looking for a pure broadband package, anyhow, as I have no TV (disposed of my old one in favour of a widescreen TFT monitor for my X360).

Thanks for the thought though!

 

[DeZmond]

Upload is only 256k on 2mb, and 386k on 4 or 10mb. And a dynamic ip. Having said that, its a pretty reliable system, and you'd have an internal contact ...
Beyond that, i'd just say that with any provider, you get what you pay for without a doubt.

 

[thatbloke]

I got Sky Broadband, since we already got the Tv package. Paying £5 a month for 8GB with 40GB cap and the changeover from Eclipse was flawless.

when you work in Sky Broadband's order status department (like i do - we deal with delayed orders) this is a nice thing to hear

And i'll be honest with you... problems DO happen, but in about 80% of the cases I deal with this is due to a fault at the telephone exchange. which we have no control over.

It just seems strange to me that the cable that connects the customer to the system in the exchange can suddenly become faulty when moving from BT's service to ours

 

[Cookalarcha]

Well i have pipex and havnt had any of those major problems of latence i only get burts of high latence when DL stuff while playin a game. the only thong i have noticed is that the loading of web pages gets a but slower in the afternoons. Other than that no effect to my gaming yet.......

 

[Ronin Storm]

Well i have pipex and havnt had any of those major problems

That makes it smell like an issue with one or more Pipex POPs, then. Either way, it's totally fookered for me. Interesting that it's good for you, though!

 

[elDiablo]

At home I have had Pipex since home broadband was a good option (at least 7 years), with good service (internet and customer). However, they recently took over Bulldog, so I ordered Bulldog for my uni home (as some of you probably know). 40 working days after they received my order (which was a month after they took the connection fee out of my account), I still had no internet. So I cancelled my order, and got Virgin.net, which arrived in under 2 weeks. 2 months later, and I was still getting mail from Bulldog telling me the details I gave them for my connection was incorrect (which was on of the first problems I had with them, and sorted it out in the first 2 week).

Therefore, I think Pipex is trying to own far too many other companies, and not allocating people correctly. My home Pipex connection is still fine, btw. It just seems to be the companies they are taking over...

 

[Haven]

I'm still with Zen. They are not longer very competitive on price (I'm getting knocked off unlimited usage to 100GB/month in a few days for the same price). Latency and speed measurements have always been good and the old adage of "you get what you pay for" pretty much applies to them.

Like I say, not the cheapest (so avoid if cost is an issue) but hassle free and good service.

 

[DeZmond]

Funny you think about switching on the same day as this article is printed: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6385631.stm

Makes you wonder why ofcom are dragging their feet over VDSL2... I want my 50mbps connection now!

elD makes an interesting point about Virgin.net - you might want to consider their ADSL service - http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/noncable.html - we're always getting told at work about how good their customer satisfaction is and so on (presumably to motivate us to do better), and it's an unlimited connection. Don't know about upload though, but I'm next at work on Saturday and I'll try having a dig around for you to see what the ADSL upload figures are like.

 

[elDiablo]

No! Don't go with Virgin.net! They are fast to activate, and very friendly and helpful, however as soon as it gets to 6pm (until 11pm) weekdays and pretty much all day weekends, I get pings of >300. On good days... Sometimes it's nearer 1000. And they don't like you streaming video in the peak hours either (6-11pm), and give you a tiny 40Gb limit/month!

Nice and friendly, but NASTY!

 

[DeZmond]

They say it's unlimited, but I wasn't aware of those issues. Oh well, cheers for that. It's so difficult to choose a broadband provider these days... argh so much choice!

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

It's so difficult to choose a broadband provider these days... argh so much choice!

Subway-Syndrome, mate. Subway-Syndrome. I definitely need a broadband service without having to reconnect our BT line, and not from ntl (I would, but they claim that it's impossible to have more than one cable modem connection in the same house).

 

[elDiablo]

They say it's unlimited, as long as you agree to their fair usage policy (which a lot of ISPs are doing now, and I hate them for it). In the FUP, they say (in a very paraphrased way), "Use over 40Gb/month and we'll have a look at your usage. Use lots more than that, and expect to get your bandwidth limited. Use video streaming during peak times, and we think you're taking more bandwidth than you should be to be fair to our other consumers."

Which sucks if you have a 9-5 job, and want to look at YouTube when you get home... Or play games... Or use the internet...