Genealogy Chat

I'm currently with AOL, and am paying out what seems to be a lot of money for a slow, erratic service.

Just wanted to get other peoples' thoughts on who best to change to, and what the best packages are.

For our home internet we've been with Telewest which is now Virgin Media for over 10 years, a totally excellent service. Can't remember the last time it went offline and it's very fast. Free helpline as well with their broadband.

Here's a link that might help you.

http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/packages/

Ron
www.genealogyprinters.com

Ive been with talktalk since they first offered broadband and now I get broadband completely free, just pay for my telephone which includes all calls, including some international ones.

Have a look on Martin Lewis (the money savings guru) website. He also rates talktalk as best buy. But go to talktalks site first, enter your post code to see if you get free broadband. I think nearly all the country does now, but check it out first.

Just avoid BT more elastic band than broadband

Thanks for all your input guys, just need to make a decision now.

Thanks for your link Ron - have bookmarked for future reference!

We are with AOL; good speed and free telephone calls.

Watch out for TalkTalk since there may be an additional £12 broadband charge if your local exchange is not set up with, I think - Local Loop Unbundling or some strange term like that. Basically it means if the local exchange is not fitted with TalkTalk broadband equipment then you pay for you broadband in addition to the telephone line.
However I have been with them for several years and I am happy with them.
Watch out for statements like "Broadband speeds of up to 8Mb" or so since I doubt if most people ever get the maximum speeds advertised.
Paul

I think about 85% of people get the free broadband from talktalk now, as I said, feed in your post code to see if that includes you. I had about 18 months before my local exchange was updated - but I live in a semi rural area. My son had broadband free from the very beginning as he lived in a city.

Ive had no trouble with them at all.

Hi blossom, do not on any account go with talk talk, they are a terrible broadband. Go with Virgin, we have had it now for about 18mths. I was with talk talk, it was mostly off the air. Go virgin !!! Chris Mac

We are with Virgin Media and we're very happy with the service. We do pay quite a large amount monthly but we get absolutely everything all in - Top speed broadband with unlimited downloads, all channels (except adult channels) including Sky sports and movies, V+ box and extra box in the dining room, telephone line and all calls including overseas calls which I use on a regular basis as I have a sister in Florida and another sister in New Zealand.

We find the service and equipment very reliable.

Kath. x

I am with AOL - £9.99 a month, but it is appalling and I am looking to switch - my dil says go to Virgin which does look good. With AOL I am losing my connection up to twenty times a day, sometimes two or three times in five minutes!!!!

I also had a nightmare with AOL, paying good money for terrible service. I switched to Sky about 18 months ago, pay no money apart from the set uo cost (£30 I think), and have not had a single problem.

Paul is quite right warning about download speeds. A lot of ISP's advertise 8mb per second, even 16mb per second, but that is no good if your phone line can't support it. Mine for example will only support 1.6mb per second. Sky check it for you, I don't know about the others, but you can check yourself by going to http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/ where you just click once and see your result in a few seconds.

Duncan

Hi Duncan

Is mine rubbish, it's 367 kbps for upload, and 666 kbps for download?

I'm with the post office. Have to say it hasn't let me down once, but the speeds do seem to me, compared others, slow.

I cant see how talktalk could be rubbish and off air as Ive not had a problem in 3 years. More likely your local server was down.

There are a lot more complaints re Virgin than talktalk even though talktalk is about the biggest set up now.

Where Virgin has the advantage over the others is that you are connected by a fibre optic cable, this cable is far superior to any other internet delivery method, BT and all the others do not have this, they still mostly use wires for their connections.

Our home download speed is 7 megabytes per second

Ron
www.genealogyprnters.com

Stay away from Orange

Thanks everyone for your input - lots of different opinions there.

I've just done the broadband test and I have 6060 for download and 367 for upload - not sure if that's good or not!

Will now have to go away and research costs etc.

If that's 6.060 then that's pretty good and will be plenty fast enough for general internet use.

Ron
www.genealogyprinters.com

My speed with Talktalk is about 3.5 MB and has never reached the 8MB quoted as the maximum possible speed. However for general surfing it does not present a problem. If I could get the 6.06MB you could get then I would be extremely happy.
Paul

Many of us cant get virgin optic though Ron.