WBC with short term contract?

I've been looking to leave Enta for a while now, as the ALT and 'black mark' system has become very annoying (especially on the Glasgow interconnect, which always seems to be in the top few most congested).

This is my exchange: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NSLNG - I've been waiting for Be/O2 for almost a year, but they're still not available here. This is part of the reason I want an ISP with a short-term contract (6months max at a stretch)- so I can easily jump over if and when Be/O2 do sort things out here.

I also need an peak monthly allowance at least as good as Entas - i.e 30gb monthly download during the day.

I liked the look of the Vivaciti Surfwise 75gb product - but it isn't ADSL2+ - meaning I'd lose the 1meg upload I have on WBC - something I don't really want to give up now.

The one I've found which seems to suit my needs is the IDNet Home Pro service. However, they don't seem to have the whole weekend of off-peak allowances which could be a problem. Are there any similar alternatives that I could check out?

So, in summary:
*<6 month contract
*30gb peak usage at least
*WBC/ADSL2+ for 1meg upload (No LLU available)
*£25ish a month
(Asking a lot, isnt it? )

Cheers

Matt at Xilo let slip that they are looking at reselling lines over CPW/Opal. That would give you an LLU option. No hints on timescales yet, but if he wanted a guinea pig, maybe you'd be desperate enough.

I think Eclipse (Kingston Comms) are using WBC (or something). They have a Home Pro 24/1Mbps 50Gb Daytime. This has unmetered uploads and claims free overnight downloads. There is no info on what times is free... (anywhere on their site). It you don't take their router and pay the £10 setup then it should be a one month contract. Be warned however that their older products atleast are now routed via Tiscali and that's not a recommendation.

Kevin

H: Eclipse Flex 512 - Living in fear of their NAF LLU Suffering from their heavy daytime throttling.
(Was Vispa Dialup)
M: PlusNet BBYW-1 monthly6.5Mbs - They went mad the month I joined

IDNet -

They don't charge a setup fee nor do they charge a disconnection fee if you leave after just 30 days.

I had to use IDNet as a "Bunnyhop" between O2 LLU and BE LLU, as O2 won't disable Interleaving on my line and BE don't accept inbound migrations from O2.

So I'm with IDNet at the moment (have been for a week now) and go over to BE on Tuesday.

The last week with IDNet has been great - I have a 15,000K IP Profile and throughput is always within 500Kbit/sec of the 15,000K IP Profile. Pings are great, too, at 13ms FastPath or 21ms Interleaved.

Definitely worth considering as a short term solution until the Xilo products based on TalkTalk/Opal LLU become available.

_____________________________________________
IDNet HomePlus (On my way to BE for FastPath)
Speed Test
Downstream: 17,109K 24dB Loss 7.0dB SNR
Upstream:1089K 12.0dB Loss 6.0dB SNR
http://www.techbroadband.net

So that's WBMC?

Encouraging to see a good report of it.

Bob's broadband help site: www.robertos.me.uk
ISPs history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 20-Sep-09 23:11:23)

In reply to a post by krands:

I've been looking to leave Enta for a while now, as the ALT and 'black mark' system has become very annoying (especially on the Glasgow interconnect, which always seems to be in the top few most congested).

This is my exchange: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NSLNG - I've been waiting for Be/O2 for almost a year, but they're still not available here. This is part of the reason I want an ISP with a short-term contract (6months max at a stretch)- so I can easily jump over if and when Be/O2 do sort things out here.

I also need an peak monthly allowance at least as good as Entas - i.e 30gb monthly download during the day.

I liked the look of the Vivaciti Surfwise 75gb product - but it isn't ADSL2+ - meaning I'd lose the 1meg upload I have on WBC - something I don't really want to give up now.

The one I've found which seems to suit my needs is the IDNet Home Pro service. However, they don't seem to have the whole weekend of off-peak allowances which could be a problem. Are there any similar alternatives that I could check out?

So, in summary:
*<6 month contract
*30gb peak usage at least
*WBC/ADSL2+ for 1meg upload (No LLU available)
*£25ish a month
(Asking a lot, isnt it? )

Cheers

Have another look on Samknows - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!!!

_____________________________________________
IDNet HomePlus (On my way to BE for FastPath)
Speed Test
Downstream: 17,109K 24dB Loss 7.0dB SNR
Upstream:1089K 12.0dB Loss 6.0dB SNR
http://www.techbroadband.net

In reply to a post by izools:

Have another look on Samknows - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!!!

Haha, how about that for weird timing! Although both their online checkers still say they're not available yet - hopefully that will be updated in the next few days. I'll phone them tomorrow and see what they say.

God I hope thats right! Anyway, cheers for the other info guys. If the Be/O2 activation isn't true, I think I'll join IDNet while waiting for Xilo to offer something decent through CPW.

Thanks again.

Careful how you sign up to O2 or Be!

Normally there are cashbacks of £50+ available as long as you go through Quidco or TopCashBack. No point in phoning unless the online system rejects you.

Currently through Quidco it is cheaper to go for O2 Premium than Standard for the first year, though that may change at midnight tonight. But you can sign up without a MAC and supply it later. O2 is in general far cheaper than Be.

Make sure you clear cookies before the ordering expedition.

See MKD's costs page for full details.

Bob's broadband help site: www.robertos.me.uk
ISPs history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 21-Sep-09 08:36:04)

I think a lot depends on how the backhaul and BT capacity are provisioned. IDnet must have got the right amount for their customers. The great benefit of WBMC is that you can get benefits as all customers usage is balanced off against a single point of connection.

Enta really didn't buy enough of each for their transition, possibly they could not afford it with their package/user characteristics. They also lost the trade of on their customer mix which is why originally they had some nodes that were quiet all day and others that were quiet in the evening/weekend. With centrals that inherently balanced out.

Kevin

H: Eclipse Flex 512 - Living in fear of their NAF LLU Suffering from their heavy daytime throttling.
(Was Vispa Dialup)
M: PlusNet BBYW-1 monthly6.5Mbs - They went mad the month I joined

In reply to a post by KevinR:

I think Eclipse (Kingston Comms) are using WBC (or something). They have a Home Pro 24/1Mbps 50Gb Daytime. This has unmetered uploads and claims free overnight downloads. There is no info on what times is free... (anywhere on their site).

If you go to this page and hover over the question mark beside "Free overnight usage" it says 11pm to 9am.

Yeah, I'd definitely be going via Quidco. I just called O2 now to see if they had more up to date information than their online checker. The guy said it was still only the Access product available here

I asked if he had any more info about the exchanges enablement, but he said he couldn't give out any information because he wasn't 100% sure.

Argh!

Thanks again for the help