Broadband with short term contract

Can anyone recommend me an ISP that does landline ADSL Broadband with a short term contract? By short term I mean anything up to a 6 month contract.

Download speeds do not matter to me, usage does though. Ideally unlimited usage but willing to go down to as little as 40Gb per month.

Would also prefer UK based call centres.

I'm migrating from AOL after 2 years of good service with them (the Free Laptop deal). I'm only moving because I want a higher usage or a short term contract or both.

I've got my MAC key already. I just need to make a decision on who I should migrate the broadband to now. So any suggestions?

Check your exchange for any LLU providers > > > SamKnows

Samknows says that ADSL, ADSL Max, 21CN WBC, SDSL, LLU and Cable services are all available in my area.

It says that AOL, Be/O2, Bulldog, Orange, Sky, TalkTalk and Tiscali are all available as LLU operators in my area.

It also says that my area is in Market 3 where four or more operators provide broadband services at my exchange where services have been deregulated.

So any recommendations?

Do you have a budget?

Well O2 or Be LLU connections are what I would go for, the downside for you is that O2 LLU is a 12 month contract and Be offer 12 month contracts on their products with two of them available on 3 month contracts at more expense.
Don't go near the O2 Access product as it isn't a LLU package, it is oversubscribed with poor evening speeds at the moment.
The service they offer is as near to unlimited as you will get for the money.

I would ask on the forum here for further advice.

........... O2

........... Be

What sort of connection speed do you get? Line stats would be best.

My thinking is as Apprentice, except if you sign up through a cashback site for O2 Standard (LLU, ADSL2+ capped at 8Mbps, unlimited usage) you can get a full year for £100, or Premium (up to 24Mbps) for £130. If you have an O2 mobile it is much cheaper.

See MKD's pricing document.

So if you jack it in after 6 months Standard will have cost £17pm. If you stay longer or do a free house move even better.

Non-O2, vivaciti have some good products, but not their family range!

Line stats as requested from a D-Link DSL-2640B ADSL2+ Modem/Router:

Mode: G.DMT
Type: Interleave
Line Coding: Trellis On
Status: No defect

Downstream Upstream
Rate (Kbps): 4928 448

SNR Margin (dB): 9.0 27.0
Attenuation (dB): 39.0 24.0
Output Power (dBm): 11.8 19.8

The budget is £20 per month.

The connection will be shared amongst 5 people. We want to use the connection for normal web browsing, youtube/daily motion, BBC iPlayer and PS3 online gaming so you can see why we want unlimited use or as many gigabytes as possible (40+ per month).

A few points there.

First, that is a pretty poor connection speed for the attenuation. I would expect well over 6Mbps, possibly approaching 8Mbps.

The likely candidates are the presence of the ring wires for the extensions; the use of a plug-in phone extension to get from the socket to the filter and router; and/or builder-installed sub-standard extension cabling.

Have a look at my Troubleshooting section, in particular the Ring/Bell Wire and Miscellaneous Nasties pages.

If you can get the connection up to the area I suggest, then O2 Premium with the cashback I suggest could get you a speed between 10 and 11Mbps connection, actual download possibly approaching 1MB(yte)ps.

If you don't fancy the 12-month contract and writing off the remaining months if you have to, then Be have rolling 3-month contracts on Unlimited (which is basically the same service as O2 Premium), working out (with cashback) at £19.10pm.

Vivaciti will be able to supply a service with similar speeds to O2/Be on a monthly contract but I think it would be the expensive LLU 75 not the cheaper LLU Unlimited, as you don't mention C & W in your list for your exchange.

Bulldog was in the list so that would be available for our LLU unlimited service on a monthly contract.

Bulldog/C&W was mentioned on the samknows website for my exchange.

I just saw a deal from PlusNet. 20 Meg speed, 80GB usage, no contract for £11.99 per month for the first 3 months then £15.99 after that. So is PlusNet any good?

So far we've established that Be, Vivaciti and PlusNet do short term contracts all with varying prices.

Be do a deal for £20.43 per month on a 3 month contract with 24 meg speed and unlimited usage. Vivaciti do a deal for £17.04 per month on a 1 month contract with 24 meg speed and unlimited usage. And then there is PlusNet (as above).

So which is the best deal out of these three ISPs and which one is the most reliable? I'm sort of leaning towards going for either Vivaciti or Be.