Who to chose?

Afternoon

I've just moved from South Africa to Oxford and into my new flat in OX1. I've been looking thru all the discussions and been asking around and from what I gather, Virgin seems like the ISP I should go with.

We have a landline in the flat but I do not want to use a landline phone as I have my mobile so I want to avoid having to pay for that if I can. I should only be using between 10 - 50gigs (20 - 25 on average I guess) per month and not a heavy gamer so speed is not too important, however should I wanna play something like company of heroes online, I dont really wanna be lagging too much. I do however play a lot of online poker so I need a reliable connection.

Basically I just want someone to tell me who the most reliable and best priced ISP is. The more people I talk to, the more everyone says Virgin, but Virgin didnt get great reviews on the site here.

Any suggestions as who you would sign up with now if you were a new customer?

If you pop your postcode into:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

It will give you your exchange. Let us know which exchange, and we can help to make a more informed decision. I assume it's this one, but please confirm. By the way, you have to pay landline rental if you want broadband on the landline.

Personally I use Plusnet for rental, call package and broadband (extra, which is 60GB peaktime per month allowance, and is reasonable for all uses). The whole thing costs about £30 per month assuming I don't make international or 0871 type calls. You may want to consider international calls in your decision making, if you still keep in touch with S. Africa.

Like I said, find out your exchange. My setup is ADSLmax, but you ought to get faster than that if I've guessed your exchange. A fibre RFS date (September) is imminent.

Assuming its that exchange

you've got pretty much every major ISP available

but for something cheap

probably virgins 10mb service would be fine enough.

yeah my exchange will be this one: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/SMOF

I'm not too bothered with international calls as its usually just skype and nothing else. The virgin 10mb line was actually what I've been looking it. Think it will do the trick but pretty much just asking here to make sure and get some other opinions

thanks guys

If you want a cheap deal then Orange home and broadband is probably the best value - especially if you use Quidco offers - but you do need to be an Orange mobile customer and its a minimum 18month contract. The offer here gives £150 cashback and a £20 HMV voucher:

http://www.quidco.com/orange-home-broadband/#offers

You also get 3 months free broadband, and unlimited evening and weekend calls.

So basically taking into account the offers, it costs less than £7.50pm for home phone line rental with free offpeak calls and upto 20meg broadband with no download limits. From your postcode I reckon you would get at least 10meg speed but probably higher.

If you do decide to go with Virgin, then quidco.com are doing £150 cashback on any ANY cable package (broadband, or TV, or both) for the next 7 days. Orange is still the cheaper deal though (providing you have an Orange mobile and are happy with an 18mth contract)

Thanks Spacemanc for the info. Never knew about quidco.com until now.
Not really interested in a 18month contract and not currently an Orange customer :/

Also, I've been pricing around and it seems that there a couple of fees that I really want to avoid (even though I doubt I can) Like for example: I already have a phoneline in the house but not sure if its activated or connected to anyone. When I chose a package from SKy or BT or Virgin, they all want to charge me between £30-£40 to 'change' the landline to their provider. Is there anyway to avoid that and any way to avoid actually having to pay for a phoneline rental as I really am not going to have a landline phone in my flat?

Otherwise it looks like I'm just gonna have to pay for these things and go with Virgin

Thanks

Edited by deleted (Tue 02-Aug-11 15:04:56)

If you're using Sky or BT then you need the phone line to carry the ADSL broadband.

Virgin Media cable has no such requirement, and they do standalone broadband.