New user. ISP recommendations please.

After years of poor line quality precluding ADSL, I'm now told that I can expect broadband, albeit basic, for the first time shortly.
My wish list is:-
1. Line rental included (fed up with BT)
2. Good customer servive (fed up with BT)
3. News server access (do all broadband ISP's have this?)
4. 512 Kb - 1 Mbit max (guess)
5. Monthly download 2GB max (guess)
Cost is not really an issue. I believe you get what you pay for and would rather pay for what I want.
More importantly, personal recommendations would be appreciated.
Nick

Well unless you move to a fully unbundled service like TalkTalk you're going to need a BT line of some sort, even if you don't pay the line rental direct to BT. However by looking at bundles only you're severely limiting your options when it comes to broadband. If you really don't want to pay BT for rental pay it to the Post Office instead and you're leaving your broadband options open.
Newnet Home Lite would be the pick of the bunch for 3GB usage or under. They will give good service, support is UK based and comes with a 1 month contract as standard. They may offer the option of a fixed rate 1Mb line rather than ADSL Max if your line is not great.
ISP newsgroups offerings tend to be very poor if indeed you get them at all; either the retention will be low and/or downloads will be rate limited. Why not consider a premium news service. If your downloads are infrequent paying a monthly subscription does not make a lot of sense so I use a block account from Usenet-News so I buy a 100GB block for $24 and that can last for months so it is a very cost effective way of going about things. If you only want text newsgroups Google is as good as any.
Another good one to consider is Entanet; they offer a 3GB peak/30GB off peak product at �16.50 a month, but they definitely offer 1Mb fixed speed lines and a text-only news server. Like Newnet they have 1 month contracts, and excellent UK based service. You might read about peak time slowdowns on Entanet but if you have a 1Mb service you will never notice the difference. Entanet resellers include ADSL24, UKFSN, Vivacity and many others; they don't sell direct to the public.

Regards,
Steve

@sjr

You don't leave much for the rest of us to say there do you! .

To the OP only one thing to add. Get ISP-independent email right from the start - in fact before it! (So that you have a decent working address for communication with the ISP in the sign-up process and after).

Not Hotmail. Googlemail is free and reasonably good as long as you expect someone to record everything you ever say (IMO). Best of all is to get a paid-for domain and email to go with it - I use Purple Cloud at �7.50 every two years for the domain and �5 per year for email to go with it - click in my sig. There are others - here is a current thread.

The problems with ISP email are they are often just a necessary (evil) add-on and they can be unreliable. Also you have hassle informing all your contacts when you migrate. With a domain, (as long as you pick a decent registrar), it's yours as long as you pay for it.

I really can't get on with google mail; unless I'm missing something you can't create folders to organise your mail, and I like folders. Search is all very well if you can remember what you're searching for. I'm probably going to sign up for a GMX account as a backup as it looks very nice.

Regards,
Steve

I find all webmail cumbersome for everyday use. However, Purple Cloud provides POP3/SMTP, IMAP and Webmail together with an 0845 non-account dial-up internet service, so all needs are covered.

I only mention googlemail whenever I recommend ISP-independence because if I don't I always get 2 or 3 people jumping on me pointing out that it is free. However, I believe it does have POP3/SMTP as well as webmail.

To many it seems that "free" means "the only one worth having".

I agree. GMX has all those features as well but at least it looks like a mail app on the web whereas gmail looks like something from 1995.

Regards,
Steve

sjr,thanks for that, good gen, just what I wanted.
As an aside, where an ISP says "BT line required", I guess all they mean
is not cable, not talktalk etc. The fact that line rental is actually paid
to someone other than BT presumably makes no difference.
Nick

Correct, as long as it isn't cable or fully unbundled like TalkTalk you should be fine.
And thinking about the newsgroups, if you're only downloading 2GB a month total, a block of 100GB from usenet-news at $24 (roughly �14) will literally last you years.

Regards,
Steve

Edited by sjr (Thu 28-Feb-08 11:18:03)