Best ISP for a 6 PC Household?

Hey guys,

I've just moved house and had been happily using my TalkTalk 8mb Service in Bolton.

I recently moved to Preston, with my family and we now have 6 PC's running in the house. We really need a good, fast ISP, which allows us all top surf and game at the same time.

Myself and one other member would class ourselves as heavyish users, including Gaming such as WoW and Guild Wars, downloading, surfing, and Xbox Live gaming aswell.

The other members of the house rarely do much more than occasionaly downloading, using MSN and surfing on myspace etc.

We really need to know what the best ISP/Speed we would need, 8mb? 16mb? More?

I've been hearing good things about Be* and their good connection speed, but their sign up page is playing up so i'm not 100% sure if we can actually get it at the new house.

Any comments appreciated,

Ben.

check your exchange at samknows for LLU operators, the ones you are after are Sky/easynet and Be/O2

Hey thanks for the site. Seems i have a fairly limited choice.

Although i know nothing about what these mean, i will post them up as i guess you lot will know more!

ADSL - YES
SDSL - YES
LLU -YES

ADSL Staus and Max Staus Enabled

Virgin Media Yes
02/Be Yes
C&W Bulldog Yes
Orange Yes
Talk Talk
Tiscal (urgh no thanks)
OFCOM Market 3

Recent History

Exchange HistorySubscribe to RSS Feed
09/11/2008 BT Wholesale WBC has set an enablement date of 31/03/2011 for the Fulwood exchange
17/02/2008 Tiscali has enabled the Fulwood exchange for their LLU TV service
27/04/2007 Be Unlimited has enabled the Fulwood exchange for their service
02/02/2007 Be Unlimited has updated the enablement date for the Fulwood exchange to 30/04/2007 (Was previously 31/05/2007)
13/01/2007 Be Unlimited has updated the enablement date for the Fulwood exchange to 31/05/2007 (Was previously 30/04/2007)
19/10/2006 BT have set a target date of Q3 2009 for the switch to 21CN for the Fulwood exchange
13/10/2006 Be Unlimited has set an enablement date of 30/04/2007 for the Fulwood exchange
04/08/2006 A change in Bulldog data source has found that they do not have presence at this exchange yet
03/06/2006 Bulldog has set an enablement date of 31/08/2006 for the Fulwood exchange


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Be* is the one to go with then? (Why is it called 02/Be?)

Ben

Because O2 use Be's network for llu connections.

Remember the speed you get will be based on your location and line quality. So 16mbps might not be possible, even 8mbps.

Hopefully your one of lucky ones to have great line stats that would allow 20mbps.

As gzero says. In fact Be existed and O2 bought them in order to get into the market.

It would be worth having a look in the Be or O2 forum here for a recent post by MKD. Click the tinyurl link in his sig and you get to his excellent comaprison of the two. Athough it is the same underlying network, the packages and pricing are quite different, and unless you are really close to the exchange I think O2 is usually cheaper and just as good.

However Be lets you use fastpath for gaming on the top two packages, and you can alter the target noise margin yourself.

Re "a fairly limited choice" don't forget that BT Wholesale ADSL means nearly all ISPs in the country. Looks like all you are missing is Sky/UKOnline LLU.

But Be/O2 seems the choice.

Well thanks for all the quick replies, i'm back at my grandparents house now, and i have the net here, so i was wondering is there a particular site i should use or if one even exists to see line stats around the area? Exchange distance and what not?

Apparently, according to one site, the fastest my exchange supports its 5mb, but at my old house, i was told the same and still recieved around the 7mb mark, so i don't know which site is the most reliable?

You won't be able to tell, until you get adsl activated and a modem plugged in. www.samknows.com could tell you the distance(straight line) between the house and the nearest exchange, but for adsl2+, distance isn't as big an issue as it used to be with adsl MAX.

If you know the neighbours there, you could ask them what they normally get (disguise it with a few other questions :P like by asking if they used Sky or cable, real detective work xD).

Thanks again,

checking on Samknows, and noting down the street the exchange is on i had to just use a map to work out the distance, and i beleive im under a mile away, at about 0.8, great huh?

My only qualm is some of the reviews for Be/02, they seem to have had some bad service reviews recently, but i guess you have to bite the bullet with as alot of the companies are abit secretive relesing details of their service and speeds and the sort.

I beleive they are P2P friendly, downloading via uTorrent or BitLord etc isn't blocked is it?

And if any Be* users live around Preston, would they mind posting their views?

That 'fairly limited choice' is substantially better than the one I have. Care to swap?

Also, Ben here again

im on the LCFUL exchange in Fulwood, if anyone else is! Just giving you lot some extra info, see if there is anything you know about it, whatever it is, it will likely be more than i know!