To Be or not to Be...

Hi All,

I've been with Zen for a long time, who I've been very happy with, but now feeling the lack of bandwidth. Currently on a 1meg service for £30/month with 100Gig cap. So I've been looking around for differnet ISP's and have a couple of friends on Be who haven't had any major problems.

Be are pretty much the only ISP I've seen with the sort of stats i need (I'm sure it's like a broken record on this forum!).... No cap, fast as possible for as little money as possible (not really a problem though), and also no throttling!

Are there any similar alternatives I've missed? Currently using 50-70 Gb/month, but with extra bandwidth I'm sure I'll start using a little more (e.g. watching HD instead of SD stuff).

Also, will my DG834v2 need replacing? Noticed people on here talking about Billion routers. Do they make that much difference performance/stability wise?

Current DG834 stats:
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1152 kbps 288 kbps
Line Attenuation 49 db 15.5 db
Noise Margin 13 db 25 db

Any help greatly appreciated!!!

Paul

Oh, FYI.... never used to have a cap with Zen, but they introduced one as standard a while back i beleive.

Sky Max package perhaps?

Idk

I presume you have checked you can get Be on your exchange? Either ask samknows or put your number into the checker on www.bethere.co.uk.

If you can get Be you can also get O2 LLU, (O2 Standard, Premium or Pro). You do not want O2 Access!

For most users O2 is cheaper than Be and just as good. (O2 own Be and they both run on the Be network, just marketed differently). Be Unlimited and Pro can be better for gamers than the O2 equivalents but otherwise in my opinion O2 is the obvious choice.

MKD produces this excellent comparison. A big difference for many is the lack of inclusive email with Be, but I believe very strongly in ISP-independent email anyway, see my sig.

Both Be and O2 provide a highly compatible router. (TG585v7 or TG585N depending on package). Many Netgear 834x models are even better, but unfortunately the 834v2 is fairly poor with regard to compatability with the O2/Be exchange equipment. (Do you actually mean an 834Gv2? That is what I have assumed, but I don't think the 834v2 is good either. It doesn't matter as you can try the supplied one and yours and take it from there).

Your stats suggest a connection speed of about 6Mbps and an actual download speed of 5Mbps or so. Upload connection speed over 1Mbps and actual over 900kbps. O2 Standard or Be Value seem the options for you, unless the latest MKD costing page shows O2 Premium to be cheaper than Standard for the first year, which it often does.

The "unlimited" is for real. 70GB per month will not even be noticed.