Market 1, Wingham Exchange: ISP/Broadband Queries

Hello Guys,

I am new to the forum but I have been lurking around long enough to know that this is the place to go if you want excellent advice

My question is basically this: What ISP to go for and how best to handle the low speeds?

I have provided the following pictures and below I state some of the things that I would like to see from my ISP/broadband. (Also, we are moving to our new house in three weeks time. I have used the present owner's telephone number to fill in details about broadband availability etc.)

Hm... Couldnt get the pics to show so here are some links instead:

BT Wholesale

Dslzoneuk

Ispreview

Samknows

As you can see, we are limited to Market 1, so no LLUs and stuff. We are about 2.6km from the exchange (I think). I take it that this means that we will have to live with slow speeds... I will now list some things that might be useful for you guys.

(1) We would ideally like to have a phone line as well, preferbaly with some kind of unlimited evenings/weekend calls.

(2) We are willing to pay about £40 per month for phone/broadband (this can be stretched if needed).

(3) Preferably on as short a contract as possible and certainly, if it can be avoided, anything like a 12 month contract. (BT only offer 12 month contracts, right?)

(4) I do not know anything about routers, but we are willing to splash out on a good router if that is needed. If would be great if someone could give any tips of nice routers and what they will cost.

(5) Stability and reliability is very, very important for us. I understand that the speed of the connection will be slow, no matter what, but it must be reliable. My girlfriend works from home so she must have access to e-mail and other things more or less at all times

(6) We do download quite alot now (music/film) and we stream a lot too (Spotify/I-player, ITV player etc.). There will be a certain amount of gaming too (MMORPGs) as well as Skyping. And then of course the general browsing and stuff. This means that we are after a sizeable download allowance per month.


I know that this is probably much to ask given the poor connection that we will have but any kind of advice regarding what ISP to go for would be highly appreciated. Any tips/tricks of how to make the connection as fast as possible would also be great

Sorry for such a long, first post here. I hope it is reasanbly clear though.

Thanks in advance!

Edited by Voices (Tue 01-Feb-11 12:56:20)

2.6km if by road can give you 6Meg on a line that has no extensions etc About 3.5km line here and 45dB attenuation and sync at 6.4Meg on ADSL, other line manages 8.1Meg on ADSL2+

The key is the actual line length which none of those will accurately will give you. How about the Wireless option? http://www.vfast.co.uk/

With ADSL until you have the line active anything else is really a guess

Thanks for the fast reply.

I had completely missed the wireless option (I saw that it was available but for some strange reason I thought it was [censored]), but I have no done some research. Seems very promising indeed!

Am still curious about my ADSL options though.

Cheers.

£40 gets you someone like Zen (50GB allowance) plus phone line rental off who you choose.
Others can give more allowance at about same pricing, but some use overnight allowances for this.

Those that claim unlimited for under £25 in your area are likely to be congested now, or will be in the next few months.

Avoid o2, Sky, TalkTalk their service on IPStream exchanges is generally poor.

How about IDnet ? Home Max
30GB peak (9am - midnight) & 60GB off-peak (midnight - 9am) download included (just £1.02 per GB thereafter)
Unlimited uploads
http://www.idnet.net/solutions/home/broadband/homema...

combined with Line Rental and unlimited anytime landline calls £42.87 Monthly
eve/weekend calls

or £38.79 Monthly with Anytime Light inc 5 hours of calls (I'm on that phone option).

Monthly contract. Other permutations at http://www.idnet.net/solutions/home/broadbandphone/d...

Edited by yarwell (Tue 01-Feb-11 16:03:11)

In essence I agree with what the previous posters say.

However I think so long as you go into it with your eyes open there is another option which could be your best solution.

The phone side should be little different from the others. The broadband has a high allowance, and would either suit you fine or be quite poor at times of the day that are important to you. This is a complex subject I can explain in more detail in a dedicated post if you are interested in this path.

As the broadband is only on a monthly contract, if the performance proved to be inadequate you could easily move it to one of the already suggested ISPs, or a more expensive package with the same ISP but without the above possible problem.

If you did migrate out early on, you could follow it with the phone rental at the end of the initial 12 months.

My suggestion is vivaciti, phone line plus one of the Family or Office Allowance packages. Family 30 and Office 45 seem the most popular.

These are Entanet based.

The higher-priced ones are the Surfwise 100 Home or Business, which are Murphx based.

I think it important that your girlfriend obtains her own domain and email package independent of whatever ISP you choose.

That way she/you can migrate to different ISPs without ever having to change email address. For personal use that is highly advantageous, for business almost essential, (and looks far more professional). See this page.

It is not expensive!

My current favourite, partly due to the superb support, is Tsohost, linked to in my sig. The minor drawback with them is that email hosting only comes with a web hosting package, but note that even the lowest package caters for two domains and email for each. (So maybe a domain each, just in case , and one package).

I suggest a setup combining IMAP for normal access, with the included webmail available for access from anywhere including a mobile phone if your broadband is down at any time, or you/she is away from home. That can happen with any ISP.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 01-Feb-11 22:20:55)