Moving into new house, looking for a decent ISP.

Hello, new poster here in need of some ISP advice!

I'll try to keep this as short as I can: I'm a student moving into a new property looking for a decent ISP. After looking through a few other threads I noticed people asking others to use this service to pinpoint ISP's available in their area, these are my results.

What I'm looking for is an unlimited package(whatever that means these days *sigh*), not that concerned about speed, but I would like a minimum of around 20Mbit. I'm a moderately heavy user, quite a bit of torrenting(nothing uh, illegal, naturally)/using services like Steam to download games(additionally, I'll be sharing the flat with another person, so the usage goes up quite a bit, too) but most importantly, I play online games and would like a stable connection. In my last flat I was using Sky Unlimited Broadband and was 100% satisfied with it (if that's an indication of the kind of service I'm looking for), unfortunately Sky Unlimited is not available in my new address. Cost doesn't matter that much, but I'd like something around 30-35 pounds or less(including line rental).

Also, I'm not going to be moving into my new flat until around the 22nd of September, but I would like to call somebody up within the next few days and arrange everything so I can be online as soon as possible, hopefully within a week of arriving. An ISP that would allow this (e.g, being able to send the router to another address as I won't be there when it arrives) would be preferable. After a bit of (bad) research, Virgin unlimited 50MBit or a package from BE seem to be the most appropriate, although I did have a bad experience with Virgin tech support last year while ISP searching, so that's that.

Any help is much appreciated, thanks.

Ps: if it makes any difference, I am and will be abroad until the 22nd.

Be would be the clear choice on unlimited/unthrottled. Problem is the speed you get will depend (principally) on the distance of your house from the local BT exchange.

Virgin would give the speed but they may severely throttle P2P applications (I'm not sure you'd have to check in the virgin cable forums).

BT Infinity might suit if available at your new house.

If you drill down from https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/Community/B... you can get an ADSL estimate according to your new houses phone number (if known) or address or postcode. That'll give an idea of the speeds you may get on Be.

What about contract length? Or can you afford to pay it off if necessary on a 12/18-month contract?

In reply to a post by john2007:

Be would be the clear choice on unlimited/unthrottled. Problem is the speed you get will depend (principally) on the distance of your house from the local BT exchange.

Virgin would give the speed but they may severely throttle P2P applications (I'm not sure you'd have to check in the virgin cable forums).

BT Infinity might suit if available at your new house.

If you drill down from https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/Community/B... you can get an ADSL estimate according to your new houses phone number (if known) or address or postcode. That'll give an idea of the speeds you may get on Be.

Bt infinity won't be available until December in my area, according to their website. I looked up the ADSL checker you posted and it seems speeds up to 50Mb are available. About the throttling: I wouldn't mind if p2p were to be throttled for a while, but would it affect my online gaming?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What about contract length? Or can you afford to pay it off if necessary on a 12/18-month contract?

I'll be staying there for more than 12/18 months so that is not an issue, unless of course the service is so bad that I'd be forced to pay it off.

ISP that use traffic management , prioritise gaming packets whilst throttling P2P .So to put it bluntly Traffic management is the online gamers friend .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What about contract length? Or can you afford to pay it off if necessary on a 12/18-month contract?

I'll be staying there for more than 12/18 months so that is not an issue, unless of course the service is so bad that I'd be forced to pay it off.

Have you thought about going for a one month rolling contract, then changing to Infinity when it becomes available in your area?

In reply to a post by Invictel:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What about contract length? Or can you afford to pay it off if necessary on a 12/18-month contract?

I'll be staying there for more than 12/18 months so that is not an issue, unless of course the service is so bad that I'd be forced to pay it off.

Have you thought about going for a one month rolling contract, then changing to Infinity when it becomes available in your area?

I could, I guess, but it would be more expensive. Also, doesn't BT throttle everything? Or will that not matter with their 'infinity' package?

In reply to a post by alex_90:

Also, doesn't BT throttle everything?

Only p2p and usenet I think.