In reply to a post by DickiePoole:

Hi All,

I have just moved into a new house and have adopted my girlfriend's awful Orange broadband, though not too bad considering it's free.

With the MAC code now acquired I have a free choice on a new ISP. We can only get 8mbps and would like to be on a short contract ideally (1-3 months as we're renting). I have looked at fast.co.uk and have read lots of good reports but some more recent ones had said the service was not what it was. I have an Xbox 360 that I play online with, aswell as doing quite a bit of downloading and would ideally like an ISP that offers a static IP for free or at reasonable cost. I am looking to spend no more than the £30 a month mark.

Any suggestions or help people can offer would be greatly appreciated.

I�m with Fast and have been for over 12 months now. I see speeds that are higher and more consistent than with all the other ISP�s I have been with. Also their customer service is legendary, I have contacted them a few times by email and have had replies back within 15 minutes, and I have even had a reply back from an email I sent them at 11:30pm within 15 minutes too!

In my opinion they will bend over backwards for you if you are having problems even when the problem is with BT. Previous to moving to Fast I had been with Zen, now I used to get good download speeds with Zen then suddenly I started to see a big slowdown, after emailing Zen and good the customer service was I just kept getting told that the speeds I were seeing were within the thresholds BT set and as such they could not do anything, I then pointed out that I had only just started getting this slowdown, but I couldn�t get any further with Zen, so in the end I moved to Fast.

When I initially joined Fast after moving from Zen I still got these fluctuating speeds but Fast assured me before moving to them that �as long as you are prepared to work with us on the problem, we will get it sorted out for you�. I emailed them to inform them and after doing some speedtests over a 3 day period they then arranged for an Openreach engineer to come to my home, he done some test etc and said everything was OK. The next day Fast contacted me to see what the engineer had said and then told me that BT had marked the case as closed. I told them that I was still having the same problem and Fast told me that they would reject the decision to close the case and would have it re-opened. After doing more tests they arranged for another engineer to call, he done the same tests but this time he said he would do something at the exchange. All I know is that shortly after this my fluctuating speeds are no more.

Admittedly Fast are expensive, but in my opinion you get a premium service.

Thanks for a fast customers opinion. The only thing swinging me towards AAISP is its £20 p/month with lots of usage outside of 9-6 (when I'm at work). Fast's offering of only 20GB at the £20 mark wouldn't be enough for me.

Think I'm going to go for AAISP and see how it goes, only a 1 month rolling contract after all.

Thanks for all the assistance everyone has given me, has been very useful. I'll make sure I drop back in to let everyone know how AAISP are.

Have you considered ICUK? Peak is 8am-8pm and there's a larger peak allowance. Or Edge Telecom - same peak hours as A&A, better allowance, but you have to pay extra for a one month contract.

of course AAISP Peak is 5days rather than 7
Peak is between 09:00-18:00 rather than 8-8
UNMETERED between 02:00-06:00.........

That's true enough - but the peak usage is cr@p....

It's all a tradeoff really....nothing out there as generous as what Enta used to be.

Edge Telecom offer something similar to A&A - with a 30gb usage in peak time and the same peak hours....weekends don't count, but there's no free usage and a 12 month contract! (Unless you want to pay 45 quid for a one month.....)

But when I'm at work from 9-6 every weekday the monthly 2GB is just fine. At just £20 a month I think it's the best package all round for me. Should go live on Monday so will see how my speeds are.

Oh I agree totally. I'm normally at work 8-4.30, so I could easily hang on until 6pm to start downloads. Weekends and unlimited periods and their reputation are good sellers.

I think I'll either go with them or ICUK's unlimited package very shortly.....

I'm considering moving to ICUK so it would be interesting to read anyone else's thoughts about this ISP. Their £25 upto 16mb Unlimited service looks very attractive and almost to good to be true.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

I'm considering moving to ICUK so it would be interesting to read anyone else's thoughts about this ISP. Their £25 upto 16mb Unlimited service looks very attractive and almost to good to be true.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/products/300.html

Presumably, you're being throttled to 16mb down, rather than 24mb down. I'd be happy with that.

Edited by deleted (Wed 03-Jun-09 22:37:53)

I'm currently with Bulldog and have been having a few issues with the broadband and their answer to my problem is to reduce the overall speed to 8meg even though the issue still exists and I'm still paying for a 16mb service. ICUK seem to be running a nice service so I think I'll give them a whirl if bulldog can't or wont fix it by next week (its been over 2 months already).

The review link you posted looks positive

Cheers