Moving to new home, ISP woes

I will be moving to a new place next month, and after checking with O2, it seems like their home broadband is not available in my area (Earls Court, London) which is unfortunate as I was hoping to use them. So now, it seems like Virgin is my only choice for high speed as their optic cables are available in the area. How are they in terms of reliability? Are they stable? Any limits on bandwidth? And if I do go with them, I suppose I should also take up their phone package too?

Let me know your opinions on this. I was actually looking forward to using O2 Home Broadband as I was with them in my current/previous place.

Well O2 is present there. Maybe they mean they have no spare capacity. Did they offer you the O2 Access service? (Which we know to avoid).

Do Be say the same?

Other good LLU there include Sky, (you no longer have to have Sky TV, it just costs £2.50 more per month), and offerings from xilo/uno and vivaciti.

Sky could very well be like O2 though, full up, in which case they offer Sky Connect which is bad news just like O2 Access.

I'm not sure if xilo/uno have it on their website yet but they also offer an equivalent package to the vivaciti Surfwise Complete. Both are full LLU Opal Wholesale based, so not on a BT line.

Xilo and vivaciti's other packages in the links above are all on BT-based lines but don't have to be BT Retail. So can be on monthly contracts elsewhere if that is useful. The broadband is also on monthly.

XRaySpex who posts here a lot is on Orange LLU and his experience is that it is good. The bad Orange reputation seems to be from lousy support and the non-LLU package - again as in O2 ACcess and Sky Connect.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 27-Aug-10 20:31:29)

Cant seem to get BE to check the line/postcode, always giving error.

O2's offering the Access so I am avoiding that, though I did start with it last year for only a few days and then they upgraded me to their Home Broadband.

Sky seems like the best choice atm, with the alternative being vivaciti although it's more expensive. Any complaints with Sky?

Also is there any way I can check which phone provider did the place have with the existing phone number?

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Also is there any way I can check which phone provider did the place have with the existing phone number?

No. But if you want to know if it is a BT Wholesale-based line then just put the number into IDNet's availability checker.