Just got a letter through from my current broad band provider and they are
hiking the cost of my 'package' from £19 a month to £24.

I am considering looking for another package.
Does anyone have any pro's or con's of broad band providers?

I could combine and have a broad band package with my current phone call providers
at £32 per month. Which would be cheaper than what I would currently be facing.

Or do I stick with the current provider and just pay more? (sigh)
I'm not in contract so can move quite easily (supposedly)

I was originally with Freeserve.  Which became Wanadoo.  Which became Orange.

I have a BT landline, but not interested in an all in one package as I don't watch TV.  And, if I'm honest, I don't make phone calls, I just need the line for a modem.

Orange have just put my direct debit up by another £5 a month, and I am less than satisfied with the service.  It's just that I still retain my original email address from freeserve, and it would be so much hassle to change my email address.

I think it depends a lot on what your needs are.  I have a friend that is more than happy to pay £50 a month to BT and thinks it is great value.  But they're great TV addicts, and phone users.  It wouldn't be useful to me.

We don't have cable, sky etc.
I do use the internet, and yes we do use the phone too.

I like using the facility of watching downloads via the bbc if you miss a TV programme etc.
We don't download music currently.

I'm not in an area that supports great speed broadband and can't get the good cheapy broadband deals
that are out there. But conversely if I do move I don't want to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

So any pro's and con's would be appreciated,

Jean my dad had awful trouble with Orange. So I'm keen to avoid providers which may cause trouble.
Oh and if it had UK call centres......excellent bonus!!

I was with Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange too -no end of hassle. Awful. So when we moved house 2 years ago I switched to BT. Just the broadband, nothing else from them (well apart from the phoneline of course). I haven't had a single problem with them.

I'm with Sky and for £32 a month I get broadband, Sky TV, phone line rental + free all day phone calls, which has worked very well for me for 18 months.

I am with BT .. Boadband and freephone calls (anytime) £32 per month.. never had a problem (all  of my problems are area/weather related)  When I was with Orange/freeserve/Wanadoo, it was a nightmare.. I paid a bit of money to break my contract just to be rid of them

iv been with AOL for years now it is £24.00 a month and has stayed that price for last few years , i know theirs cheaper out their but i was with bt before and their was very expensive and i could only use it free after 6pm and they charged their fee plus £ 5,00 for leting me surf the net i queried that a few time with them as they were charging £24 a month plus the fiver as an extra and their were limits , so i changed to Aol where i can just leave it on all day long download what i like no ristrictions and when all my mates switched to virgin and they all went down for 5 days i was they only one that could get on line, everyone i speak to has problems execpt me, maybe im just lucky but its realy once in a very blue moon that iv had the server go down on me and when it has its always been back on within a few hours, so for these reasons i stick to what i thinks working best for me,

i will say i dont ever sign into aol or use their page to get online i always just click the e and im online without going signing into aol at all, #
thats what my sons mate told me was best and he works in IT fixing pc's he's a real wiz and restored my son a dell laptop for his 21st birthday he practicly rebuilt it from a shell and its great,
when i did ever have probs with my pc it was when i was using the AOL signin page and browsing online from their but since using the e and iv been doing this for couple of years now, i'll honstly say i have no problems and i watch almost everything online all my tv series as i dont get chance to watch them on regular tv so everything for me is online

We've been with Virgin for years - never had a problem. We used to use BT at one place I worked at and it was forever crashing - and as it was an internet-based company that was a disaster!

I have BT and cannot fault it.

i wonder if id save money with sky ? ,
are their limits on how and when you can go online?
i have sky tv on in 2 rooms and we pay £34 a month for just that , then bt phone and we have high bills cause of my oldest son using to call freinds on mobiles so it on dd at £80.00 a month,
then its £24.00 a month for the internet from aol,

does it all sound like im paying over the top here??

wonder if sky all in would be better for me,
would hate to change tho and get problems,

I Use talk talk and have had no problems with them.  I pay £24 per month for phone calls, line rental and broadband.

Talk Talk for under £20 a month I get phone (including line rental) and an 8 meg broadband connection. For me they've been ultra reliable and I pay virtually nothing in call charges each month as most of my calls are local which are free.

Check it out. :)

we have a BT wireless home hub and we have the broadband via that, the wireless home hub is also good because we have the nintendo wii picking up the signal and then we get things through that, and i've just got a wireless network adapter for the xbox and it's picking up the internet for the likes of downloading movies and games on the xbox and chatting to people to play games. as for the broadband and the home hub, we havent had any problems with them, find it reasonably fast, and i am not even sure if they are the cheapest because we do have sky tv so could get the package through them but while we are happy we are sticking with the bt home hub and service from them. if you have the bt homehub you get a phone with all but one of the option packages and you can make free calls via the home hub phone which works via the interet, so can chat away for free

I'm with Virgin.  Their customer service is awful and I presume maybe another country.  My phone, TV and broadband all went down on the same day and when I phoned Virgin it did say there was a fault in the area.  36 hours later TV came back, 3 days later the broadband but the phone still wasn't working.  I contacted them and they said that it would definitely be a fault on my side of things, which I said that's strange when everything went down at the same time!  He still continued to say that I was at fault and that they would get someone down in the next few days to check but unfortunately I couldn't get the day off work on the day I wanted so I was asked how I was going to resolve the problem!???

Eventually they came after a week of having no phone.  Of course there was nothing wrong with my end, when there had been a fault the person had put my phone connection into the wrong place aggghhh!  No apologies, no nothing but they were still taking my money and I feel that their bills are extortionate.  I rarely use the phone at all, more on the broadband and watch TV for about 3 hours a day.

I'm with Karoo & whilst not the cheapest, the helpline number is free for me as it's a "local"call. Only had a few problems, all I must add caused by me <blush>but the helpline is staffed with PC savvy people, who can help out with PC problems as well.  Personally I cannot fault them

you just discribed exact as was happened to my friend around corner from me and he works in IT so he new  it wernt his end but they refused to take any blame at all then he stopped the DD , and when they sent demands for payment he wrote to head office complaining and he got money back in end for the time he was cut off, he sinced changed over to another now,

I'm with BT and its been a nightmare. If your phoneline is residential then any problems of queries are directed straight to an Indian call centre. I've never had a problem with call centres out there apart from these. Most unhelpful and was without internet for over 2 weeks as they kept denying there was a fault. Eventually 2 engineers came out and located the fault at BT'S expense.
So finally i am up and running, but will be looking elsewhere from no on in that have UK onl;y call centres. I'm not part of a phone/tv package with them and it costs me £27p/m which is daylight robbery, so do need to move soon.

Was liking the Sky package but their broadband is not up and running in my area as yet...

We are with O2 home broadband, £7.50 per month if you have a mobile contract with them. We haven't had any problems and been with them for quite a few months now.

I am with virgin and agree with the other poster that their customer service is terrible and very expensive but they are one of the more reliable internet providers.  they are currently doing an upgrade so even the lowest level packages have 10mb broadband speeds.  I have calls from other places with 'better' deals but they either involve a less reliable connection e.g. using a dongle and through my mobile provider or I would have to get a bt line reconnected at a cost of nearly £150 which would defeat the purpose of the savings.

Anyways to summarise Virgin are very reliable until something breaks!

o2,probably not the cheapest but uk call centers,good customer service,they always answer quickly without going through 50 options that you dont need.And im a computer idiot and they are very patient.

I am with AOL, have been for years, but when Carphone Warehouse took over AOL's UK services the service plummeted! It is so bad now I will be changing when my contract is up in October. I phoned the tech help a few months ago and got a man in India, who told me that the problem was not with AOL it was because my computer was very old and unable to cope with the super AOL service....... my computer was at that time only two weeks old!

Chelzea, I am with sky. I pay £21 for my sky subscribtion (family pack i think) £10 a month line rental, £5 pr month anytime calls to anywhere (apart from mobiles) and 20 intertational countries. I dont have broadband with them cos i am a heavy user (have four kids and they all have computers) and we live in an area which doesnt accept unlimited on sky, i then pay tiscali 14.67 for broadband. However, if u are able to get your broadband sky, it does come in free which your sky package. I would say go ahead if u can, it works out much cheaper for me  xx

Polly do you use the AOL sign in page when you turn pc on and do you use their browser to surf net??
was just wondering as im to with them and used to get the odd problem now and again had to call them a few times wasted money and time messing about with the quick fixes they make you do when their nothing wrong with your settings,  i'd give up turn it all off to then turn it on in morning and all would be running as normal,

my sons pal whos an IT tec, told me not to sign into or use the aol at all just use the internet explorer itself as he said that it was aol that gave me all the problems i had,

so i switched to ie and iv not had any problems since i watch movies online download music and pc is left on most of the time i never sign into aol anymore and havent done so for maybe over a year now and i do find its alot better than it was from when i used to use the aol did take some getting used to tho as i liked the way the favorites were set up on it better than the ie's but im so used to this way now i'd not go back to using aol sign in ever,

yeah see but i would say we are heavy users also,  i have me online all the time and eldest son and now my youngest has just had his mini laptop fixed so he can go on limited sites educational and some games ,
id have to look into it to see what their broadbands like, im on the family package was 24 a month till we got it upstairs in my room when my mum comes to stay she has my frontroom so we need it upstairs,
as for the phone line most all of the calls made from bt line are to mobiles i did want to go on incoming calls only but was told by bt that i wouldnt be able to get online with my aol if i did that, its my eldest son who keeps running up the phone bills in here their like £300.00 a quater its been going on like this for few years now ands starting to get me down,

Well I've requested the MAC code - now it's just to decide to see whom I go for...

O2 (UK call centres)
BT
TalkTalk

Sadly I'm out of area for the superfast & cheap offers on both O2 and TalkTalk :(
But O2 I can still get it cheaper at £17.13 per month on their access package.
As my mobile is with O2...so I get a discount :)
At the moment I think it will be O2 so would be grateful to hear if anyone has had any problems with them
or if it's good feedback then be useful to hear this :)

i with bt right from the start when we move in here 29 years ago never switch to other companys over the years just stuck with bt  and have all their service for phone and broardband with no trouble.

> i with bt right from the start when we move in here 29 years ago never switch to other companys over the years just stuck with bt&nbsp; and have all their service for phone and broardband with no trouble.

Anne Bishop has BT and in the last few months she has been unable to get online at all! She has had no end of BT techs out and the last one said it was her new computer which was not compatable with her BT line! With hubby John not being well she enjoys keeping up with everyone by the email and internet, so it very disappointing for her to have such poor service.

As to my AOL it doesn't matter whether I use aol or Internet Explorer, I get the same crappy service. My daughter is a computer techie type and tells me AOL is blocking so much stuff I'd be better off finding a new service provider. Anyway I am def changing from AOL and now am wary of BT too!

So where to go????????

BT let me down dreadfully which is why, for the same money, I'm now with Sky with tv package and although I watch little TV, I LOVE my free Sky+ box! :)

I have an Orange phone contract so get broadband free with them.  Had it for over a year and no problems whatsoever.

I've got my flat set up with Plusnet for £10 a month, rolling 30 day contract so can be cancelled at short notice.  BT phone option 2.  Probably works out similar to a "package" that will tie you to them for a year or two.

Our house is set up with Zen Internet and they are also really good.  Excellent customer service.

You have to be careful with some of the packages, such as Sky, Virgin, Talk Talk and O2 as not everywhere in the country has their phone cables "unbundled".  If your phone cable has not been unbundled then you will still have to pay line rental to BT over and above what you are paying on your package.

> You have to be careful with some of the packages, such as Sky, Virgin, Talk Talk and O2 as not everywhere in the country has their phone cables "unbundled".&nbsp; If your phone cable has not been unbundled then you will still have to pay line rental to BT over and above what you are paying on your package.

So how do you find out if your cables are unbundled?

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php?page=availability-exchange-search

To see if your telephone exchange is 'unbundled' or not.

Mine isn't :(

Er.............. Help! Looked at my phone number, but do not understand what it all means? Why can't they just say yes or no!

Can any one help? the number to put in is 01844 299508

It's a BT wholsesale and your exchange won't be going over to 21CN (whatever that means) til 31/03/2011.
So I'm guessing that bit means when you'll be able to get cheap broadband?

You are looking for LLU, "Local Loop Unbundled", which your exchange is not (yet) and so not all service providers will be available to supply connections to you until it is unbundled.

Also, I don't think it's a very wise idea to publish your phone number on the internet, far too many weirdos out there !

I'm with Orange, I get my Broadband and a mobile phone (300 mins and 100 texts) all for under £20.........................never had much of a problem although I do know of others who have, I guess I've just been lucky. I think if I were to change, then probably it would be to BT :-)

We've been with Plusnet for years and years now - never had a problem.

This is a handy site to look at - you can compare lots of providers

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html

The freeserve e-mail work even if you leave orange. I know several people who have done it. One 3 years ago.

Hi FabLab

It is a work line for Our Dogs. So if you have any news stories do let me know....

Polly

I am with O2 after having major problems with AOL.  O2 have been brilliant, great connection, outstanding customer service from a UK call centre and they sorted out all my initial problems which AOL were unable to do.  I have been with them now for 18 months.

we are with Tiscali/Pipex we dont pay line rental and have the phone and broadband and wireless all for £19

Oh how did you manage that. I am with Pipex..( really good no problem at all) but I have line rental to via BT.

Blue, Inthemistuk must have her line unbundled.