Best Broadband?

We are moving into our house on Monday and we need to decide on a broadband provider.  We will not have a TV, so we don't need cable.  All we need is Mac-friendly broadband and a phone.  We were thinking about Carphone Warehouse's Talk Talk plane, which gives you broadband and phone with unlimited free calls to the US for £20/month, which includes BT Line rental.

Suggestions?

I would not get Talk Talk, some people have been waiting a year or more to have it connected!

I don't know if it is Mac friendly but we are with Demon and they are GREAT. Prior to that we were with Virgin for about a year and the connection kept dropping out all the time, it was awful, but Demon have been brilliant. We pay £20 per month for 8mg.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-broadband

if you scroll to the bottom of the page they have a section on home phone/broadband combos.

Also- double check that you're eligable for talktalk combo in your area.  i live near peterbough and am not eligable due to the cables etc in the area.   

Demon sounds great and thank you sooo much for the warning about Talk Talk.  Do you have to have a BT line?  Because if we don't, we can get the broadband and have Vonage for our phone.  If so, it looks like we will pay for BT even though we won't use it.

Also, what is the 8mg thing?  I see it on all the sites for internet here.  And download limits?  What constitutes a download (is it pictures or iTunes or something)?  

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-broadband

if you scroll to the bottom of the page they have a section on home phone/broadband combos. 

Thanks!  I will check that!

I think all the broadband services require a BT line. It's all DSL, instead of cable.

I have Sky, which is ok. It's cheap -- £30 a month for broadband, tv, and phone with unlimited free US calling. They used to do a pick and mix thing, so you don't have to get all of them.

The one thing I hate about our Sky service is that whenever you pick up the phone, the internet drops for a few minutes. It's bothersome, but we haven't tried to fix it since we don't get too many calls on the home phone.

We have http://www.bethere.co.uk 

Our speed is 17mbps, and ADSL2 (which means you can get very high speeds if you live close to an exchange)  And it's not that expensive.   

It depends on your priority - speed? price? Most providers are mac friendly - We have both Mac's and PC's using our broadband.

Does Talk Talk require you to take their voice services as well? Try somewhere like www.moneysupermarket.com to see a comparison of what's available in your area.

(all written by mr.jennredd!)

not all "bundled" packages require you to have a BT line.  that was the advantage of them for me. 

not all "bundled" packages require you to have a BT line.  that was the advantage of them for me. 

How does that work?  I know Virgin have their own cable connections but other than them I didn't think anyone else had the physical infrastructure to provide broadband with out using BT's wires.

Arg!  I am trying to use Money Supermarket but our post code is seen as invalid.  It is the right code.  Stupid new build!

Arg!  I am trying to use Money Supermarket but our post code is seen as invalid.  It is the right code.  Stupid new build!

I've heard of that happening sometimes.  It's frustrating. 

I just wanted to say again how bad talk talk is.  A friend of ours started a website about the bad customer service she and others experienced with them.  She met with people from the company twice, and still the crappiness continues. 

We work from home and reliability is a huge issue for us. We have used Zen for over two years and I can't say enough good things about it. It's DSL and whenever we have a problem (twice), there's none of that "It's BT's fault, take it up with them!" nonesense.

Stay away from Tiscali!

I would not get Talk Talk, some people have been waiting a year or more to have it connected!

I don't know if it is Mac friendly but we are with Demon and they are GREAT. Prior to that we were with Virgin for about a year and the connection kept dropping out all the time, it was awful, but Demon have been brilliant. We pay £20 per month for 8mg.

And also with Talk Talk, you have to have BT and BT won't let you switch until you've been with them for three months.  They don't tell you that, but that is how it works. 

Do you have to have a BT line?  Because if we don't, we can get the broadband and have Vonage for our phone.

Dar, this is what we did and we absolutely love it.  IIRC, terriponeale has it as well.  I honestly don't think I'll go back to having a standard landline.  We do quite a bit of int'l calling and we've not once had a phone bill over £15, the countries we call are included in the package price, with the exception of mobiles and 0845 type numbers.

I second the "stay away from TalkTalk".  We had them and the phone was ok, but we never got the internet connected after a couple month wait.  When we moved, i just cancelled it.  Another thing I learned from my brief stint at a call center for another company is that they seem to have a tendency to screw up the line when cancelling the service.  I don't fully understand it (maybe one of the tech-savvy people will) but when a customer would cancel their TalkTalk service, they would either put tags on the line (not sure what this is but it affects getting service through another provider) or they would completely cease the line.  A lot of people have ended up with huge headaches.

Also, what is the 8mg thing?  I see it on all the sites for internet here.  And download limits?  What constitutes a download (is it pictures or iTunes or something)? 

8mg?      Could it be 8 meg, referring to a speed of 8Mbps?  Either that or 8GB, indicating a monthly download limit of 8 gigabytes.

The download caps are the total amount of data which is sent to you during the month.  It will include web browsing, e-mail & attachments, files received over FTP -- Basically everything which comes down the DSL connection to your computer.

How does that work?  I know Virgin have their own cable connections but other than them I didn't think anyone else had the physical infrastructure to provide broadband with out using BT's wires.

Other than the cable companies, they don't.  Every DSL connection goes over BT lines, which is now handled by the fairly new BT OpenReach division (with the exception of the Hull area, with its independent phone company). 

From the technical point of view there's no reason why DSL cannot be provided on a line which doesn't have POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) on it as well.   This is sometimes referred to as "raw DSL" or "naked DSL."   It would be down to whether BT OpenReach will provide the line at a cost acceptable to the ISP (and you) when BT isn't receiving any other POTS income from it.

If you will be served from a central office which has no local loop unbundling, your DSL connection will be provided by BT Wholesale back to wherever your ISP has a presence anyway.    You can check for LLU options by exchange here:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php