Clara.net

We switched to ClaraNet as a relatively cheap supplier of SDSL for their contention rating and support contracts. We had to press them initially to try to get their suggested speeds, which was annoying and less expected for an SDSL line, but seemed to work. Support was average at this stage. 2-3 years on we have logged repeated issues with high latency and low transfer rates, dropped connections, etc. and have had repeated failures of their support team to resolve issues, to respond in reasonable time-frames, to return promised calls, to reach our account manager, etc. The technical team seems of limited competence, and it became increasingly obvious that their SLAs with their providers feel short of those promised to the customers, leaving us expecting something they could not realistically hope to achieve given their setup. Also note their contracts renew for a full year rather than rolling into monthly renewal, so they will try to screw you on exit too. We have now switched to a far cheaper and more competent provider, and I would recommend no-one consider this company as a business critical solution!

I signed up to Direct Connection in 1995 and haven't changed my ISP account since then although Dircon were taken over by Netscalibur and more recently by Clara.Net.

After 14 years, I can say we have had very few problems and certainly not some of the horror stories I've read about here and elsewhere. My experience has been good and my only complaint has been the BT supplied part of the service.

My office is located 1600m from our local exchange and our Cu connection has been upgraded several times however, the best we could hope to achieve would be 1.5Mbps. We currently operate an ADSL 500 package which delivers near enough 496Kbps download. I replaced the BT Voyager MODEM with a WiFi router and we have up to five devices use the service.

At peak times this can be quite slow but mostly the service is robust and we accept that unless we subscribe to a Cable supplier it is unlikely to improve significantly. As I design and configure systems for WAN use, I know what services are available.

Prior to getting BBd we were invited to take part in a satellite broadband trial for locations where BT couldn't offer the service. The ISP was Dutch and the Telco was France Telecom who owned the satellite. The service was excellent and apart from some disruption due to an electrical storm and a dish the size of the gable end of the house, there were no downsides.

Perhaps I have been fortunate but Clara.Net have provided a reliable and stable service. I have just asked them to advise me what upgrades are available as I would like to improve the connection speed. There is much more content that requires faster throughput now and I am awaiting the response.

If I do not receive a reply in good time, I will migrate to another ISP and base my decision on the collective wisdom evident here.

Our Office 2meg ADSL has now been down 4 days. We paid for engineer install but were told to buy a replacement modem - didn\'t resolve it.

No calls back from Clara staff, despite promises, until we escalated to line managers, even then they are reluctant. Took over a day to even get an engineer appointment made for 2 days later. That\'s useless. Engineer then didn\'t turn up. CLara failed to contact us to say appointment was changed, even when we start phoning to ask whats happening. Clara now blaming BT, yet still noone has identified the problem.

No SLA is offered - BT do one for similar price plan, why not Clara.

One word: Farce :(