bigblu Reviews

I decided to have Avonline provide me with an alternative to my telephone line broadband as I live in a rural area and the speed was less than 2 megs. OK for Youtube but not so good for anything else.
I contacted Avonline and after some negotiation I was “sold” on the claims that I “will receive up to 20 Meg for most part”. Despite much sale pitch pressure I opted for paying the extra so I could have the 1 year contract instead of the sales pitch to sign up for 2 years. It turned out to be money well spent as if I had been tempted to save that small amount of cash I would have had a 2 year contract and would have been stuck with this system for another 12 months!
The first disappointment was the size of the dish. It is huge! Almost a metre across and standing well over a metre from the wall on an enormous bracket. Brilliant white, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Comments about Jodrel Bank were rife from my neighbours. What an eyesore.
Despite the size we fitted it to a suitable wall. Alignment was simple and we started to enjoy the “20 Meg” downloads, unfortunately the best we could get was 8 Meg and that was “off peak” and unreliable.. This was the best and more often it was 2 Meg and less. I contacted the help line and they had me do all sort of amendments. Line the dish up, turn the router on and off, test it over 24 hours to see how the downloads worked out etc. It was obvious that the service was being “throttled” and I was being effectively starved of download speed. After complaints the service improved slightly but even so at one point it registered 720K! I haven’t seen that since dial up! One other irksome feature was dropping out altogether. I lost count of the number of times I had to go into the loft to reset the router!
I complained repeatedly to the help line and one technician suggested that it was “because you are using it at peak times”, Should I, I suggested, get up at 2 am to watch Youtube? Trying to watch it at 7 pm was almost impossible. It buffered incessantly.
Fortunately as I said earlier I have opted for the 12 month contract and I terminated it in accordance with the contract. I had had enough! However, it is up to the renter to dismantle and return the dish and equipment as it all belongs to Avonline. The option is to have their engineer come and dismantle it and return it. Not cheap! I decided to do it myself and it still cost me over £30 in carrier charges to have this huge dish and router equipment returned.
In a nutshell I would advise anyone considering having this system to think long and hard and read the reviews. If you are expecting 20 Meg then from my experience think again! How is it that Avonline can advertise “up to 20Meg and then give such an appalling service? It beats me!
I was happy on only two occasions with this system. The day I installed it and the day I sent it back!

I have been with these guys for 3 years and they are just the worst for service. The 20mb speed they promise is very rare and when I called to complain a while ago pointing out I was getting under 2mb I was told "well we do say up to 20mb".

When I told them I wanted to leave them. My speed dropped to under 3 and has been there ever since. I asked for details of my data usage last month 3 times and have received nothing. I was told to send them a mail to cancel my connection and someone from their disconnection team would contact me. Nothing.

They have no concept of customer service. I was actually laughing reading their Triple Guarantee drivel on the website.

I had been using Avonline's Twoway Satellite service for about a year without too many problems when I agreed to upgrade to their 20MB unlimited service back in February 2013, this for a hefty £70 per month. At that time they were offering the service as unlimited use with no cap. Unfortunately, Avonline along with any nod to good customer service and operational transparency parted company somewhere in 2013 with their sneakily introduced capping policy and un-notified downgrading of the unlimited accounts to a capped 60mb, which introduced a throttling policy that led to speeds plummeting.

Customer service turned into an increasing round of excuses and fob offs with never a mention that they had actually downgraded the contracted unlimited service to one which was often unusable because of the throttling that was being implemented - my download speeds are now recording at well under 1MB and I am still being charged nearly £70 per month for this! On dial up I would only get about half a meg but at least I would only be paying about £12 per month for the appalling service and speeds!

At the end of October 2013 one of Avonline's 'customer support' guys suggested that things would improve by December, if I could just hang on. Well, I have hung on guys and things have only got worse. Speeds of less than 1MB on a so called 20MB service at your prices, you really are having a laugh!

This is the worst company I have ever dealt with. Limited customer service at best.

The "unlimited" data allowance package it sold wasn't actually 'unlimited'. It had a cap of 60Gb and after that cap was reached the speed you got was throttled back to 0.25Mbs.

This wasn't detailed in the T&C's not was explained during the signing up process not were details released by Tarium / Europasat when they received the details from Eutelsat.

I have had a terrible experience with this company and would NOT recommend them.

http://andrew-miller.co.uk/satellite-broadband-europasat/

Be very careful if considering avonline as a provider.
I have utilised their service for two years, until July this year it was good. High speeds and consistent, typically 15 to 20 meg downloads,
However since the introduction of unlimited download packages the service levels have plummeted to speeds below bt.

For the last month I and other users are typically getting between 1 and 2 meg download speeds during evenings and weekends. This is no better than my adsl provider but at 4 times the cost.
This is despite avonline continuing to advertise 20 meg speeds and all the benefits. This is now a myth.

Avonline seen totally unable to do anything, they are totally dependent on the satellite provider.
Their technical support team is overwhelmed with calls from existing users wondering just what has gone so wrong.
Please note I am not a heavy user, so have not been subject to the so called fair usage policy.
A real shame,
Be careful

Update Avonline and Tooway its got worse....

They finally fixed the UK IP problem now the unlimited product £65 per month! Has become limited to the point that it is unusable very quickly.

The Fair Access Policy was implemented by Tooway and Avonline in July. The Unlimited limit is 60GB download over a four week rolling period, (not reset at the start of the month).

When you hit that you are moved into a overfilled heavy users pool which reduces the performance to a crawl, all your web sites time out, download speeds of 100k only,yes 100k only are not uncommon, the service becomes unusable the only way to get out of the cycle is not to use the service for several days to get your four week rolling period back below 60gb.

Effectively the Unlimited service should be seen as 60GB.

Its clear Tooway have oversold the bandwidth and are now in deep trouble meeting demand. This results in an appalling service all round.

If they are to move users that exceed the secret FAP policy (which has not been published in detail)into a heavy users pool it should still meet a minimum performance level which it does not. Effectively if you hit the heavy user pool your are DOOMED!

Previous problems below....

Avonline advertise on the front page of their web site that BBC Iplayer etc will work however following the service being installed we have had no joy with obtaining a UK IP address.

The service switches from France to Italy at will and we have only been fortunate enough to have a UK ip address for two days out of over 60.

Their answer is reboot the router and if you are lucky you may get one of the UK ip addresses in the range. I have lost count of the number of times the router has been rebooted.

It wouldn't be so bad if they could supply a date when it will be fixed. The first 6-7 calls were two hours now its days and weeks.

Just go into this relationship with your eyes wide open.

Package - Absolute (unlimited hahahah)

Bought on promise of unlimited data and where throttling present it would not be as severe as previously, traffic management instead of sliding windows. None of this is true (disclaimer - or so it seems, things could just be broken at Tooway).

I'm told that a number of customers are having similar issues, in some cases even when they are not as heavy as I am in data usage, but I haven't found this anywhere before laying out the money to get this. It's a known issue.

Anyone spending out this much will know that Tooway is just being resold - and are full of dread of the usual 'oh it's not us, we can't control anything' response. Which is exactly what happens.

I have used over 100GB and experienced restrictions - the afternoon through to early morning ranging from 30K to 80K ish, not enough to stream video right in the peak hours. Avonline aren't even sure if I'm being restricted. They have no idea what the policy is and how it works.

Want to manage your use to not get restricted? No go - unlike non 'Absolute' accounts your checkportal doesn't show any usage data. I'm told that the usage window to wait out the restrictions is now a monthly one. Yep, overdo your connection and it's pretty much ruined for the rest of your month. The ABSOLUTE opposite of what Avonline (and other Tooway suppliers) reps try to have you believe. I have taken screenshots of everything possible and have it on good authority that I can disregard the contract if required.

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"20Mbps speeds and unlimited data, available
wherever you live or work. Guaranteed!

Avonline Broadband delivers a whole new internet experience via satellite, allowing you to enjoy movie downloads, catch-up TV, free calls and much more."
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I've transferred more data on our rubbish ADSL within a month just spread over whole days instead, so if you have more than one bedroom, more than one internet user in your house (who doesn't) you might be in for a lot of aggro just trying to do much of any of what they suggest.

I'm currently paying £65 per month for the 20mbs unlimited satellite broadband service and along with constant drop outs, having to frequently reboot the modem, slower than advertised speeds (about 5mbs rather than the advertised 20mbs), frequently unobtainable (lines busy due to high call volumes) tech support and unanswered emails, I would love to know just how exactly Avonline can say their new bb services are as fast as advertised or indeed are reliable... Furthermore, my neighbour is having exactly the same problems with their Avonline satellite bb connection and neither of us were amused to be fobbed off with different excuses for a recent 4 day downtime when the satellite went offline. If Avonline really do believe their own hype and would like their customers to be able to believe it too, perhaps they could provide me with the bb service promised and if they can't manage that then compensate me for the service that I am not being provided with but for which I am paying heavily for.

I went for satellite ISP due to low speed and unreliable ADSL from BT in our Gloucestershire village. It was a mistake. The signal is unreliable and like with all satellites it will not operate during heavy clouds where you are or where the receiver is, Turin. The irony being Bentley Walker send out emails saying the service is down. Using a VPN is almost a non-starter because you have twice the latency and VOIP is very poor, which is a recognised problem if you search the internet. I called the tech support who were obviously recruited from the local Amish community and said I had to close each browser window before opening the next. At this point it was time to give up, so I paid to get a second ADSL line and kept the satellite for a while. Pleased to say the ADSL is now at 4Mb and quite stable. Have cancelled the 12 month contract with Bentley. Conclusion: if you have no ADSL option then look at Satellite, otherwise forget it. Also forget their speed rating as the latency kills you and regularly takes 20 secs to load a new page on a simple click through, despite a speed rating of 6Mb

Toowaydirect service/sales team are truly briliant. They simply bent over backwards to assist with all aspects of set up. The best customer services I have encountered for years.
The actual speeds delivered are at least as much as I paid for : 8.00mbps download and 2.00 mbps up. I live in the wilds of the highlands of Scotland and am delighted with the speeds via the "Ka-Sat" satellite that I get. Am now getting as good broadband as in mainstream towns like Inverness. Before I would get not much more than dial up.
I can use Skype and BBC i/player etc too.

This lot are open helpful and transparent with pricing which is as good as any of the providers if not better.
I am so happy with it all. BT have no plans to improve the miserable service given to the UK's most isolated corners.
I give them top marks. They are worth a good look!