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Is there really A GREAT BIG HOLE waiting to be filled?

HELP! All I wanted was a PRIME QUALITY broadband service bundled with a telephone line & calls package. I now don't believe that any such package exists in the UK.:(

What I mean by "Prime Quality" is a service akin to that supplied by the "Top 10" ADSL broadband suppliers on this site (and a few others), but with a telephone line & calls package as well (or both products from the same supplier but separately priced).:D Obviously, I would want reasonable value as well! I would say that a reasonable value, high quality bundle should cost no more than £35 per month with "anytime" calls included.

I thoroughly searched for such a supplier but was left despairing;:crap: it would have been so much more convenient to have ONE bill to pay for these services, instead of two. I discovered that there are quite a few suppliers of such bundles, such as DST, GreenBee, Madasafish, PlusNet, Talk Talk, The Phone Co-op, The Utility Warehouse, :eek:Tiscali (& Pipex):eek:, etc.. However, NONE of these provide broadband that instills me with any confidence; I would want to be absolutely certain that I had confidence before committing myself to the usual 12 or 18 months contract. I would probably have confidence in Vispa, but their prices are too prohibitive for me.

Am I missing something? Is there really a great big hole in the telecomms/broadband market waiting to be filled? Am I ALONE in wanting a prime quality bundle at an affordable price?:shrug:


? ? ? ? OR DO YOU KNOW BETTER ? ? ? ?
 
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Hi Kansenji,

I have been with Talktalk for over 18 months now. On their International 3 package during this period I lost my phone and BB for about 14 hours when a node went down. Also twice lost BB connection, which was soon restored after contacting tech support (free call).

I am happy with the service I get and all for £20.49 pm. This includes line rental. Any extra cost is due to having to call 0845,0870 or other chargable numbers and mobiles.

Regards Paul.
 
TalkTalk are a gamble and probably a reasonable one provided multiplayer isn't an issue, although if you ask me Sky do the best all-round bundle, provided you can get it of course. But I do agree, there aren't many top quality / well price ISPs offering good bundles. I'd love to see Zen, IDNet, Entanet and so forth sticking line rental deals up but it can be difficult for them to do.
 
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The problem with Talk Talk is that even though their broadband is "free", once you accept it, you are stuck with it.

If you want a new broadband supplier, then you have to cancel the whole contract, voice service as well. :crap:
 
No more "hunting" for a while . . .

The sole reason for me wanting a bundle was given in my original post: "It would have been so much more convenient to have ONE bill to pay for these services, instead of two."

You reinforced the point I made about committing to a long contract; I would not do that without being as certain as is possible that I would get a high quality service. I agree with you that "providers can lose their way", which is why I would only have confidence in very few suppliers; nothing is 100% certain, I agree and that is why a reasonable charge to terminate a contract early is a good idea.

I too have experienced crapness; that is why I have just migrated to Andrews & Arnold (AAISP):cool: and all smells of roses so far . . . .

I have given up "hunting" for a while, to get a bit of peace of mind and a rest from all the turmoil.:)

I am not sure what your reasoning for a bundle with line rental and BB is? I personally would be very wary of these type of deals because they generally tie you in fo 12-18 monts which is a long time in the broadband world as prices and more importantly quality of service vary greatly and I will not place myself in a position where I am stuck with a degrading BB service with big penalties to leave!!

I think it is worth the extra to have the flexibilty to change BB providers at no more than a months notice as once good providers can easily lose there way or be bought out and the once good service can become crap!!

happy hunting

Andy
 
How do you work out Vispa is too expensive?? I pay £30 for 300 minutes of UK calls, dirt cheap overseas calls, line rental, static IP and 50gig of downloads.

Good Luck with AAISP, but I'll stick with Vispa!!
 
More than 16 times as expensive

Hi,

I'm not doubting that VISPA provide a good service and on the face of it, their prices seem competitive. On closer inspection though, the telephone rates of their "Complete" Packages do not compare well with other suppliers.

FIRSTLY, their "Complete" broadband/telephone packages: they charge either £29.99 or £39.99 (£30 or £40 as far as I am concerned) and in both cases, you get 10GB Peak/40GB Off Peak broadband use, more than enough for many people and get telephone calls and line rental included.

SECONDLY, their "Complete Package" telephone charges: My own telephone service is via YOUR CALLS.NET, so I'll compare VISPA'S charges with those of YOUR CALLS.NET:

YOUR CALLS's "Anytime" package includes ALL national and local (01,02,03) calls of up to 1 hour each and line rental for a total cost of £14.24 per month. You can redial after each hour and then get another hour free. If you don't re-dial, you get charged 0.75p to 1.35p per minute.
VISPA include only include 5 hours in the £30 package you mentioned (8.3 hours in the £40 package) and they then charge 13p to 21p for every other minute used (MORE THAN 16 TIMES AS EXPENSIVE AS YOUR CALLS.NET):eek:!

When it comes to European calls, the picture is similar: VISPA mostly charge 5p per minute and YOUR CALLS charge mostly less than 2p per minute. YOUR CALLS.NET also offer a "Golden Number" where you can select one number (ANY number) and get an even cheaper rate on it. VISPA have a £20 connection charge; YOUR CALLS.NET provide FREE connection.

So VISPA'S telephone part of the package is not quite so brilliant after all. They should at least be congratulated on taking the leap into the "bundles" market and they seemingly are the only prime quality broadband supplier to do so. There appears to be no other choice if you want prime quality broadband bundled with telephone calls & line rental.

All VISPA probably need to do to get people like me to migrate to them, is to have "Unlimited Anytime Calls" included and cheaper European calls too.:D

How do you work out Vispa is too expensive?? I pay £30 for 300 minutes of UK calls, dirt cheap overseas calls, line rental, static IP and 50gig of downloads.



Good Luck with AAISP, but I'll stick with Vispa!!
 
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Ugh, I see you mentioned Tiscali there.

Tiscali was my first broadband provider. We went to them from AOL dial up. We stayed with Tiscali for over 2 years, thats 2 years of all the problems that you see people complain about tiscali every day.

We also took the phone package that came with it at first, they over charged us every month and it was one hell of a fiasco trying to cancel it. We had to phone the multiple times before the cancellation actually took effect.
Ive since migrated to Titan ADSL (After a 4 or 5 month war with Tiscali trying to convince them multiple time I had migrated and was with a new ISP, as they kept charging us).

This whole ordeal with Tiscali has somewhat "scarred" me when it comes to considering a Broadband/Phone package and I dont think I'd take one up unless i knew for sure it was as good a service as I get now with Titan.
 
Vispa also charge 0.5p per minute to Russia, and points east, including mobile numbers; it really depends on what you want from a package, 300 minutes is more than enough for me, last month I used about 20 of them!!!

Note the call price 0.5p, I think you misread the price chart, the same as I did when I first read it, it says "0.50" which I read as 50p originally; I have never used all my free minutes, but I would suspect that "13-22p" is actually 1.3-2.2p.
SO I think Vispa would get a lot more customers if the charts were more readable, but then, service might deteriorate, and I don't want that!!
 
virgin media cable is the only provider id ever go with.. i think if i moved home id check first if it was available in that area because having a reliable service is that important.

we've been with virgin/ntl for 6 years now and its only ever gone down once that i can remember and that was very briefly.

the real reason i wouldnt go with anyone else is that i just dont trust adsl in the slightest. the way these telecom companys are setup they just cant deal with the frequent problems that adsl brings in my opinion properly.

the tv is fantastic too, i dont get why anyone would use anything else if they had cable in there area.
 
accousticbug said:
The real reason i wouldnt go with anyone else is that i just dont trust adsl in the slightest. the way these telecom companys are setup they just cant deal with the frequent problems that adsl brings in my opinion properly.

That's a bit of a generalisation - some ISPs are not great at support, but others are very good - and the benefit of an ADSL set-up is that you can choose which ISP you want.


the tv is fantastic too, i dont get why anyone would use anything else if they had cable in there area.

I don't want a monthly fee for my TV, so I have Freeview (and am happy with it). Plus on the Internet side, VM has a poor reputation for throttling, even for nat particulalry heavy users. They have also had some serious service and billing problems in the past, but AFAIK they seem to be sorted now.

VM may be fine for you and your usage (and I wholeheartedly agree that if you are happy with an ISP - any ISP - you should stick with them) but for me and many others VM don't fit what I want.
 
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I recently left VM due to them linking into Phorm, at peak times I used ti slow down to 512K had for months. The UBR they knew needed updating and that there was isues with this yet still set dates to update that were constantly rescheduled. I heard it was finally updated 3 months after I left that would have been over 6 months stuck on 512k at peak times. VM are still having billing issues. One is when you leave they cliam back any discounts they give you. If you downgrade a package they then say they gave you a discount and claim back making you pay for the dearer package you downgraded from.. They also add refunds to the bill instead of reducing the bill by the refund. We also found Sky TV programs better than VM.
As for what you pay VM I have upto 8meg now no restrictions on speeds I jsut will be charged if I go over the capped limits which I never get anywhere near.
If its possible for £35 a month, setup a company that does it, that can handle 100,000 end users, and be profitable


I moved to Aquiss support is extremely good this was after spending 8 years on VM BB and 15 years as a cable telephone customer...
 
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I must get an eye test again soon!

YES, YOU ARE CORRECT Captain_Cretin, I've looked again; the Vispa "prices per minute" are actually NOT what they first appear; upon closer examination they are 10% of the figures I quoted in my original thread.
Vispa's figures say "0.013" (1.3p) and "0.021" (2.1p) per minute for National/Local calls. These are only 1.6 times more expensive than YOUR CALLS.NET; not 16 times more expensive.
Thanks for pointing that out.

Note the call price 0.5p, I think you misread the price chart, the same as I did when I first read it, it says "0.50" which I read as 50p originally; I have never used all my free minutes, but I would suspect that "13-22p" is actually 1.3-2.2p.
quote]
 
This is 2008? You must be kidding!

If ONLY we had cable in Winscombe! We are only 16 miles southwest of Bristol; and a trunk cable passes passes along the A38, only about 10 YARDS from the Winscombe boundary. The cable is so close, yet, none of the 3,600 residents of Winscombe can have access to it.:(

We don't even get terrestrial digital TV here yet. This is 2008? You must be kdding!:laugh:

the tv is fantastic too, i dont get why anyone would use anything else if they had cable in there area.
 
I agree with you kansenji. 5 years ago I spent months searching through this and other forums looking for an ISP I would have confidence in to sign up for a lengthy contract. My problem was that I wanted an ISP that providing newsgroup access. I finally plumped for www.zen.co.uk and have stayed with them for the last 5 years and I highly recommend them - for anyone who isn't bothered about newsgroup access anyway as they have removed that facility now. Therefore I am back in the hunt again and five years on - NOTHING HAS CHANGED! It's a virtual lottery in the providers favour. The only way to decide if you are happy with a providers service is to try it and then it's to late- they have you.
This has got to change soon
 
AAISP & other recommendations.

I agree with you kansenji. 5 years ago I spent months searching through this and other forums looking for an ISP I would have confidence in to sign up for a lengthy contract. My problem was that I wanted an ISP that providing newsgroup access. I finally plumped for www.zen.co.uk and have stayed with them for the last 5 years and I highly recommend them - for anyone who isn't bothered about newsgroup access anyway as they have removed that facility now. Therefore I am back in the hunt again and five years on - NOTHING HAS CHANGED! It's a virtual lottery in the providers favour. The only way to decide if you are happy with a providers service is to try it and then it's to late- they have you.
This has got to change soon
Yes, it really is very much a "lottery" choosing an ISP. Obviously you need to have an idea about how many Gigabytes you use per month (both daytime & after 6pm) before you start looking.

Both this site and DSLzoneUK provide reviews and ratings on different ISPs. However, each site has different member recommendations and a "Top 10" ISP on one site may not appear at all in the "Top 10" of another. The smaller ISPs and also business ISPs usually don't have enough users to count.

I have used several broadband ISPs and amongst them, IDnet & Newnet were pretty good; whereas "AllFastAccess" was poor as far as speed was concerned. I mostly use the internet for emails, browsing and a small amount of software downloading/listening to music. I use less than 1GB before 6pm and up to 5GB from 6pm to 2am (per month).

I have been with ANDREWS & ARNOLD(AAISP) for 1 year, an ISP and telecomms provider based in Bracknell, Berkshire. Their main business is business customers, but most of those operate between 8am and 6pm (their PEAK time) and they are keen to have non-business users to make use of otherwise unused capacity. Thus, between 6pm and 8am is their off-peak time; much more generous than other ISPs. Their reputation is amazingly good and their service provides me with the fastest broadband I have ever received. I use their cheapest package at £17.54 per month offering 1GB peak/50GB off peak; all I do, is try to make large downloads after 6pm or anytime Saturdays/Sundays. There is just a 30 DAY contract and NO throttling of speeds. Their fault-finding service is legendary too.

I would suggest you check out: AAISP, Fast.co.uk, ICUK, IDnet, Newnet, Titan ADSL, UKFSN & VISPA.:)

GOOD LUCK!
 
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Yes, it really is very much a "lottery" choosing an ISP. Obviously you need to have an idea about how many Gigabytes you use per month (both daytime & after 6pm) before you start looking.

Both this site and DSLzoneUK provide reviews and ratings on different ISPs. However, each site has different member recommendations and a "Top 10" ISP on one site may not appear at all in the "Top 10" of another. The smaller ISPs and also business ISPs usually don't have enough users to count.

I have used several broadband ISPs and amongst them, IDnet & Newnet were pretty good; whereas "AllFastAccess" was poor as far as speed was concerned. I mostly use the internet for emails, browsing and a small amount of software downloading/listening to music. I use less than 1GB before 6pm and up to 5GB from 6pm to 2am (per month).

I have been with ANDREWS & ARNOLD(AAISP) for 1 year, an ISP and telecomms provider based in Bracknell, Berkshire. Their main business is business customers, but most of those operate between 8am and 6pm (their PEAK time) and they are keen to have non-business users to make use of otherwise unused capacity. Thus, between 6pm and 8am is their off-peak time; much more generous than other ISPs. Their reputation is amazingly good and their service provides me with the fastest broadband I have ever received. I use their cheapest package at £17.54 per month offering 1GB peak/50GB off peak; all I do, is try to make large downloads after 6pm or anytime Saturdays/Sundays. There is just a 30 DAY contract and NO throttling of speeds. Their fault-finding service is legendary too.

I would suggest you check out: AAISP, Fast.co.uk, ICUK, IDnet, Newnet, Titan ADSL, UKFSN & VISPA.:)

GOOD LUCK!

Just had a thought. Why can't ISP's have a short probational sign-up period of -say 1 month. If you are happy with the service then to continue sign up to a 12month contract; if not happy then walk away no cost (or very small costs ) incurred.
 
Pay more and GET more.

Just had a thought. Why can't ISP's have a short probational sign-up period of -say 1 month. If you are happy with the service then to continue sign up to a 12month contract; if not happy then walk away no cost (or very small costs ) incurred.

Probably because poor ISPs just wouldn't make any money that way; they want your financial commitment but want to give little in return. Any broadband service costing much less than £15 per month is probably not much good; as you know, ZEN's prices start at over £20, but you get a decent service for your money.

Fortunately, most good ISPs now seem to only ask you to commit to 1 month; if they demand a longer contract, just don't go to them, its just not worth the risk. At least, with a 1-month contract, you can migrate away quickly again.:nod:

Unfortunately, if a telephone service & calls package is lumped in with the broadband, they usually insist on an 18 month contract.
 
Probably because poor ISPs just wouldn't make any money that way; they want your financial commitment but want to give little in return.

There is also a cost associated with connecting a customer, which they wouldn't get back if that customer only paid for 1 month.

Any broadband service costing much less than £15 per month is probably not much good;

I pay less that £7.50/month for an excellent service, usually averaging 5-6mb on an up-to-8mb line, with no capping issues.

Fortunately, most good ISPs now seem to only ask you to commit to 1 month;

I think its mainly the big ISPs insisting on a 12-month or more contract.

I signed up to a 12 month contract against my better judgement, and I think I'm now well past that, but haven't bothered looking elsewhere too much because I know there isn't a better deal available.
 
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