Isp

[Fud]

Can you recommennd a good cheap ISP for unlimited download /month for Wick (town centre)? Not BT please.
Thanks in advance.
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Cheers,
the Fud.

[Jeid]

haha... best name ever!

Anyway, O2 are good for me!

[Mad1man]

I always think that its funny people say not BT - BT control ALL of the broadband lines and were forced to create BT Openworld to maintain them to prove that they are fair to all ISP's customers as well as their own. So it makes no difference who you use it is still a BT network and BT staff maintaining it in exchanges and up poles and underground, the other ISPs all simply rent space. Therefore the speed you get is determined by the local hardware limitations not the service provider so we all get whatever BT has installed locally to us.

The only alternative is the few areas of large cities where there is a cable TV infrstructure owned by Virgin or whoever - then for those lucky few customers nationally it might be different.

Good luck - hope I haven't spoiled you dream of superfast Caithness broadband.
I do think that in a fair world rural communities should be first to get upgraded to fibre optics to get us to the international norms for places like Korea and Holland of practical speeds of 34Mbs download on supposed 100Mbs services. Sadly it will be the larger cities first and we will be tail end charlie yet again.
In BTs favour reported a router fault on Wed at 1.30 am and new router arrived at house by lunchtime today.

Quite a few friends have been trying both Tiscali and Sky haven't heard them wailing or gnashing teeth yet.

Thanks for giving me a chance for a weekly rant.

[Metalattakk]

Can you recommennd a good cheap ISP for unlimited download /month </snip>

There is no such thing. You get what you pay for. ;)

[Sapphire2803]

O2 is no good. We were summarily dismissed by them for downloading 100gb in a month on an "unlimited" package.

Virgin seems great so far, but make sure you stay within the limits during peak hours (fair enough).

[The Oracle]

I always think that its funny people say not BT - BT control ALL of the broadband lines and were forced to create BT Openworld to maintain them to prove that they are fair to all ISP's customers as well as their own. So it makes no difference who you use it is still a BT network and BT staff maintaining it in exchanges and up poles and underground, the other ISPs all simply rent space. Therefore the speed you get is determined by the local hardware limitations not the service provider so we all get whatever BT has installed locally to us.

True but ISP loading (from their own servers) does put speed restrictions on customers.

For example, I was with AOL where my speed on a 8Mb package, with a line limit of 7Mb, was never above 2.1Mb and was more often than not 400Kb.

I switched to BT and always have 6.7Mb.

The reason, AOL allow up to 200 customers to share a connection, BT only allow 50!

[Geo]

I always think that its funny people say not BT - BT control ALL of the broadband lines and were forced to create BT Openworld to maintain them to prove that they are fair to all ISP's customers as well as their own. So it makes no difference who you use it is still a BT network and BT staff maintaining it in exchanges and up poles and underground, the other ISPs all simply rent space. Therefore the speed you get is determined by the local hardware limitations not the service provider so we all get whatever BT has installed locally to us.

It makes a big difference. On O2 I got less than 1Mb, often down to dialup "speed." Changed to Plus.net and now get 4Mb.

[pottheed]

How Broadband works here is that all ISP's rent services off BT wholesale.

BT wholesale maintain all of the broadband connections up here.

In regards to speed, the ISP then shapes the traffic as per its policy however BT wholesale is responsible for the "sync speed" which is the speed you can see in your router. so if your actual speed is much less than you see in your router, its a ISP fault. if your "sync speed" is low, then its a BT wholesale fault.

If a fault does occour, it is up to the ISP in particular to chase it up with BT wholesale, some ISP's are better than others in doing this. Some ISP's just refuse to log a fault with BT wholesale as it costs them quite a lot of money if its not a BT wholesale fault, they would prefer just to lose a customer as their profit margin is small anyway.

BT retail have no more access to BT wholesale as tiscali, o2, virgin etc.

[regalkings]

plus.net has been excellent so far,
They have the option of having a month to month contract, £11.99 for first 3 months, 17.99 thereafter, although after 7 months i'm still being charged £11.99 instead of £17.99.
Like all isps with fair usage policy bandwidth is limited at peak times.
Plusnet apply this between 7pm and 10pm, but online gaming and downloading is still possible, which compaired to others i've used which throttle for longer periods and even website viewing from lagging.
Bandwidth usage monthly limit is 80gb, Not sure if all isp's are similar but usage between midnight and 6am is not counted in monthly allowance.

I was using tiscali previous to this and found them totally incapable of fulfilling anything more than basic internet usage.

My top downstream speed can reach just under 8gb in springpark, thurso. Always fastest during the night, best time to download.

Plusnet so far 9/10
Tiscali 5/10