broadband

[jims jimny]

looking to change my isp
so is anybody running SKY & if so whats it like


   cheers
               jim

[strapping young lad]

these may help

http://www.mud-club.com/forum/index.php?action=search2

broadband has been discussed many a time before, including sky

personally im ok with it, others are not

[carbore]

Unless you want all your surfing data to be sold to anyone who wants it avoid Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk.

they are implementing Phorm, read more here www.badphorm.co.uk

"Simply put, three of the UK's largest ISPs (Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk) have decided to sell your private browsing history to an advertising broker. Yes, the entire list of every web page you visit gets sent to Phorm (the broker) in real time, as you click, so they can send you 'targeted advertising'. Naturally the ISP's are not too keen on telling their users this, they'd much rather feed us all platitudes about how it'll help combat phishing and how the targeted adverts will be so much better than the random ones we see today. In fact, they didn't even announce it to the UK press, we had to find out about it from the New York Times!"

I use plus net who despite being owned by BT have said they dont intend to implement Phorm.

PS BT actually implemented this as a test without telling anyone. They may get sued.

[MuddyMachine]

Just phone BT about this as I am looking to move to them, they were coy to start with then gave me this link saying it was only a voluntary trail in the Humberside area

http://webwise.bt.com/webwise/index.html


we will have to see :?

[carbore]

Here is another reason NOT to use BT

BT broadband customers who don't use an @btinternet.com address are being forced to jump through hoops to send email, as the national telco says it is tightening its anti-spam policies.

A change in BT's rules means individuals and businesses who use a desktop SMTP program such as Outlook or Thunderbird with their own domain name are being confronted with error number 553 when they try to send mail. SMTP error 553 is raised when a remote server rejects the mail because the sender's domain is not on its approved list.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/25/bt_email_verification_update/

They just do what ever the hell they like.

[Wireless]

Yeah, I'm in the unusual position of using a BTopenworld Account for email, and having my Broadband via Demon, this last little trick from BT stuffed up my email starting from a few days ago, not helped by my having a proxy email service elsewhere as the return route for some mail, which BT just binned, including all my business mail from the US.
I'm afraid this anti-spam crap, without any warning to account holders, has driven the last nail into my relationship with BT, just got to sort out the email with Demon and I'll just bin BT.

I don't know why I left Demon years ago, they were good back then on dial up.

[carbore]

Does anyone knoe if Greenbee are any good for phone and Broadband?

I want to ditch BT for phone line rental and although I like PlusNet (my ISP) they are new owned by BT so therefore Id like to drop them.

http://www.greenbee.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&categoryId=6

They even do Fixed IP so they seem reasonably savvy.

[Wireless]

Sorry, never heard of them before.

I tend to steer clear of the new start up ISP companies as they tend to either sell themselves out (anyone remember Screaming.Net?), or fold like e7even.com after they've taken your subscription in advance.

The big companies buy them out and then gradually change the terms and conditions so that you're 'integrated' as one of their clone customers, some people don't notice and the ISP revenues increase, others move on, recognising whats about to happen.

I'm now back with a stable Demon ISP, and might pay a little bit more than most, but Customer Service is second to none, you get what you pay for, as always.

[strapping young lad]

www.thinkbroadband.com

will give you a clearer picture of whats currently on offer

i found O2 to be better than most but i dont know how accurate it is

ie

10 people who use o2 are asked how good they are and 8 say good and 2 say no..

but

1000 virgin customers are asked and 200 say they are poo, even though the percentages are the same the amount is different, as i dont know anyone who uses o2

but loads who use virgin

[andyw]

I will be going to O2 for broadband from the end of this month, the reason being is that they are the only people that have LLU services in my local exchange, and as I live in spitting distance from the exchange they say I should get around 18mbps.

Check out your local exchange for available ISP's.  http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php

[SimonHarwood]

I use Demon. I have had no complaints to make about their service in the 10+ years that I have been with them.

[Freelander1980]

Just read this and now a little worried as i have just ordered the bt homehub broand band thing, hopefully i will not have any problems

[Range Rover Blues]

I didn't know talktalk had been selling all my data, bloody great as I use interent banking that would explain all the spoof bank emails I get, usually 2 a day.

My sister has been with AOL for years, I might look into swapping.

[waveydavey]

Even reading the small print doesn't necessarily help.

I cancelled BT to emigrate; I had read the small print and quoted it to them time and again but they wanted to charge me nearly £400 cancellation fee which I should not have to pay.

I won in the end but the first stage was a person in the UK then escalate it to the duty braincell.

If anybody has BT account problems PM me for a good Email contact!

[crazymac]

I started my internet stuff with virgin on dial up, then their broadband. I had no issues at all.

last year I decided to try and save money, so switched my phone line and braodband to Talk Talk. NEVER AGAIN!!!

They were without a doubt the worst company with the worst service I have EVER come across!! and it cost me more than I was originally paying!

After a particularly turbulant conversation with another call centre I lost the rag and told them to stick the service where the sun will never shine! and went back to BT for my phone, and for simplicity taggen the broadband service on as well.

I have had no problems since. The home hub did stop working, but they had a new one out in 12 hours!! thats right, 12!! i phoned them about it at 8 in the evening, and the courier arrived at 8 the next morning!! Impressed? I was!!

[datalas]

I didn't know talktalk had been selling all my data, bloody great as I use interent banking that would explain all the spoof bank emails I get, usually 2 a day.

My sister has been with AOL for years, I might look into swapping.

Your internet bank should be using SSL (if they aren't change it now, or at least stop) if so then they will only be able to log the fact you have been to the domain of the internet bank, not any of the pages you visited within.   Granted that's not necessarily any better but it does at least limit the data they have access to.

Whilst I understand your concerns and a healthy level of paranoia is healthy [1] I would imagine that the number of phishing attacks you receive is due to the fact that spam has increased several fold in the last year and that finding an idiot on the internet seems to be insanely easy to do if you email enough people.  Not that you're an idiot, it's just that they live in eternal hope :(

Another interesting thing to note is that some organizations (and some ISPs) sell email data to third parties, and those that don't can have rather obvious email addresses for people.

Perhaps we should just turn the internet off.


[1] OK, that's a contradiction in and of itself, but hey ho

[JumboBeef]

I use BT without any issues.

BT broadband customers who don't use an @btinternet.com address are being forced to jump through hoops to send email, as the national telco says it is tightening its anti-spam policies.

A change in BT's rules means individuals and businesses who use a desktop SMTP program such as Outlook or Thunderbird with their own domain name are being confronted with error number 553 when they try to send mail. SMTP error 553 is raised when a remote server rejects the mail because the sender's domain is not on its approved list.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/25/bt_email_verification_update/

I use SMTP (outlook) all the time (and never use my BT email address ~ can't even remember what it is!) and have never received an error 553 (or any other error).  Anyway, the link you have posted says:

SMTP error 553 is raised when a remote server rejects the mail because the sender's domain is not on its approved list.

...so it a domain issue and not BT issue.

People love to hate BT but I don't think they are much different to other ISPs (plus you can call them on a free phone number, not many ISPs offer that).

[carbore]

Interesting comment from JumboBeef. IT has been widley repoted that BT have caused a lot of people (Wireless included) problems but you have not suffered so.

Maybe they have blocked the sending from non bt domains via the BT smtp server as opposed to a blanket block on ntn BT domain SMTP traffic. I use 1-1 and send out via 1-1 SMTP servers which authenticate me via username and password. If aomeones mail servers dont provide this and rely on you being connected via "thier isp", e.g havign thier IP address then you need to send out via the connecting ISPs (say BT) mail server in which case it could bet blocked. This IS a bt issue as things worked before the change that now do not.

Unless I had a BT account to try these options on I cant try it for myself but the balence of what I have read says that they are being a pain!

Still its nice to know that not everyone has suffered.

[karlo]

I e-mailed Virgin about this Phorm doofer and have received this reply:

Dear Karl,

Thanks for your email.

I would like to inform you that our customers won’t be forced to use the Phorm system, and will have the choice to keep their internet experience exactly as it is now. As we get closer to launch we’ll explain how this will work.

 

For more information please visit the below given link.

 

http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/webwise.php

 

For further queries, please contact our Customer Support Department on 0870 013 0070.


If you need any further assistance please contact us again, or visit the following address:

http://www.virgin.net/helpme/

Many Thanks

Jaibeer

Virgin Media Customer Support

You may have noticed that we have changed our name to Virgin Media. So

What does this mean? Well the same great service and value, but now we

can bring you even more exciting new services. To find out more visit:

 

http://www.virgin.net/allyours/broadband/

[Quaker]

I was with AOL for 3 years and whilst the service was ok whilst it worked - every 6 months or so it would randomly stop working and after spending a small fortune ringing India (The staff were fairly helpful but had there hands tied with the info they could give me!) I would get it working again myself after giving up with them. 

I've now switched to Orange (I got it cheaper with my mobile package) and after a couple of teething problems have to say it's pretty good.  I'd certainly recommend them.