Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

I am. Haven't noticed any issues.

Our home broadband (BT) has been awful all weekend - disconnecting every 10-20 minutes or so.

So, moving house and will be internetless until BT sort out the new line.

Is it worth buying a wireless dongle & PAYG data? If so who and what?

Mostly for watching TV and low level daily internettage.

We were on BE which got bought by SKY which then started to charge us for not having pay-tv.
Bailed them off and will have the Zen internet fibre line put in next, next Monday.

Anybody use Zen?

^^ you can get a rolling contract with ee, £15 pcm I think, works ok. more dial up than broadband, but fine if you just need to check emails. Alternatively if you're going to get a BT account couldn't you just use the complimentary BT FON account if you're in London / built up area

That's a good shout. I used BT Fon (or whatever it was called) when I was waiting for them to hook my internet up a couple of years ago. Was complimentary, so certainly worth a shot.

I just got connected to BT last night. Given that pretty much all I do on the internet is look at this site and reddit, I noticed that Imgur was being blocked. VPNing to Sweden fixed it so it's obviously not that the website was down.

I don't know what else has been blocked. Has anyone else seen something like this - Parental controls are off.

In fact I'm starting to think that BT are awful after only one day...

Bt >>>

BT Infinity is pure dog shit.

Are there any other decent unlimited (I'm not too fussed about throttling at peak times) broadband providers with a good speed (30Mbps upwards) apart from Virgin. They're dicking me around at the moment and have pissed me off.

BT Infinity isn't yet available in my area.

Cheers

seen this? https://www1.relish.net/

Comcast, erm...

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/15/tech-blogger-tries-to-cancel-comcast-service-hilarity-ensues/

Is there a way to empirically prove who has been leaching off a wifi connection?

My dad has been complaining of high bills in recent months from BT (no surprises there) but they claim he's been using 90+GB a month when all he does is check emails and occasionally watch fly-tying videos.

He lives in a small semi detached house with 5 or 6 other houses within 50 feet of him (next door, next door + 1, across the road etc).

1. Is there a way to trace the culprit?
   
2. If so, what can be done (apart from a baseball bat to every electronic device they own).
   
3. If not, is there a way to claim back the $$$s this has cost him over the past 6 months? He spoke to a call center this morning for over an hour and being deaf as a post struggled to understand what the fuck she was going on about but he's under the impression they're not prepared to refund the excess.
   
   

I'm assuming someone has cracked the password on the router? What else could be possible? Someone accessed his computer on the network and read wifi password from there? He uses a mac and has basically zero competence with anything more technically demanding than an abacus so I suspect there's nothing in the way of security software installed which won't help his chances.

The router should have a list of active and inactive ip addresses and mac addresses which have used it, within the admin login.

Take a look and eliminate his machines (PC, phone, tablet etc) the one / ones that are left are the culprits.

I'd be a bit worried if someone has got hold of his wifi pass word too.

Unless his network is open?

Do what soul said - router address will be something like 192.168.1.1 Most routers supplied will be of a similar format so should be easy enough to talk him through on the phone/ over skype.

Better still install VNC and do it for him?

^^^ What tariffs still exist that charge for excess bandwidth? That's a bit 90s.

Make a MCOL claim for the excess charges, and make a complaint to OFCOM. There's heaps of precedent for telecoms companies to be forced to refund excess charges.

If he pays by direct debit, just tell the bank that the payments were taken in error - The direct debit guaranty is very powerful.

The PC / laptop itself may be compromised, and running a bot. 90GB per month is a big whack of data for just some leacher to be using.

You can lock the router down further by not broadcasting the SSID, switching to WPA2 at a bare minimum, and enabling MAC address filtering.

Thanks all.

Am I making it up to assume it's a crime in the UK to hack access to a protected router? (And potentially not a crime if the router is not protected?)

at some point it was d/l at 62Mbps
this is definitely the fastest I ever downloaded
WOAH!

Bumping this... anyone using Talk Talk? In East London? BT has been solid but is no longer competitive... can get 5x the speed at half the cost with Talk Talk.

Use this: https://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

Useful for the exchange mapper too. You can sometimes get promised mega-speeds but if you are 5KMs from the exchange..

About to leave BT. Their tv package is useless, I'm constantly resetting the box, iplayer is unusable.
I'm planning on keeping the phone line with them for less hassle swapping, getting a freeview box and taking broadband elsewhere. I'd love to go to zen but its pricey. I'd love to be with a provider I could actually phone if there was an issue (mrs sacreds laptop has never worked with bt router).
I have read back thru the thread and used the checker^^.
Plusnet were awful in our last place.
I'm o2 customer so they do a half price offer but thats now sky?

Any suggestions?

Can't fault Andrews and Arnold for telephone support... Speak to someone in the UK, who knows what they're talking about, and gives a shit. Oh, and without 20 minutes of press 5 because your call in important to us waiting beforehand.

I'm moving to SSE Broadband and Talk, however I live in the sticks in bonny Scotland so my choices are limited, I have the choice of BT who deliver a half decent service or a very small handful of other chaps who use BT hardware so not always that competitive on price, until I saw SSE who are doing free broadband for a year and line rental with all the calls to landlines for £20/month! They have call centers and generally so far have picked up straight away. Not sure how good they'll be but they are half the price of BT so wortha shot.