CiC

Since i'll be moving soon, I'm looking into other ISP's, and with most, if not all, they have stupid fair use policys which basically cap your usage during peak times. :S. So... I'm after knowing what various ISP's people are using, just something nice to know anyway, but i'd like to know whats good for gaming, whats maybe bad for gaming etc etc. I'm not in a fibre optic line area so sadly i can't get a nice 50mb line (fastest i've seen on offer) but if you have fibre optic line as well, please mention that as well, also say if you had good or bad experiences with customer services if ever. i wanna get the best thats on offer

i have the upto 8meg with BT, not great speeds but pretty reliable, quite expensive tho and when our contract expires we are gonna prolly go with sky which is what fish is on

i am on a sky its part of the deal with sky tv am going for the biggest one when i move like 20mb i think for 15 a month or something

enjoy sky no problems so far a few disconnects at the begining of it now its smooth sailing no cap or anything like that

sky caps you with fair usage policy, been looking at them cos currently on sky. Have you also checked that you actually get them speeds? I live in a village, and where i currently live it says 2mb is max, and other side of village where my dad lives is 6.5mb max, which is also same as where i moving into, though it's another corner of the village.

Dunno the kind of area you guys live in, but can you get fibre optic line? This is where you get max speeds, and it's likely that you won't actually get those speeds, but their websites can do speed tests for you to see what max you can get. 20mb is just the max they'll do in certain parts of the country. Virgin is better though, because those same areas they'll do 50mb for similar (if not the same) cost.

Atm all i see is deals for unlimited but with fair use policy attached in the fine print of the terms of service. Which generally means that from 6pm - midnite, weekdays, and 9am - midnite weekends, you'll get capped if your in a heavy usage category, and it'll do this for the whole month, or you reduce your average downloads. Heavy usage is usually just above that of their highest bandwidth that isn't unlimited, but averaged out between people in your area... so if your in a busy area like a town/city, your more likely to be capped than if your in a village like me.

Found out that if your on BT and use any P2P programs, like limewire or bittorrents, etc, they'll cap you auto while they are in use, unless you use them overnight :S



btw fish, once connected, expect lag spikes and disconnections for the first 10 days (dunno if thats working days or not), once you get connected, they train your line to see what max you can do, based on your home wiring and distance from the exchange, etc etc, they start you off a slow speed and keep uping it until they get a stable fast speed, so even when you get back online (and same for me) might not be advisable to play matches due to this.... or at least not important ones

i dont use anywhere near enuff for the limit to affect me so not bothered by it :p

I'm with Vodafone, it's £25 a month unlimited upto 8mb including line rental and free 01 02 calls. But you have to have a vodafone contract or it's a bit more i think. Never had any major problems with them and customer service is free from your mobile and normally pretty helpfull. I just did a speedtest via speedtest.net and it's currently at 4.37mbs at 8pm. It normally around this fast or faster. Don't really know if they have a fair use policy, but I dont download all the time tbh probably only a couple of games and cd's a month so maybe it has never hit me.

hope that helps

I'm with virgin media (what was blueyonder) not sure what the exact speed is now as through the years its been doubled for free think we're on 10mb now could even be 20 i not sure lol. I've always been quite happy with it, when i used to download the speeds were always pretty good, although now i don't know if they cap but its not too much botehr as i don't really dl much anymore. Downtime is pretty rare and when it does happen they're pretty quick at rectifying it.

Im with Virgin media also. Fibre optic. 10mb BB + TV + unlimited weekend and evening calls for £25pm. Cant fault them. Downtime is minimal, and if it is they have brilliant system where they have workers in every small area in the city that you just phone them directly and they come around and fix it. Like a local handyman. My virgin media engineer lives across the street.

Im a massive downloader and the cap is not bad at all. If you download more than 3gig in the morning or 3gig in the afternoon it drops me to 2.5mbps for 5hrs. 9pm - 9am is uncapped.

Highly recommend them.

Added a poll to allow you to see the results

I'm with Virgin Media. I don't have much complaint. A few times where the net drops, but overall good. The Customer Service is abroad, with the usual responses when you have an issue, but in the past few years I've only had to phone up once

virgin for me, pings to servers always decent.
had about 2 dodgy days in 7-8 years of cable.
cap isnt an issue for me and 20meg is good speed although would like greater upload to use my servers a bit better.
cable > adsl always, so if you can get it you should