Broadband/Cable Options in Fleet, Hants

[GLOC]

Originally Posted by neilh

Cable is pretty well established there - but can be hit and miss in terms of service and quality. My folks are currently getting their service capped through the evenings - and they're not exactly major downloaders

You should also be able to get a reasonable DSL service from most other providers around there - who's your mobile contract with as you may find some deals that you can tie to your mobile.

Capped cable isn't a good one for me as I do a fair amount of downloading! I am on BT at the moment and get 6.5Mbs which is quite handy. The house is 1.34km (as the crow flies) from the exchange so should get fairly decent DL speeds.

Free eve/weekend calls (I am on an Orange mobile contract at the moment so that might sway things towards Orange)

Orange! That's why I asked you

Neil, pm me your email/mobile details and I will send you my address in the main address change email that will be going this weekend.

Anyone else have any experience of

[neilh]

Originally Posted by aclivity

in Fleet you are about 5 minutes away from the Virgin Media head office, so if anything goes wrong you can always take it up with them there. Or should I say "us" there.

I might have to steer my folks that way - they're getting pretty cheesed off with the usual offshore call centres

Originally Posted by aclivity

Cable broadband is capable of much higher speed than ADSL, Virgin Media have announced nationwide 50mb broadband by the end of the year.

Shame my folks connection is being capped and seems to constantly drop in and out

Mind you that's a sample of 1 that I've got experience of

[GLOC]

Thanks Andy. I will be speaking to the customer sales team tomorrow as I want something a little more than 2Mb download but don't want to spend £85 per month. I had noticed that Virgin was just the other side of the M3 so that might be an advantage

[neilh]

Originally Posted by GLOC

Capped cable isn't a good one for me as I do a fair amount of downloading!

Yup, I figured you'd need a reasonable connection for images and stuff

Having said that I'm not sure what the score is with Virgin and capping at the moment and how much is protection measures to try to sort out network issues and how much is changes to service. I haven't really had chance to dig into it for my folks yet

Originally Posted by GLOC

Orange! That's why I asked you

I had a feeling you were

Originally Posted by GLOC

Neil, pm me your email/mobile details and I will send you my address in the main address change email that will be going this weekend.

On it's way shortly

[Finless]

If you have a Sky package then their broadband package/free phones weekends is pretty good (you still need a BT line though).

If you are interested then check their website and key in your new post code to see if their service is available in your area.

[aclivity]

Originally Posted by GLOC

Capped cable isn't a good one for me as I do a fair amount of downloading!

Cable isn't capped.

If you are in the top 3% of downloaders or uploaders (torrenters, I'm looking at you, err ... us ... here) during peak hours, you may be throttled, but not capped.

I'm on a 20Mb connection, and haven't ever been throttled yet, but the way it works is that if I downloaded more than 6gb between 4pm and 9pm, my account would be throttled back to 5Mb, for 5 hours. You can continue downloading or surfing or streaming at 5Mb.

ADSL caps work differently - download your 8Mb in a month, anything over that is stopped.

[aclivity]

Originally Posted by neilh

I might have to steer my folks that way - they're getting pretty cheesed off with the usual offshore call centres



Shame my folks connection is being capped and seems to constantly drop in and out

Mind you that's a sample of 1 that I've got experience of

moving to a maximum service of 50mb sounds great, but in reality few people need a service that fast. The good news is that by enabling 50Mb, Virgin Media are deploying a new version of the transport mechanism ... DOCSIS 3. By moving the 20Mb customers to DOCSIS 3, this will make all other tiers of service more reliable.

If the connection is dropping out, call faults, and get an engineer out. If they aren't big downloaders they should not be being throttled (see above), so it sounds like a config or cable modem problem?

[neilh]

Originally Posted by aclivity

If the connection is dropping out, call faults, and get an engineer out.

They had one out recently and had the modem replaced, but it's hard for me to check whether it's definitely their cable connection dropping as opposed to something odd with their PC.

Originally Posted by aclivity

If they aren't big downloaders they should not be being throttled (see above), so it sounds like a config or cable modem problem?

They're definitely not big downloaders - we're a little slack at putting up photos and videos of their grandson at the moment
They're definitely being throttled though as they've either spoken to someone who told them they were or they've had a letter recently, I can't recall which now.

Anyway, none of this particularly helps Gareth - except that if he rolled up at their house my mum would feed him up nicely and sort his washing while he borrowed a bit of t'internet

You don't golf do you Gareth?

[GLOC]

Originally Posted by neilh

Anyway, none of this particularly helps Gareth - except that if he rolled up at their house my mum would feed him up nicely and sort his washing while he borrowed a bit of t'internet

That's very kind of you Neil, I will print this page out and take it around to your Mum's

Originally Posted by neilh

You don't golf do you Gareth?

Nope, I passed T1 with AndyK so didn't need to

[neilh]

Originally Posted by GLOC

That's very kind of you Neil, I will print this page out and take it around to your Mum's

You wouldn't need to mate, she's far too keen to mother anyone who's passing!!

Originally Posted by GLOC

Nope, I passed T1 with AndyK so didn't need to

Heheh - shame, you could have joined my old man on the course. I'm sure he's distressed I took up diving and not golf