Broadband/Cable Options in Fleet, Hants

[GLOC]

As of this Saturday I will be moving from Lyneham to Fleet to make the commute to work a little easier (currently 90mins, down to 10 )

However, with that move comes the normal upheavals of electricity, gas, address lists etc and most importantly Internet Connection!

To try and get some pointers from the collection (YD collective that is, we DIR clones communicate by telepathy ) and I am seeking some advice from those in the Farnborough area and from those with recent experience of getting an adsl/cable contract sorted.

What I need from a service is

• 4-8Mb downloads, low contention ratio
• Free eve/weekend calls (I am on an Orange mobile contract at the moment so that might sway things towards Orange)
• Not bothered about a free wifi router as I have a pretty decent Netgear one. However, if cable is the option to go for, I need one of those.
• Sky maybe an option but I have Freeview and there isn't that much I watch on that. If need be, I have other ways of getting good stuff from Sky In addition, I will be living in rented accomodation is a set of flats so an aerial probably isn't going to be a player anyway.
• Relatively cheap. I am an BT Option 2 atm

So, any ideas. Mal, anything from BT? Neil, anything from Orange?

[Bantam]

If you put your postcode in here;

Samknows Broadband - Availability checker

It will work out which exchange you're on, distance to the exchange, and give you every option known to man, including which LLU providers and cable providers are available.


HTH.

Mark.

[GLOC]

Unfortunately, I don't know the phone number as I haven't got that far with BT.

[wilbo]

but you could look up the STD code for fleet and make the rest up..




edit: which does work..

[GLOC]

Originally Posted by wilbo

but you could look up the STD code for fleet and make the rest up..




edit: which does work..

Or read the first page which allows you to put a postcode and house number in 'doh'

[Scuby]

Gareth,

Fleet's all well wired up for cable - everyone I know in rented places in Fleet already had the house wired up when they moved in, so it can be enabled and working the day you move in. Virgin's deals seem to vary, but a couple of friends have just moved and wanted phone and internet, and Virgin was the best option (think they pay ~£18/month for phone + broadband). 2 for £20 (phone + internet) and 3 for £30 (+ tv) seem like common offers too.

Been meaning to say hello actually - noticed you started work at our place last week. Took a while to work out why I recognised the name at first

David

[GLOC]

Originally Posted by Scuby

Gareth,

Fleet's all well wired up for cable - everyone I know in rented places in Fleet already had the house wired up when they moved in, so it can be enabled and working the day you move in. Virgin's deals seem to vary, but a couple of friends have just moved and wanted phone and internet, and Virgin was the best option (think they pay ~£18/month for phone + broadband). 2 for £20 (phone + internet) and 3 for £30 (+ tv) seem like common offers too.

Been meaning to say hello actually - noticed you started work at our place last week. Took a while to work out why I recognised the name at first

David

x5332 A3 G012 Pod C . I am in all day tomorrow and most of friday so come by and I will buy you a coffee.

I will check with the agents tomorrow about Cable with Virgin although I am a little suspect following the comments on here. Their wine club is excellent though!

[Scuby]

Originally Posted by GLOC

x5332 A3 G012 Pod C . I am in all day tomorrow and most of friday so come by and I will buy you a coffee.

Ah yes, I can always make time for the coffee shop!

David
(G008-C - next office down!)

[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.

STD code is 01252 if you haven't already got it

Let me know where you end up, we can see about hooking up when I'm visiting the folks

[aclivity]

Originally Posted by GLOC

x5332 A3 G012 Pod C . I am in all day tomorrow and most of friday so come by and I will buy you a coffee.

I will check with the agents tomorrow about Cable with Virgin although I am a little suspect following the comments on here. Their wine club is excellent though!

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. As part of the VM organisation, my following comments may be a little biased:

Cable broadband is capable of much higher speed than ADSL, Virgin Media have announced nationwide 50mb broadband by the end of the year. ADSL can't reach that kind of speed yet, and even when it does it will only be available to people who's address is "The Exchange" .

ADSL is severely hampered by the distance from the exchange, and contention. Cable broadband doesn't have "exchanges" in the same way - the distance is measured in feet from your local roadside cabinet where the optical fibre terminates. Contention is also usually lower for cable broadband, simply because each cabinet serves less customers. In dense areas, this second fact is less true, but I don't think Fleet is particularly densely built up.

In regards to TV service, as I was personally involved in one area I feel I have to shout about it a bit. Cable offers a service which is currently unmatched by any other provider - Video On Demand. Satellite simply cannot provide this service (they claim to, but it's actually using a technology called push VoD which is severely limited compared to True VoD). IPTV will offer it, as yet the content coverage is quite limited though, and there are issues with streamed content that don't affect true VoD (which isn't streamed on your internet connection, it's actually called a "narrowcast", as opposed to broadcast). Virgin (well, Telewest) was actually the first to put a HD broadcast service into the market, but Sky pretty much own that market now - they have several linear HD channels, whereas Virgin Media only has 1, and quite a lot of HD On Demand content.

Costs, there are several deals on at the moment from things like 2 for £20 - that's phone and broadband for £20 a month. Which I think comes with free TV, you'd have to check to be certain; up to the VIP pack, which has 20Mb broadband, phone with talk unlimited, V+ (PVR inc HD) plus second set top box for another room, plus sports & movies for £85 a month.

Other issues raised here have been about billing. Which was abysmal. 5 different billing systems were in use across the company, thanks to the merger of ex Telewest and ex NTL (despite being called Virgin, it's still the same old company, who paid squillions to buy the Virgin name). The last migration to the single billing platform is happening early next month, so it is now a lot better than it was. There are lots of initiatives under way to make it better, but some people are still having problems. I can say that the number of billing calls has dropped dramatically in the last 6 months (more than halved) but you still hear bad tales.

But as I said, I am probably not giving wholly unbiased information here.

Andy