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anyone is better than AOL !!!

BT was fine when I was still in the UK, but that was a while back now ! CaleyD sorted my mum out with her Internet connection last year and the choice she made based on all the details was Tiscali.

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Been with BT since we had one of these contraptions. Never had any aggro. Probably more expensive than other providers but I suppose you have to pay for quality these days.

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Check out Sky as well if you've got or are getting satellite telly. They've got a deal on where you save on line rental and get free evening and weekend calls if you take telly, phone and broadband with them.

Edit: If you do decide to go with Sky get in touch with a friend who also has Sky to recommend you and you both get vouchers.

Edited by 5thStand
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The best provider in the area is actually Orange at the moment as they have LLU enabled in both of the Inverness exchanges. Tiscali are horrible, it's taken me months of angry phone calls to get them to provide a reasonable speed - to give you an idea of the scale of the problem: I live 2mins away from the Culloden exchange, my router sycs at 8.1Mbps, off-peak is great - at times speed tests have shown I'm even getting 9.5Mbps downloads :rotflmao: The problems used to occur during peak times - download rates of < 500Kbps. After my latest angry phone call to them though I mysteriously seem to be receiving a consistant 4Mbps during peak times...

Avoid AOL, Tiscali, Talk Talk & BT (they do a lot of speed throttling and have download limits)

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Orange is one of the worst down our neck of the woods. Also heard bad reports about AOL and Tiscali. Techno Gringo is with O2 and hasn't mentioned any problems. Not sure if he has a download limit mind...I doubt it though knowing what he's like!!

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Tiscali get a lot of bad press because the service they provide down south and in the larger cities is terrible, but I've used them in Inverness for years and, aside from self inflicted issues, have never had any trouble with them.

Also keep in mind that you are in Ardersier so your not likely to be getting anything like maximum advertised speeds. No point in going to a company that charge you over the odds for an 8Mb service when the most you can get is 2 or 3Mb.

Think we pay ?20 all in for our Tiscali Broadband and Phone (Free Anytime UK and International to some countries) including Line Rental.

They aren't running the free setup at the moment (costs ?30), but if you phone them and tell them you're thinking of switching and free setup would clinch it then I'd be confident they'd wave the fee.

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One other thing, if BT are contacting you make sure they tell you what it's going to cost when introductory offers expire. They almost caught my father out until I had a look at it and after 3 months the cost was going to go up to over ?30...3 times the intro offer!!!

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Orange is one of the worst down our neck of the woods. Also heard bad reports about AOL and Tiscali. Techno Gringo is with O2 and hasn't mentioned any problems. Not sure if he has a download limit mind...I doubt it though knowing what he's like!!

As CaleyD has said, it mostly depends on how far away you are from your exchange. That and what providers have LLU in that exchange. A provider with LLU will always provide a better service than one using BT OpenReach.

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Jay Ardersier might be out in the sticks but we do get broadband ....we also have 2 shops and 2 pubs... there were 4 pubs at one point....which would explain why some people out here have a drink problem....Aint that bad a place..

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water!!!

Not good news in the long term I wouldn't think, but I'd imagine they'll start fecking about with bigger places first and it could be a while before they screw things up in Inverness. If it was me I would be hesitant of saddling myself with anything more than 12 months on Tiscali given the news.....think they're 12 month standard contract anyway.

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I have been with AOL for years, and it's been ok as long as you don't use their software and just use them as a connection via a router. I have no download limit and pay ?16 a month with no phone tie in. Speeds are not great but when you live in the sticks you have to accept that. My bit torrenting works fine overnight, just gets throttled during day, I can live with that.. lol!

Years ago my wife transfered our phone to Sky because it was supposed to save money. What happened was our bill not only went up, but they just took funds from our bank account as and when they felt like it leading us to go overdrawn and incur serious bank charges. Resultingly, I would never sign my phone over ever again!

Set up my Dad on BT last month, huge problems... no connection for 48 hours after they were supposed to be activated. Several hours of phone calls to Indian call centre getting passed from piller to post and playing with differerent sockets in house and different settings on pc's and all of a sudden the router light shows a signal and it just works!

Now from first call, I told them my experience was that if no broadband signal showing on router the problem was them not giving us a connection, they disputed this and had me all but reinstalling Windows in a bid to fix a problem, that was at their end.. Hopeless service and huge accent problems!!

Graham

Edited by kiltarlity
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  • 1 month later...

Orange is one of the worst down our neck of the woods. Also heard bad reports about AOL and Tiscali. Techno Gringo is with O2 and hasn't mentioned any problems. Not sure if he has a download limit mind...I doubt it though knowing what he's like!!

As CaleyD has said, it mostly depends on how far away you are from your exchange. That and what providers have LLU in that exchange. A provider with LLU will always provide a better service than one using BT OpenReach.

I'm reasonably close to our exchange (less than 1 mile), and changed ISP to Tiscali. They offered an upgraded speed and I immediately thought go for it.

Worst thing I ever did. They put on an LLU and it HALVED the download speed I was getting beforehand!! I tried umpteen different calls to Tiscali but they just said there was no guaranteed download speed.

Needless to say when the contract was up, so was Tiscali....

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I'm reasonably close to our exchange (less than 1 mile), and changed ISP to Tiscali. They offered an upgraded speed and I immediately thought go for it.

Worst thing I ever did. They put on an LLU and it HALVED the download speed I was getting beforehand!! I tried umpteen different calls to Tiscali but they just said there was no guaranteed download speed.

Needless to say when the contract was up, so was Tiscali....

Tiscali are my ISP at the moment but they don't have LLU at my exchange. I will not be staying with them when the contract is up at the end of October.

Out of curiosity, which exchange do you connect to?

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Tiscali don't have any LLU enabled exchanges up here.

I was just thinking that. Orange are really the only LLU in the Inverness area until Talk Talk get their LLU working in the Inverness exchange in mid July.

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  • 1 month later...

I'm reasonably close to our exchange (less than 1 mile), and changed ISP to Tiscali. They offered an upgraded speed and I immediately thought go for it.

Worst thing I ever did. They put on an LLU and it HALVED the download speed I was getting beforehand!! I tried umpteen different calls to Tiscali but they just said there was no guaranteed download speed.

Needless to say when the contract was up, so was Tiscali....

Tiscali are my ISP at the moment but they don't have LLU at my exchange. I will not be staying with them when the contract is up at the end of October.

Out of curiosity, which exchange do you connect to?

To answer CaleyD's and your question, I'm not in Inverness. I'm just outside Sutton Coldfield.

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One thing to remember is... And Sky dont tell you this, Is you still pay line rental to BT for the phone line, also you will find that BT Option one (basic line rental) you can haggle with BT for free evening and weekend calls, also with your calls from and by BT you get 0845 numbers free now too. Im with BT but have been since dial up days, I dont have any bother with they, yes they do cost a couple of quid more to start with but you can Haggle it down, I have option one line rentel and option 1 broadband, up to 8 mb and 10gig down load limit and it all in costs me ?24.50.

For a normal broadband user 10Gig is massive, I used to online game too and never went over 10gig a month!!

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It won't matter what ISP you go with, you still have line rental to pay because without line rental - you can't have broadband.

When I ditch Tiscali at the end of October this year, I'll only have Line Rental to pay - Folk with Orange mobile contracts over a certain value get free broadband in areas that have Orange LLU :023:

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If we ever get fiber Virgin give you phone line, tv, broadband and mobile phone all for ?50 its as good as having the full package of sky, but with free hd channels and its V+ my grandfather in laws got it, it looks mint and hes got 20mb broadband too......

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