Freeview and Free Broadband
 

With the broadband price war breaking out I wonder where that will
leave freeview.

It looks like those of us with broadband will soon be looking towards
the likes of Sky, NTL/Telewest and BT for that service.

I'm currently paying £23.50 to Pipex for broadband, I appreciate that
for a mere £7 extra I could get TV, broadband and phone with NTL but
at the moment and waiting to see how it sorts itself out but how long
I'll stay with Pipex is another matter.

Geoff Lane

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

"Geoff Lane" wrote in message
...
With the broadband price war breaking out I wonder where that will
leave freeview.

It looks like those of us with broadband will soon be looking towards
the likes of Sky, NTL/Telewest and BT for that service.

I'm currently paying £23.50 to Pipex for broadband, I appreciate that
for a mere £7 extra I could get TV, broadband and phone with NTL but
at the moment and waiting to see how it sorts itself out but how long
I'll stay with Pipex is another matter.

You can get broadband for £15, + £10 for a BT line, which is £25. Still less
than £30 for a combined package via cable or Sky. And you don't have to pay
them per month to use a PVR.

--
Max Demian

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

Max Demian wrote:
"Geoff Lane" wrote in message
...
With the broadband price war breaking out I wonder where that will
leave freeview.

It looks like those of us with broadband will soon be looking towards
the likes of Sky, NTL/Telewest and BT for that service.

I'm currently paying £23.50 to Pipex for broadband, I appreciate that
for a mere £7 extra I could get TV, broadband and phone with NTL but
at the moment and waiting to see how it sorts itself out but how long
I'll stay with Pipex is another matter.

You can get broadband for £15, + £10 for a BT line, which is £25. Still less
than £30 for a combined package via cable or Sky. And you don't have to pay
them per month to use a PVR.


BT will also be launching their Freeview PVR + VOD broadband box within
the next couple of months called BT vision.

Orange are also looking at some sort of TV service to complement their
Broadband service.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

"Geoff Lane" wrote in message
...
With the broadband price war breaking out I wonder where that will
leave freeview.

It looks like those of us with broadband will soon be looking
towards
the likes of Sky, NTL/Telewest and BT for that service.

I'm currently paying £23.50 to Pipex for broadband, I appreciate
that
for a mere £7 extra I could get TV, broadband and phone with NTL but
at the moment and waiting to see how it sorts itself out but how
long
I'll stay with Pipex is another matter.

Geoff Lane



Ah, but what do you get for that from Pipex?

NTL Telewest will charge you £30pm for 1Mb, telephone with a call
connection charge of 5p, and only a basic TV package.

I have to say - despite how I will doubtless get flamed - that NTL
broadband must be one of the best available, at least around here.
Stable, reliable, and fast. I get 4Mb uncapped for £24.99pm which,
with market forces, will either get faster soon at no extra cost, or
will come down in price. Freeview and Freesat give me everything else
I could want.


--
Woody

harrogate3 at ntlworld dot com

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

"Geoff Lane" wrote in message
...
With the broadband price war breaking out I wonder where that will
leave freeview.

It looks like those of us with broadband will soon be looking towards
the likes of Sky, NTL/Telewest and BT for that service.

I'm currently paying £23.50 to Pipex for broadband, I appreciate that
for a mere £7 extra I could get TV, broadband and phone with NTL but
at the moment and waiting to see how it sorts itself out but how long
I'll stay with Pipex is another matter.

Same here. The only thing is that it has to be unrestricted broadband.
Listening to the radio at 128 kbps will exceed a 2 GB cap in two days and a
40 GB cap in a month. For steeming video at 512 kbps a 40 GB cap will go in
about a week.


Geoff Lane

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

harrogate3 wrote:
"Geoff Lane" wrote in message
...
With the broadband price war breaking out I wonder where that will
leave freeview.

It looks like those of us with broadband will soon be looking towards
the likes of Sky, NTL/Telewest and BT for that service.

I'm currently paying £23.50 to Pipex for broadband, I appreciate that
for a mere £7 extra I could get TV, broadband and phone with NTL but
at the moment and waiting to see how it sorts itself out but how long
I'll stay with Pipex is another matter.

Geoff Lane



Ah, but what do you get for that from Pipex?

NTL Telewest will charge you £30pm for 1Mb, telephone with a call
connection charge of 5p, and only a basic TV package.

I have to say - despite how I will doubtless get flamed - that NTL
broadband must be one of the best available, at least around here.
Stable, reliable, and fast. I get 4Mb uncapped for £24.99pm which,
with market forces, will either get faster soon at no extra cost, or
will come down in price. Freeview and Freesat give me everything else
I could want.




Because of a recent bit of enforced belt-tightening, I have had my
NTL\Telewest broadband reduced to the £17.99 per month 2Mb service, and to
be absolutely honest for the overwhelming majority of stuff I haven't
noticed a blind bit of difference.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

In article , Ivan
writes
harrogate3 wrote:
"Geoff Lane" wrote in message
...
With the broadband price war breaking out I wonder where that will
leave freeview.

It looks like those of us with broadband will soon be looking towards
the likes of Sky, NTL/Telewest and BT for that service.

I'm currently paying £23.50 to Pipex for broadband, I appreciate that
for a mere £7 extra I could get TV, broadband and phone with NTL but
at the moment and waiting to see how it sorts itself out but how long
I'll stay with Pipex is another matter.

Geoff Lane



Ah, but what do you get for that from Pipex?

NTL Telewest will charge you £30pm for 1Mb, telephone with a call
connection charge of 5p, and only a basic TV package.

I have to say - despite how I will doubtless get flamed - that NTL
broadband must be one of the best available, at least around here.
Stable, reliable, and fast. I get 4Mb uncapped for £24.99pm which,
with market forces, will either get faster soon at no extra cost, or
will come down in price. Freeview and Freesat give me everything else
I could want.




Because of a recent bit of enforced belt-tightening, I have had my
NTL\Telewest broadband reduced to the £17.99 per month 2Mb service, and to
be absolutely honest for the overwhelming majority of stuff I haven't
noticed a blind bit of difference.



For various reasons we have ntl 4 meg and ADSL 8 (well 5.4 actually) meg
and really there isn't that much of a performance difference most all of
the time FWIW.....
--
Tony Sayer

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

The message
from "harrogate3" contains these words:

====snip====

I have to say - despite how I will doubtless get flamed - that NTL
broadband must be one of the best available, at least around here.
Stable, reliable, and fast. I get 4Mb uncapped for £24.99pm which,

Yep, that's Token Ring LAN speed of twenty years back.

with market forces, will either get faster soon at no extra cost, or

I believe NTL are planning to upgrade the 4Mbps service to "Cheapernet"
speed by the end of this year (10Mbps) and are actually trialling a 50
or 100Mbps service as I type this.

will come down in price. Freeview and Freesat give me everything else
I could want.

In the run up to the 2 to 4 MBps upgrade, I had the impression that the
1Mbps was also going to be 'doubled up'. Apparently, that (also)
uncapped service is to remain stuck at 1MBps.

If NTL had doubled up the 1Mbps as well, I think I might well have
dropped back to the cheaper (still uncapped) 2Mbps service after a month
or so of sampling the delights of Token Ring speeds. It seems NTL know
me only too well :-(



--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

The message
from tony sayer contains these words:

In article , Ivan
writes
harrogate3 wrote:
"Geoff Lane" wrote in message
...
With the broadband price war breaking out I wonder where that will
leave freeview.

It looks like those of us with broadband will soon be looking towards
the likes of Sky, NTL/Telewest and BT for that service.

I'm currently paying £23.50 to Pipex for broadband, I appreciate that
for a mere £7 extra I could get TV, broadband and phone with NTL but
at the moment and waiting to see how it sorts itself out but how long
I'll stay with Pipex is another matter.

Geoff Lane



Ah, but what do you get for that from Pipex?

NTL Telewest will charge you £30pm for 1Mb, telephone with a call
connection charge of 5p, and only a basic TV package.

I have to say - despite how I will doubtless get flamed - that NTL
broadband must be one of the best available, at least around here.
Stable, reliable, and fast. I get 4Mb uncapped for £24.99pm which,
with market forces, will either get faster soon at no extra cost, or
will come down in price. Freeview and Freesat give me everything else
I could want.




Because of a recent bit of enforced belt-tightening, I have had my
NTL\Telewest broadband reduced to the £17.99 per month 2Mb service, and to
be absolutely honest for the overwhelming majority of stuff I haven't
noticed a blind bit of difference.


Ivan's statement about the £17.99 service from NTL/TeleWest becoming a
2Mbps service is rather surprising news to me (sorry to be responding
via your posting, Tony, but Ivan is posting from a spam blocked domain
:-). Looking at NTL's own 'publicity' on the upcoming upgrade suggested
the hoped for doubling of the 1Mbps service was not to be.



For various reasons we have ntl 4 meg and ADSL 8 (well 5.4 actually) meg
and really there isn't that much of a performance difference most all of
the time FWIW.....

That 4Mbps of NTL is soon to become 10Mbps (by the end of the year,
apparently) and you _will_ see a significant difference then (but only
from fast sites, like microsoft and grisoft. Asus will undoubtedly
remain at dial up speeds with many others at intermediate speeds).

Ivan's 2Mbps may well go to 4Mbps when that 10Mbps upgrade is finally
rolled out.

Since life is too short to waste on screwing the max out of 'premium
content TV services',[1] I will be quite happy to 'manage' with a mere
4Mbps for my internet downloads (some of which go no faster than 40Kbps
anyway due to the abysmal servers some (surprisingly) major companies
are hosting their customer services on - Asus being a case in point.)

I must have another 'search' for what NTL have on offer by way of BB
speed options. NTL seem to be shy of publicising such changes to their
existing customers (The dropping of the capping limits on their 1 and 2
Mbps services a few months back being a singularly unplubicised
upgrade).

An uncapped 2 (or possibly 4)Mbps service at £17.99 a month seems to be
a reasonably priced service compared to the cheaper "You get what you
pay for" ADSL offerings advertised elsewhwere.

[1] It's quite obvious that the 10Mbps upgrade is driven by the need to
be able to sell 'premium broadband content' services other than via
their existing digital TV service.

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

Because of a recent bit of enforced belt-tightening, I have had my
NTL\Telewest broadband reduced to the £17.99 per month 2Mb service, and to
be absolutely honest for the overwhelming majority of stuff I haven't
noticed a blind bit of difference.


£17.99 for 2Mb? Are you sure about that? I'm paying the same for 1Mb(I
think). If you are def. getting 2Mb for the same price, I should have a word
with their Customer (dis)Service...

Cheers,

Chris.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

ChrisM wrote:
Because of a recent bit of enforced belt-tightening, I have had my
NTL\Telewest broadband reduced to the £17.99 per month 2Mb service, and to
be absolutely honest for the overwhelming majority of stuff I haven't
noticed a blind bit of difference.


£17.99 for 2Mb? Are you sure about that? I'm paying the same for 1Mb(I
think). If you are def. getting 2Mb for the same price, I should have a word
with their Customer (dis)Service...

The offers change a fair bit I think... I'm paying £15 for 2mb (offer
lasts 12 months, with telewest)

cheers,
Chris

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

The message
from "ChrisM" contains these words:


Because of a recent bit of enforced belt-tightening, I have had my
NTL\Telewest broadband reduced to the £17.99 per month 2Mb service, and to
be absolutely honest for the overwhelming majority of stuff I haven't
noticed a blind bit of difference.


£17.99 for 2Mb? Are you sure about that? I'm paying the same for 1Mb(I
think). If you are def. getting 2Mb for the same price, I should have
a word
with their Customer (dis)Service...

He's got that wrong. I _was_ right about the 1Mbps service remaining
stuck at that speed (NTL, _do_ understand me so well! :-( )

The only thing to be said for it is that they no longer 'enforce' a
(soft) capping limit (enforcable by a 'stiff letter' advising the
'errant' customer of their abuse of the Ts & Cs clause which refers to
'fair usage'). Apparently, you had to 'cane it' for a month or two in
succession to qualify for such a warning letter.

I have to say, most of the cheapy ADSL offerings impose woefully
inadequate hard capping limits that basically make a mockery of the
concept of broadband.

It appears that NTL are offering a 512Kbps service at £14.99 a month
(the origional price for the 128Kbps cable service which was jacked up
to the £17.99 a month price point [1] when they 'upgraded' it to
150Kbps).

They don't specify, but I think this might be an ADSL service (there's
no reason why NTL should restrict their BB to cable only - after all,
the whole world and their dog (eat dog competitiors) are at it as well).

[1] That £17.99 a month service was successively upgraded from 150Kbps
to 300 Kbps and from there to the current 1Mbps service (which _didn't_
have the doubling of speed upgrade that was so recently applied to the
2Mbps service).

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

Johnny B Good wrote:
The message
from "ChrisM" contains these words:


Because of a recent bit of enforced belt-tightening, I have had my
NTL\Telewest broadband reduced to the £17.99 per month 2Mb service,
and to be absolutely honest for the overwhelming majority of stuff
I haven't noticed a blind bit of difference.


£17.99 for 2Mb? Are you sure about that? I'm paying the same for
1Mb(I think). If you are def. getting 2Mb for the same price, I
should have a word
with their Customer (dis)Service...

He's got that wrong. I _was_ right about the 1Mbps service remaining
stuck at that speed (NTL, _do_ understand me so well! :-( )




I've always been with Blueyonder (nothing to do with NTL until the recent
takeover) I was informed that for £17.99 pcm my connection speed would be
reduced down to 2Mb.. are you saying that this is incorrect they were lying
and I've been reduced down to1Mb?.. if so then I'll be ringing them up
pronto and giving them a good bollocking!

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

Andrew wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:56:00 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:

I've always been with Blueyonder (nothing to do with NTL until the
recent takeover) I was informed that for £17.99 pcm my connection
speed would be reduced down to 2Mb.. are you saying that this is
incorrect they were lying and I've been reduced down to1Mb?.. if so
then I'll be ringing them up pronto and giving them a good
bollocking!

The 2mb service (that I also use) is currently £17.99 pcm. If you are
unsure what speed you currently get, you can use the speed checker on
adslguide.org.uk. They sometimes "accidentally" set you up on a lower
speed than you pay for, and miraculously they can change it as soon as
you phone them up.

Thank you Andrew you're a real gent. I've just checked out my speed which is
revealed to be"Downstream 2,019.1 Kbps ( = 2.0 Mbps ) Upstream 241.0 Kbps
( = 0.2 Mbps )" therefore no complaints regarding Blueyonder.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 08:34:20 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:

Thank you Andrew you're a real gent. I've just checked out my speed which is
revealed to be"Downstream 2,019.1 Kbps ( = 2.0 Mbps ) Upstream 241.0 Kbps
( = 0.2 Mbps )" therefore no complaints regarding Blueyonder.

I have been with them for about 18 months and have been very pleased
with their service. I use Skype for all my home telephony needs, so
that saves me £100/year line rental, so the £17.99/m is good value for
me.
--
Andrew, contact via http://interpleb.googlepages.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

Andrew wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 08:34:20 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:

Thank you Andrew you're a real gent. I've just checked out my speed
which is revealed to be"Downstream 2,019.1 Kbps ( = 2.0 Mbps )
Upstream 241.0 Kbps ( = 0.2 Mbps )" therefore no complaints
regarding Blueyonder.

I have been with them for about 18 months and have been very pleased
with their service. I use Skype for all my home telephony needs, so
that saves me £100/year line rental, so the £17.99/m is good value for
me.

I've used (Telewest) Blueyonder as an ISP since 1997 with few complaints so
far, although over the years I've read a fair number of moans from people
complaining about the level of customer service offered by NTL.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 09:05:59 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:

I've used (Telewest) Blueyonder as an ISP since 1997 with few complaints so
far, although over the years I've read a fair number of moans from people
complaining about the level of customer service offered by NTL.

A lot of people judge an ISP by their customer service. Blueyonder has
been the perfect ISP to me as I haven't needed to phone them once.
--
Andrew, contact via http://interpleb.googlepages.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

The message
from Andrew contains these words:

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 09:05:59 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:

I've used (Telewest) Blueyonder as an ISP since 1997 with few complaints so
far, although over the years I've read a fair number of moans from people
complaining about the level of customer service offered by NTL.

A lot of people judge an ISP by their customer service. Blueyonder has
been the perfect ISP to me as I haven't needed to phone them once.

Same thing here with NTL. :-) It's only since the recent merger with
TeleWest that the service has suffered bouts of flakyness long enough in
one instance for me to discover just how ****e the part time tech
support is :-(

It comes as no surprise that customers serviced by the TeleWest half of
the merged company enjoy a 2Mbps £17.99 service whilst the NTL half
suffer a 1Mbps £17.99 service.

NTL have always been reluctant followers of the trendsetting TeleWest
cable company who have always led the way regarding upgrades of service
at no cost increase to their customers. I can only hope that the
TeleWest ethos prevails in this regard.

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

Freeview and Free Broadband
 

Johnny B Good wrote:
The message
from Andrew contains these words:

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 09:05:59 GMT, "Ivan"
wrote:

I've used (Telewest) Blueyonder as an ISP since 1997 with few
complaints so far, although over the years I've read a fair number
of moans from people complaining about the level of customer
service offered by NTL.

A lot of people judge an ISP by their customer service. Blueyonder
has been the perfect ISP to me as I haven't needed to phone them
once.

Same thing here with NTL. :-) It's only since the recent merger with
TeleWest that the service has suffered bouts of flakyness long enough
in one instance for me to discover just how ****e the part time tech
support is :-(

It comes as no surprise that customers serviced by the TeleWest half
of the merged company enjoy a 2Mbps £17.99 service whilst the NTL half
suffer a 1Mbps £17.99 service.

NTL have always been reluctant followers of the trendsetting TeleWest
cable company who have always led the way regarding upgrades of
service at no cost increase to their customers. I can only hope that
the TeleWest ethos prevails in this regard.

Well since the merger there was a period (which for some lasted a couple of
days) when the news and mail servers went tits up big time.

Then there was the more recent England World Cup match which apparently
100,000 subscribers failed to see, due to sabotage, allegedly the police
later arrested an (ex? disgruntled) employee.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4982450.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/5116120.stm

So fingers crossed that there are no more surprises in the pipeline!