SKy vs Orange....... broadband

[Dan]

Seems I can get free broadband with my Sky TV or free broadband with a £30 a month Orange phone. Anyone got either and are they any good?

 

Dan

[ricksteruk]

if you have sky broadband in your area then i would say go for that, their customer service even though not brilliant is better than orange, they are also generous on their caps. plus you dont have to take a 18 month contract for a mobile to get it.

 

thats just MHO but im bound to get shot down in flames for recommending somthing other than BT, but what do i know, only worked in IT and Ecommerce for 10 years

[corydoras]

I would only buy my broadband from a company that only does broadband. We use Demon and have never had any problems. I don't know what their technical support is like, in the 4 years we have had it we have never had to ring them, but hey what do I know, I've only been in IT since 1987.

[ricksteruk]

I would only buy my broadband from a company that only does broadband. We use Demon and have never had any problems. I don't know what their technical support is like, in the 4 years we have had it we have never had to ring them, but hey what do I know, I've only been in IT since 1987.

 

 

im also with Demon, yes they are very very good, had to use the customer service once and i got straight through and solved the issue in minutes. I also rent my servers through them as well. but they too are expanding into other fields as well now.

[Alan Roe]

I have the Orange deal and my advice is to ring them up and negotiate as I now get 600 anytime mins per month + 1100 yes you read it right 1100 texts per month and my broadband and a phone upgrade...I chose a nokia N 80 all for £35 pm I used to pay far more than this for my mobi contract ....Happy bunny!!

[Dan]

Orange standard deal is £30 a month for Broadband, pluus a new mobile 300 mins anytime calls and 850 txts, ........ I'd never use all of that! Sky just want an Extra fiver for free evening and weekend calls and broadband, both about 8meg .............. decisions decisions!!

 

Dan

[Cranfield]

Orange broadband customer/technical service is awful.

They have strong accented, small children from India, reading from cue cards.

They cannot answer individual questions, they just recite what the card says.

 

When Sky comes to our area, I will be changing over.

[Dan]

Thanks Cranfield, To be honest out of shear laziness I dont think I can be bothered to change networks and port over numbers etc so it might well be Sky!

 

Dan

[UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk]

Cory - good point about Demon etc, but I think different applications warrant different things. We use Demon services at work as a primary and BT Openworld as a secondary on a load balancing router and I have to say the Demon service vastly outperforms the BT connection when we are on a 'single connection state when one or the other has dropped.

 

That said, most home users are not looking for mission critical systems, so warranting £25 a month for a business grade connection (which truthfully even the Demon home services are not far from), might be pushing it. I think the point here is if someone is prepared to accept a free service then 95% uptime plus is all they should expect, and as long as they don't whinge if the connection drops out at odd times then I can see free or low cost ADSL solutions being very practical day to day.

 

I have just patched my home line over to TalkTalk - I've not jumped in at the deep end but instead tested another couple of users I know who seem to be able to sustain about 70 to 100kb/s downloads, which for me is plenty quick enough. Again, for the rest of you, it's well worth noting because of the way ADSL Virtual Paths/Circuits work it is quite possible that a Tiscali connection may vastly outperform another based on different exchanges (Tiscali is my prime example, as it's something I've had personal experience of) - therefore ask locally where you can, not on a forum where people live all over.

 

Finally customer service is rarely an issue unless you are on the fringes of reception. I've had broadband at home and work since day one, and truthfully most incidents of downtime have been my fault, hardware failiure or software issues - which frankly are beyond the scope of your line provider anyway. The true amount of times I've seen an ADSL line fail (and not rectify itself or be rectified by engineers within an hour or two) I could probably count on one hand.

Edited January 20, 2007 by UK-Fishing-Tackle.co.uk

[Jim Bob 9 Pants]

I have not a good word to say about Orange, but hey thats just one opinion - I was wannado B4 they changed over and I saw a drematic decrease in service.

 

Now because I make a living ON-LINE I have opted for BT and have been very pleased with the service