Best price ADSL ISP for light user??

Futher to my recent posts here, I am trying to get my parents ADSL'd for
their Christmas pressie.

They live in a semi rural area (Workington, Cumbria BT Exchange) which is
ADSL enabled.

I am trying to get an account with EFH Broadband but this is proving
difficult - no capacity - but they want to use data streaming not ISP
streaming. Now they charge quite high set up fees which I wiull be paying
but their monthly charge is £9.99 plus vat, which is ideal for my folks. Not
so happy with the idea of data streaming as it then locks them into EFH with
no migration path, so when the guaranteed £9.99 per month expires in a year
they will be at EFH mercy as far as prices go.

My father, being a Scot does not want to end up paying best part of £20 a
month for casual access. They currently use OneTel Pay as You go access at
1.5p / min and spend about £6 - £8 a month on that so £11.75 is OK for a
much better service. Their current service on dial up is so unreliable and
slow. The last time I was visiting them it varied from 7kbps to 30 kbps
using a speed test site.

So any ideas of other suitable ISPs that I could try. Must have lowish
monthly charge. WAs going to go with Metronet but they have a very low cap
on the £9.99 service of 200MB. Not sure how that would do them, but they
only really surf, order stuff on line and email.

Thanks

DeeBee

"DeeBee" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:1100953714.w+edjk7HkdBnt9r6MzD7+g@teranews...
> Futher to my recent posts here, I am trying to get my parents ADSL'd for
> their Christmas pressie.
>
> They live in a semi rural area (Workington, Cumbria BT Exchange) which is
> ADSL enabled.
>

I'm with Tesco.net and they connect and provide equipment free for £19-99 a
month with no download limits.
Think you can get others such as Wanadoo for a couple of pounds cheaper with
limits which might not effect in your case.
(All providers seem to get some negative in the NG.)
--
Regards,
David
<><
Please reply to News Group.

"DeeBee" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:1100953714.w+edjk7HkdBnt9r6MzD7+g@teranews:

> So any ideas of other suitable ISPs that I could try. Must have lowish
> monthly charge. WAs going to go with Metronet but they have a very low
> cap on the £9.99 service of 200MB. Not sure how that would do them,
> but they only really surf, order stuff on line and email.

Maybe have a look at Pipex, reasonable monthly fee plus free setup and
hardware (assuming you stay with them for a year).

Thing with EFH is by the time you pay £80 setup and buy a modem (not clear
from their site but it doesn't appear to be included) you could look at a
lot of other ISPs who offer free setup but charge more per month.

regards
Paul
--
paul <at> spamcop.net

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 12:45:21 GMT, "David" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>I'm with Tesco.net and they connect and provide equipment free for £19-99 a
>month with no download limits.

** datastream alert **
--
spamcop.net address commissioned 18/06/04
Come on down !

"Phil Thompson" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 12:45:21 GMT, "David" <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>>I'm with Tesco.net and they connect and provide equipment free for £19-99
>>a
>>month with no download limits.
>
> ** datastream alert **

Phil

Is this becoming the norm now for new connections, especially those
competing on price, as they can lock you into their service?

Any ISPs still using IP streaming?

Cheers

DeeBee

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 12:28:30 -0000, "DeeBee" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

> Was going to go with Metronet but they have a very low cap
>on the £9.99 service of 200MB.

its not really a cap at all, its a PAYG service with an inclusive
amount. I just set one up on my parents line (some 35 miles from
Workington as it happens). You can pay the monthly fee for them if you
wish.

Quite a few Metronet users pay around £12 to £15 apparently, and they
don't see themselves as especially light users. Its £11.75 per month
inc VAT, so if you use an extra 1 GB in a month its an extra £2.71
making £14.46. Setup fee is £69.95.

Pricing is per MB at ~0.26p per MB above the inclusive 200 MB.

Freedom to surf have a lite account at 1M or 512k (line dependent) for
£14.99/month inc VAT. Includes 1 GB. Then £2.99 for extra GB.
http://www.freedom2surf.net/adsl/connect.php?f2sc=1Gig

Phil
--
spamcop.net address commissioned 18/06/04
Come on down !

"Phil Thompson" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 12:28:30 -0000, "DeeBee" <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> Was going to go with Metronet but they have a very low cap
>>on the £9.99 service of 200MB.
>
> its not really a cap at all, its a PAYG service with an inclusive
> amount. I just set one up on my parents line (some 35 miles from
> Workington as it happens). You can pay the monthly fee for them if you
> wish.
>
> Quite a few Metronet users pay around £12 to £15 apparently, and they
> don't see themselves as especially light users. Its £11.75 per month
> inc VAT, so if you use an extra 1 GB in a month its an extra £2.71
> making £14.46. Setup fee is £69.95.
>
> Pricing is per MB at ~0.26p per MB above the inclusive 200 MB.
>
> Freedom to surf have a lite account at 1M or 512k (line dependent) for
> £14.99/month inc VAT. Includes 1 GB. Then £2.99 for extra GB.
> http://www.freedom2surf.net/adsl/connect.php?f2sc=1Gig
>
> Phil

I may well go back to the Metronet route as the do not really download that
much stuff if any, only photos I post on pbase.

Is Metronet IPStreaming or DataStreaming.

Setup costs look similar, but would have to buy a modem, I'll go and take a
look

Cheers

DeeBee

> So any ideas of other suitable ISPs that I could try. Must have lowish
> monthly charge. WAs going to go with Metronet but they have a very low cap
> on the £9.99 service of 200MB. Not sure how that would do them, but they
> only really surf, order stuff on line and email.
>

The extra they might use over 200Mb is only £0.0025 per Mb so even 1Gb
monthly usage is only another £2 or so.

If you dont mind the fact that the connection and hardware costs are
paid up front then Metronet are recommended. I have multiple clients
with them and the ones who use it as you describe rarely exceed 200mb in
a month.

All the installs have been ready in 4/5 days - always the day before
Metronet say it will be activated.

JP

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 13:51:30 -0000, "DeeBee" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>Is Metronet IPStreaming or DataStreaming.

Definitely IPstream (no -ing in either case)

>Setup costs look similar, but would have to buy a modem, I'll go and take a
>look

usually <£20 on Ebay for a Voyager 105 USB modem (free issue to AOL
and BT users).

Metronet have a fairly short minimum term contract too - 3 months.

Phil
--
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Come on down !

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 13:45:58 GMT, "DeeBee" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>Is this becoming the norm now for new connections, especially those
>competing on price, as they can lock you into their service?

Datastream was popular because the ISP paid £5/month less for a Home
500 connection to your house and could cram a lot of users onto a
connection to the exchange, rather than using BT's more expensive (but
probably less congested) exchange to ISP connection. The ISP paid the
same for a 2M connection as for 500k, so could "innovate" with
services like Tiscali's 150k service provided over a 2M connection.

The "lock in" is probably a temporary thing, as BT are working on
inter-service migration and charges are coming down. ISPs still have
freedom to lock you into contracts if they wish though, most people
are on 12 month contracts.

BT's more recent IPstream "capacity based charging" scheme has a
similar pricing arrangement to the user as Datastream outlined above,
however Telefonica, Tiscali, Thus and others may provide alternative
exchange connections at lower cost than BT.

>Any ISPs still using IP streaming?

the majority. F2S, Demon, Pipex, Metronet, Wanadoo, AOL, BT, Plusnet
are all purely IPstream to my knowledge (except Demon's top end
business products).

Tiscali, CPBB, Tesco, EFH etc are datastream.

There's nothing inherently bad in datastream, although it is less
widely available and capacity may be more constrained at a given
exchange as it is dedicated to that ISP or their service provider. An
exchange with a lot of datastream users on it managed to a sensible
contention level need not be much different to an IPstream one,
however so far we have seen more bad examples than good ones.

Phil
--
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Come on down !