UK Online as an ISP?

Hello, I'm new here. I've a question which I've not been able to find
the answer to on Google or G.Groups.

I'm moving house next week (within the same exchange & taking my
existing number with me if that's relevant). I've just checked the
(existing) phone number in BT's checker and found that it will only
get 512kbps, and may need an engineer to call.

I'm currently with Pipex on 1Mb, and I _was_ planning to stick with
them before I found out about the lower speed, but £23.44/month for
half my current speed seems a bit pricey. Pipex have been fine in
terms of line speed, usenet provision, etc, but their customer service
sucks.

However, I've just found out that UKOnline LLU operate on this
exchange and they are offering 2Mb for £14.99/month (Bulldog is
another company, but their prices are even higher and I seem to have
no choice but to use their phone service). A couple of questions
occur to me:
1. Is the 'LLU' company subject to the same line length restrictions
as BT; in other words, am I likely to find my speed with a LLU
supplier no better than BTs?
2. As an ISP, are UK Online any good?
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed?"

Hugo Nebula wrote:

>
> However, I've just found out that UKOnline LLU operate on this
> exchange and they are offering 2Mb for £14.99/month (Bulldog is
> another company, but their prices are even higher and I seem to have
> no choice but to use their phone service). A couple of questions
> occur to me:

> 1. Is the 'LLU' company subject to the same line length restrictions
> as BT; in other words, am I likely to find my speed with a LLU
> supplier no better than BTs?

They are far more pragmatic with line length data than BT. Generally are more
relaxed than BT on marginal cases.

> 2. As an ISP, are UK Online any good?

A friend signed up with them for LLU ADSL (500k at £10/m). He was already a
satisfied dial-up user of theirs for several years. It took about 5 or 6 weeks
to connect him, (he didn't care about that as he was effectively starting from
scratch), but reports in ADSL guide say that that can lead to problems if
you're migrating from a BT Wholesale ADSL connection (many get a gap of no
ADSL for 3 or 4 weeks !)

He had what turned out to be a router problem a month ago, he's not technical,
so I phoned their helpline pretending to be him, the woman I spoke to was
knowledgeable, and concluded after talking me through some checks and pings
gave credible evidence his router was at fault, I swapped it with mine, and
she was correct. He's been with their ADSL service about 5 months, a few
glitches mainly down to DNS server problems.


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 11:26:46 +0000, a particular chimpanzee named Hugo
Nebula <abuse@localhost> randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

>A couple of questions
>occur to me:
>1. Is the 'LLU' company subject to the same line length restrictions
>as BT; in other words, am I likely to find my speed with a LLU
>supplier no better than BTs?
>2. As an ISP, are UK Online any good?

A follow-up question; what's its news server like?
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed?"

Hugo Nebula <abuse@localhost> wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed):

> A follow-up question; what's its news server like?

There's no news server. You'll have to sign up with a third party
provider.

--
Phil
http://www.philipchung.co.uk/

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:07:52 +0000, Hugo Nebula <abuse@localhost>
wrote:

>On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 11:26:46 +0000, a particular chimpanzee named Hugo
>Nebula <abuse@localhost> randomly hit the keyboard and produced:
>
>>A couple of questions
>>occur to me:
>>1. Is the 'LLU' company subject to the same line length restrictions
>>as BT; in other words, am I likely to find my speed with a LLU
>>supplier no better than BTs?
>>2. As an ISP, are UK Online any good?
>
>A follow-up question; what's its news server like?


Unfortunately UKOL doesn't have a news server any longer.

In mitigation I would point out that these days fewer than 1% of
ISP subscribers use such a thing, and surprisingly few know even what
it *is*, which makes the expense of running *good* newsservers just
not worth it. And running a poor sever just generates loads of
complaints! <grin>

Regards,
Harry.


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Harry Broomhall wrote


> Unfortunately UKOL doesn't have a news server any longer.
>
> In mitigation I would point out that these days fewer than 1% of
> ISP subscribers use such a thing, and surprisingly few know even what
> it *is*, which makes the expense of running *good* newsservers just
> not worth it. And running a poor sever just generates loads of
> complaints! <grin>
>
>

Easynet did run a good news server, which was used by their customers in
Europe too. Unfortunately they lost their server admin and things
turned to shite afterwards.