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Hi Mike.

Regulars on the forum have read about me banging on about O² and with good reason. They've been bloody superb. Not only faster than most ADSL ISPs but because of the support. UK-based and nothing short of superb. I've just moved house this week so took advantage of their Takeaway offer. Simply pop into a store (or their website) and pay £15 to get the Wireless II box of tricks. They then double it and put it towards your bill. Not only that but their 2 months free offer is also applicable so their broadband works out very cheap. Finally, if one of your folks has an O² contract mobile phone then you save even more. I simply can't tell you how brilliant they are. I feel like a shameless rep but when it comes down to it, ISPs of this calibre deserve shouting about. They've been flawless with the PSN, my computers, my laptop, my iPhone. The bloody lot. There's a reason why they're winning loads of polls/awards/etc.

Not sure about them offering them a landline but no great shakes if you have to slip the landline over to BT or Tesco, etc. You can walk away with their broadband tomorrow if you're near a store (O² and Carphone Warehouse). No traffic shaping whatsoever. A pleasant bump in speed when going over to them (they simply have better hardware at the exchange) and I've spent hours talking to their call centre staff and every one of them has been utterly splendid. 1st tier support being as informed as so-called "technical support" with many other ISPs.

Finally, if you don't like it inside the first 30 days tell them and they'll cancel everything and give  you your money back.

http://broadband.o2.co.uk/Takeaway.jsp 

Mike said:

Thanks for the reply Mike.

Ha! It took me a while to figure out what was going on there…  ;)

No worries, fella.

I'm quick to complain and quick to compliment. For example:

BT = cock

O² = win

2½ hours on the phone with BT (split across 5 calls and the same number of departments) with me asking if they had a Samaritans department they could finally put me through to. :D Conversely, O² bloke so well informed that he helped me with mobile broadband, landline broadband and some non-specific fuckwittery too. If the call centre was nearby I'd actually pop in there to say thank you in person.

Have you considered going cable?  Virgin Media are very good speedwise (I get 20Mb, but they go upto 50Mb), although you should use a VPN with them, as they are introducing DPI (basically, scanning your network traffic, the internet equivalent of listening to your phone calls).  Apart from the privacy issues tho, I've had no problems with them, very fast and reliable service..  

And with the phone+broadband bundle its pretty cheap too.  Once you go fibreoptic, phone lines just seem a bit 20th century..

Mike said:

That's all well and good but where my parents house is, it isn't a fibre optic area. However, my house next year at uni is in a fibre optic area so we are planning on going with Virgin. How do you set up a VPN with Virgin?

You need to get a VPN connection from a provider (you can get them really cheap, like peanuts), its not a service offered by Virgin, and they give you instructions on how to set it up..

Its essentially creating another network connection on top of the one provided by Virgin, which they cant see, more technically, it creates an encrypted tunnel between you and a server somewhere in the world, then all your internet traffic goes down that, so all Virgin sees is you talking to that server and because its all encrypted they cant spy on your usage.   Personally, I get mine via VyprVpn, but there are countless ones out there..  Google will help.