Broadband Supplier

My family uses BT. Had have no bad experienes with them;

It really depends on what you need it for...

If your gona be on the internet for a few hours a day and only viewing web sites like this one then a slower speed (512kbps) would be OK and with a limited usage.

On the other hand if you want to have your computer running over night downloading lots of stuff then you would want a faster speed and no limits to your download.

Eitherway you should choose one that gives you a free modem and connection (about £80), but this will tie you into a 12 month contract.

I personally am with AOL but I dont use the rubbishy software they inflict upon you or their email address. I pay for 1meg but I actually get around 2.2 ;D ;D

This web site gives a quite good selection: www.broadbandchecker.co.uk

It would be helpful to know which options are available to you e.g. do you live in a cabled area.

I don't know anything about Bulldog's service reliability, but they won't be able to pull the old trick of blaming BT every time something breaks so easily as they own the connection from the exchange, rather than relying on BT to forward connections to them.

All other ADSL based services are fundamentally the same, going through BT's network, until they reach the ISP, who then decides what to do with it. The only ADSL supplier I have any experience with is BT, who supply my parents. They're a bit on the expensive side, and have rather draconian (for some) download limits.

The main disadvantage of cable based system is the comparatively slow upload speed (either 128 or 256kbps I think), which remains the same regardless of the download speed you select. This may or may not be an issue for you. Cable can also suffer from contention issues as you share the same connection with all your neighbours. If all of your neighbours have cable broadband, and all start using it heavily, you might notice it slowing down, regardless of what the ISP's core network is doing.

I've just upgraded to Tiscali broadband and the installation was very easy. Connect cables, insert CD, about a minute later it works! It took about a week from phoning up to getting the modem in the post. Too early to say what the service is like longer term, but so far so good. 14.95 per month for 1meg with a 2Gb download limit.

I've got BT and have had virtually no problems with their service at all.

It's 2Mb and though there is nominally a monthly 4Gb limit their terms of service are such that the consumer isn't penalised for exceeding this, though there's some sort of rider about frequest excesses I think.

That happily powers the three PC's in the house, all of which are almost continuosly connected to the www, msn etc etc

Not the cheapest I know, but my view is 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'!

Looks like you have quite a choice there tubeoperator92!!

That would be the one I put in...

Not Talking Lately
No Television Lately
etc..

Same here. On BT 2MB/40GB and its been great! Although when we first got it it was disconnecting a lot, but i think that was down to it being new to them as well as us. I've had no problems since and I find their support, when things rarely go wrong, to be 10 out of 10. Stick with the ones who know what they're doing and have done for decades!