Broadband Question

[DITTRICH]

If you rent your telephone line from company A, can you select company B to provide your broadband service?

My parents live in the country in East Sussex. They rent their line from company A. But Company A have crap broadband deals. So can they just buy the broadband from company B? Difference over 18m contract = £72.

Apologies if this is a stupid question.

Les

 

[Sp!ke]

Is it a BT line or something else?

(most broadband suppliers require a BT line)

 

[jpskiller]

if BT phone line, then there are a lot of ADSL suppliers to choose from, so answer would be YES, try BeThere.co.uk

 

[The G.F.P]

your house is 1 of 2 suppliers

BT or VIRGIN

if you have BT then you can goto O2, carfone warehouse, AOL ect. as they are all broadband

if your with Virgin then your nackerd as no one else really does cable broadband

im with BT but have it with O2

 

[219]

Likewise - telephone BT ; broadband UK Online

 

[Chrishazle]

I lived in a small village in East Sussex for years, had my phone with BT then One-Tel then BT, my broadband from Global Internet then Wanadoo / Orange.

 

[HughJarse]

Type your number in here and your postcode and it will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about your exchange. Every provider, and future dates.
SamKnows Broadband - Availability - Exchange Search

 

[grober]

You may run into the dread dead hand of "local loop unbundling" This is where ISP companies run their own lines into local exchanges. BT then provide the remaining last link via their "Open Reach" division which has monopoly control of this last link. In the past if you wanted to change provider you applied to your ISP for a MAC code which you supplied to your new ISP. They in turn use this to get BT to change your line settings in the local exchange to the new ISP. In the past when BT controlled both upstream and downstream lines from the exchange this was a relatively simple process. Now non BT ISP companies are involved people are reporting a marked reluctance of these ISP to release individual lines to other providers be it BT based or other ISP's exchange lines. There was another post about this several months back. WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T LEAVE YOUR PRESENT PROVIDER WITHOUT GETTING A MAC CODE ONCE YOU LEAVE YOUR PREVIOUS ISP ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE YOU WITH A MAC CODE AND YOU ARE SC***D

 

[DITTRICH]

thanks for all the helpful advice.
Parents are currently with TalkTalk.
The TalkTalk broadband offers are crap and they want £15 per month!
Other providers will give £6.50 3m and £12 15m - plusnet.
Parents live in the country and therefore they say £6.49 deals don't apply as they don't have their own equipment at the local exchange and must use BT's equipment.
It would therefore appear that it would be better for them to switch back to BT but I'll have to check the phone bills to see if they would lose out.
It's all about ordering groceries online and having them delivered rather than mum going 20m to the shops and back. I resent TalkTalk trousering £180 per year.
Rgds
Les

 

[grober]

Plusnet (who had a good rep in the past) are now owned by BT AFAIK tho still independantly run at the mo I think. Just as well your local exchange has not been struck by LLU in some ways!

 

[Baron_Samedi]

When Plusnet is good, its very good.

I have been with them for almost 6 years and they have given me cause for concern just once (email spamming) and their customer support beats the snot out of TalkTalk.

 

[glojo]

Type your number in here and your postcode and it will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about your exchange. Every provider, and future dates.
SamKnows Broadband - Availability - Exchange Search

What a great link but it only shows the telephone exchange andwhat that location is capable of.

we come under the control of the town centre exchange in Torquay, that location has most of the bells and whistles, but... We can only get a gauranteed 2mb down load speed just because of the distances and the quality of the string that is used

 

[verytalldave]

Another link to find out who provides broadband in your particular are check here............

Broadband Providers Comparison for UK ADSL, Cable and Satellite

Providing you have a BT phone line, you can go to ANY of the ISP's listed for your area.

 

[Baron_Samedi]

What a great link but it only shows the telephone exchange andwhat that location is capable of.

we come under the control of the town centre exchange in Torquay, that location has most of the bells and whistles, but... We can only get a gauranteed 2mb down load speed just because of the distances and the quality of the string that is used

That's life in the burbs for ya!

 

[DITTRICH]

...and the quality of the string that is used

Yes, that well known electrical conductor...
best used with a couple of empty tin cans!

 

[saorbust]

That's life in the burbs for ya!

True.

We get 8MB ADSL Max from BT, but they are the only provider in the area. So - great speed, but no choice. Ah well.

Used to get 2MB ish before we moved out of the city. Can see a major difference in the speed of downloads now.

 

[HughJarse]

What a great link but it only shows the telephone exchange andwhat that location is capable of.

we come under the control of the town centre exchange in Torquay, that location has most of the bells and whistles, but... We can only get a gauranteed 2mb down load speed just because of the distances and the quality of the string that is used

John click on "exchange mapping" under "availability" on the left and it will tell you what speeds you should get from whom.

 

[crockers]

John click on "exchange mapping" under "availability" on the left and it will tell you what speeds you should get from whom.

That is very interesting - according to this we can have a max of 0.5 whereas on the main street about 100 metres away they get 3.5 ...hmmm I can see a phone call to someone is in order ...but that's the problem who do I call ?? Any ideas??

 

[franey]

Call HostBusters !!

 

[Beetnik]

OK here: