APJ

My current ISP is dropping its evening/weekend surftime product and moving to FRIACO (eh?), putting the price up and setting an online time limit. Time to change I think.

Can anyone recommend a good ISP which offers free calls evenings & weekends for a monthly fee?

Freeserve (dixons-bah) at £9pm seem cheap, but dont fancy an email addy with 'freeserve' in it!! BT are £10pm. What others are there?

Andrew

APJ

Obviously everybody access the net from work then!!!

CharlesW

My wife has been subscribing to Demon's Premier Connect in conjunction with BT's Surftime for a couple of month's. I can only describe the service as sh**e.

To be fair to Demon I don't think it their fault. They have been most apologetic.

The problems manifest themselves as follows. After 6 pm the lines are constantly engaged, or their is no carrier signal/tone, or you break straight into a data stream. On the occasions that you are lucky enough to get a connection, it is often dropped after a couple of minutes. This might be related to the breaking into data stream problem.

Demon say that a lot of their customers are experiencing similar problems. BT claim there is no problem. On one occasion my wife did elicit from them, that the way way they can offer free calls, is by constantly switching them to lines that are at that time not being used. I do not know whether this is true or not. But one does get the impression that BT are not too keen on providing the public with 'free' - at a fixed monthly charge - internet access.

So if anyone can honestly recommend a trouble free 'free at night/weekends' ISP I would like to hear about it.

DazV

Don't go for Freeserve. Their service is sh1te too.

I ended up getting cable for £33 / month and no phone charges...and I've got to say its blisteringly quick.

Just downloaded a double-cd album in MP3 format for my new car cd/mp3 player and it took just 30mins.

512kbps download / 128kbps upload

-DV

HunterB

I use BT's SurfTime with BT Internet for a total of £10 a month added to my phone bill.

56k analogue or 64k ISDN is available 6pm to 8am weekdays and all weekend free of call charges. Outwith these hours, they provide different numbers for 56k analogue, 64k or 128k ISDN chargeable (I have BT Home Highway so can use any of these options).

Never had any problem connecting, although it occasionally suffers from the usual slowness at peak times that I've experienced with other providers.

Brian

ChrisB

For everyone who posts they are happy with an ISP, there will somebody who finds them pants.

For instance, I use BT Internet from home on ISDN. I have no problems other than the odd disconnect (Win 2000 dials-up again straight away) and I'm generally happy with the service.

However, look at the BT Internet newsgroups and it is full of people complaining about poor connection speeds, dropped lines, time outs for news and mail etc etc.

If you have ISDN, try to find an ISP like BTi that has an ISDN only number - there are a lot less ISDN users.

Chris.

boomer

Mr.Cookie

APJ if you've already got a BT line try

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Mick, please don't take any offence to this but AOL, IMO sucks. Having to have all of that rubbish software installed just to call the web etc, is silly. All that you need is provided with the OS nowadays and is almost always a damn site better on it's own than AOHell interfering. Service might be good, but software and way of doing thing is pants. Like I said, sorry, don't take offence, just my experiences.

Andrew, if you are in a NTL area and really use the web a fair lot, then a 512kbps cable modem is bloody brilliant. I have used NTL for ISP for over 3 years now, and the modem service has been very reliable and extremely quick, even better if they put a new line in. Crystal clear line quality. With old USR modem never connected below 51.6. ever. I moved to Cable Modem in 10/00 and would never go back. £19.99/month and it goes like schtink! They had a couple of teething problems in the beginning, but nothing like ADSL and it is all sorted now.

Cheers,


Nick



[This message has been edited by Mr Footlong (edited 17 March 2001).]

Mick

iTrader: (1)

AOL - £9.99 pm evenings & weekends, £14.99 24/7. You can change monthly from one to the other on line. Been there 3 months now & seems OK. - Free 1st month too

Mick

Steve Perriam

if you are looking for standard 56k access theni think BT is very good.

£10 per month now for free evening and weekends although this is being upgraded to £15 per month for free 0800 24/7 access at the end of march.

i've been with bt for several years and never had any real problems. 2 hour disconnect is a pain but not a real issue and i can always connect / re-connect without ever getting a busy tone !

steve

Steve Williams

My brother is with cable (£33 a month ONLINE ALL THE TIME)

Seems expensive but as it has been said it is QUICK, he likes to look at trailers from forthcoming movies and can download them quicker than he can watch them.....


Thinking of switching to them myself, just got to justify the cost to the wife

APJ

Thanks for all the info folks!!!! Whilst I'd love something a bit nippy, there's no cable in my area, and ISDN/Highway etc is just a tad exotic for my couple of hours a night.

Might give BT a bash, cant really go wrong for a tenner a month.

Andrew

topdog

I'm on ic24.net, been with them about a month now, free 8pm-midnight and no monthly fees/other charges exellent.
Dewi