Sorry if this has been covered a billion times before, but couldn't do a search:

I hear that NTL are going to start charging for their NTLWorld dialup service in the New Year. I was thinking about taking the opportunity to move to NTL broadband (if only to stop my family from whining that they can never get through - yeah, I'm to busy playing RTCW multiplayer).

Anyone have any experiences, opinions, comments about NTL broadband? I don't want to lose my NTL email address, so I either payup for NTLWorld dialup or payup & move to broadband. Either way, NTL screw me for more money :-(

Cheers

Den

You won't lose your email. NTL broadband works great, would never go back to dial up. However IF it does go wrong, be prepared for a long wait to have anyone A answer the phone and B fix it.

Sounds like you're describing the normal impeccable NTL service there! ;-)

Just wondered if the service was any good, don't want to move and then find out it's crap. NTL are apparently writing to all NTLWorld dialup customers in the New Year, asking what they want to do. I'll probably move to broadband.

Cheers for the info -

Den

NTL has been good for me so far. There people that have problems.

You could take a look at http://www.broadband-help.com/

H

NTL BB for about a month, fantastic so far...

Had 512k NTL Cable for over a year now.

NTL's cable support is much better than their TV/Phone support. the waiting times to get someone on the line are still long but at least they have more of a clue as to what's going on and a generally very helpfull.

As for quality of service, My cable modem was down for 1 week, in the first month the I had it installed, since then not a problem, and have always been getting download speeds far in excess of 512k.

Basically I think it is fantastic.

Scoobs

Thanks guys - that's good enough for me. Broadband it is then.

To be honest, I've come to expect getting a muppet on the other end of the phone when ever I call NTL, so anything other than that is a pleasant surprise.

Edited to say: 'thanks for the link'

Cheers,

Den

[Edited by Dirty_Den - 12/31/2001 10:15:41 AM]

Now had a ntl: cablemodem for the best part of 3years. Within that time i've had 5 weeks of a totally dead connection and around 2 months of packet loss and routing. All apart from one week of these problems were in the first 6 months of ownership.

When its working its great, u will NEVER go back to dail-up. When its broken you will pull your hair out. ntl:'s customer service is the worst I have come across.

Get a cablemodem but do not have any problems with it :D

Yep, had it about a month now and no problems at all. I came home from work late one night and it wasn't working, so I rang their technical chaps up and they answered immediately, but it was 11pm...so perhaps thats the best time to call them!

Jim

wish i could get cable or adsl :( :(

We've had Ntl cable for only a few days but already are well chuffed with it. We're getting speeds far in excess of 512K from the cable modem. Initially we had a few problems registering with the service but everytime my other half phoned the help desk he got through straight away and they were extremely helpful in tracing our problem which turned out to be Nortons built in firewall for the anti-virus software (didn't know it had one!) blocking the IP path out to the network. With Norton anti-virus disabled and zone-alarm uninstalled we were able to complete registration, zone-alarm was reinstalled and Norton enabled and (touch wood) we've had no problems since, just super quick download times - eg: 12K in under 3 minutes :eek: :D

Sal

That'll be 12Meg in under three mins Sal :D :D - I was actually downloading IE6 from Microsoft - very impressive so far :)

Chris

Scuse the ignorance but what is broadband. I,m using NTL now for my dialup and its really slow most of the time. How much does this broadband cost.

Chip.

Broadband is the jargon name for fecking quick internet access.
Typical speeds in the UK are 512,000 bps recieving and 128,000Bps sending. This means an average download speed of around 60-70Kilobytes per second

A normal dial up modem will do 56,000 Bps in the best conditions, usually it's around 40-44,000 Bps. This in practice means between 5 and 8Kilobytes per second.

So it's about 10X faster than a normal modem

if you buy your own cable modem(about 150 quid). The rates are 5 quid a month for 60,000Bps or £20 quid a month for 512K. These figures are not based on usage, i.e use as much net time as you like.

Chip

Neil description is pretty much spot on. If you want a slightly more technical idea about broadband, goto www.whatis.com and look up 'broadband'.

Cheers
Chris

I've just joined NTL Broadband (on 29/12) and can honestly say it is brilliant. The only reason I haven't had it before is beacuse they have only just brought it into this area. I am already with NTL for digital TV, so I don't need a cable modem (just an ethernet card in the PC and a x-over cable to the set-top box). I rang them up on Friday, installed the card Saturday morning and voila! Permanant internet connection at 10x dial-up speed! All for £25/month (approx what my dial-up telephone charges were).

Just ensure you have an up-to-date virus scanner and solid firewall (such as Zone Alarm) - I get hit by 'potentially hostile activity' about once every 5-10 minutes! :eek:

Daniel

NTL are also offering 128k broadband for £15 a month including modem rental.

Lee