[lovelyLT]

Hi,
so, I'm moving out of uni accommodation and I'll need to set up my own broadband now. Which provider is the best for students? The speed isn't very important as long as I can watch movies online. I've heard that the Virgin is good as they don't require to pay the line rental. Also, which provider is more or less torrent-friendly?
Any advise will be appreciated,
thanks!

P.S. I'm in Edinburgh

[IcEmAn911]

O2 Broadband. It's cheap, unlimited and based on ADSL2+.

It's also torrent friendly.

I pay £9 a month for 7mb/1mb and I tend to hammer a lot out of it especially with steam games.

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by lovelyLT)
Hi,
so, I'm moving out of uni accommodation and I'll need to set up my own broadband now. Which provider is the best for students? The speed isn't very important as long as I can watch movies online. I've heard that the Virgin is good as they don't require to pay the line rental. Also, which provider is more or less torrent-friendly?
Any advise will be appreciated,
thanks!

Depends which virgin you get, their cables pretty good.

[Camoxide]

Virgin cable is pretty good and torrent tolerent. (you get throtlled if you download over 1 gig though before midnight)

I'm with BT. They're alright but you pretty much can't torrent before midnight. It's limited to like 0.1Kbps

[Jake9]

(Original post by Camoxide)
Virgin cable is pretty good and torrent tolerent. (you get throtlled if you download over 1 gig though before midnight)

I'm with BT. They're alright but you pretty much can't torrent before midnight. It's limited to like 0.1Kbps

throttling is dependant on what package your on and the time, full table:

Spoiler:

Show

imo virgin is the best even with their throttling policy, they also offer 9 month contracts for students.

[Dilzone]

i'm thinking of getting this offer:

sales.talktalk (dot) co.uk /product/broadband/essentials

half price broadband for the 12months (£3.25pm), £9.50 line rental per month (if you pay it all upfront) and free line installation.
works out to be £12.75 a month (which for a house of three people is £4.25 per person). and that's unlimited downloads and free weekend&evening calls.
and if the moneysavingexpert offer goes through you get a £50 tesco voucher on top.
downside is that their customer service isn't that great...

the deal expires at the end of july but it looks pretty good to me. opinions?

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Dilzone)
i'm thinking of getting this offer:

sales.talktalk (dot) co.uk /product/broadband/essentials

half price broadband for the 12months (£3.25pm), £9.50 line rental per month (if you pay it all upfront) and free line installation.
works out to be £12.75 a month (which for a house of three people is £4.25 per person). and that's unlimited downloads and free weekend&evening calls.
and if the moneysavingexpert offer goes through you get a £50 tesco voucher on top.
downside is that their customer service isn't that great...

the deal expires at the end of july but it looks pretty good to me. opinions?

talktalk have issues, I have it....sometimes randomly it's crap, and does get throttled, particularly in the afternoon.
But check if that version doesn't have a download limit.
btw do u no a guy from woodhouse in ur classes ?

[Dilzone]

(Original post by Iqbal007)
talktalk have issues, I have it....sometimes randomly it's crap, and does get throttled, particularly in the afternoon.
But check if that version doesn't have a download limit.
btw do u no a guy from woodhouse in ur classes ?

how much does it get throttled? does it affect you a lot? can't say i've ever noticed it myself when i was living at home (on talktalk).

according to their site it's 40gb but according to one of their advisers it's 80gb. i don't think it'll really be an issue, nothing ever happened when both me and my brother were at living at home and we're both crazy downloaders.

at UCL? probably. inbox me a name!

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Dilzone)
how much does it get throttled? does it affect you a lot? can't say i've ever noticed it myself when i was living at home (on talktalk).

according to their site it's 40gb but according to one of their advisers it's 80gb. i don't think it'll really be an issue, nothing ever happened when both me and my brother were at living at home and we're both crazy downloaders.

at UCL? probably. inbox me a name!

Well if you live in Camden, you can sometimes tell that your being throttled. But i happens maybe once a week or so when you notice.
The 3rd time I was warned, they added £5 on automatically for an extra 40gb, so I just got it upgraded to the topone without a limit

[Dilzone]

do you go over the limit a lot then? and is it 40gb or 80gb?
i didn't think we'd use that much in a month! is that all through downloading stuff/watching stuff online?

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Dilzone)
do you go over the limit a lot then? and is it 40gb or 80gb?
i didn't think we'd use that much in a month! is that all through downloading stuff/watching stuff online?

Well the in the first contract i went over 3 times in 18 months............normally it's 40gb as I recall, but you should check.
Yeah, and other stuff..........especially if your getting it for a house to share with other students, you'll reach ur limit pretty quickly.

[tooosh]

We're going for Zen in our house next year. Fibre, 80/20, 200GB peak cap, unlimited off peak, £40/mo I think it was? Don't even touch Talk Talk.

[Dilzone]

(Original post by Iqbal007)
Well the in the first contract i went over 3 times in 18 months............normally it's 40gb as I recall, but you should check.
Yeah, and other stuff..........especially if your getting it for a house to share with other students, you'll reach ur limit pretty quickly.

was the contract for unlimited downloads? cos if it was, i'd be blood outraged. 40Gb =/= unlimited.

i've looked into it a bit more, and according to this:

http://www.uswitch (dot) com/broadband/news/2012/06/talktalk_brings_back_unlimited_u sage_on_essentials_package/

the unlimited usage thing was only just reintroduced. i might be ok then!

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Dilzone)
was the contract for unlimited downloads? cos if it was, i'd be blood outraged. 40Gb =/= unlimited.

i've looked into it a bit more, and according to this:

http://www.uswitch (dot) com/broadband/news/2012/06/talktalk_brings_back_unlimited_u sage_on_essentials_package/

the unlimited usage thing was only just reintroduced. i might be ok then!

Oh no, the original one was 40gb, which changed it to the new contracts which had unlimited
Their customer service is appalling ¬¬

still would be careful with the broadband....getting fibre is far better in comparison but is more costly

[Rainingshame]

(Original post by lovelyLT)
Hi,
so, I'm moving out of uni accommodation and I'll need to set up my own broadband now. Which provider is the best for students? The speed isn't very important as long as I can watch movies online. I've heard that the Virgin is good as they don't require to pay the line rental. Also, which provider is more or less torrent-friendly?
Any advise will be appreciated,
thanks!

P.S. I'm in Edinburgh

Pretty simple, unless you live like 200m from the exchange stay away from ADSL2. That leaves you with BT infinity and Virgin (cable). I've always had Virgin/Telewest Broad band and there's almost no problems. In terms of capping if you time it right you can get 15GB of downloading before it happens (every day). The reliability is also very good. If you are going to get ASDL2 BT are the only good choice. Stay away from Talk-talk and AOL.

[Dilzone]

(Original post by Rainingshame)
Pretty simple, unless you live like 200m from the exchange stay away from ADSL2. That leaves you with BT infinity and Virgin (cable). I've always had Virgin/Telewest Broad band and there's almost no problems. In terms of capping if you time it right you can get 15GB of downloading before it happens (every day). The reliability is also very good. If you are going to get ASDL2 BT are the only good choice. Stay away from Talk-talk and AOL.

what's so bad about TalkTalk? i know the customer service is bad but the deal i mentioned works out to be seriously cheaper than virgin. is it really worth paying that much more for virgin considering the capping as well?

[Jelephant]

I wouldn't recommend virgin myself- had nothing but issues from pestering me with cold calls to my connection randomly cutting out now and then with no explanation or permanent resolution. No idea who to go with instead though =/

[tamimi]

Joining Virgin is the worst thing I ever done. But the quality of their service varies from region to region so you may be Okay.

The speed is great but their customer service is the worst I've ever endured. It's torment. I have a log of when they put me on hold for 13 hours.

Anyway, they're k. Customer service 1/10. Speed 9/10. Download limitation 6.5/10

Sky offer better customer service, slightly lower speed, bit more expensive. They have the "Truly Unlimited" package with no throttling so it's good if you're an aggressive P2P user.

BT infinity - Good customer service, average speed. Not sure about their download limits.

O2 - No clue.

[That Bearded Man]

Any opinions on internet in Belfast guys?

Virgin again keeps popping up

[Rainingshame]

(Original post by Dilzone)
what's so bad about TalkTalk? i know the customer service is bad but the deal i mentioned works out to be seriously cheaper than virgin. is it really worth paying that much more for virgin considering the capping as well?

You have a 40GB TOTAL limit for talk talk. It's ADSL2, the 24MB speeds is like to be 3-4mbps(a HD movie wouldn't stream) during off peak and near 2-3mbps at peak times. That's if you live a half a mile out of the city center. Go a mile out and you should have a quarter of that.
And virgins is capped for max speed if you go past that limit they halve for the rest of the cycle(less than 12 hour periods).