Be*/O2

I've just got a MAC from Virgin. Finally got fed up with their traffic
shaping which gives piss poor service on iplayer & other streaming services
at peak time.

So, of the LLU services available locally Be* is the only one I would
consider, the others being different flavours of Carphone Warehouse.

So, FOAK, what do you think of Be*/O2 as an ISP?

Be*'s £24 of Amazon vouchers and an £80 Quidco rebate sweeten the deal
somewhat.

 

I'm with O2 Home Broadband (£14.77/mo as I'm an o2 mobile customer)
and it's fucking fantastic. Thanks. BUT: No usernet server, so use
freebie one.

 

Was that on ADSL? I have 20M cable and no shaping that I can detect.


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ASDL via BT line - used to have NTL cable when living in Cardiff and it was
very good.

 

I'd agree with this assessment (I use the business version £20ish/mo).

 

I'd rate be* very highly,

we live about 3 miles from the exchange apparantly, and bt rekoned we'd
struggle to get a half meg connection,
we get 6.5 megs with be*

they always notify us when its about to go down for 'essential maint.' which
has been about 4 times this year, and it's always back up way before they
say it will be,

only problem we had was when moving addy, but that was BT fuckups, they
didnt activate the phone line, so the llu transfer thing got fucked up,

 

The last time I browsed thinkbroadbands's forums, Be* seemed to be
getting mostly compliments.

 

They seem pretty good to me.

Had a couple of initial niggles[0], but everything was sorted out
quickly. You can adjust your connection profile for speed or reliability
(although I've never bothered playing with mine, as it's generally a
fairly solid 17Mbps).

BGN's already pointed out that they don't have a Usenet server, but you
should also be aware that email and webspace is an additional cost. (Not
a problem for me, as mine's set up elsewhere.)

They'll send you a router, but I've never bothered using it as my
Netgear works just fine once I'd changed the ADSL settings, meaning that
I didn't need to reconfigure all the firewall settings.

Recommended.


[0] One was because their billing structure had changed between when I
signed up and when I got activated, IIRC. The other was to get them to
confirm the DNS servers that I should be using, as the ones that they'd
initially told me were missing some records.

 

Thanks for the replies. I'll be switching the service when I get the MAC
from Virgin. So far the, "we'll email it to you within 2 hours" promise has
proved to be bollocks.

 

Bethere gets a big thumbs up from me.

I'm on the Be Pro package with a sync rate of 18Mb with the 2.5Mb upload.

Another friend went with the cheapest O2 offering (8Mb)and has been very
happy with it.

 

They've got five working days:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consumeradvice/internet/service/switch/mac/

 

It finally came through on the 19th, so, obviously, they only work
three days each week.

Now that Bethere have activated the migration Virgin seem to have
throttled my broadband to 160k download. Cunts.

Transfer day is Mon 29th.

 

You may be in line for further disappointment. There have been rumours of
Be moving to bandwidth "shaping". Throttling anything useful in other words.
Given their ownership it seems plausible.

 

I haven't noticed any.

Their DNS servers are rubbish, mind; I'm trying OpenDNS for now, but I'm
slightly concerned about this kind of thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS#Privacy_issues.2C_conflicts_and_covert_redirection

 

and today, at 14.20 the phone went ding and the Virgin connection
dropped. Phone line was dead too.

14.21 - I cloned the Bebox settings into Netgear router

14.23, phone went ding again, phone working again

14.25 red lights on router

14.26 green lights on router, Be* ADSL active

I'm quite impressed.

 

I have mostly just used random dns servers for years.
I think some people restrict access now but many don't.

The one I am using at present as my primary
I can't disclose here but I have used the following
in the past. They all work at least a bit today
from off their network.

dns servers
212.103.224.51 ns1.firstnet.net.uk \\bound to be ns0, 2?
212.42.162.1 ns0.fast.net.uk \\bound to be ns1?
213.120.62.103 inh2dns07.imsnet2.btopenworld.com

The last one went a bit wobbly a while back but
may be OK now, or may not

AOL - I am on this net so no idea if they work from off.
(was the best deal for me at the time and is OK except that
the fairly frequent 2 hour maintenances are a bit annoying.
Overnight but I am often up late.)
Primary DNS: 92.31.241.20
Secondary DNS: 92.31.241.21

 

As Eddie says, the DNS servers are slow, so I'm using openDNS, which I used
with Virgin as their DNS often failed completely.

So far the service with be* seems much better than Virgin's ADSL. Faster
peak time downloads and a much wider upload band.

All for £2 a month less and with an £80 bribe via Quidco.