Can anyone recommend a reliable UK ISP?

I've been with PlusNet for over 3 1/2 years and recently the quality of my connection and their customer service has gone south in a big way. I got hit with the LLU & MaxDSL 'upgrades' at the same time time. Now my local line is operated by Tiscali and PlusNet no longer answer their customer support line . I've had a look at a few ISP's such as Pipex, Demon and UKFSN. Pipex & Demon lock you into a 12-month contract and UKFSN hits you up for £50 to migrate from an LLU line (thanks for nothing, PlusNet).

I can't really afford to shell out more than £25/month. The things I'm looking for in an ISP are: fixed IP address, a reasonable upload speed (I host a radio station, website and do live internet music performances from home) that isn't 'throttled' and similar downloads that aren't 'throttled'. I can live with capping (do I have a choice on my budget?), but throttling leads to me having abysmal ping times.... at the moment I can do little more in SL other than stand or sit on the spot & chat. Building, my other passion in SL, has become seriously glitchy thanks to PlusNet's bandwidth 'throttling'. Webspace would be an added bonus but not essential.

So.... anyone in the UK able to recommend a good ISP? Things are so bad for me with my regular ISP and what I've seen of the other major ISP's that I'm almost considering going with AOL. In my attempt to get a MAC code out of PlusNet, they went ahead and put a cease order on my line effective Sept 9th so I've got a few weeks to find a new ISP.

I've been using NTL, and they have been good. I have had only one problem with my connection in the few years I have been with them, and despite a rather tediously long wait for customer service, they did sort everything out.

For £25 (12.50 for first 3 mnths) you can get 4MB

http://www.home.ntl.com/icat/broadband

I haven't a clue how this compares with other ISPs, though.

We use Eclipse and have done for three and a half years. We work from home running an internet business and have been very satisfied. There is very little downtime. We pay 23.95 for a 1mb line but I don't think that product is available now. Check on their website. They're the most reliable isp I've used. We had to request a fixed ip address but it didn't cost us any more.

Albion

thanks for your replies, Hiro and Albion. I had a look at the NTL site and I'm not too sure about them. Also looked at the Eclipse site. I think their residential 'Evolution Option 3' package comes closest to to fitting my needs even if their definition of 'peak time' is a bit harsh. What's their customer support like? Do they answer their phones? I tested the Pipex customer support and scarily they use exactly the same voice menu system as PlusNet with similar dead-end results.

My partner says their technical support is good and that if you ask a technical question they give you a technical answer. They don't lead you through a help file. We haven't had to call them for a long time, however.

Albion

I've been with demon for 10 years now and can not falt thier Broadband.

Get 2.2Mb and very rerely have a problem, waiting for the free upgrade to come through with the up to 8 Mb promise.

I pay £24.99 a month and this is an umlimited uncapped account.

Hiyas Elle, an RL friend of mine also recommended Demon Internet. They don't support the LLU (local loop unbundling) program, so if I do decide to go with them I'd be looking at 1 - 2 weeks' downtime. Other than that and the 12-month contract, I'd have gone with them straight away. They are close to the top of my list though. What are they like on bandwidth? Oh, another question... the person I talked to on the sales line didn't know if their upload bandwith was 448 kilobits or 448 kilobytes. That is a crucial difference by a factor of 8. A 448 kilobit upload connection wouldn't even support the grungiest of audio feeds for a live performance whereas a 448 kilobyte connection would be sufficient as I have access to an audio relay server. Is the Demon Internet broadband upload speed 448 Kilobits or 448 Kilobytes?

Speeds are almost always in bits per second - so I'm betting that's kilobits. That should be fine though if you have a relay -- you might be better served by getting a cheap shell account somewhere for the hosting side - even the cheapest hosts have much better bandwidth than home connections.

That sounds interesting, Adam. Except for one thing: I have no clue what a shell account is. I'm not really 'up' on all the terminology.

from General to The Sandbox.

i was going to put this in Techinical Issues, but since it's less SL related and more generally RL realted, i've opted to place it in The Sandbox.

hope you get this figured out!

I don't really have a recommendation I'm afraid, but I would just like to say NOT BT. I share my flatmate's internet connection, which is BT, and they randomly block off entire domains at times, like, say, the whole of blogspot.com, or everything for SL. They also have regular technical problems which they blame on the customer not configuring their router correctly, until you call them for the twentieth time and they admit that, actually, yes, it was their fault all along. (It's got to the stage where, if somebody says their broadband is down, the first question I ask is "are you with BT?" and 100% of the time it has ended up being BT's fault.)

No probs, Cybin. I wasn't sure where to start this thread and wanted to put it where it would get a response. I need to find a decent ISP rather quickly.

Hiyas Ordinal. I'm surprised you and your friend even bother with BT seeing how their service is so brutally capped and SL is such an intense data stream. On a long day of building I'll easily rack up 500+mb download.