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Be Broadband. https://www.bethere.co.uk/

So what's the setup for fibre? How come other ISPs aren't able to pick this up and sell it to customers? Is fibre not required to be provided wholesale? Is it being sold by BT Wholesale in a way that favors BT Retail over other providers? If so, these are issues that Ofcom should be taking VERY seriously.

Openreach roll it out..... BT retail always get first shot at it and wholesale always delay roll out to others, basically till OFCOM kick their asses which they have been.... as to whether bt wholesale favour bt retail.. yes and that's another thing OFCOM have given them grief for and still do. openreach were given shit about their preferential treatment and QOS given to BT retail. as to why other ISP are not able to sell on.....BT were gauging prices like hell anf got caught thus the recent OFCOM ass kicking and yesterdays announcement of the wholesale price drop and better conditions to other ISP's.

However , whether it's BT Openreach , BT retail, BT wholesale.. they are ALL part of the BT group of companies which are all run by the same board of directors...... to be honest it's like you actually haven't been following this story at all as this is just the latest entry into the catalogue of it and thus my temptations is to sauy to you, Mr AC that there is a smell of freshly laid plastic grass about you.....ALL the questions you have asked have answers readily available to you and in the majority od cases BT was found to be at fault in a big way

As for bethere... i am with them and they just sent out an email as to why their fibre offering will not be this year
http://blog.bethere.co.uk/2011/09/update-on-fibre.html

BT is just as bad I hear.

You should try https://www.bethere.co.uk/group/beportal/homepage

Depending on exactly how you define resellers.

What has become increasingly common here in the UK is local loop unbundling. With local loop unbundling BT openreach* owns the physical line but the provider can operate their own ADSL gear. Afaict lines can be unbundled for just ADSL or for ADSL and voice (not sure if they can be unbundled for voice only or for ADSL and voice to different providers). LLU allows providers to avoid the high costs of using BTs ADSL backend network but comes at a price in that. So there are only a handful of LLU providers of which SKY and O2/BE (O2 bought BE but they still operate services under the BE name as we as their own) seem to be regarded as the best.

There are also many BT wholesale based providers but due to the way BT prices access to their backend network these tend to be expensive, congested or both.

* Part of BT but kept somewhat seperate from BTs other operations by the regulator.

Not any more bud.... my ISP http://www.bethere.co.uk/ is now going to roll out VDSL(fibre to the cabinet) to it's customers.
otherwise you are absolutely spot on with the situation apart from sky, their support of horrible..BE's support is stunningly good, free phone and 24/7. i have friends who are with them who are leaving due to their terrible support and coming over to bethere who do not throttle,shape and are truly unlimited.
Bethere (and no i don't work for them) are taking registrations now for the fibre at https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/fibre
with adsl/adsl2+ it's LLU but with FTTC Ofcom call it Virtual Unbundled Local Access(VULA and BT Openreach have named it GEA (Generic Ethernet Access).. same shit.. different label

Depending on exactly how you define resellers.

What has become increasingly common here in the UK is local loop unbundling. With local loop unbundling BT openreach* owns the physical line but the provider can operate their own ADSL gear. Afaict lines can be unbundled for just ADSL or for ADSL and voice (not sure if they can be unbundled for voice only or for ADSL and voice to different providers). LLU allows providers to avoid the high costs of using BTs ADSL backend network but comes at a price in that. So there are only a handful of LLU providers of which SKY and O2/BE (O2 bought BE but they still operate services under the BE name as we as their own) seem to be regarded as the best.

There are also many BT wholesale based providers but due to the way BT prices access to their backend network these tend to be expensive, congested or both.

* Part of BT but kept somewhat seperate from BTs other operations by the regulator.

Not any more bud.... my ISP http://www.bethere.co.uk/ is now going to roll out VDSL(fibre to the cabinet) to it's customers.
otherwise you are absolutely spot on with the situation apart from sky, their support of horrible..BE's support is stunningly good, free phone and 24/7. i have friends who are with them who are leaving due to their terrible support and coming over to bethere who do not throttle,shape and are truly unlimited.
Bethere (and no i don't work for them) are taking registrations now for the fibre at https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/fibre
with adsl/adsl2+ it's LLU but with FTTC Ofcom call it Virtual Unbundled Local Access(VULA and BT Openreach have named it GEA (Generic Ethernet Access).. same shit.. different label

That is mainly false (maybe your american point of view that Europe is backwards?).

But sometimes you have to choose your provider carefully before you start hoping for a service. For example, Free in France and BE in the UK mean unlimited. And although the latter has a "fair usage policy" that isn't available anywhere, after 2 years with them I haven't triggered it yet (and boy do I try!).

Except that they're a BT reseller, so your service is dependent on a third party

Unfortunately just about every ISP selling to home users is, aside from virgin and the few other cable providers if they are available in your area. You could pay for a fibre line that bypasses BT completely but that ain't going to be cheap! They have their own backhaul though, so their users (myself included) haven't experienced some of the issues users of other ISPs have over recent years.

they subscribe to the IWF, so your service is filtered

This is an irritation, when there are significant false positives on the blacklist. IIRC their implementation is purely DNS based though, so easy to avoid if it causes you issues by using an external DNS provider (like Google's).

and their FUP lists all the ways they don't allow you to use the service, for example spamming

I have no problem with that: they are up front about what you can and can not do. Similarly with Virgin's current traffic shaping (I know people who use their service, and there is at least a page fully documenting how much you can use in a given time before rate limits start to be imposed and it is nice definite numbers not some unknown values so you don;y know what to expect).

I have no problem with them, I'm with a similar BT reseller, but don't delude yourself about what you're getting.

Aye. They are not perfect. And they are more expensive then most of the less perfect options. But I've been pretty happy with the service they have provided over the last ~3 years.

Except that they're a BT reseller, so your service is dependent on a third party, they subscribe to the IWF, so your service is filtered, and their FUP lists all the ways they don't allow you to use the service, for example spamming.
I have no problem with them, I'm with a similar BT reseller, but don't delude yourself about what you're getting.

i am actually truly unlimited , unfiltered and unmanaged, unshaped in every way

then again i am with bethere who i can highly recommend

free phone 24/7 tech support, the tech support guys are always pleasant and know what they are doing

i'd recommend them in a heart beat. and no, i don't work for them i just really appreciate top notch service when i get it

Ayrshire is far from the middle of nowhere, especially when talking about the coastal parts of it

the problem being with it, especially Ayr, is that there is only (in general) a single exchange per town

a lot of the real country side parts of Ayrshire don't have an exchange of their own and thus get routed to their nearest decent sized town, hence their crappy connection speeds and connection issues

i am originally from Ayr, but , live in Edinburgh now and enjoy the bliss of a Bethere connection at the full 24 megs a sec due to being 438 metres by wire from the exchange

My cousin and mother both live in Belmont in Ayr and get around 7 meg connection , both with talk talk

my aunt, who live a mile up the road in Kincaidston gets about 4.5 meg a sec with AO-hell and my other aunt who stays in Alloway(fringes of Ayr) gets a mere 2 meg a sec.

an old school friend of mine who stays in Maybole gets a crappy 1 meg a sec on a good day.

in the UK this is pretty average for non city connections and to slag it off just shows what an ignoramus you really are skyride

One thing to add, which you may not have realised if you're not a UK user, is that it is absolutely possible for people to vote with their wallets in this case. Unlike the situation as I understand it in the US, we have a fairly good choice of DSL ISPs.

If a person is using TalkTalk, it means they have a BT (physical) phone line, although it may not be currently connected to BT equipment at the exchange. Since BT has long been required to open up their government-provided-monopoly infrastructure to others, it means that there will be a wide choice of ISPs and switching is relatively straightforward.

Also, on a purely personal note, this allows me a brilliant concrete example of why I advise people to pay a little more for a straightforward, unadulterated connection from Be or UKFSN's LLU service (no affiliation with either other than as a satisfied customer) and support those ISPs who don't pull crap like this.

And I use Be, who do their best to keep contention to 1:1 and give me a steady 18MB/S down, 1MB/S up, for £18 a month or something. Can't beat 'em.

it depends on your ISP what your contention ratio is.

very low cost of craptastic ISP's do indeed have a 50:1 ratio

there are also other contention ratios you can have, usually 30:1 or 20:1 and bethere offer a 1:1 contention ratio on the Be Pro service.

i am with bethere and that was stated to me when i called to enquire about what the score was with their connection.

in fact i have just phoned Bethere to confirm this and the answer from tech support was a resounding YES

while it doesn't state about contention ratios on the website feel free to call their support free on 08081019430, you can get hold of the sales folks there too.

i DO NOT WORK for Bethere however i am a customer and a VERY happy one at that.

Since this ISP charges for bandwidth (and quite heavily during the day) and are more expensive than other providers that supply truly unlimited tariffs such as BeThere, I fail to see how "pirates" can be "their best customers"

Rubbish. No really.
I'm with Be and their modems while not the best are very accessible. The devices are not pre-programmed, at least not to the extent of having user name and passwords built in. They know who you are by the simple expedient of knowing what your land line number is (just like BT). And none of the configuration details are secret, in fact you can find them on their user community site or by chatting to an online rep.

They distribute firmware updates, when they are needed, and offer command line access to modify settings. You only have to use their smtp servers if you have a dynamic ip, and if you get the unlimited or pro service, you get a free static ip with no port blocking whatsoever. They are happy to tell you how to configure your machine to act as a server, and there are built in port forwarding defaults for roughly 30 services.

I suggest you get somebody else to set up your grans modem, but it's possible she's already worked it out herself.

https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/homepage
https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/technicalguides
https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/beboxdownload
http://beusergroup.co.uk/
http://blog.bethere.co.uk/2009/11/three-strikes-and-impact-on-be-and-our.html

Rubbish. No really.
I'm with Be and their modems while not the best are very accessible. The devices are not pre-programmed, at least not to the extent of having user name and passwords built in. They know who you are by the simple expedient of knowing what your land line number is (just like BT). And none of the configuration details are secret, in fact you can find them on their user community site or by chatting to an online rep.

They distribute firmware updates, when they are needed, and offer command line access to modify settings. You only have to use their smtp servers if you have a dynamic ip, and if you get the unlimited or pro service, you get a free static ip with no port blocking whatsoever. They are happy to tell you how to configure your machine to act as a server, and there are built in port forwarding defaults for roughly 30 services.

I suggest you get somebody else to set up your grans modem, but it's possible she's already worked it out herself.

https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/homepage
https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/technicalguides
https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/beboxdownload
http://beusergroup.co.uk/
http://blog.bethere.co.uk/2009/11/three-strikes-and-impact-on-be-and-our.html

Rubbish. No really.
I'm with Be and their modems while not the best are very accessible. The devices are not pre-programmed, at least not to the extent of having user name and passwords built in. They know who you are by the simple expedient of knowing what your land line number is (just like BT). And none of the configuration details are secret, in fact you can find them on their user community site or by chatting to an online rep.

They distribute firmware updates, when they are needed, and offer command line access to modify settings. You only have to use their smtp servers if you have a dynamic ip, and if you get the unlimited or pro service, you get a free static ip with no port blocking whatsoever. They are happy to tell you how to configure your machine to act as a server, and there are built in port forwarding defaults for roughly 30 services.

I suggest you get somebody else to set up your grans modem, but it's possible she's already worked it out herself.

https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/homepage
https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/technicalguides
https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/beboxdownload
http://beusergroup.co.uk/
http://blog.bethere.co.uk/2009/11/three-strikes-and-impact-on-be-and-our.html

Rubbish. No really.
I'm with Be and their modems while not the best are very accessible. The devices are not pre-programmed, at least not to the extent of having user name and passwords built in. They know who you are by the simple expedient of knowing what your land line number is (just like BT). And none of the configuration details are secret, in fact you can find them on their user community site or by chatting to an online rep.

They distribute firmware updates, when they are needed, and offer command line access to modify settings. You only have to use their smtp servers if you have a dynamic ip, and if you get the unlimited or pro service, you get a free static ip with no port blocking whatsoever. They are happy to tell you how to configure your machine to act as a server, and there are built in port forwarding defaults for roughly 30 services.

I suggest you get somebody else to set up your grans modem, but it's possible she's already worked it out herself.

https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/homepage
https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/technicalguides
https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/beboxdownload
http://beusergroup.co.uk/
http://blog.bethere.co.uk/2009/11/three-strikes-and-impact-on-be-and-our.html

I too was with them in the beginning but they lost the plot (the founder even got a suspended jail sentence).

Agreed about the other ISPs as well - I've found bethere to be pretty good though.

who is this magical ISP? - please tell me!

ADSL24. I use their ADSL2+ LLU service, which I believe is provided over BE's network.
Obviously they have a fair usage policy too, it's just that it seems to be fairer.

I recently switched provider to Be, and experienced a doubling in download bandwidth, and a trebling in upload bandwidth, for 25% less per month including a fixed IP. Plus BT claimed that "it was not possible to get faster speeds on my line". Funny that, considering you need a BT phone line to sign up with Be. But now I'm not with BT broadband, I can't get BT Vision. So there was no net neutrality in this case. All their stuff was prioritised already.

I am just about to move house but I have used Be for the last two years. I have called them a couple of times with technical questions and they have always solved them quickly ( under 20 minutes ). Even canceling my service with them easy.
I have 18Mbits/second down and 1.5Mbits/second up. They are a great service provider.

• Pause rewind and record Live TV
  The Vision+ box is a digital TV recorder that lets you pause, record and rewind live TV.
• 160 GB hard drive
  Record and store up to 80 hours of Freeview TV with the huge 160 GB hard drive.
• # Dual tuners
  The Vision+ box's dual tuners can record one or two programmes at once while you watch another recording.
• Record whole TV series
  The TV guide shows scheduling 14 days in advance. Simply press the R button twice to record a whole series.
• HD Experience
  The HD Vision+ box gives you selected films and TV in crystal clear, High Definition picture and sound quality.
• # Convenient billing
  Any pay per view movies, sport, music or TV shows you watch will be added to your next BT Vision bill. If you take one of our Value Packs, you will be billed in advance each month.

Combined with bittorrent, I already have what they are offering. Except their speeds are derisory. I recently switched provider to Be, and experienced a doubling in download bandwidth, and a trebling in upload bandwidth, for 25% less per month including a fixed IP. Plus BT claimed that "it was not possible to get faster speeds on my line". Funny that, considering you need a BT phone line to sign up with Be. But now I'm not with BT broadband, I can't get BT Vision. So there was no net neutrality in this case. All their stuff was prioritised already.

There are still a few good ISPs out there, but yeah they are very few and far between.

http://www.bethere.co.uk/ is probably the best I know of and from experience, it's truly unlimited in pretty much every way, and it's not ridiculously overpriced unlike others which may offer similar services.

and also a couple of ISP's who do uncapped and unfiltered for less such as http://www.bethere.co.uk/ and http://broadband.o2.co.uk/home/index.jsp

£35 per month is very "shabby". For £17.50 you can get a truely unlimited ASDL2+ connection from BE. Why pay double? Be Internet are also very highly rated and almost on par with Zen in terms of support and customer service.

I've already complained from their contacts page. Now I am wondering which ISP to move to. Obviously anyone with Phorm is right out (BT, for instance), as is anyone with a strict download cap. Any suggestions?

Like everyone else here, it's not that I want to look at child porn, but rather that I object on principle to censorship. I didn't realise I was helping to fund this sort of thing with my broadband subscription

Extreme example I know, but today it's "criminally obscene content" and "incitement to racial hatred", and tomorrow it's the British equivalents of "Tianamen Square" and "Democracy". If I have a choice, I'm not funding that.

If you want fast get adsl 2 from bethere. I had an appaling time, my connection was supposed to be 2mb but I got less than a 56k modem since I've switch to bethere I get 14mb (more than a MB per second download!). The only catch is you have to use their own kit which isn't that great but does the job.

> which don't provide unlimited plans: Australia, New Zealand.

UK,...

uhh, what?

I live in the UK. I'm using an ISP with an unlimited plan. By unlimited, I mean COMPLETELY unlimited. I've regularly downloaded hundreds of GBs a month and never heard a word from them. And it's an ADSL2+ connection with no restrictions (i.e. if I live close enough to the exchange, I DO get 24Mbit down/1Mbit up - if I pay a little extra, I get 2Mbit up). And it's not overpriced, either. I currently pay £18 a month (A cheaper, ADSL1 plan that's still unlimited, is available) for this connection, albeit on top of line Rental because BT are a bunch of cunts.

Nah, in the UK we've been conditioned to expect ineptitude, in the last two months alone:

- It took me a week to start the process of reactivating a BT phone line to my new apartment, as *the system is down*.
- The phone line to my workplace was disconnected, for no reason, taking a ( No internet. We're a mainly web based graphics company ) week to re-connect.

The trains don't work, the airports don't work...

If you are in the UK, however, I can heartily recommend Be ( bethere.co.uk ) 24 meg for £18 pcm. ( No affiliation, just a happy customer. )

I'm a very happy Be* customer. They seem still to be on the side of the custommers and I love them for this (and their good service)! :-)

Yes, try BE. Had no issues with them so far (6 months): my connection is reliable and, being paranoid, when I read their T&C, there was nothing unduly alarming. For a change.

The UK was praised in one of those broadband reports that appear on here every so often for having the small packages. They're cheap and just fine for my grandma. The limits (if any) are generally clearly advertised.

There's still unlimited broadband available. Unsurprisingly, it costs more than the unlimited options. Isn't that the whole point of this discussion though?

Everyone I know in London who downloads lots uses BeThere, which gives 24Mbit/s for £18/month, and it is unlimited -- I don't know anyone who's been cut off, or had their transfer rate throttled.

Not sure if this is the case in the UK, but in the US there always seems to be the same statement--"up to X mbits". I don't know of any large ISPs that do not use that phrase.

Yup, they all use that phrase - I wasn't arguing that that was misleading (although now you come to mention it, if your network is overloaded to the point that there's no way anyone's going to get 8Mbps you probably shouldn't be allowed to advertise "up to 8Mbps").

I do not know any company that explicitly states their residential service is "unlimited".

Orange: "unlimited monthly downloads (fair use policy applies)"
Be: "Unlimited usage"
Tiscali: "a fast, affordable service with unlimited usage every month."
Toucan: "all packages are unlimited"
Pipex: "Our Pipex Max + Anytime package gives you both unlimited broadband AND unlimited local and national calls all day every day"

Thats just from a quick Google for "unlimited broadband". I hear radio ads quite frequently for "unlimited broadband" too, and infact it wasnt that long ago that Tiscali's radio ads said "Up to 8 megabyte unlimited broadband" (which was clearly a mistake and whoever let that through needs a kicking).

Right now in the US, no company has ventured out into metered billing like PlusNet has.

It's pretty common place in the UK amoungst the smaller ISPs. The bigger ones are still misleading everyone with their "unlimited" claims though.

Ultimately, many who complain a lot about residential service not being unlimited have no clue what such a service actually costs.

The customer shouldn't need to care how much the service costs the ISP. If the ISP sold them an "unlimited" then the customer has every right to expect it to be unlimited - if the ISP misadvertised it then it's the ISP's responsibility to swallow any costs required to meet their commitment.

The practice of labeling up ISP services as "unlimited" needs to be addressed before freemarket economics can come into play. There is not much incentive to launch a "restricted" service if all your competitors keeping touting neverending network access.

This led me to examine my ISP, selling the "unlimited" package that I am using - https://www.bethere.co.uk/homebroadband.do

Not on the top 10 list of FAQ's (I guess that not many people search for "how long will it be before I get disconnected from my unlimited service?") but a vague entry about if the service really is unlimited - https://www.bethere.co.uk/generalFAQ.do#faq30

Ahh, somewhere near the bottom "What about excessive network usage?" - you get a nasty letter if they "feel" that you're using too much of the internet - https://www.bethere.co.uk/fairusage.do

I'm acutely aware that all/most UK ISP's operate like this so this doesn't bother/affect me too much, at the moment. But I would like more(some) transparancy about the service that is being supplied to me. I migrated from my previous ISP because they had a routing problem (this affected me everyday) that they couldn't fix, and would not publicise - I do not appreciate being lied to about the service I think I'm paying for.

Anyway, they should just double the speed of my connection (at no cost) so I can use the internet in half the time - that way everyone wins ;D

The practice of labeling up ISP services as "unlimited" needs to be addressed before freemarket economics can come into play. There is not much incentive to launch a "restricted" service if all your competitors keeping touting neverending network access.

This led me to examine my ISP, selling the "unlimited" package that I am using - https://www.bethere.co.uk/homebroadband.do

Not on the top 10 list of FAQ's (I guess that not many people search for "how long will it be before I get disconnected from my unlimited service?") but a vague entry about if the service really is unlimited - https://www.bethere.co.uk/generalFAQ.do#faq30

Ahh, somewhere near the bottom "What about excessive network usage?" - you get a nasty letter if they "feel" that you're using too much of the internet - https://www.bethere.co.uk/fairusage.do

I'm acutely aware that all/most UK ISP's operate like this so this doesn't bother/affect me too much, at the moment. But I would like more(some) transparancy about the service that is being supplied to me. I migrated from my previous ISP because they had a routing problem (this affected me everyday) that they couldn't fix, and would not publicise - I do not appreciate being lied to about the service I think I'm paying for.

Anyway, they should just double the speed of my connection (at no cost) so I can use the internet in half the time - that way everyone wins ;D

The practice of labeling up ISP services as "unlimited" needs to be addressed before freemarket economics can come into play. There is not much incentive to launch a "restricted" service if all your competitors keeping touting neverending network access.

This led me to examine my ISP, selling the "unlimited" package that I am using - https://www.bethere.co.uk/homebroadband.do

Not on the top 10 list of FAQ's (I guess that not many people search for "how long will it be before I get disconnected from my unlimited service?") but a vague entry about if the service really is unlimited - https://www.bethere.co.uk/generalFAQ.do#faq30

Ahh, somewhere near the bottom "What about excessive network usage?" - you get a nasty letter if they "feel" that you're using too much of the internet - https://www.bethere.co.uk/fairusage.do

I'm acutely aware that all/most UK ISP's operate like this so this doesn't bother/affect me too much, at the moment. But I would like more(some) transparancy about the service that is being supplied to me. I migrated from my previous ISP because they had a routing problem (this affected me everyday) that they couldn't fix, and would not publicise - I do not appreciate being lied to about the service I think I'm paying for.

Anyway, they should just double the speed of my connection (at no cost) so I can use the internet in half the time - that way everyone wins ;D

Be Broadband.
£24 per month. Up to 24Mb/s (theoretical max speed, but it depends on your line, so probably only 10-12Mb/s). Unlimited usage (and they've clarified in a few places that they really do mean unlimited, and I know of at least one person who has downloaded more than 100GB in a month).

Sigh.

The new breed of UK ISPs using BT's last mile are activating exchanges in the exact same manner used by BT some years ago - by demand.
Don't get bitter because they've not got to you yet; even with limited staff they seem to be moving faster than BT ever did.
If you didn't read into that sentence I'll emphasise my point: They're expanding in the manner, and direction that gains the most profit.
Not because some fictitious socialist mandate pushes them to; not to alienate rural users.
Most of these ISP's are still small, and doing what they can with the capital available.

Example of one of the ISP'S jumping on LLU (local loop unbundling): Be24 - Home package: 'Be Unlimited'
Up to 24meg downstream
Up to 1.3 meg upstream
'Unlimited' usage. In relation to the 'unlimited' usage, their Be Lite package charges £1/gb in 5gb chunks -up to- 90gb. Then they recommend switching to 'Be Unlimited'.
They basically expect near enough 100gb/month from you.
It's not even like they're the cheapest/best value (TalkTalk,Sky; anyone?) So much for crappy, Slow, expensive UK Internet. Our internet is improving fast, how about yours?

I live in remote, leafy...greater London. I can get me 24 MBit broadband from Be*. That's with an 0208 number, shouldn't be a problem up in 0207...

Dunno what areas they cover, but Be Unlimited do 24Mbit for £24 a month.

I have a http://bethere.co.uk/ BE adsl which gets you upto 24mb/1024 down/up, depending on distance from the exchange and line quality. I'm around a mile away from the exchange and get ~15mb.

Between the 3 of us in the house, we use around 150~200Gb a month for the past 5-6 months without any complaints from BE.

They've been good to us, give them a try.

https://www.bethere.co.uk/ - If you're lucky enough to live in one of their areas, i'd go for Be. Their pay-per-gb package goes up to 90gb, so their unlimited is for those who will use more? £24 connection fee £24 a month 24mb down 1.3mb up

In the UK we have a monopolistic telco - BT. We also have a government watch-dog - ofcom - which has mandated that BT must offer the local loop to competitors such as bulldog, etc.

Whilst this initially progressed quite slowly it is now at the point where you can get cheap broadband with up to 16Meg connections with the added bonus of being able to choose alternative phone line suppliers too. In fact you can now get 24Meg connections (dependant on distance from the exchange and quality of the wire).

"In principal there are no download or upload limits on any of our broadband products, but they are subject to our "Fair and acceptable usage policy". All fair and acceptable usage is included in our Be unlimited"

This policy limits applications "which place an unreasonable burden on the network" (even included 'repeated sending of large email attachments', and talks about how the "Lite" plan (not yours, I know) can purchase only a few "5 gig blocks" in a month, which would seem to indicate that there is a very real limit at a point.

Nothing is free, unlimited, ever.

Left out a link to my isp https://www.bethere.co.uk/homebroadband.do

http://www.bethere.co.uk/

Interesting that they offer 24Mbps service, but can't survive a Slashdot effect?

Yeah, that's my choice.

I'm with Internode's 24Mb plan.
If you exceed your download limit your connection will be 'shaped'. You are never charged more than your usual monthly fee. As I understand it (and I am open to correction) Shaping involves slwoing your connection down if and only if their servers are under heavy load (ie. it is affecting other users). They do this to keep things fair for all of their users. I've been over my limit a number of times and have not noticed any slow down at all.
What I like about it is that they are very explicit about the limits of their service.

From the Be site: https://www.bethere.co.uk/beonline/acceptableUse.d o/
"If it's felt that any member's Internet activities are so excessive that other members are detrimentally affected, Be may give the member generating the excessive web traffic a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, should the levels of activity not immediately decrease after the warning, Be may terminate that member's services."

The reality of it all is that you will not find many people out there serving up content at 24Mb. Except for direct conections with Internode's mirrors and Gaming Servers (which make the whole thing worth while!) you'll be spending your time waiting for the Internet to catch up with you.

There's one, big, fundamental difference in the services provided. Internode caps the amount of data you're allowed to download (15-60 gigs, depending on how much you pay). Meanwhile, Be has no download cap whatsoever. This, I think, makes Be's service significantly better.