View Full Version : Should I switch to NTL?
Hey,
At the moment I'm paying £25 for a Freedom2Surf 2MB uncapped service. Now I'm perfectly happy with the service, but I'm worried I'm overpaying for the speed I'm getting... problem is my line won't handle much over 2MB if I switch to Max (in fact it would probably sync under 2MB!).
So for the same amount of money I could be getting an NTL 4Mb cable line. Should I switch to them? I see it's an uncapped service, but how bad is the traffic shaping? And game pings are usually better on cable right?
I live right next to the Lenton student area in Nottingham, so will the NTL service here be a bit pants with all the students raping their connections with warez 24/7? http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/images/smilies/tongue.gif
Any help/views appreciated Download Failed (1)
Cheers,
Suman
NTL hasn't actually released this 4meg as of yet, but it should be rolled out by the end of this month, theres a comment on the homepage from NTL about it.
There's no traffic shaping as of yet though people do expect it to return.
I've heard about some people experiancing slower speeds in student areas, though I'm not sure on this one.
:welcome: to the forums by the way :)
Thanks for the reply dude :) I guess I should hang on until all the 4MB upgrades are done and see how it pans out... and in the mean time do some research on what NTL in Nottingham is like. I used it in my old house but didn't really pay any attention to the service (I do remember the connection dropping a lot though :p:).
Also I was looking at the Linksys WCG200 (http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1138056788757&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper). Will I be able to use this with NTL?
Cheers,
Suman
DaggaDagga
06-06-2006, 21:08
Absolutely do not sign up for NTL broadband. It was once a good service, now it's utterly hopeless.
FusionXN1
06-06-2006, 21:40
Well my bro In Grimsby had it around a year ago and said it was great and my friend has 10mb there he gets 9.5 - 10.5 all day! (according to speed test 10.5). So I guess it depends on your area.
tomjleeds
06-06-2006, 22:08
If I could be bothered to have the BT line reconnected and having Sky installed, I'd have switched to DSL by now.
lol ok, lots of conflicting reports... so it's either really really good or totally crap :p:
Out of interest, are Telewest better than NTL? And whats the upload speed on NTL 4MB? The out-dated FAQ's on their website make no mention of any of the newer services!
Cheers,
Suman
orangebird
07-06-2006, 12:49
lol ok, lots of conflicting reports... so it's either really really good or totally crap :p:
Out of interest, are Telewest better than NTL? And whats the upload speed on NTL 4MB? The out-dated FAQ's on their website make no mention of any of the newer services!
Cheers,
Suman
?? There's a release from ntl on there website, here (http://www.ntlworld.com/helpsupport/alerts/broadband_upgrade_1june_2006.php)
Well my bro In Grimsby had it around a year ago and said it was great and my friend has 10mb there he gets 9.5 - 10.5 all day! (according to speed test 10.5). So I guess it depends on your area.
I'm in Grimsby and, while I personally don't use ntl, both my neighbour and the guy over the road use it, and they've never had any problems :)
homealone
07-06-2006, 12:55
lol ok, lots of conflicting reports... so it's either really really good or totally crap :p:
Out of interest, are Telewest better than NTL? And whats the upload speed on NTL 4MB? The out-dated FAQ's on their website make no mention of any of the newer services!
Cheers,
Suman
You will get conflicting reports, as the performance varies depending where you are. Parts of Leicester are poor, for example.
You would be best advised to pay more attention to customers from around Nottingham, as that will be the most relevant to you.
Nottingham has one of the biggest proxy server 'farms' in the country - my connection is proxied through Nottingham & I have to say that for the majority of the time they perform completely 'transparently', for me.
Upload on NTL 4meg should be 400kb/s. <edit> as it says in orangebird's link - thanks OB :tu:
No experience of Telewest, though, sorry :)
<edit> NTL will supply the cable modem, so you only need a standard wireless router, such as the Linksys Wrt54G :)
DaggaDagga
07-06-2006, 13:02
At the moment, the broadband seems to stop working nationwide for a day every 2-4 weeks or so. Check some of the other threads on this forum.
If you think this is acceptable then you'll be delighted with it.
It was once incredibly reliable. Now it seems to be falling to bits.
chrisjones
07-06-2006, 13:12
Like a lot of people are coming back with - it really depends on what your area is like. Do some research, try and find people in your area that are currently with NTL. Im in Harrogate (HG1) which apparently has quite a low connection rate via NTL - I have next to no issues with my 2mb connection except the pretty regular DNS attacks we seem to all be having.
Nottingham has one of the biggest proxy server 'farms' in the country - my connection is proxied through Nottingham & I have to say that for the majority of the time they perform completely 'transparently', for me.
I have no idea what that means :blush: please could you explain? Is it a good thing or a bad thing basically :p:
NTL will supply the cable modem, so you only need a standard wireless router, such as the Linksys Wrt54G :)
I would rather have an all-in-one solution like my 3Com ADSL router/modem at the moment... less wiring mess, and plug sockets are a premium commodity for me atm! Is the Linksys I mentioned compatible? Or do you have to use the supplied NTL modem?
At the moment, the broadband seems to stop working nationwide for a day every 2-4 weeks or so.
:Yikes:
Do some research, try and find people in your area that are currently with NTL. Some good old hammering of the forum search button then? :D
Cheers :)
Suman
homealone
07-06-2006, 13:33
I have no idea what that means :blush: please could you explain? Is it a good thing or a bad thing basically :p:
as if they weren't there - a good thing, as when the proxies don't work properly it affects browsing quite badly.
I would rather have an all-in-one solution like my 3Com ADSL router/modem at the moment... less wiring mess, and plug sockets are a premium commodity for me atm! Is the Linksys I mentioned compatible? Or do you have to use the supplied NTL modem?
you have to use the NTL supplied one, I'm afraid ...
FusionXN1
07-06-2006, 13:41
I'm in Grimsby and, while I personally don't use ntl, both my neighbour and the guy over the road use it, and they've never had any problems :)
Yes - Agreed - again Grimsby / Cleethorpes are a good area (one of the top apparently for NTL) and i think they connect to a proxy in nottingham I'm not sure. Anyway maybe post a new thread on the forum asking for people in your area with 4mb and 10mb and find on what service who gets what and where they are in your area :)
I have been with NTL for years and had a few problems but they have always been sorted (touching wood desperately lol) But on the whole I am happy with them :tu:
Do not sign up for any of the NTL services, I have after being with them a long time, am getting everything disconnected as it is to much trouble. BT phone BB get 8Mb 768kb (no download cap) on ukonline (get the netgear modem only). Two things with ntl is if you fit in with their billing system you are o/k but if you don't then thats £10 for late and if you like add £4 if you don't use direct debit. Phoning support because you have a problem (it does not work + disconnecting) now costs you money, so they keep you on the phone for as long as possible i.e time wasting. Changing any services and it could cost you £20 (someone told me this one).
If you are on BB they may bring in new terms reducing what you can download at a moments notice (ofcourse without telling you) and traffic shaping is the next big thing ntl are looking at. If you use newgroups (usenet) then look elsewhere too, online game problems you can get on ntl are choke, loss and bad pings. At the moment the problems I have where choke and DNS so in CS:S I could not connect as the server downloads for maps could not start as the IP could not be resolved.
And last of all, on the phone it takes 5 minutes to get the acount setup and the services arranged for installation but try and disconnect them and you will be on the phone for over 30 minutes waiting then another 5 minutes getting things done and 10+ minutes with the guy time wasting. God I h8 this company.
Toilet-Duck
07-06-2006, 14:36
I switched from nildram MAX because of the usless syncing for over a month and pings in games due to my conjection at the exchange. Changed to NTL a few weeks ago and have been very happy so far top speeds 24/7 and 15 pings in games :). Havent had a disconnect once since it was installed :tu:
To the above two posters, where do you guys live and what broadband packages do you use?
Cheers,
Suman
bmxbandit
07-06-2006, 18:03
I live right next to the Lenton student area in Nottingham, so will the NTL service here be a bit pants with all the students raping their connections with warez 24/7?
ive had absolutely zero problems with the internet speed in 4 years here, and i've lived in different areas of lenton each year :)
although, i have had more than a few customer service issues and the tv service was appalling/didn't work 2 years out of 4... but that's a whole different kettle of fish! :shrug:
Sumanji (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/member.php?u=18699) Belfast here.
ive had absolutely zero problems with the internet speed in 4 years here, and i've lived in different areas of lenton each year :)
Is that the general concensus around Nottingham you reckon? There are a fair few threads on here about outages and bad speeds in/around Nottingham though :( Used to use NTL in my 2nd year and 3rd year in student houses, but didn't really pay attention to speed and stuff back then! Seem to recall frequent freeze ups and needing to reboot the modem though :dozey:
Would really like to upgrade to MaxDSL and be done with it, but with the attenuation and SNR I get I'm lucky to get the 2MB I have atm! NTL 4Mb is looking more and more tasty...
Cheers,
Suman
bmxbandit
07-06-2006, 19:33
hard to say really - from the people i've talked to, i think it's pretty good round the lenton area... but i guess there's a certain amount of pot luck involved.
you have to use the NTL supplied one, I'm afraid ...
Are you sure about that mate... I've read people using Teryon, 3Com, Motorola etc. modems?!
Cheers,
Suman
ntl customer
07-06-2006, 22:15
Are you sure about that mate... I've read people using Teryon, 3Com, Motorola etc. modems?!
Cheers,
Suman
Those are long standing customers who have had their cable modems for years. When the first services came out, you had to purchase your own modem (like you do on DSL). This isn't the case anymore, and has been for some time - I think yuo use to get a discount if you had your own modem, but not any more. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they don't allow you to hook up your own modem to the network full stop, unless you were one of the 'legacy' customers who had to buy their own modems.
I wouldn't touch ntl with a 20ft bargepole. My 'experience' with them was nothing short of ghastly - the billing was inept and you spent ages on hold to speak to a CSR - mind you, back then it was free to call, but the wait times were long - so much so, that on one occasion I could predict what advert for their products was going to come on next - sad I know, but it gives you an indication of how long you had to wait; you could go "ah, here comes the one for ntl's football tv packages'. Again, for the bloody umpteenth time.
The other main killers for me, apart from the long waits to customer service (and shyte on hold music) and inept billing, were the fact that the email went down pretty much every day and I remember at one point, email was taking ages to get delivered and I always got authentication errors on a daily basis, and webmail was just as bad as it relied on the same backend servers which held the mail, and had problems. Result - lots of premature greyed hair and aggro. Plus lots of "have you got my email" questions.
The other was the fact that they had the forced proxy servers, which not only were a pain in the butt as it caused no end of problems with websites. Some wouldn't recognise your proper IP and refuse you access (rapidshare is an example of this - they think you've downloaded too much and ban you from their free service).
It broke streaming media too - causing it to become hit and miss. Some sites wouldn't work at all, whilst others were very intermittent. An example of this was when Radio 1 had the clips of the top 40 singles you could listen to, only about half of them would load. Others would time out with errors. Same with the BBC news site.
And to top it all off - when the proxies broke down (which they often did), you'd have to do the legendary 'proxy dance' - i.e. fiddle with the settings in IE, choose a ntl proxy from a list of many, whack it in and hope it wasn't down for maintainence, or simply bust or overloaded. Ah, bad times, bad times.
As you can probably imagine, I ditched them at the earliest possibilty for proxy free browsing with Pipex, whom I've been with for nearly 2/3 years now (in fact I think our "anniversary" is coming up soon :p: ). I've been happy with their QoS, but their CS leaves quite a bit to be desired. Although, admittedly I have to rarely contact them, if ever. So that's good thing I guess.
With regards,
One of ntl's many exes (yeah, ex customers that is ;) ).
Toilet-Duck
07-06-2006, 23:03
To the above two posters, where do you guys live and what broadband packages do you use?
Cheers,
Suman
North East here on the 10mbit.
The great thing about ntl at the moment is they are offering a 30 day money back guarantee, so if you sign up and later on when its installed and all setup you decide you dont want ntl anymore simply ring them within the 30 days after the installed it and tell them your not happy. And they will come collect the modem charge you nothing and cancel the direct debit :tu:
Or they will say you did not call and/or you are on t a 12 month contract.
Hmm, still in two minds about this... totally conflicting reports! Would I be ok to start a new thread specifically about Nottingham or would I get told off for thread spamming?
Cheers,
Suman
VERY happy with my 10mb broadband. Perfect speeds, very very low pings in games and hardly any disconnections. Just the DNS problem over the last week like most people were having and 1 billing error are my negative points on them.
VERY happy with my 10mb broadband. Perfect speeds, very very low pings in games and hardly any disconnections. Just the DNS problem over the last week like most people were having and 1 billing error are my negative points on them.
Word for word for me too, and I'm in the Suffolk area, I can't compain at all, apart from the customer service but the techno's that install the stuff so far have been excellent.
mikeybrass
11-06-2006, 21:09
My service has been reasonable in Cambridge ever since I joined at the end of Sept 2005. We were moving into our own place. While BT insisted that we would have to wait four weeks after moving in before they could activate the line, NTL had it done the next day. I am also finding the service faster than ADSL.
Although I know others in Cambridge who have been disappointed, I am quite happy and recommend NTL.
It is easy to get a long adapter and to plug both the NTL modem and wireless into that adapter.
Same as quoted earlier on...
Mostly the broadband has worked fine up until recently, although I will point out that I very rarely see any indication of 2mb speeds despite being on this ever since they last upgraded us to this speed. Otherwise until recently it's been decent.
Since March and most certainly over the last 3 weeks or so the service however has been p**s-poor. The speed is shocking, some websites won't even open or half open without images. This is apparently due to attacks but good old NTL have no clue about stopping them or dealing with them considering they get fixed and a couple of days later (if that) it's happening again suddenly.
---------- Post added at 21:17 ---------- Previous post was at 21:16 ----------
Also I'll point out that aside from the long waiting times to speak to someone they now are charging to ring up technical support or customer service and should you need to talk with anyone about broadband faults they'll almost always talk to you as if you've never seen a computer before, nevermind know anything about them.
Also I'll point out that aside from the long waiting times to speak to someone they now are charging to ring up technical support or customer service and should you need to talk with anyone about broadband faults they'll almost always talk to you as if you've never seen a computer before, nevermind know anything about them.
And if they don't know the answer they lie to you.
The main thing is that I would recommend NTL over all, can anyone name an ISP etc that's without faults? The trouble if you ask that question here is that this is an NTL board (NT'Hell' for name sake), so this board will get a majority of people with negative responses.
I've also heard a lot of bad things about Sky and BT Broadband, all depends on how picky you are and what you would define a problem, 3 days bad DNS doesn't mean 3 years of hassle free should be tarnished.
Sure every ISP has it's problems. Hell every company has it's problems. But I'm not exaggerating when I say I've never seen anyone as incompetent as NTL despite the size of the company. And I also know that they lie about issues, I know this from the inside.
My service has been reasonable in Cambridge ever since I joined at the end of Sept 2005. We were moving into our own place. While BT insisted that we would have to wait four weeks after moving in before they could activate the line, NTL had it done the next day. I am also finding the service faster than ADSL.
Although I know others in Cambridge who have been disappointed, I am quite happy and recommend NTL.
It is easy to get a long adapter and to plug both the NTL modem and wireless into that adapter.
I'm in the cambridge area too. Just outside in a village.
Sure every ISP has it's problems. Hell every company has it's problems. But I'm not exaggerating when I say I've never seen anyone as incompetent as NTL despite the size of the company. And I also know that they lie about issues, I know this from the inside.
iSoft
;)
As an NTL cable modem customer in the LU7 region practically since day one of it being available here I've got to admit they've ben pretty good.
Apart from the ocassional DNS and cache/proxy issues i've not had more than a few minutes of downtime in the past couple of years.
However my first 18 months were pretty hit and miss, I think due to a combination of a poor install (we've got 3 STB's and a SACM - the installers used a single line for them*) and the original 3com CMX modem (which eventually burned out), however since 3com exchanged it for a Tailfin** we've barely had a hiccup.
From what i've seen the difference in competence and CS between now and 3-5 years ago is amazing, at least in our area, yes there are still hiccups and the odd problem but they've improved massively.
Call waiting times are down (gone are the days I would spend 45 minutes in a queue to talk to tech support), the techs seem to know a bit more, the engineers seem to have improved and the price has stayed the same, but the speed has gone up massively :)
Both my brother-in-law, his sister and his brother also have NTL cable in my area and they've not any more problems than I in the past couple of years:)
*And we only recently found out that at somepoint an engineer had left a forward path attenuator in back to front (which explained why our STB's would lose interactive and burn out after a while).
**As the original modem was bought by us, we were told in 2002 when it died that NTL would charge us for the callout (user owned equipment at fault), so 3com swapped it and I just rang to get it registered (something I don't think you can do now).
simple answer NO
Read the horror stories that are on this board and look at the dates. You will notice there are more and more horror stories in this last 6 months then ever before. There network is stretched to the limit and will only get worse as they cram even more customers on to it.
etccarmageddon
12-06-2006, 07:40
and their technical support help line is CHARGED for and the staff on it are handling calls in a scandalous manner if you read some of the stories here.
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