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martingold
23rd-May-2009, 10:48 AM
Just wondering if anyone has had any dealings with this company's broadband service

A friend of mine has just signed up locally and he is getting awesome download speeds on ADSL +2 for in my opinion a small amount of money
When they checked his line they rated it at 13 meg he is getting an actual speed of 10 meaning he is able to stream full hd movies etc over a normal telephone line
My current isp (plusnet) are providing an up to 8 meg line which invariably gives me about 1 to 1 1/2 megs O2 have said my line could support 18 meg
so i am in the process of changing over to them now as if i get regular 10 megs robust connection i would be a happy bunny

Personally i am intrested if anyone is using this service so i can make up my mind before commiting to a 12 month cotract albeit at under half the price of my current connection

Miguel
23rd-May-2009, 11:37 AM
To do a realistic test of download/upload speeds visit here: http://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband-speed-test/ and type in your postcode.

As I have a mobile contract with o2 I got 8mb for the first year free or had the choice of 16mb at £2.50 a month, both with unlimited downloads. You have to ring up and ask as you won't find these offers online. o2 has been excellent.

More broadband info: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-broadband

Dreadful Scathe
23rd-May-2009, 12:04 PM
Just wondering if anyone has had any dealings with this company's broadband service

Not personally, but its currently #1 in most peoples opinions I understand. I've used only 2 ISPs in the last 15 years - Demon and Telewest(now VirginMedia)

Brian Doolan
23rd-May-2009, 07:25 PM
Just wondering if anyone has had any dealings with this company's broadband service

........... he is getting an actual speed of 10 meaning he is able to stream full hd movies etc over a normal telephone line


If he does that too much he'll suffer from traffic shaping, like all ISPs, O2 will throttle his connection if his downloading is considered too heavy.

After downloading a heap of Ordnance Survey 25k maps, BT throttled me for about 2 weeks.

martingold
24th-May-2009, 01:15 AM
If he does that too much he'll suffer from traffic shaping, like all ISPs, O2 will throttle his connection if his downloading is considered too heavy.

After downloading a heap of Ordnance Survey 25k maps, BT throttled me for about 2 weeks.
i asked o2 whether they had a fair use policy they told me they didnt
they dont throttle and they dont put any limits on they unlimited service, so they say

pmjd
24th-May-2009, 12:42 PM
I had them for about 6 months, before I had to cancel as I was moving to somewhere which already had broadband. In general they were very good, hardly had any problems. The supplied wireless box was very stable, only needed to be restarted a few times. Only gripe would be the router using WEP encryption, the more secure WPA2 was not available.

Only real problems were during cancelling, due to one idiot doing the wrong thing, but apart from that it was a good experience.

Miguel
24th-May-2009, 04:07 PM
i asked o2 whether they had a fair use policy they told me they didnt
they dont throttle and they dont put any limits on they unlimited service, so they say

O2 Home Broadband Fair and acceptable usage policy & conditions
4 What about excessive network usage?
There is no limit on the monthly network usage. However if we feel that your activities are so excessive that other customers are detrimentally affected, we may give you a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, if the levels of activity do not immediately decrease after the warning, we may terminate or suspend your Services.
http://www.o2.co.uk/termsandconditions/broadband#

martingold
5th-June-2009, 09:11 AM
Well i decided to go ahead and order O2 broadbands premium package
this is costing me as an O2 customer £9.79 a month first three months free
12 month contract with a 30 day trial
So far they have done everything they said they would I have had this for two days now
The set up was extremely easy using their modem / router and the cd that came with it (now its up and running i will be trying my own router a belkin n1 vision this weekend)
testing the connection i get approx 8 to 9 meg download and 1 to 1.2 meg up (over the wireless connection) which is far better than the 1.2 meg down that i was getting with plusnet (paying £23 a month for their business package as a home user) the router reports a 16 meg connection so i need to spend some time and sort out my wireless network

Also i cant fault customer service the person i called (a free 0800 number) was very easy to understand (unlike a lot of call centers these days) and had good technical knowledge of the product and although in the paperwork that comes with the router they say they wont support you if you use your own router i was told by the service assistant that they now have a team that will if need be)
Like i say so far i am very pleased i have changed to them

Robin
6th-June-2009, 02:26 AM
As it happens, O2 broadband is run by BEunlimited - who were bought out by Telefonica - who also own o2. Working in the IT industry and in central london where broadband is heavily contended, I've found BEunlimited to be great - they generally don't contend either which means you get you full quota any time of day - have had clients in central london going from average downloads of 200k to 1mb simply due to being contended out of existence by BT !

If you have an O2 phone contract you get a discount on their broadband too - if you didn't know. Personally I prefer BE as they are a little more "technical" but have a client who decided on 02 for home as they have a mobile with them and I think they are paying about £8 per month for 8mb - bargain !

martingold
6th-June-2009, 11:20 AM
If you have an O2 phone contract you get a discount on their broadband too - if you didn't know. Personally I prefer BE as they are a little more "technical" but have a client who decided on 02 for home as they have a mobile with them and I think they are paying about £8 per month for 8mb - bargain !
this is true the O2 phone owners discounted rates are very good i am (or will be when the three month free runs out) paying £9.79 for the up to 20 meg version of the broadband and £9.79 for my wifes phon contract which includes 150 mins x network anytime and 300 txts
she will never use this amount of mins or txts
my last boadband provider was charging me £23 for up to 8 meg (on a business account) so i am now saving over £4 and efectively getting the phone for free

i didnt know that BE were part of the same company as we cant get it round here as i would also have gone with them had i had the choice

having said all that all in all i am pleased with O2 so far