My ISP (UKonline) is disappearing in January - any thoughts on who I should (or should not) go with as a replacement?

I am not in a fibred area.

The obvious alternative is Sky - who own UKonline and offer an easy and cheap transfer - but their routers don't have enough wired ethernet connections for my network (how easy is it to connect another router into a home network?).

Talk talk are cheap but their service seems to upset a lot.

Zen and Titan seem to have lots of satisfied customers - I should think so at their prices.

Is Newbury.net still offering connections Brian?

BT, Orange .... too many choices!

BT home hub

I am with a company called Freeola, who are very good - their support team are great, they answer the phone almost immediately ....... and they are based in this country  

Quoted from blackdog

Is Newbury.net still offering connections Brian?

Yes we are but our standard charges are not particularly competitive. I am sure that we could set you up with something that you would find attractive.


Don't forget that with BT, unless you opt out of BT Fon and BT Openzone, then you could be sharing your bandwidth with up to six other people nearby.

BT don't tell you about this, but when you do find out you can have this facility removed. Basically, every BT Home hub is providing in excess of 2 million hot spots throughout the UK.

Quoted from BrianB

BT don't tell you about this, but when you do find out you can have this facility removed. Basically, every BT Home hub is providing in excess of 2 million hot spots throughout the UK.

Of course BT Openzone is the unique selling point of BT - free wifi in places others cannot reach. Wherever I go there seems to be a BTOpenzone connection available -   I hadn't really considered how they did it.

Apparently they are also bringing fibre connection to Newbury in December ...

Quoted from blackdog

how easy is it to connect another router into a home network?

Pretty simple in theory. If you buy something like an HP Procurve switch (assuming it's more wired ethernet ports that you want), then it should be pretty simple. Connect the switch to your ISP supplied router, Homehub or otherwise, and then use the remaining ports on the switch for whatever network devices you want to connect. The HP Procurve switches are auto sensing, so there is no setup required, as are most current switches. The only issue I could possibly see is if your ISP uses really cheap, crapola routers that wont accept having a switch attached. But most stuff is built to a standard and should just work. Give me a wired connection instead of WiFi any day!  

Quoted from BrianB

Don't forget that with BT, unless you opt out of BT Fon and BT Openzone, then you could be sharing your bandwidth with up to six other people nearby.

It can be annoying. But in some instances it could be worth it for the option of using free WiFi when you are away. If you have a quick connection (I have approx 15MB, being close to the exchange), then someone pinching up to 512K isn't going to impact anything I'm doing online. Also, BT say that the customer's home connection takes priority over the Fon/Openzone connection if both are trying to use it at the same time. So customers shouldn't notice any degredation in connection quality. Having said that, I opted out, because I just dont like the idea of sharing my connection.

I'm also getting dumped by UKOnline. When they sold themselves so Sky it was only a matter of time till they were killed

Personally. I am moving to Be Online. https://www.bethere.co.uk
The service is as close to UK Onlines was as your going to get now. (I've had a meat space encounter with them in London recently and like the attitudes of their staff)
Their free supplied router is not so great tbh. So just dump that and install your own or keep your existing one.

There is no reason why you should change your router when you change your ISP. If your using the Netgear model advertised and supplied by UK Online it will be superior to any of the free devices offered by other ISPs. Just login and enter your new login details in its web setup page and it will continue to function as normal.

I'd advise staying away from Homehubs. They are the most insecure routers on the market. There is not one in existence I could not crack open in under 10mins

Don't use Wireless?  Homehubs, well the old ones anyway were poor.  You cant backup any custom configurations up.  Configure WPA and on a re-boot it goes back to WEP.  

The new ones are not much better.
Their WPA implementation is vulnerable to a rainbow table attack which makes it as fast to crack as WEP.
Secondary to that is it is possible to extrapolate their default admin passwords as a function of the default WPA passphrase.

Anyway wifi signals are really bad for your health. They disrupt sleep patterns. Will increase the rate that corneal opacity develops. And of course the cancer risk. They output more power than a cell phone on a similar slice of bandwidth.
em smog is bad, mmmm'kay?

Interesting - thanks.

I am tempted by BT - mainly because of the free BTOpenzone access and the possibility of fibre in the new year. In reality I suspect that the fibre will not reach me for a long while yet and will, in any case, cost a bomb.

If I go with them do I have to use a Homehub?  Can't I use by existing router? If the Homehub has a weakness through a default key, can I not change it?  

Be Broadband looks pretty good though - and cheaper than BT, which always helps.  If it weren't for the free BTOpenzone access away from home ...

Has anyone using BT had much experience of connecting via BTOpenzone?  Could it replace my dongle and its associated cost.

I've used Plus Net ever since they were Force 9 for the last 12 years or so. They've always been good and have started advertising on the TV recently.

Which? rate ISPs (based on customer satisfaction, best first):
Zen, O2, Be, Utility Warehouse, Plusnet, Eclipse, GreeenBee, Post Office, Sky, Freedom2Surf, Virgin, Demon, BT, Madasafish, Tesco, Talk Talk, Supanet, Karoo, Orange, AOL.

Plusnet (thanks User) are quite highly rated, but I wonder if lots of extra users gained through aggressive marketing via TV ads will cause their ratings to fall?  It seems evident that small is more likely to be beautiful when it comes to customer satisfaction.  The choice is (I think) between Be (thanks MP) and BT (for the roaming wifi).

Waiting for a MAC code from UKOnline/Sky - UKOline's technical support has been great on the rare occasion I needed it but they have handed over the MAC code issue to Sky - who can't find it!  They have promised to email it within 72 hours.

The problem is, you will always get anecdotal evidence to contradict someone's point of view.

Quoted from Greenham Common

The problem is, you will always get anecdotal evidence to contradict someone's point of view.

There is also the problem that dissatisfied customers are far more vocal and much more likely to respond to sureveys, post reviews etc.

The Which? rating for BT is 48% - given the number of customers they have this is probably not bad.  Be are at 76%.