[tkiely]

Hi Mike, welcome to the site.

I am an ex ntl user, still hanging around the forum because it's a great place full of good people.

I had ntl for 6 years. In the beginning the broadband was wonderful, I went for 2 years without a hiccough. Unfortunately things just went downhill over the last 4 years. VERY variable ping times, repeated periods of dissconection, appaling mail services and 40 minute waits to speak to a CS who ( no offense guys and gals) was often unable to fix the problem. Billing probs added to the fun, it took them just under a year and seven goes to make a DD work. Once it was working they seemed to think they could use it to plunder my bank account however they liked!!!!! ----calm,---calm-----

sorry, i often start to rant when recalling those golden days.

Anyway,I ended up on the 1meg service which seemed pretty good until I tried my friends ADSL512. Of course the max download speed is around 500k but the web browsing was fantastic. The lack of proxies lets it fly. Also as mentioned before, the upload is 256 so thats a bonus.

I finally chopped ntl and got freedom2surf adsl and haven't had a single gripe so far.PINGs are rock steady, way down at 20ms for major servers, my PC is only 2 hops from Linx rather than the 15-20 while on ntl, which has to help. All this for £22.50 per mth as well!

Don't get me wrong, there can be a good side to ntl services, as James said, when it works its great. CHeck out the pricing of other options if you are after value.

Whichever way you go, good luck, and stick around here.

Terry