OT: Just signed up for Bulldog 4meg unlimited and Phone.

i get upgraded to 2.2mb soon with pipex with no increase in costs, there ditching 512k and just having 1mb and 2mb

I thought I would try the 4meg DSL (unbundled from BT by Bulldog).

=A339 a month gets you an ADSL line with a max speed of 4meg (although=20 I've since found out it rarely reaches that) + a phone line with all=20 calls (local, national and local and national rate non geographical) and=20 for another =A35 a month you get a static IP.

Sounds a little pricey compared to some, but all landline calls=20 included, and VAT is inclusive. the phone service is actually provided=20 by Clueless and Witless (they own Bulldog) but over the BT cabling by=20 bulk buying minutes, and I'm paying =A323 a month to Timewarp just for the= =20 ADSL (512k) and =A313 on a budget plan to BT for the phone (and just about= =20 make enough calls to make that sensible) so for a maximum increase of=20 bandwidth of 8x the speed, and all my phone calls included, it isn't a=20 bad bundle, just a few =A3 a month + the static IP cost. I can swallow=20 that for the speed increase.

--=20 Carl Robson "Sorry Sir the meatballs are orf" (The poster formerly known as Skodapilot)

I quit bulldog because they were s**te. Got worse since they were bought out by C&W. But I'm on the Lymm exchange that could only manage

0.5 meg at max especially as I'm out in the sticks near High Legh garden centre so Warrington might fare better. Having said that, all the homeworkers in the company I work for are given a Bulldog line and there are no end of complaints and downtime. When they have to send us important stuff it's no good and they sometimes have to resort to dialup to upload their work.

Bulldog did allow me to break the 12 month contract though, plus they refunded me for the 6 weeks of crap service, which I didn't notice until I went to my online CC account to pay the bill and found they'd paid most of my CC bill off for me :)

Hope it goes better for you anyway because on the surface it sounds like a really good deal.

I heard al the horror stories after I signed up.

I'm lucky in that they have changed to a one month contract now.

Yep, the deal sounds good, just hope the service is, or I'm coming back to BT and picking a new ISP again.

I've heard the adverts and I must say I'm very tempted - £39 for the 1st year of 4MB broadband ain't bad at all.

What sort of problems are they talking about? Could this be the whole plusnet saga all over again?

Appears to be delays in getting connected, delays in phone getting=20 activated, speeds as low as a 512 connection, or rarely better than a=20

3.5meg.

I'm willing to give it a go through because it is only a month contract=20 tie in, not the old fashioned 1 year contract.

--=20 "Sorry Sir, the meatballs are Orf" The poster formerly known as Skodapilot.

I'd advise checking both "isp unhappiness" and the bulldog forum on

Mason

Too late now, I'm signed. Just waiting for migration/activation. As it is on a months contract, I can easily get out.

Furry Muff :o) you'll be looking at 4&8 Mb from BT ADSL providers soon. Keep your eyes open ;o)

Mason

Oh I shall, but I've heard rumours that ADSL2 might have theoretical faster speeds, but distance from the exchange get full speed is stupidly short, and tails off to less than the current 512k base speeds really quickly at much shorter than current ADSL distance limits.

Sooner than that...

as of next month IPstream DSLmax will be avaiable, making 4 and 8 MB speeds available this quarter (initaill just london and glasgow IIRC but rolled out this year to the rest of the uk. Should see increased upload speeds too.

The benefits of this platform are that speed upgrades should be free, your line will automatically sync up at the fastest speed it can support, leaving you to simply select the speed you want ;o)

Thats how we are working it anyways.

Mason

Yeah, I've seen the plusnet postings in uk.T.broadband