h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm seeking advice to add to 'pc help for digibox users' - A2297667 I'd be interested in anyone's personal experience with free ISPs.

Their reliability of connection, cost of calls, technical help/advice etc.

Cheers

Emmily

It is important that "free" ISPs are not free. They are only free in that you do not have to pay a monthly fee, but you do have to pay for the phone calls while online. PAYG (Pay-as-you-go) describes them better.

So if your calls cost say 1p a minute and you are online for one hour a day, that is £18 pound a month, so you may as well have a monthly fee ISP.

I have used 3 of the well known ISPs Freeserve, BT internet and Tiscali and didn't find much difference in reliablility really. The helplines cost 50p a minute so I never used them.

I don't use Telewest so I don't know if this applies to Telewest, but all the deals and offers on BTs phone bills (e.g. the 6p per hour at weekends) do not apply to the 0845 numbers which Pay-as-you-go ISPs use.

When I first started on the net, I used BT click (Don't even know if it exists anymore), I found it very reliable (more relible than when I was paying* a monthly fee for Freeserve), and it gave a good connection speed (considering it was dialup), It didn't work out too expensive.. but that was in the days before* I found H2G2

I have used Quista in the past and it was pretty good. Don't know exact prices but I didn't ever have huge bills and used the internet for about an hour a day.

so basically a so called free ISP may actually workout more expensive than one with a set monthly payment with anytime connection..

Emmily

Hi Emmily,

Digibox users are Telewest users. They can _only_ use Telewest ISP. Telewest block calls to othe IPS dial-up numbers.

So asking about free ISPs for them, nice idea, but sorry they can't use them, no to BT Yahoo, Freeserve, Virgin, Tiscal etc. etc.

Also the pay-as-you go dial up service is 2p per minuite until April 1st (kid you not) when it will go up to 2.5pence per minute.

http://www.telewest.co.uk/pricechanges

Also the subsribe 'unlimited' will got to £14/month.

Beyond the digibox, tried using free ISP's in the past, all rubbish.

Remember, free now means free content, provided by the ISP ie POP mail and Web hosting, possibly channels lie news, sprt etc. Not having to pay for that ontop of phone calls.

So its £10 for a Telewest phoneline (£3 or £5 extra depending when you joined) plus £14 for a dial-up service, subject to you having another Telewest service - which *has* to be a phone line.

Do you mean that Telewest do not allow the other monthly fee "unlimited" access ISPs?

I don't see how they can block 0845 numbers as those are used for Gas/Electric/Banks voice phone lines so you wouldn't be able to do much by phone if 0845 numbers were blocked.

You can get AOL unlimited access through Telewest telephone line. It is not blocked.

Hi,
The site that I know is 100% free is:-
http://www.waitrose.com/free_isp/index.asp
There is no set-up fee, no monthly charge and a free 24 hour helpline.
When I get my new eMac, 27/03/04, then I shall ditch my Virginm account and sign up with them. Also any profit generated from using that ISP, goes to the British Red Cross, British Heart Foundation, MacMillan Cancer Relief, or Prince's Trust. You nominate your preferred chrity on sign-up. Hope that helps. It is also availble to Mac and PC users.

I'm a telewest customer. Brought an uncles PC here to set-up BT Internet for him, and some other stuff. He is a BT customer. It would not work, so tried Freeserve, that also would not work...

Used the Telewest Dial-up CD (same disc for PAYG and 'unlimited') it worked, dowloaded the new VIA drivers, BIOS, Windows updates etc. etc.

Phoned Blueyonder support, they said "yes it won't work other ISP with a Telewest line, they are blocked."

From a previous conversation with Telewest customers services...

The service they can provide telephone users in not at a level accross the UK. As Telewest bought up other cable companies, they had been left with legacy hardware, and software systems.

SO AOL works? What's the dial-up number it uses, I'd like to give it a try. Plus it may be woth phoning Telewest to see what they will allow now.

Friday just gone, a TV ad for AOL showed them as compatrable with BT, Telewest and ntl....

Just been to Freeserve...

http://www.freeserve.com/time/nuexcel/excela.htm

1p /min Pay-as-you-go, and BT line not a requirement.

Maybe the Telewest CS did not understand the differecs between pay-as-you-go and pre-pay dial-up?

Best thing may be to pop down the local library, visit the site of the service you want, ie Freeserv and do the line-compatable test these sites offer.

I have got an aol cd which was put the through the post (freebie) and would like to know more about it before signing up. The one sponsored by the supermarket sounds a good offer.

kat

Hi kat

I used the t-west dial up and it was ok, very few problems, My friend used untill the other day and he had no probe with it either. I think it is as good as any other.
They are crap at supplying TV service but they don't seem to bad at the internet

My friend tryed AOL at first, but he had a lot of problems with it, and it seem to mess his system up a bit so he came of it.

manda