poss. change from Orange(Wanadoo) to Tiscali

Hi I've had the Wanadoo(now Orange) wireless and talk thing for over a year now but the talk thing is rubbish because it's VoIP and it has delays and is compressed sounding. This is cost me twenty something pounds per month depending on how many calls I make on it (which isn't many). Also my mainline provider is BT.

Anyway, I was considering chaning to Tiscali for £19.99 a month deal which is broadband AND ALL local and national calls are free, but I still have to pay BT line rental. Instead of using their modem, I'd just buy a wireless router and use that instead (the Wanadoo one only has 1 wired network connection and I may well want more soon (printer and remote hard drive storage for example).

This should save me money and be more flexible.

Anyone had any experience with the Tiscali broadband and phone package? Do you have to dial a number first or do they give you a dialler device? Or is it crappy VoIP too?

Thanks for any advice.

new day, new bump.

1) Good to see you back mate, hope you had a good time

2) I've always found Tiscali better than "Needadoo Better"-"Wanadoo nothing"- and before the merger I also had problems with Orange, though not on the broadband front...

1) yeah it was cool thanks. Also being back is nice too. Haven't got much work done yet, just tons of admin...sigh.
2) Yeah I'm hearing good stuff about Tiscali + price is good so may well go for it...

I'm with Tiscali, not really had any problems. Very occasionally can't connect to the internet for a couple of hours but I kind of expect that from any ISP.

I've never had a problem connecting with Wanadoo/Orange, personally. I also suspect all ISPs' 'free' telephone packages are going to be VoIP, too.

Yeah Wanadoo has never had any connection probs except for once when the Livebox was updating. Yeah I wanted to hear from the horses mouth if the Tiscali free phone was VoIP or predialler or what really...

Off topic slightly but have any of you guys with Livebox had the 8meg upgrade in your area? I have and I`m still getting only 2meg speeds despite my best efforts to complain to Orange about it.

Jason.

Funny you should ask that as I only have the 2Mb speed and have been hankering after the 8Mb speed but it's not in my area. However, the office I used to work in, less than 1 mile away, has BT broadband and ahve just been upgraded to 8MB! So I'm gonna check again.

just tried the test on my orange/wanadoo account and it said I can't go any faster! Maybe I'm too far from an exchange or some crap, but less than 1m from the town centre!! grr.

Go here:

http://www.bt.com/btcom_redirectLink.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0189574259.1156956916@@@@...

and enter your post code in "see how fast you can go". Mine says I can get up 6Mb so why won't Orange give me this!

8meg?!?! I'm still on a poxy 1meg connection. :(

ouchoola do you live in a cave or something? Ah I got it, wooky hole or cheddar gorge.

Try http://www.bethere.co.uk.

They offer DLS2+ technology if you are in the area they cover. That's who I'm currently with.

> Mine says I can get up 6Mb so why won't Orange give me this!

Because you're probably multi-threaded with a load of other users to save bandwidth space when certain users aren't using any of it.

I'm sure you know that 1MB is 1Megabit and not Megabyte?
Divide by 8 and then you get your true speed (top line for 1MB is 128k a second download, and you've probably got around 12k of that for upload speed)

Not a cave, just out in the sticks a bit, so, same thing really. Hmm, Wooky Hole - isn't that a Star Wars porno?

i have tiscali.

they're good enough, probably better than orange. i have a 2mb connection, i doesn't use VoIP (i think) good additional features and the connection isn't 100% but still ok.

and i live in a cave. :)

Amon: woser, that's some speed!
ENAY: Yeah I know. I knew it in the old modem days when 14.4kb was kilobits, and in fact each byte had a start and stop bit so you divided it by 10, not 8 to get the k per second, hense why 56kb only did around 5k per sec not 7.

lol at star wars porno!

Markcw: so do you have their phone service then? How does it work?

yes, i've no idea how it works, but we can use the phone and internet at the same time via an adapter/dual-socket thingy. the phone quality is fine.

ok cool, and you've specifically signed up for broadband AND phone deal right, you are not just using tiscali for broadband and standard BT for phone calls? The dual socket thing is the microfilter and ALL broadband lets you use the phone at the same time as the Internet, I'm just trying to work out if you are using Tiscali as a phone call provider too...do you follow me?

yes, we only pay line rental to bt. we have the phone plus 2mb internet broadband deal.

aha, cool thanks for clarifying, so maybe their box auto dials a code before the main number...

Do it, I've been with Tiscali since they launched dialup and it's been a pleasure. The packages are really good and they continue to improve the service, upgrade my line and reduce my fees. Best of all it's unmetered broadband.

yeah I'm pretty tempted and then I can get rid of the livebox and get my own wireless/wired router.

I remember LibertySurf before they morphed into Tiscali. Now, they really were one crapola ISP. :/