Is NTL Broadband offer too good to be true?

Sorry for starting a new thread but Eircom is not an issue anymore.

Phoned NTL yesterday and told they are currently offering free installation, free modem and free to use for three months followed by a nine-month contract for €25 per month. Plus free technical support and I'd have it by the end of next week. A lot of users here seem very happy with NTL but if it sounds too good to be true, maybe it is?

Told them I was just at the end of a free Eircom trial and that didn't seem to matter.

Thanks to Dearg Doom for saying my PC should be OK with P4 and to all the other IT experts here too numerous to mention. There isn't enough time to bone up on Wireless but since I haven't a laptop that's for another day. From what I've read here, NTL doesn't support wireless - officially!

Main Q is - would it be better to go for the basic package at €25 or push the boat out and go for the €35/month with double the speed but still a saving on Eircom? The person I spoke to seemed to be pushing the cheaper pack which makes me wonder a bit. Is it true that the more subscribers the slower it will get?

Has anyone here recently moved to NTL and if so would they recommend them? Asking this 'cos someone wrote about returning to Eircom. I'd stay with Eircom only they're too expensive. Thanks in advance.

8)

If NTL is in your area then you should probably go for them. Don't forget to sign up for the 1.5MB service and then ring them up in three months time to shift you back down to 750k or 350k. I made the switch (after IOL BB contract was up) last November and thing have been good since. A couple of us are having crappy web browsing experiences which are probably due to contention but straightforward downloading results in good performance.

Don't know what the customer service is like as I haven't needed to engage with them yet. But they can't be any worse than IOL. 2 months on and they still haven't cancelled my broadband service. Soon shifting strategy from weekly nag calls to daily.

No direct experience with ntl: myself but the offer is not too good to be true as far as I know. Unfortunately it's still not on offer in my area yet otherwise I would have gone for it and ditched the landline altogether. Note that the €25 p.m. package is 300Kbps download/64Kbps upload compared to the 512Kbps/128Kbps on offer under most ADSL packages for €29.99 (UTV Clicksilver) upwards. However even this should be more than enough for most users (other than gamers, P2P filesharers, very heavy multimedia users etc.).

I'm using and find it a very good service, albeit I have no expereince with other providers to compare. Been installed since last August and had one outage for over a day where the whole NTL network went down in our area (D15) as a result of a storm. No TV and no AAM, I nearly resorted to reading a book !!

Other than the outage very happy with service

ntl

Have the NTL 1.5 mbit byte whatever! service, it rocks for Eur50 a month. Average download speed is 180kb a second - whats that ? 50 or 60 times better than dialup!

In one year I've had about 2 hours total of downtime.

All set to take advice from here (thanks all) and go for ntl but just learned via an email sent yesterday they are not in my area and don't know when they will be. Yet told on the phone also yesterday by nice Ava I could have it by end of next week! Are they coming or going.... So now it's back to the drawing board or dial-up or books.

Discovered too that the UTV promotion isn't an option either - read the small print by accident.

8. This Offer is only available to you if your phone line is not currently, and has never been, enabled with a broadband service (ADSL/DSL).

Click to expand...

and

7. During the Three Month Trial Period you agree to use UTV Internet as your voice telephony provider and agree that your voice calls will be billed directly by UTV Internet.

Click to expand...

Could they be in cahoots? Of course at €29.99/month it's still cheaper than Eircom but the contention ratio is 48:1 (I'm learning ClubMan) and that doesn't sound great. I honestly don't know what to do now. Seems it's too much to expect b'band at a reasonable price and without all these tie-in contracts. You are all very generous sharing your knowledge and experience and it is much appreciated.
8)

8. This Offer is only available to you if your phone line is not currently, and has never been, enabled with a broadband service (ADSL/DSL).

Chance your arm and try it anyway - seemingly there's some order in which you can do all the free trials with each ADSL provider and I think that it starts with eircom. Plead ignorance and see what happens.

Could they be in cahoots?

How do you mean? In any case the UTV Talk package isn't bad (all off-peak local, national, UK are free) in case that's what you're worried about.

but the contention ratio is 48:1 (I'm learning ClubMan) and that doesn't sound great.

I'm on thje UTV trial and find it grand. I've used in a colleague's house as well and it was fine there too.

ntl

Hi sherib,
If you do get to go with ntl, take the higher package at 50e a month for the first 3 months while its free, then downgrade by way of a simple phone call to their free tech support. Thats what I did anyway. Am on the 25e tariff since xmas when my billing started and havent noticed much difference if any.

Re: ntl

I am taking the NTL package (free for 3 months etc) but never though of taking the highest one and then changing it to the low one.
Good idea.

Can they just do that over the phone or do they need to come out and change something?

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They can do it over the phone. You'll get customer service on the line who'll try to put you through to tech support who need to change the settings, just have your account number handy.
If they can take the call there and then, they will, if not they'll ring you back which has happened to me twice. Once after 15 mins, the other time after 3 days.

Oh yeah, write the date down somewhere so you dont forget to downgrade once the 3 months are up!!!
( i swear it didnt happen to me, doh!)