On Sun, 13 Oct 2013 23:58:21 +0100
Graham Todd <disabled.pensioner@xxxxxxxxxx> allegedly wrote:
> Even if this part of Kent, there are only three types of provision:
> cable (Virgin), telephone company (varies but relies on a BT line in
> the house) and satellite (mainly Sky and Freesat) We have Virgin
> because a) our landlord prohibits us from putting a satellite dish on
> his house b) Virgin Media have lines buried outside the front door and
> provide a more regular service than any other provider and c) The wife
> and I rue the day we ever attempted to go with BT.
Graham
I agree that BT's domestic IP service is appalling. (If you are at all
interested you can read my experience with them back at the end of 2006
at http://baldric.net/problems-with-bt-total-broadband/ )
But just because BT owns the infrastructure does not mean that you must
use their IP service. "Unbundled" service providers aside, the
majority of UK ISPs deliver their domestic service over BT lines (and
almost all of them bar the largest will use BT's backbone ATM service).
You can take a service from any one of hundreds of smaller independent
ISPs. Whilst this means, of course, that BT has intrusive capability at
several points in the network, by taking an IP service from a good
independent that does not apply "family filters", or block or shape
certain services (e.g. torrents) you may have a much better experience.
Certainly I think it more likely that the independents are going to
remain Tor friendly longer than BT or the other large providers.
Personally I use vispa.net - purely by accident since they bought out
service from an earlier small supplier I moved to when I left BT. They
are one of a diminishing band of providers who give domestic customers a
fixed IPV4 address (essential to my way of working). But if I were to
move, I would go to andrews and arnold (aaisp.net -see for example
http://aa.net.uk/kb.html ). The owner of that ISP writes a wonderfully
irreverent blog at http://revk.www.me.uk/. For one of the reasons his
company is popular, see
http://revk.www.me.uk/2013/07/active-choice.html and
http://revk.www.me.uk/2013/08/what-could-determined-small-isp-do.html
> My carer tells me she got disconnected from the internet because of
> the high charges she experienced, and others around me have confirmed
> the same with their mobile charges ('mobile' is British for 'cell
> phone'), so we won't be trying that route anytime soon.
That is outrageous. But I agree that mobile IP services are way too
expensive (and unreliable and they suffer from the problem of NAT
to the device). Unfortunately too many people are ditching their
landlines thinking that they no longer need them these days.
>
> What we two pensioners could do with is some advice about which
> "independents" offer us an alternative service (if you have this
> information) and any provider with support for Linux or Free Software
> would be a boon.
See above. I'd be inclind to give AAISP a call. They are smart people
and obviously Tor firendly.
Good luck
Mick
(And if you want any further advice or simply want to discuss options,
I'd be happy to hear from you direct.
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Mick Morgan
gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312
http://baldric.net
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