Metronet www.metronet.co.uk

Also known as M247, our business has been using this unprofessional outfit for several years (thats what contracts make you do).

Continuous service outages, updates to firmware without prior notice which affect your internal firewall/VPNS. They disregard any customer feedback and quite literally do what they want to do.

Avoid them like the plague, use a established national provider.

Found this amateur company to be both disorganized and dishonest.

Overall a thumbs up and the best of the three ISP's I've tried.

I have been with Metronet for 4 years now, I have had very few complaints about the service, whenever I have had to call technical support they have always been been helpful and very easy to deal with. The service has been reliable with very few outages and the speed seems quite acceptable (although I have not measured it). The only down side is there are no mailboxes included in the package. That does not bother me as I use 1&1 for my email and domain management. I am not sure how they compare toother companies in terms of price

Was a decent and reliable ISP until the cap on traffic, something you are unlikely to hit if doing occasional browsing or email in my experience, but once hit the internet access becomes virtually UNUSABLE for me, running much slower than a dial-up modem as far as I am concerned. Metronet instead of contacting me to ask me to re-evaluate my internet access needs, they just cut me off in my opinion. Preferred it when Metronet was still an independent company that prided itself on a cap on price not service.Their customer service has come unhelpful I feel as they have not yet as far as I am aware called me back with status updates or to explain what's happening in the first place. Their pricing - once competitive - has equally not kept up with the market. Much better deals around.In short: I do not recommend Metronet.

In short avoid like the plague. This service is OK if you only use the Internet for browsing the web and the occasional download. Used to be a good company... now sadly they are in the very bottom tier of service providers... no better than my previous provider Virgin ... and they were BAD!!!

Metronet offer three Internet (broadband) options starting at £11.75, and rising to £18.75. There is a usage allowance included (starting at 2Gb), and if you use more than the allotted usage allowance, additional costs are billed to you at the end of the month - although there is a 'ceiling' for the amount you can be billed (ie. £22.74 with the lowest cost option), so that no matter how much you use - you know what the maximum amount will be.

I found Metronet to be very easy to use, and I was with them for over a year. Direct deductions can be set up so that each month the money comes out of your account with no fuss. Unlike other providers, you automatically get allocated more download usage (so that you don't get barred from the Internet, and only have the option to pay for more before you can use it). I think this is a very efficient system - one that other providers may like to take a look at.

The website has all billing information and usage statistics for customers to check on, which is relatively easy once you are used to it, but it can be a little confusing during the first few times it is used.

One larger draw-back that I think needs to be highlighted is the lack of email - you have to pay extra for that. Myself - I use webmail - I dislike Outlook and other mail programs, so it is not too much of a problem for myself, but if you like to use a mail program you may have to pay a little extra.

I recently migrated from Metronet due to the speeds which appeared to be less than those specified. I paid for a 'better quality' provider which cost more money. The speed of the new provider was no quicker and the service quite under par. I am now in the process of trying to get back to Metronet.

As far as leaving them goes, they were quick and efficient in ending the contract - Unlike my present provider who is stalling the process.