UKRTC (UK Round The Clock) http://www.ukrtc.net/

It's fair to say that we live in a rural area where choice of broadband is limited. That was what forced us to look at premium priced broadband. To cut a long story short, after extensive research we singled UKRTC as the best option for us ( £20 a month for a 2 mb unlimited downloads connection). Getting on was a breeze! Super-stable 1.2mb connection always there for you - it seemed like a dream. Convinced that we were on a 'unlimited downloads' connection we started freely downloading movies, music, etc, as well as constantly listening to internet radio. Suddenly, after 3 months of use we realise that our speeds were no better than on a bad dialup connection - Radio no longer played (128kbs) and surfing severely impaired.

Initially when we phoned them they would say they were going to sort it out, but never were able to explain what they were going to do. After many calls and no improvements we finally spoke to someone who told us this was probably happening because we were downloading too much and that BT had capped our connection? Obviously we quickly reminded him about the 'unlimited' word on their adverts. His response was that they didn't care how much their customers downloaded but BT did! (apparently there's a 30gig a month download limit which I cannot find to be mentioned anywhere). Anyway, to this date they haven't even confirmed whether that is the problem yet. They just keep being nice as usual and doing tests and sending us round the magic roundabout (new router, new leads, new filter, change the router's position, different firewall, no firewall, the list goes on). I would NOT recommend this company to anyone. I get the feeling I know more about broadband connections than them! - and that's not a good feeling. I feel I am paying premium price for a mediocre BT connection.

There are only two options for someone like us in rural areas - You either go with BT in some form or another (without even knowing), or you go for TalkTalk... Might as well be the end of the world!

I have been with them for 3 years, and I have had no problems ever - no drop out or disconnections.

As for the 10Gb - I have exceeded this a few times and nothing happens. As long as you don't over download every month, it's fine. UKRTC (UK Round The Clock) have never charged me any extra.

They are the best ISP I've ever had, and I would recommend them to any one.

UKRTC (UK Round The Clock), part of Linix, recently taken over Liverpool's Mersinet. (That's Linix.net NOT Linux)

I've been with Mersinet for over a decade when they started on local call dial-up service at 28K. Totally uneventful.

There's been one major outage during that time, a serious DNS, and one minor when some phone lines were out action following the fire in the underground telephone system system which didn't my exchange. There was no problem moving to 512Kb ADSL when my local exchange was activated, and subsequently to a 2Mb connection. Speed test results always good.

Just connect your router, enter your U/N and P/W, and there's your home network.

They do assume the home user knows what she/he is doing, which for me is good point.

I've given content 10, but AFAIK there isn't any. Or if there is, I've never seen or used it. This system demanded a score, and zero seemed unfair.

Definitely recommended for Merseysiders, and for users elsewhere of course!