Maybe Changing broadband provider, advice needed

I think there is!! I'm quite happy with BT 50mbps some chap came round trying to get our little enclave so we all had fibre, two of us out of 30 had it already!! When I told him I was getting 35 mpbs at the time he said 15 was there max !!
At the time with Sky who stated that mine was 16 mpbs but we're unaware of BT new boxes fitting had increased us!! I have 18 month contract now ending August next year, no price increases yet and her indoors went shopping with £80 card add is chuffed with Tablet the trick is to know when the contract ends!!
Sorry, didn't realise you had fibre, though you were on ADSL, teach me for only scanning a thread lol

As soon as BT try to hike the price, leave without penalty. The last time I was with them, they never sent me a hub in time for activation. Went mental as I had no internet with 3 kids at Xmas..........sent me 6 in a row lol. The Hub6 had just launched so when I left 10 weeks into my contract for a price hike, sold them all for £50 a piece on eBay.

Broadband £37pm x 2 months = £74 + activation which was £25 i believe so total outlay was £99 during the contract.

£130 cashback through quidco and a £100 mastercard = £230

Sold 6 hubs at £50 each = £300

£530 - £99 outlay = £429 BT payed me to be their customer for 10 weeks lol
 
I'm with sky but use my own tp link router it never misses a beat, using google dns

I experimented with a few 3rd party routers a few years ago before the Q Hub launched as Sky had the most outdated router at that time but just had no end of issues due to their MER authentication, even high-end Asus ones that had full support for MER.
When the Q hub was launched they made a big deal about it having a dual antenna so that it could build the Mesh network and not halve the speed in the sending & receiving but that was bullshit.
Don't care anymore, put CAT5e everywhere and only the kids use the wifi really, get what they're given as they know what the alternative is lol
 
As much as it pains me to say, always found BT the most reliable with the best ISP issued router on the market, terrible customer service and usually more expensive but can usually offset the extra expense with their agressive cashback (quidco & topcashback) and mastercard deals. I usually sign up with a tonne of cashback and after a few months they put the price up, I cancel without penalty and then go with someone else, the last 3 times I've been with BT......it's cost them money to have me as a customer

Sky & Vodafone are both quite aggressive with content blocking, i find I have to use a VPN more with these. Currently with Sky due to an amazing all-in-one deal that was the same price as my broadband only. Their routers force you to use Sky DNS servers though and I had a battle with them recently to alter my firmware so I could use Google DNS as my PS4 really didn't like theirs.
Talktalk issue the worst routers known to man that just fall over every time you put them under any stress.

@Toddy2 have you not got any rural wireless broadband in your area? usually same speeds as fibre for around the same cost. They're not that well advertised so usually require a bit of digging, PM me if you want me to have a look for you
Your comment lukieno1 about 'Sky & Vodafone are both quite aggressive with content blocking, i find I have to use a VPN more with these' is info that I was interested in, thanks. I don't want to have the hassle of an ISP assing about, and I recalled from the days of my Openbox that some posters were complaining that they were doing this. So if all things being equal Sky are guilty of this I will go elsewhere. As previously mentioned the telephone is the stumbling block to Virgin, but my better half is moving to getting the quality fibre and living with the mobiles during the week for calls.
 
I find Sky are even a pain with streaming apps like TVZion & Cyberflix etc. Virgin have amazing broadband but their 'Super Hub' 3 is a piece of crap in my opinion. I would always put it in modem only mode and use a decent 3rd party router instead......your call though as it may be sufficient for your uses.

Virgin are able to do telephone and can port numbers in, bit hit and miss though and there's sometimes the issue of losing the number as you can't usually take it back to a BT line.
 
Sorry, didn't realise you had fibre, though you were on ADSL, teach me for only scanning a thread lol

As soon as BT try to hike the price, leave without penalty. The last time I was with them, they never sent me a hub in time for activation. Went mental as I had no internet with 3 kids at Xmas..........sent me 6 in a row lol. The Hub6 had just launched so when I left 10 weeks into my contract for a price hike, sold them all for £50 a piece on eBay.

Broadband £37pm x 2 months = £74 + activation which was £25 i believe so total outlay was £99 during the contract.

£130 cashback through quidco and a £100 mastercard = £230

Sold 6 hubs at £50 each = £300

£530 - £99 outlay = £429 BT payed me to be their customer for 10 weeks lol
I left Sky mid term when they hiked up the price!! For the same price £29.99 I went from 35mpbs to 50mpbs BT with a decent router and they wavered activation charges!! And gave me the £80 cash and Samsung Tablet, after I accepted Sky rang and said they could reduce my payments to £25 and give me £150 credit to the account!! If they said that initially I would of stayed, I never had any trouble with blocking with sky, I did the same every Saturday morning with there router and now BT ( factory reset )
 
EE have a good dual band WiFi router that automatically transmits on the best frequency. If your phone is with them you get a good deal for both.
 
EE have a good dual band WiFi router that automatically transmits on the best frequency. If your phone is with them you get a good deal for both.
I'll look it up, thanks..at the moment I'm nearing Plusnet basic with phone, as the phone is the household issue, and my iptv is fine on the TT equivalent. Also I've registered with Openreach to get notification of when Fibre is going to become available locally...they say 'soon' whatever that means, so when and if that happens in the 18 months I'll switch to fibre then.
 
I'll look it up, thanks..at the moment I'm nearing Plusnet basic with phone, as the phone is the household issue, and my iptv is fine on the TT equivalent. Also I've registered with Openreach to get notification of when Fibre is going to become available locally...they say 'soon' whatever that means, so when and if that happens in the 18 months I'll switch to fibre then.
Plusnet are part owned by BT and were supplying (last I checked) white versions of BT's Hub5 which was still a great Hub
 
cheers lukieno1, jury's still out on isp as Plusnet are saying my download speed would be 4-10mb on the adsl....I've checked TT and I'm consistently getting 10-11mb, so I'll have to find out why they are quoting the low number. Would hate to stay with TT but won't cut my nose etc.
 
cheers lukieno1, jury's still out on isp as Plusnet are saying my download speed would be 4-10mb on the adsl....I've checked TT and I'm consistently getting 10-11mb, so I'll have to find out why they are quoting the low number. Would hate to stay with TT but won't cut my nose etc.

use the BT DSL Checker to get an accurate reading, you'll probably find that Plusnet like to give reserved estimates to better manage customer expectation where as Talktalk will promise the earth and deal with the grief that may come of it afterwards. Every provider uses the same BT Network.......only slight exception to the rule is Sky use their own LLU at the exchange. Still the same lines though.
 
Plusnet are fully integrating with BT's consumer division and will soon effectively become the same company. See link below

Linky here
Read the link,thanks....jeez I think I'm getting somewhere and :cry: I'm not. Thought Plusnet were staying sort of independant, but I've had BT before and they were crap to the point of almost being as bad as TT for customer service...would never willingly use them again.
I appreciate everything said by members in the last 2 pages, just shows that others' experience can help and save a load of grief.
Looks like I'll have to work on the VM angle again at home as Black Friday is giving good deals for broadband and weekend phone. They say I can get it and are offering M500 for £25pm ( + weekend calls=£33). Sounds good speed- wise as there are no gamers in the house and we use it for tablets/ipads /tv and iptv.
Am I right that 'throttling by the isp' shouldn't happen with fibre speeds, or is that naive?
 
They will say they don't throttle and AFAIA ISPs are not allowed to throttle your service unless it's specifically in your T's & C's. IPTV should use f**k all of your 500mbps anyway. What's more of a worry with Virgin is blocking of streams during EPL games, so you may want to think about a VPN.
 
Is VM any worse for blocking than other ISPs? I don't watch PL games but do watch La Liga and (until the problems mentioned elsewhere) Celtic TV. Looks like we'll all have to be going down the VPN route soon , so not a problem to do, unless they start blocking because they have identified a VPN.
 
I read somewhere that they block quite aggressively. Also depends on your provider. I don't have any problems with my IPTV so far. I haven't used VM yet but will be shortly.
 
I have used all the big boys on a regular change round at end of contract, I would never use Vodafone!! After reading posts on here and other sites, my neighbour had Talk Talk and had trouble with his land line and asked me for help!! I got in touch with customer service and I needed a interpreter (Nigerian) so would never use them.
Not able to get VM but Sly and BT would be my first port of call!!
 
Virgin media for me if possible. .. followed by bt then sky... I did have talk talk for a fair bit and had no bother at all but as a few have said their customer service isnt great if somthing did go wrong
 
Back
Top