Who provides the best home broadband at the moment?

For me it's Virgin Media. And it should be for anyone who has enough backhaul connectivity, in other words isn't in an oversubscribed area.

Too much crap can affect your speeds on this ultra ancient DSL over POTS technology which has been re-branded as "Fibre Optic" for some bizarre reason.

Isn't Zen just an openreach reseller? It's basically the same technology as any company that uses the ancient POTS also known by the nonsense buzzword "Fibre Optic".
 
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What if someone actually wants to upload something though? Virgin Media don't cater for that sort of insane niche usage.
 
I wish Virgin would remove the upstream management. I'm close to the cab, so went with fftc just for the upload.

I stream to twitch a lot, and would basically be constantly throttled by Virgin, in peak hours (exactly when I want to stream).

I think my area is ok though, so if they roll out 300 here and give decent upload with no management I'd probably switch.
 
Armadillo said:
I wish Virgin would remove the upstream management. I'm close to the cab, so went with fftc just for the upload.

I stream to twitch a lot, and would basically be constantly throttled by Virgin, in peak hours (exactly when I want to stream).

I think my area is ok though, so if they roll out 300 here and give decent upload with no management I'd probably switch.
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I would recommend Plusnet or BT. Virgin throttle at peak times
 
Caged said:
What if someone actually wants to upload something though? Virgin Media don't cater for that sort of insane niche usage.
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Yeah you have a point, Virgin has always been limited on the upload. It's because of the technology. Upstream has a bigger burden on the CATV network than downstream because the CATV network is naturally supposed to be transmission only, it's not really designed to receive huge amounts of data, so with docsis they need to implement something called a return path, which doesn't need to be done with DSL.

Andy7 said:
I would recommend Plusnet or BT. Virgin throttle at peak times
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I've never been throttled since they stopped throttling. Only difference between peak and off peak is that my downloads might slow to 18.5MB/s instead of 19MB/s.
 
XfXGamer2014 said:
Best I have used is BT infinity, been superb for me. Tried loads of different ISP's and they are by far the best imo.
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Problem with BT - its good when its good, terrible when its terrible. If you have anything other than the most trivial of problems 99/100 you have to escalate it to the highest levels of the company to get it resolved which is a ridiculous waste of the CEO/ELC's time and your own.
 
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Rroff said:
Problem with BT - its good when its good, terrible when its terrible. If you have anything other than the most trivial of problems 99/100 you have to escalate it to the highest levels of the company to get it resolved which is a ridiculous waste of the CEO/ELC's time and your own.
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Been with them 2 years and never had a single problem, connection has never dropped. Also had no issues with download or upload speed.
 
Had BT broadband for 15 odd years from the earliest days of ADSL while overall the connection has been great there have been some tales of woe. Exclude about 14 days downtime due to massive screw ups by BT - had 99.999% uptime and largely full speeds and low ping.

They once managed to disconnect us entirely somehow when someone in another town on a different number, different account, etc. but the same last name requested to cancel their line and a comedy of errors trying to get reconnected until I went to the CEO directly.

When I had FTTC installed we had a second appointment on the same day to add an extra line and the 2nd engineer managed to cut the FTTC line entirely by trapping it in the door for the box on the pole then hastily made his exit - frontline support were entirely useless and we were looking at 2+ weeks (and probably longer due to how busy they were) before anyone would remedy it through that route and loads of other issues - ended up with Liv Garfield going nuclear (thankfully she was sympathetic and didn't waste any time on sorting it) and had an engineer come out of region on a Saturday to sort it while keeping tabs on him to make sure it was resolved - which didn't have him best pleased.
 
Ok. So I've been with the following:

Sky Fibre (current provider).
BT Infinity 2 (2012-2013).
Virgin Media (2008 - 2012, 2014).
Plusnet (2013-2014).

So I think I have a fairly decent idea about this.

The first time I had to cancel Virgin media as the connection was so bad. They let me out of my contract early after I complained. I went to BT and it was like breath of fresh air. Headline figures were not as good, but the quality of the connection, the ability to browse and stream were in another league. But I didn't like the fact most routing was done via Sheffield and I ended up with over 20ms ping. When I moved house I went with Plusnet, albeit I couldn't get over 40mbps so ended up with 40/10. Plusnet were brilliant to be fair, no Sheffield routing and nice and cheap. I got drunk one weekend and decided I wanted 152mbps with Virgin, so I signed up. New house wasn't in a congested area, how bad could it be I thought? They're a bunch of cretins. Youtube, streaming and general browsing was worse than 40/10 Plusnet. I've since moved so I managed to cancel, I can't get VM where I live now so I'm on Sky Fibre Pro now due to the friends and family deal. Apart from the absurd cost, I'm more than happy with Sky's network. Sub 8ms ping, no slow down, streaming, Youtube etc is flawless.

As for the 'fibre' remark above, VM isn't fibre to the house either, it's coax. To think they only manage twice the speed over a twisted pair of cables is pretty shocking if you ask me. VM's network is on the whole, as widely reported, over subscribed and not a patch on the FTTC network.

Zen may be a BT reseller, but you still go into their network and route via it. The quality of the connection would be beyond that BT, Sky, Plusnet etc can offer. But you pay a premium for this (line rental etc).

TLDR if you want headline speeds go with VM, if you want a decent connection go with Plusnet, Sky or Zen.
 
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Rroff said:
Problem with BT - its good when its good, terrible when its terrible.
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XfXGamer2014 said:
Been with them 2 years and never had a single problem, connection has never dropped. Also had no issues with download or upload speed.
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Got to agree with XFXGamer. I've been with BT for about 18 months on Infinity2 (75down/19up). Never had a single issue. It just works. , might not be cheapest, but for an extra couple of quid, I don't care. Never been happier with my internet since Infinity2 came out.
 
It all depends on your area and how many people get one particular service in that area.

I've been with both Virgin Media and now I'm with plusnet. My 100Mb connection with VM, between Monday - Friday, 11am to 11pm would be a 2Mb connection! That was my last address. Prior to that at other houses, it was always capped and limited during peak hours.

My plusnet connection is 40Mb. Its always 40Mb and never drops from that during peak or off peak hours. Much better upload as well at close to 20Mb :)
 
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