Broadband Recommendations...

Soldato
Joined
25 Oct 2006
Posts
5,386
Been quite a few years since I bought broadband in the UK.

Looking for general advice and recommendations. My place has potential for Gfast (110Mbps ish), standard FTTC (something like 75Mbps) and potentially Virgin Media.

I've essentially vetoed the Virgin Media option as I couldn't even get through to their sales team on the phone. Automated message suggested I go online but when I go online they can't give an answer and it asks me to give details and they'll call. Eventually a guy called and he seemed honestly clueless as to whether I can get it. One house on the road definitely can but he's unsure about mine. He even asked me if I saw a Virgin Media van in the area recently as that would indicate it's serviceable :D He said he'd call back but never did.

I'm looking for fairly fast setup. It looks like Gfast will require an engineer out while standard FTTC option would be activated within 10-14 days. Gfast options from EE and Talktalk suggest earliest 15th June :( BT can't even offer me Gfast at the moment.

I asked Talktalk if I could get the £26 package of standard FTTC and then upgrade later on live chat (with no extra charge besides the £2 extra per month for Gfast). They agreed but couldn't provide any official terms and I'm reluctant to get stuck in existing customer upgrade prices.

I think for the moment I'm resigning to tethering on giffgaff for next few days and hope that Openreach start opening back up properly sometime soon.

Are there any obvious options I'm missing?
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
26,053
If you put your address into the address checker (submit the postcode and then pick the house number from the list) https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/Address what are the G.fast estimates vs. FTTC? A 110Mbps Gfast estimate makes me think you'll get a pretty poor upload when compared to FTTC - here's an example

EnwCuIa.png

It depends on your needs obviously, but I'd much prefer an 80Mbps download speed and 20Mbps upload than the faster download but the potential for losing upload. I've seen enough Gfast installations come in miles away from their estimates that I wouldn't feel comfortable ordering it unless the prediction looked closer to this

xM0fOVC.png
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
26,053
Personally I wouldn't bother with Gfast at those estimates as you might easily end up with 100/10 rather than an almost guaranteed 80/20 on an FTTC service.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
25 Oct 2006
Posts
5,386
Personally I wouldn't bother with Gfast at those estimates as you might easily end up with 100/10 rather than an almost guaranteed 80/20 on an FTTC service.
Thanks for the input. That's very useful. I had kinda neglected to check the estimates for upload but even Talktalk's estimate is 7.6Mb - 20.5Mb for gfast. FTTC 17.9Mb - 18.9Mb.

Are there any peculiarities with provided routers nowadays? Should I be able to replace all routers with my own or at least modem mode them easily enough?

I noticed some ISPs giving a free single-band router as standard and for 2.4+5Ghz it was over £100 :o

In that case I'd just get my own.. assuming there's no issue in that.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
25 Oct 2006
Posts
5,386
On demand....almost every property has on demand available. You pay the installation costs which run to tens of thousands fairly often.

This. I'm ok thanks :D

Gfast is certainly available and actually overnight BT are now showing availability on their site but I think I would prefer a higher upload speed so likely to go with standard FTTC option... Now just to decide on provider/deal. Ideally 12 month contract max but may go with 18.

Looks like SSE have a 60 day money back guarantee so that could be worth trying at least. Not sure how easy to exercise it.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
25 Oct 2006
Posts
5,386
My company might actually pay some of installation costs due to WFH at the moment but I think I'll give my manager a heart attack if I present an FTTP install bill :)
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
25 Oct 2006
Posts
5,386
No and honestly I can't even wait that long. I'm faced at the moment with likely having to tether giffgaff or MAYBE BT fon (but not expecting much from this).
 
Associate
Joined
23 Feb 2009
Posts
2,395
Location
Bournemouth
Zen internet is my recommendation, because for me my connection has been rock solid with zero connections problems and good uk based customer service.

Their website is > https://www.zen.co.uk/

Before you give up give zen a ring and see if they can get you sorted because you say that you have tried arranging but got cut off or whatever.

All is all contact zen, if it ends up the same which i doubt then well give up for now.

Dan.
 
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