Best for Broadband in Northern Ireland?

Jimbo Mahoney · 29 Sep 2009 at 13:32

I'm moving house and have so far had a bit of a shambolic handling of it by both BT and TalkTalk (currently with BT, want to move to TalkTalk).

In the new place I'm moving to, I have the following options (according to SamKnows):

BT
O2 / Be
TalkTalk
Sky
Virgin (cable)

I want cheap and reliable broadband. It doesn't need to be fast, but it needs to be reliable.

Whaddya reckon?

I've been happy with BT, but they're expensive. They offered me a good deal initially, but due to someone on their end hanging up on me (accidentally I assume) and me not phoning back, they withdrew the offer in the meantime.

TalkTalk has been weird. I keep getting passed between a call centre in India and one in the UK and keep getting advised different things, like "It's best to move you to TalkTalk, then we can move your line to your new address" to "You'd be best to cancel the order and set up as a new customer at the new address" :rolleyes:

BunnYPandA · 29 Sep 2009 at 17:54

i'm down the road in derry and go with virgin 20mb. ive had wholesale based and llu based connections none of which come close to virgin for latency and bandwidth.

pennywise · 30 Sep 2009 at 15:56

Virgin are good in Belfast; I had a bit of bother in the first few weeks with them appearing to be switching everything over from NTL to Virgin, but after that it was rock solid and dirt cheap split between two people. The only thing is, if you're in a studenty area might be waiting a fair while to get it installed

Alternatively, o2/Be would be a good point of call if you're looking for reliability, *according to many people on here and on other forums*.

SDChargers · 2 Oct 2009 at 01:39

I recently changed providers from talktalk to o2. I wouldn't recommend talktalk at all, was slow, unreliable and completely cut out at peak times. I'm in Lurgan though, so maybe it would be slightly better in Belfast. Have nothing but good things to say about o2 so far. Getting about 4 times the speed and haven't lost connection at all in the first month.

Jimbo Mahoney · 5 Oct 2009 at 13:16

Thanks guys.

I was going to just go back to BT, but phoned them and they said they can't do anything until I receive my final bill from my old place. Useless, so they've lost my business...

I've given Virgin a call and they'll have a modem etc. in the post for Thursday.

Fingers crossed it will go as smoothly as the phonecall did with the salesperson.

Jimbo Mahoney · 8 Oct 2009 at 19:19

Awesome!

I'm now online after phoning Virgin on Monday.

They said the modem would be here Thursday, and it showed up.

Sure, I had to wait on the phone for 30 mins to get activated, but it's great!

20mb connection and I'm seeing ~18mb downloads. Pings are great too.

Highly recommended. Beats the pants off BT and TalkTalk for both customer service and performance.