Fibre Broadband recommendations

kirbz

kirbz

kirbz

Associate
Joined
2 Mar 2006
Posts
641
Location
Derby
Hi all

I am currently with VM and am having issues. Spoke to them to hear the dreaded 2 words "high utilisation"!

So I am in the market so a switch. What are peoples recommendations? BT, plusnet and (shudder) talk talk are the ones I know of.

Thanks all
 
Talk Talk are great ..........until you get a problem . and then omg

will be swapping to bt ... but all of them have rubbish customer service if you read reviews ... so you cant win lol

going bt even tho its more expensive just for bt sport
 
TalkTalk's network is pretty good & as long as you have decent connectivity then its pretty rock solid. Seem to deal with exchange over contention quite quickly as well.


However, that said.
First line support is like banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall.
Raising faults via their official forums seems to work better as I think that bypasses the offshore call centers and go's straight up to the UK guys in Manchester.
 
Sky are pretty good, happy with them so far and you get a static IP on the Pro package.

But they cost the same as Zen I think for the 80mbps package, so maybe go with them.
 
Thanks for the recommendations guys, I have to admit VM have been rock solid for years for me but the past week or so and speaking to them last night has given me reason to swap.

We use Zen for our work connectivity packages so I know they are well recommended.

Quite like the thought of a static IP address though so may need to look into sky, the worrying thing is if I swap and the service is bad I'm tied in to a contract then.
 
pantbash said:
TalkTalk's network is pretty good & as long as you have decent connectivity then its pretty rock solid. Seem to deal with exchange over contention quite quickly as well.


However, that said.
First line support is like banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall.
Raising faults via their official forums seems to work better as I think that bypasses the offshore call centers and go's straight up to the UK guys in Manchester.
Click to expand...

I'm currently with TalkTalk Fibre Large and as far as value for money goes it's a good deal - £100 shopping vouchers, £80 sign on cash back, free mobile phone/data package for one year. Speed tests fairly constant at 70Mb/s - doesn't feel any different to Plusnet.

Now the downsides, there is noticeable low level latency fluctuation as shown by the Thinkbroadband connection quality monitor(assume it's congestion) - can't tell how pervasive this is across their network(some people's graphs look OK). At least one serious gamer was looking to leave TalkTalk fibre because of this issue. The support on their forums simply won't discuss it - they always deal with problems by asking for a ping or traceroute, which don't highlight the issue the way a 24 hour ping graph does.

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Secondly you have to ask yourself, in the unlucky event you have an issue, are you prepared to wait three days for an answer from TalkTalk forum staff(that's three days per reply, not three days to completely solve your problem)? And that's assuming the answer you get is actually helpful. Dealing with the community forum is a bit like swimming through treacle, it's possible but completely exhausting.

So after a couple of months I can say TalkTalk are great value, the speeds are fine, but I'm going to have to leave (when contract terms are favourable) because their attitude towards everything is to do the bare minimum and if you use the Internet a lot that begins to cause worry.
 
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Plusnet have been great for me, a lot of our customers are also with Plusnet and very rarely get issues.

Speeds are usually spot on with what they quote on the website or when speaking on the phone to them.
 
Anything but talk talk, my fibre large has been dropping just over 2% of packets for 11 weeks now, and in spite of 2 bt visits, a new router, the issue persists, and today they have told me the problem is the device on 192.168.1.1, you know the router they replaced with a new one, they are worse than useless
 
All the large players suffer from contention issues.

I am with Zen, after being with ADSL24 (until they got bought out by coms). Been rock solid at 78.6/18.74 for ~6 months. for £25 a month.
Customer service is top notch too, and you get static ip etc.

Oh, and none of this blocking of random bits of the internet.
 
Most of the providers will use the same equipment up to the exchange, provided by Openreach. Only when it hits the exchange will anything vary between providers such as the quality of their Network. No issues with Sky here but some will say I'm biased.
 
I've been with VM for 10 years and always been happy but their customer services dept appear to have received an edict from above to be d**k heads just lately and ,as BT are laying in fibre in my street in the next few weeks I'll have a serious competitor to them soon.

Looking forward to that.
 
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