Moving house and need broadband - Sky vs. BT vs. PlusNet vs. Vodafone vs. NOW

[Participant]

Hi all

We're moving house on Friday and because we've only just exchanged, I've not yet arrange broadband, which I'm starting to panic about...

But anyway, are the above all much of a muchness, or is there a clear winner in terms of reliability, speed of installation, and CS?

We're currently on lovely VM 300Mb but they don't serve our new address.

Many thanks.

 

[ChrisD.]

I was with PlusNet for FTTC for years and never had an issue.

 

[Liquid_Entity]

They all the same, use the same cables. Go with who's cheapest, fastest and offers the best cashback or gift vouchers when signing up

 

[Participant]

They all the same, use the same cables. Go with who's cheapest, fastest and offers the best cashback or gift vouchers when signing up

Thanks, I've just gone with TalkTalk actually as they were £30 per month for 60-80mbps (slow but hey) fibre with unlimited landline calls (which my wife likes).

Now to figure out how to make do without the internet until they activate it (estimated ten days after we move in ).

 

[andicole0]

They all the same, use the same cables. Go with who's cheapest, fastest and offers the best cashback or gift vouchers when signing up

Depends if BT have done Ultrafast at the house, then it'll be BT as they offer the fastest. Not all the same, support people vary a lot, Plusnet are very good at that but still a BT owned company. Sky use a lot of their own infrastructure.

 

[andicole0]

Not heard a lot of good reviews for talk talk. You could get a 4G system if you have decent 4G, EE do a monthly deal.

 

[Mysterae_]

The services might all be a much of a muchness but their supplied hardware varies a lot. PlusNet has a terrible router, very poor range and a ringing noise when being used heavily. The Sky one we had previously was much better.

In the meantime buy a cheap 4G router if you get a good signal like andicole0 mentioned, or tether your devices to your mobile phone.

 

[Avalon]

They all the same, use the same cables. Go with who's cheapest, fastest and offers the best cashback or gift vouchers when signing up

No. Just no. They all use the same cable from your house to the exchange, in terms of core network, hardware, billing, complaints and CS they can be very, very different.

Now is Sky's budget brand, same way BT own Plusnet. Sky use what you will often find incorrectly called MER, or MAC Encapsulated Routing, it's actually DHCP Option 60/61 but this misnomer has persisted, it can make using 3rd party routers more difficult, but it doesn't require you to extract any info at this stage, if someone tells you otherwise, they are mistaken. Plusnet is UK based, they don't have overly scripted CS/faults and are generally easy to deal with, similar with Sky/Now. If something goes wrong, BT can be a PITA to deal with, I mean you can literally tell them the issue, tell them what process they need to follow and what they need to do and get nowhere. They are able to order upskilled techs on faults though, Sky/Now used to go 'cheap' as default, they also tend to use a different connectivity approach to bring you back to core. If BT mess up, they are more inclined to throw money at you, but anyone who has opted into the OFCOM compensation scheme should play by the same rules now, I made a profit from being a BT customer for over two years, but it wasn't a fun few months and someone at the CEO complaints team had to have a disciplinary as a result, I can't imagine the issue would have existed with anyone else other than BT and took a well known industry media outlet leaning on them to get them to acknowledge the mistake. Vodafone are just a bad idea for FTTC, CS/complaints/billing, policies are all questionable, but they have U turned on the policy side and seem to be reducing the rest, but the hardware isn't great either.

If it were me, Plusnet or Sky/Now would be my choice, but I value easy to deal with over saving £2, but check Quidco/TCB and consider that BF is later this month, so we should have a decent selection of promotion going on now, Sky are likely to offer a decent cash back deal on TV/phone/broadband if you're taking a TV service.

 

[andy_mk3]

Been with Plusnet for the past few years, had faultless FTTC service, never had to call them once. Used my own hardware but never had any issues ever.

Just waiting on my Sky FTTP service to be installed next week, so can't speak about that too much yet, however I did mess up the order online and had to phone them up to sort the issue, they were fantastic on the phone, very helpful, not feeling like they were rushing to get to the next person. I even had a follow-up text from the last woman I spoke to to confirm everything was OK.

 

[ChrisD.]

No. Just no. They all use the same cable from your house to the exchange, in terms of core network, hardware, billing, complaints and CS they can be very, very different.

Now is Sky's budget brand, same way BT own Plusnet. Sky use what you will often find incorrectly called MER, or MAC Encapsulated Routing, it's actually DHCP Option 60/61 but this misnomer has persisted, it can make using 3rd party routers more difficult, but it doesn't require you to extract any info at this stage, if someone tells you otherwise, they are mistaken. Plusnet is UK based, they don't have overly scripted CS/faults and are generally easy to deal with, similar with Sky/Now. If something goes wrong, BT can be a PITA to deal with, I mean you can literally tell them the issue, tell them what process they need to follow and what they need to do and get nowhere. They are able to order unskilled techs on faults though, Sky/Now used to go 'cheap' as default, they also tend to use a different connectivity approach to bring you back to core. If BT mess up, they are more inclined to throw money at you, but anyone who has opted not the OFCOM compensation scheme should play by the same rules now, I made a profit from being a BT customer for over two years, but it wasn't a fun few months and someone at the CEO complaints team had to have a disciplinary as a result, I can't imagine the issue would have existed with anyone else other than BT and took a well known industry media outlet leaning on them to get them to acknowledge the mistake. Vodafone are just a bad idea for FTTC, CS/complaints/billing, policies are all questionable, but they have U turned on the policy side and seem to be reducing the rest, but the hardware isn't great either.

If it were me, Plusnet or Sky/Now would be my choice, but I value easy to deal with over saving £2, but check Quidco/TCB and consider that BF is later this month, so we should have a decent selection of promotion going on now, Sky are likely to offer a decent cash back deal on TV/phone/broadband if you're taking a TV service.

Great post.

 

[DB_SamX]

No. Just no. They all use the same cable from your house to the exchange, in terms of core network, hardware, billing, complaints and CS they can be very, very different.

Now is Sky's budget brand, same way BT own Plusnet. Sky use what you will often find incorrectly called MER, or MAC Encapsulated Routing, it's actually DHCP Option 60/61 but this misnomer has persisted, it can make using 3rd party routers more difficult, but it doesn't require you to extract any info at this stage, if someone tells you otherwise, they are mistaken. Plusnet is UK based, they don't have overly scripted CS/faults and are generally easy to deal with, similar with Sky/Now. If something goes wrong, BT can be a PITA to deal with, I mean you can literally tell them the issue, tell them what process they need to follow and what they need to do and get nowhere. They are able to order upskilled techs on faults though, Sky/Now used to go 'cheap' as default, they also tend to use a different connectivity approach to bring you back to core. If BT mess up, they are more inclined to throw money at you, but anyone who has opted into the OFCOM compensation scheme should play by the same rules now, I made a profit from being a BT customer for over two years, but it wasn't a fun few months and someone at the CEO complaints team had to have a disciplinary as a result, I can't imagine the issue would have existed with anyone else other than BT and took a well known industry media outlet leaning on them to get them to acknowledge the mistake. Vodafone are just a bad idea for FTTC, CS/complaints/billing, policies are all questionable, but they have U turned on the policy side and seem to be reducing the rest, but the hardware isn't great either.

If it were me, Plusnet or Sky/Now would be my choice, but I value easy to deal with over saving £2, but check Quidco/TCB and consider that BF is later this month, so we should have a decent selection of promotion going on now, Sky are likely to offer a decent cash back deal on TV/phone/broadband if you're taking a TV service.

Thank you. Helps me out as I am due to renew with Plusnet in a month; would like to stay with them but I'd like to discuss a discount as their standard renewal is more than all the alternatives.

Edit - they offerred a £4.50/month reduction, which brings it comparable to Vodafone/TT for the same speeds. Admittedly no sign-up voucher, but often a pain to redeem. I can always cancel within 14 days if I see something amazing appear though.