Which internet provider?

mushtafa

mushtafa

mushtafa

Soldato
Joined
17 May 2013
Posts
2,974
Location
West Sussex, UK
Currently have Sky Fibre Max 78/20. Costs £34 a month, and not happy. Looking to go elsewhere.

Considering Plusnet, same speeds and unlimited, £30 a month plus £25 activation fee. Need to research which router they'll send first.

BT looks to be around £55 a month which is too expensive.

Any other suggestions? Can't get Virgin in our area.
 
bt is expensive plus also the worst customer service i have ever experienced seriously its super bad.
 
Hi,
Just wanted to share our absolutely appalling experience with Virgin Media broadband over the last year:

x-posted from the Virgin Media Community forum:

Previous shenanigans described at:
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Speed/W6-Area-21-Getting-3mbit-out-of-70/m-p/3360856

Our internet went down on the Saturday again 15th of April - It is now the 19th of April, and we still haven't got service restored. The estimated fix time has been extended 6 hours every 6 hours from Sunday. Currently it's listed at

Overall, we've had appalling service the last 6 months. The internet has either not been working or been extremely slow during peak hours (Read: <1 mbit instead of 70, as measured by multiple speedtests on wired connections).

For this, Virgin has kindly agreed to take £5 of our £42 bill this month. It's a complete joke. When I asked to transfer to the customer relations department to talk to someone regarding our monthly costs, they offered us a rebate of a whopping £2.50 a month if we decided to sign up for another 12 months.

The quite rude guy at the retentions department couldn't understand why I wasn't interested in signing up for another 12 months with Virgin, and promptly hung up on me after I told him I wasn't interested in any sort of deal that extended our contract period.

I guess we'll be voting with our feet on this one, I'm absolutely appalled by the service from the accounts and retention departments. At least the poor guys at technical support were very apologetic and understanding.

Overall, I'd stay as far away from Virgin Media as I can. The service is either not working or extremely slow (Read, less than 1mbit out of 70mbit payed for) during peak hours. Their customer support is in shambles and they can't keep promises.

Best regards,
- Tobias
 
And Plusnet really don't care what router you use. It's a completely straight forward PPPoE connection with all of the necessary credentials provided.

And £85 cashback at the moment.

The only downside is the long wait time if you need to call them. I have however found that the support has been fine once you actually do get through to them.
 
I'm currently on BT 52/10 for £25 but that is coming to an end and so I am also shopping arround. It seems that nobody else offers this package so it will have to be 78/20 (not sure I can go back to 38/2 now).

Plusnet is the cheapest at £30 but I believe they traffic shape.
Vodafone is £31 but they don't let you use your own router.
TalkTalk is £32 with no traffic shaping. Phone features like Caller ID are included for free.
EE is £32.50 but they do traffic shape.

Cashback of between £50 and £105 is available on these depending on the deal.
 
ree said:
bt is expensive plus also the worst customer service i have ever experienced seriously its super bad.
Click to expand...

And for balance, I've had superb service from them, maxing my 52/10 and the one time I did have problems I got it sorted and one month refunded at full rate (which taking into account my discount saved me three months payments).

I got mine at a discount, with topcashback and a £100 gift card so relative cost is low.

It's horses for courses.
 
IT Troll said:
Plusnet is the cheapest at £30 but I believe they traffic shape.
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It depends on what you mean by 'traffic shape'.

They have a traffic prioritisation policy, and the details are available on their website. If it works as described (and I have no reason to believe it doesn't) it can be looked at as a positive rather than a negative.

If you go back far enough there were different policies in force, but that was for ADSL.

I moved my FTTC connection from IDNet to Plusnet back when 40Mbit was the only available option. I've never had any reason to regret it. A cheap static IP, configurable rDNS, and you can use your own kit without any issues. What's not to like?
 
bremen1874 said:
It depends on what you mean by 'traffic shape'.

They have a traffic prioritisation policy, and the details are available on their website. If it works as described (and I have no reason to believe it doesn't) it can be looked at as a positive rather than a negative.
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VOIP and Games are high priority, everything else is medium or low (downloads being the lowest). I've read mixed reports of this online. Some report no problem at all, whilst others have. I guess it all depends on local contention.

I am tempted to give Plusnet a go, just because I haven't been with them before. But when you factor in the free Caller ID and increased cashback you get with TalkTalk, I think that is a slightly better package.

For the OP. If you can live with 52/10 the BT new customer offer of £28.99 with free weekend calls and £150 cash back is pretty good. I've been with them for 18 months, using my own router and never had an issue. Their 78/20 packages is £44.99, which I agree is no so good.

As an existing customer they will give me 78/20 for £33.49, but want £34.49 for 52/10. :(
 
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IT Troll said:
It seems that nobody else offers this package so it will have to be 78/20 (not sure I can go back to 38/2 now).
Click to expand...

Some providers offer 40/10.

IT Troll said:
EE is £32.50 but they do traffic shape.
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For a while, they removed all traffic shaping, but the current T&Cs are vague.

We manage our network at peak and congested times for unlawful content only. For more information on our traffic management policies visit ee.co.uk/homekfi.
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http://ee.co.uk/content/dam/ee-help...ibre-Broadband-Plans-from-24-January-2017.pdf
 
So far Plusnet seem to be the best for the money. I discovered they will also give you a static IP for a setup fee of £5! Sounds very reasonable.

Since I've had 78 down, I don't think I'd want to go slower again. I need to research this traffic shaping stuff though, I want max speed for everything, at all times!
 
We use zen internet fttc. Full speed any time of day, low stable gaming pings and no traffic shaping. Also if you contact them people know what they are talking about and are willing / able to help.

For us well worth paying a bit more for.
 
mushtafa said:
£47 a month!
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Hard to justify isn't it?

I'm sure that have excellent customer service, but that's not IMO enough to make them worth the extra. Having the option to get more than a single static IP will be useful for some people, but most people just seem to get them because they can and then try to find things to use them for.
 
BT have been great for me, their new customer deals when I started were excellent (Amazon vouchers + TCB cashback on top) and their retention offers have been good too. I pay less than £50 a month for Infinity 2 and line rental, my mobile SIM (3GB of data) and the 4K BT TV package. Can't complain about the customer service either, the few times I've needed to use them.
 
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