Which Provider Should I Go For?

nutshot · 28 Dec 2022 at 21:37

Hello friends hope you're all having a blessed holiday period. Long story short live in South London, been with Virgin Media for a number of years now and recently in the past year or so I am not happy with the connection. For the amount I'm paying my speeds are quite frankly pretty bad compared to whats on the market now so I'm considering moving over to BT Full Fiber 900 as it's basically the same price and apparently my area is predominantly a Virgin Media area. So I have a few questions if you wouldn't mind helping out as this isn't my area of expertise.

1. Are there any other providers you think may be better than BT so I can check if they're available in my area?

2. I was told by the BT sales guy that apparently with this Full Fiber I have a direct connection so only people using internet in my household can affect it's speeds as opposed to Virgin which is affected by others, is this true?

3. I've heard stuff about companies having their own infrastructure and what not is this something I need to know about or something that affects my connection in a big way? What is BT infrastructure?

Thank you, Virgin sucks.

Sparx · 28 Dec 2022 at 21:50

1. Yes. Have you checked if any altnet full fibre ISPs are available? In London the likes of Community Fibre or Hyperoptic are well regarded, if they cover your home. They're also much better priced.

2. Complete crap. Even on full fibre, no matter what ISP you are with, for a residential connection you're bandwidth has a limit with your neighbours and can become congested. You'd need a leased line for true dedicated bandwidth, and they are in the region of £300pm. But it's irrelevant on the likes of Openreach or altnet networks, congestion isn't usually a problem, that's a VM thing!

3. See above.

johnno93 · 28 Dec 2022 at 21:52

1. Most Openreach providers are pretty much the same so BT are as good as any, there are some that some people say have better tech support but some like Zen this is no longer true.

2. This is not totally true, you will be affected if others on the same cable link are using heavily at the same time.

3. BT will use BT infrastructure, most ISPs also use this, some have their own backhaul suck as Talk Talk and Zen. Other ISPs backhaul will have no affect on BTs service and vice versa. They will all still be using Openreach physical infrastructure (unless there is an Altnet such as cityFibre in your area).

nutshot · 28 Dec 2022 at 22:17

@Sparx @johnno93 Thank you so much for the fast responses. I have checked for Hyperoptic and Community Fibre but both are unavailable in my postcode with Community Fibre coming at some point but not ETA.

Thanks for clearing up about the bandwidth usage issue, I thought it sounded too good to be true. However is the fact that this is a predominantly a VM area I guess make it less likely that my connection will be clogged up? My main problem with VM has never actually been about slow load times it's mainly been about how often the connection drops then reconnects then drops, this has been happening way too much in the past year + the deal is not as good as what BT are offering.

One more thing I have checked TalkTalk who are available in my area but their highest speed deal is very similar to BT is there any reason to consider them over BT? Might sound daft but if both deals are similar I'd rather go with the more established company (despite me actually having BT in this house about 14 years ago and it was horrible but that was way way long ago)

Sparx · 28 Dec 2022 at 22:26

It all ultimately uses the same Openreach backend infrastructure with the ISPs you're looking at. So just go with whatever is cheapest imo!

Shame about no altnet ISPs being available though. Worth keeping your eye on Community Fibre if they reach you in the future.

ChrisD. · 29 Dec 2022 at 07:06

The reality is, that you are likely going to notice a significant improvement moving from VM to FTTP, and are unlikely to see a huge difference between providers. Talk Talk have a really good backhaul, if you can deal with their CS that is.

nutshot · 26 Jan 2023 at 15:30

ChrisD. said:
The reality is, that you are likely going to notice a significant improvement moving from VM to FTTP, and are unlikely to see a huge difference between providers. Talk Talk have a really good backhaul, if you can deal with their CS that is.

Interesting but BT still offer more for the same price so I might just switch! Thank you once again

crazyDAJT · 27 Jan 2023 at 21:25

If you can get FTTH then this whould be worth it. Most provides are just using openreach network so will be about the same. The reduced latency and reliability is beneficial.

Unless you are with a challenger provider who has laid there own infrastructure.

As cool as 1 gig internet sounds, you will struggle to get anywhere near saturating it.

I have a 1 gig symmetrical connection for a few weeks and apart from flexing the 920Mbps speedtest I am no where near pushing it.

I have a high end UniFi network set up that can actually utilise this speed as well.

The only reason I went for the full 1 gig was that i actually worked out cheaper than 500Mbps due to an offer.

nutshot · 28 Jan 2023 at 16:33

crazyDAJT said:
If you can get FTTH then this whould be worth it. Most provides are just using openreach network so will be about the same. The reduced latency and reliability is beneficial.

Unless you are with a challenger provider who has laid there own infrastructure.

As cool as 1 gig internet sounds, you will struggle to get anywhere near saturating it.

I have a 1 gig symmetrical connection for a few weeks and apart from flexing the 920Mbps speedtest I am no where near pushing it.

I have a high end UniFi network set up that can actually utilise this speed as well.

The only reason I went for the full 1 gig was that i actually worked out cheaper than 500Mbps due to an offer.

Sorry for my ignorance but what is FTTH? The only things I do are game and upload to youtube (around 3-5gig sized files). The main thing I'm hoping for is more stability as VM has been really bad in my area for about 7-8 months I was told it is a predominantly VM area.

crazyDAJT · 28 Jan 2023 at 19:40

nutshot said:
Sorry for my ignorance but what is FTTH? The only things I do are game and upload to youtube (around 3-5gig sized files). The main thing I'm hoping for is more stability as VM has been really bad in my area for about 7-8 months I was told it is a predominantly VM area.

FTTH - fiber to the Home or sometimes referred to a FTTP - fiber to the premises.