Thetownend.com

Come to the end of my Virgin contract and looking elsewhere. Had Sky before Virgin and unimpressed with both broadbands.

Is there any really decent broadband provider out there?

Aren't you limited to two?  Virgin or Openreach provide the fibre, so regardless of who you only have two supplier options of the infrastructure.

yeah, but you might get unlucky with congestion. in which case changing provider may help

I've been with BT for donkeys years and never had a problem, superfast for me. However living in Bedford that isn't much help, i've heard it can depend on how near the exchange you are? (i'm very near here); although don't know how true that is.

Unless you have fibre to the door (which most don't), it's hugely dependent on that. We had BT's "Superfast" Fibre but it was Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) and the only thing worse than the speed was the appalling customer service and support. Switched to 4G so I never had to go near Openreach's ropey excuse for a network ever again

Luck of the draw, by contrast we used to get 2mb on ADSL and now get near as 80.

also had 2 line problems that were sorted within 3 or 4 days on each occasion.

the BT hub was a piece of shit though.

Broadband speeds and reliability figures are a con. It's all run through BT, and all pretty antiquated. Virgin have fibre loops, but it's all for corporate wallets. If you have good internet you are lucky, nothing more nothing less. The message being if you dont have problems, don't swap, doesn't matter who the provider is, the next one might be in the wrong duct, or plugged into the wrong circuit board in the same exchange cabinet.

Can you watch live BBC, ITV and Channel 4 through their apps?

We used to have Sky but swapped to Virgin about 5 years ago because it was cheaper. Now we're (my Dad) is paying Virgin £90 a month for phone, TV and internet.

I'm pushing him to swap to BT who'll do more or less the same deal for about £35 for 18 months and £55 thereafter.

Virgin really pissed me off yesterday. Phoned to cancel, there is no option when calling to be put through to the Cancellations Team, so got transferred. On hold for over 30 mins before I gave up.

Tried again but the fuckers know who is calling from the number you are calling from so, yet again, on hold for 30 mins and spoke to no-one.

Obviously trying their hardest to stop you cancelling by the equivalent of putting their hands over their ears and going la la la, I can’t hear you.

Fucking twats. Cunts. Ass wipes.

Sky do the same, in fact pretty much everyone who takes money from the public for a "Service" makes it as difficult as possible. to cancel or downgrade anything. Viva La Revolution..

Yes for BBC and ITV, never tried C4.

Ah, thanks.

Finally got round the Virgin stonewalling. Used the Moving Home option and told them I was moving to France and they processed the cancellation there and then. Scummy bastards.

Can someone advise me about line rental ?

For example, if I don't have a home phone landline, but do have broadband do I need to pay for line rental ? Or is the line rental only for a landline ?? Or for both ??

Cheers

Not sure where it's got to but the line rental was a must have (con) for you to have BB, they were on about banning it as no one uses landlines (bar parents and scammers) But I suspect it's still in the government to do list at number 2 million and 1.

My BT BB has expired and I am FREE to be ripped off by some other cunts. I no longer have SKY though my TV comes through their box and has limited access ability. We have a number of communication devices on contract with Vodafone, though this iPad has been cancelled now it is paid up as I can hotspot my iPhone from it. Back to BB, who to choose? I live in west Swindon if that helps on a connectivity level?

The one with a cheap 12 month contract and best quidco/tcb. that's my approach.

I looked into this and the only companies I could find that do broadband only without landline are Virgin cable and Relish 4G. Both were much more expensive than most ADSL broadband providers. I've been ok with talktalk for quite some time and renewed with them. As others have said it depends on your exchange.

*Stupid question alert *

I know it's not like me to ask a daft question, I have a BT broadband cable but am looking elsewhere, can all providers use that line? I thought I read somewhere that some providers use the old cable line?

Apart from virgin I believe.

The line will be more than likely provided by BT Openreach, which is a different company to BT Broadband. It's all down to the exchange at the limits placed by the ISP.

Virgin still use bt ducting pretty much everywhere, they will do the last 100 yards or so for residential from wherever the exchange box is, but even then its still bt stuff more often than not. Doesnt really matter tbh, as I've said before connectivity is more down to luck/location than anything else presently. Virgin have rolled out their own dark fibre ring around London, but it will be decades most likely before they have full coverage.

it depends what service you can get 4D.

For fiber to the premises (fttp) you will need a new fiber optic cable. not many people can get that yet.

for Virgin you need to check you are in their service area, if so they will run you a new cable.

for pretty much everything else you are using your old line (local loop unbundling was as said, the local ' last mile' copper line is not tied to one provider with rare exception).

if you are going fiber, there are three main things that will affect you. 1. the physical quality of the line, 2. the distance from the cabinet (not the exchange). 3. congestion/contention at cabinet out at the exchange. some companies have there own exchange equipment, some don't. therefore when moving speed results can be improved or worsened - whenever I've moved it's been near identical....

normal ADSL, distance to the exchange is significant

Ironically I'm on Adsl, as virgin quoted me 15k for the dig, as everyone else is on fibre around here, i have little, if no contention ratio to deal with, and have very fast speeds :)

I've got Virgin cable broadband. They keep shafting me with price increases, but there's no way I'm going back to the shitty ADSL I had before.

BT put my line in about 18 months ago, not sure what it is tbh. Just a cable to me  :)

Should be nice and new then :)

They normally just repatch/reroute in the cabinet when you switch. Broadband/phone is usally down for a few hours and then onto your new provider. Maybe less.

I succumbed and ditched Virgin for Sky. Installation last Thursday, since when I have had no broadband service. Sky blames the BT exchange, BT said there was no problem. Now I have to wait for a Broadband Specialist to try and sort it

Is there any mileage in claiming a refund on my non existent broadband rental

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2017/automatic-compensation

£5 or £8 a day... maybe..

If you are asking can you cancel..no idea

Anyone know if there's anything I can do to improve my upload speed? Getting reasonable (not good) download speeds of 4-10mbps depending on the time of day, but my upload speed never passes 0.2 and I get significant delays while video calling as a result. Can't get fibre here (they'll never get permission to dig up central London and install it) unfortunately.

I decided to go the mobile route. Got an unlimited speed/data package with Vodafone. Stuck the sim into a 4G router and I get 30-40 mbps down and 20 up.

Should be hugely cheaper in the UK than here as well.

Maybe it's your ISP, some really throttle upload speeds.

I'm with BT so nobody terribly niche, but I have an open engineer case with them to come and look at it. Hopefully that improves things a bit, but who knows.

Right, currently a BT customer but looking to move. Sky stream package is favourite. TV and Broadband, netflix and prime included. £39 per month - saving £13.

Anyone got it? Alternatives?

I’ve got that exact package being fitted on Wednesday, so will let you know 😂

 :thumb:

Is that for an 18 month contract? Does the price jump significantly after that?

I am enjoying my 500mbps ftth connection.

That is all

Can you watch sky on more than one TV?

do you mean using a sky q/old hd box, streaming or ?

Sky stream through the "puck" thingy?

Never used pucks

I think this is what you need if you want to watch different things on different tv in same house, extra cost - no suprise :

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/watching-sky-in-different-rooms-sky-glass
========
With a physical dish/skyQ you'd need mini boxes to do the same - again extra cost.

My old hd box has RF out, so I use that to distribute to the bedroom - but obviously I can't watch something different to the main box - which isn't so much of a problem for us as the kids stream stuff.

I’m looking for options on our TV package. Currently have BT broad band and free view tv via a box with BT sport but that has run out. Well the sport has I think the TV may have done so too as there is no signal today and there was on Saturday. And how do I know if my tv is a smart tv as it is a bit old but a good Panasonic one.

Time to change I think.

By for fibre broadband, tv and sky

Sky for the above

Virgin ditto

Hearing conflicting stories about all of them. Broadband is shocking, I’m sure bt have fiddled about with things that have slowed either the router or strength of signal coming into the house because the number of devices and usage hasn’t bone up that much.

Helpful advice would be welcome. SN5 area towards Peatmoor, Shaw and Sparcells.

TIA.

I severely doubt BT have fiddled with the router in any way. Speed decreases could be due to a number of factors including which type of broadband you have (ADSL/vdsl, fiber to curb, fiber to home). Plus local factors.

Interference if using WiFi - use fast.com to do a speed test using a *cable* connection

Line issue may reduce speed down. See router stats.

Congestion at exchange.

Shit router slowing down with more devices connected even though they aren't using much bandwidth.

Etc, etc.

So there's no easy answer and it's really hard to advise without knowing where the fault likes because there's a danger swapping provider makes no difference (e.g. if the line is dodgy)

I'm pretty happy with my middle package fiber to the home, but that's with BT. I'll shop around when my deal runs out.(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20240406/f574449bc0674d4fc48ea8439ff8dc36.jpg)

Can't go wrong with anything over 100mbps download and anything over 50mbps upload for the average home consumer. So your 400+ and 60+ is ''ideal Neil'' {erm I mean Simon} but it is still behind somewhat for the goal of 1gbps available to all homes by 2030

The UK really does need to get ahold of it's provision of superfast internet though. Whilst options are available to some at relative premiums, as standard it's incredibly poor and nothing close to superfast for most. Especially when paired against many other countries, where 1gbps download comes as standard for a much higher percentage of population, I don't think the UK even has 10% availability at these speeds

https://www.gsma.com/get-involved/gsma-membership/gsma_resources/a-reality-check-on-the-progress-toward-a-gigabit-society/

We have recently upgraded our BT package it its finally got to South Somerset, with BT and gone from 68mb down and 10mb up to 1000mb down and 100mb up, tho we rarely see the full 1000 this is our average.

(https://i.postimg.cc/g02VRgbT/a-Untitled.png)

Very happy with it as the wife uses it for her web design business and the uploading to Youtube is so much speeded up, plus we are paying £10 a month less on this than we were previously, bonus!

That's decent enough mate. Should be able to do pretty much anything with relative ''lightspeed''. In imagine very little latency for you if gaming. Not too shabby for a small town in Zummerzet  :toocool:

Absolutely mate, its fine for us, its only been in the area 3 weeks, I dont do online gaming though so ping is not a huge issue really.

23 is a decent enough ping if you did though tbh :thumb:

To be honest 500 is more than enough. Think we can get 1Gbps but no point in paying for it not to use it.

I thoroughly recommend fiber to the home LL. Openreach were far better than the cityfiber cowboys who I ended up cancelling

I’m a bit pissed with BT TBH, the router works,I’ve complained about the buffering on downloading YouTube clips and Amazon and Netflix. Not been a problem until the last few months, don’t understand why it’s suddenly started to be crap. Hence why I thought about talking to SKY for their B and sports package, saves me going to the pub, drinking to much 🤐

Having said that, I’ve seen negative shit about the sky service too.  :suicide:

Are you on the new fibre to the house?

Thanks for the feed back gents.

It’s there to hook upto Jim.

Get it hooked up LL it’s normally free and comes with the new router. I’m on fibre to the house and it works fine.