Opinions on Broadband providers

[rafletcher]

Round here it seems they’re sharing some infrastructure. Gigaclear have been digging up the roads to lay a 10mm’ish duct, but where there are already BT ducts they are connecting to those, so hopefully once the fibre is laid (next year for terminations I believe) it can be shared (Openreach won’t get to us before 2024) or the same ducts used.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

My BT FTTP broadband is due for contract renewal on 6th May.

Wanna carry on with the current 150Mbs and EDIT: digital landline deal - and initially there appears to be lots of choice cheaper than the current £43.70/month

I've trawled most of the comparison sites and no other company can or will offer FTTP broadband and phone line to my property, after going through SEE THE DEAL process.

Can't understand why?

Openreach successfully connected the FTTP 2 years ago and it's been great.

There is no mobile signal here, if that's a possible reason? (like not able to have a Smart leccy meter)

It appears BT have a monopoly?

Any ideas folks?

Now another company are digging up the road again. Since our BT contract ends in 6 weeks we will be nicely placed to take advantage of whatever new options appear.

The question is, do we have to have the road dug up every time a new provider appears?

The roads around here are being dug up by City Fibre - except when they go on extended vanishing trips and leave piles of crap on the pavements.

My reading of the way City Fibre work is that they work as a 'platform' for a variety of different ISPs - so once the City Fibre service is available at my address (if ever*) I'll have a new choice of providers that don't use OpenReach.

*Reading reviews it seems it could be months between the City Fibre work being completed and the services being offered
They've only dug up the pavement on the other side of our cul de sac, but their modus operandi seems very strange.

Must say the contractors doing our road have been a model of efficiency (Heneghan). Of course there has been some inconvenience but the work was done remarkably quickly and everything left tidy.  What benefit it gives us I don't know yet.

[Hot Flatus]

Talktalk contract is up in 30 days. Going to go Three 5g. It's £20, and it's 150-300mbs download speed (upload is a bit slower than fibre)

[MikeFromLFE]

Talktalk contract is up in 30 days. Going to go Three 5g. It's £20, and it's 150-300mbs download speed (upload is a bit slower than fibre)

It's going to be very tempting later this month.
Reports on your experience will be much appreciated

[Hot Flatus]

Do you have a 5g phone, on Three?  Check coverage

[rafletcher]

Do you have a 5g phone, on Three?  Check coverage

And don’t trust the suppliers coverage map. We’ve apparently got “good inside and out” coverage. I get 1 bar indoors.

[Hot Flatus]

Well, I've pulled the trigger on Three.

Talk talk have just bumped their price up to £31 a month for this:




Three will work out at £15 a month for this (assuming 5g speeds via their 5g hub are the same as on my mobile):

[sojournermike]

No 5g here yet, otherwise I’d have switched already. BT’s latest round of price rises has led to ‘negotiations’…

[Hot Flatus]

Funnily enough, when I phoned Talktalk the price suddenly dropped from £31 a month to £26.

It's weird though, in the grand scheme of things it's a very minor cost, especially when compared to energy or water, or council tax.

[Horizon]

Scoping out alternatives to BT following their huge price hike - was about to jump to PlusNet when I saw the posts about Three, but I can't even get past the idiotic postal address finder on the website, so I'm out on that one. Used to be with them on PAYG until they hiked all their prices by 400% to get rid of low spenders, and their web site and app were rubbish then.

[Hot Flatus]

The postal address finder foxed me fir a moment. I had to put in first two lines of address.

What I would say is if you have a 5g phone, switch off WiFi and do a speedtest before you bother doing anything else

[Wowbagger]

We now have the option of City Fibre, it having been turned on last week. Several of my neighbours are already ditching Virgin. I had a look at the video explaining how it works, and there's a bit of an issue in the room where all our networking stuff is kept and that is a shortage of suitable power points. We are due to get this room decorated soon and that will involve lining the walls with damp-proof plaster board. I will also get them to put in some more power points, but that's non-trivial because it's a concrete floor - the rest of the house, bar the granny annexe, has floorboards, so the cables will need to be boxed in. So for the time being I think we will stick with our £14 per month Three 4g deal and hopefully get the decorating done in time for its second anniversary next January, and switch providers then.

Of course, if Three upgrade to 5g some time soon, then we might stay put, depending on the speed.

[Canardly]

Depending upon the existing layout Wow it may be possible to spur off an existing outlet to provide the required power point, involving a chase in the wall and some filler. Any existing single outlets can be doubled up. We are waiting for You Fibre to finish the network cabling in town as they seem to provide much better VFM than Virgin, including unlimited 'landline' telephone calls and no price increases during the contract period. They do not provide cable TV. However, they are taking their time about it.

[Kim]

I assume they're doing the same "ONT must be fitted within $distance of a mains socket" thing as Openreach.  Which is daft, because Power-over-Ethernet exists.

(They installed our ONT right next to a socket in the front room - coming perilously close to drilling through a load of mains wiring in the process.  However, I'm powering it using a PoE splitter^[1] so it's supplied by the UPS that powers the router and other other kit in another room.)



_{[1] Disappointingly the ONT doesn't support PoE itself.}

[Horizon]

The postal address finder foxed me fir a moment. I had to put in first two lines of address.

What I would say is if you have a 5g phone, switch off WiFi and do a speedtest before you bother doing anything else

Thanks, jumped through the address hoop to be told 'We can't offer Home Broadband at your address right now, but we're busy expanding our network to connect more homes. Check out our Mobile Broadband plans, or try a different address."
This despite the fact we have really good 5G here. I'll try the Speedtest later.

[Hot Flatus]

Maybe your local 5g signal is not from Three?

[Horizon]

Good point! However, their coverage checker (for mobiles) does show our house in the zone, perhaps the home broadband is different.

[Hot Flatus]

Well, it's up and running and it's awesome


how to check iphone screen resolution

[Kim]

Good point! However, their coverage checker (for mobiles) does show our house in the zone, perhaps the home broadband is different.

I can imagine them not wanting to sell it to people if the cell they're in is near capacity.  I can also imagine their database not getting updated in a timely manner.

[Horizon]

Couldn't do the 5G thing in the end, so I started the move to Plusnet. Very efficient UK call centre and moving along nicely towards changeover when I had a call from the BT retentions lady in Tyneside. Explained I was moving due to cost, PlusNet was the same package for almost half the price and so she explained they wanted to keep my business at any price and offered a 55% discount for 2 years and a £75 digital cash card. It would have been rude to say no, given this was £1100 saving over the old contract. PlusNet were helpful, cancelled the order and refunded my payment within a few days. As a further bonus, I now have a shiny BT Smart Hub 2, which has pushed my download from 64 to 74Mbps and a stronger wifi signal. Couldn't fault the service of either party.

[rafletcher]

Plusnet are owned by BT.  Make of that what you will.

[Kim]

Plusnet are owned by BT.  Make of that what you will.

Yes.  It wasn't the exact point they started to go downhill, but the decline proceeded apace afterwards.  I don't think BT have much input on their day-to-day running, thobut.

[ian]

I have to say that we've been with BT since, well, forever. In the last eight years since we moved to the Asbestos Palace it's glitched precisely once and for about an hour. Fortunately, they'd sent me a backup 4G router.

Of course, there must be a bit of BT involved, so the backup router didn't come with any acceptable credentials. And I think when we got the palace plumbed in, they managed to connect a line we didn't have. They fixed this by disconnecting someone else.

[slope]

My BT FTTP broadband is due for contract renewal on 6th May.

Wanna carry on with the current 150Mbs and EDIT: digital landline deal - and initially there appears to be lots of choice cheaper than the current £43.70/month

I've trawled most of the comparison sites and no other company can or will offer FTTP broadband and phone line to my property, after going through SEE THE DEAL process.

Can't understand why?

Openreach successfully connected the FTTP 5 years ago and it's been great.

There is no mobile signal here, if that's a possible reason? (like not able to have a Smart leccy meter)

It appears BT have a monopoly?

UPDATE: It seems that either BT or Openreach will not allow any other companies whatsoever to make use of the FTTP at my property. I've spoken directly to all the usual alternative providers who show up on various comparison sites - and they all say they can't access the Openreach infrastructure. On the Openreach website they say they share their stuff with all the providers I've tried. Something fishy goin' down methinks ☹️ Bastards!

[Kim]

Have you tried AAISP?  They have Shaun The BT Slayer and others who are skilled in getting sense out of our-favourite-telco well beyond the point where other retailers would give up.  If nothing else they might be able to work out what's going on...