Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

boycott sky

i've got talk talk in the same area as you chris
in 3 years i've had one issue that led to an outage of 3-4 days otherwise all good, you just don't want to have to deal with their phone centres
i've got a basic package.. calls plus 9MB line nothing flash no tv services it's about £24 per month all in, i'm looking to renegotiate that downwards a bit the next time one of their offers comes along

Ffs they're all shit aren't they? No idea who to go with, want to leave virgin

Just an update, move to SSE went through without a hitch, same speeds as BT but half the price. Package is unlimited broadband and calls to landlines, plus should hopefully be getting £70 cashback through Quidco. It was £20 p/m (first year free internet) for landline and interwebs but now it's £28 p/m but with £100 voucher. Would recommend if you are out in the sticks (a place called Glassel in Aberdeenshire) and BT own a monopoly over your internet connection. I'm sure you get better deals in Londons famous London.

Just add my tuppence worth. I've been with Tesco for 2-3 years, not bad. Very cheap. Awful router.

Switched to EE, good deal. Again, not bad and better router. Gonna move when my 12 months are up, cause you'd be mad not to with all the new customer deals going about.

Do you have to use the companys router or can you buy your own? How.much is a router that would be noticably better than the ones issued as standard likely to cost?

Depends is the stock router has the modem built in like the Virgin ones do these days. £100 will get you a router with a noticeable speed increase.

You can use the Virgin ones in modem mode though (at least the fibre) and pass straight through to a decent router.

I bought a decent router for £65 as I wanted dual band and better wi-fi but the speed didn't increase if I was near the router, more as I got further away. Again, that was with cable rather than through the phone line.

Further update, still waiting on Quidco cashback, but I've just got a £100 Love2Shop voucher from SSE through the post and broadband speeds are exactly the same as what we done had with BT, so far so good!

went with John Lewis.

Seems fine, phone support is pretty good.

Only thing is the speed seems to massively slow up at random times. Why would that be?

So we had reached our MB limit hence the slowdown. Called John Lewis, UK call centre, they upgraded us to unlimited for 12 months half price £9 a month.

So far so good I would recommend them.

Best provider for fast uploads? We've just moved and looking for a new contract. At the moment I'm just paying bolt ons for my mobile phone contract to use tethered 4G when I need to upload large files. Works out about a tenner a file. Not ideal but all chargeable to clients so... But still, would like a fixed line at the same or faster speeds. Currently 1GB on WeTransfer via 4G is about 20 minutes. Would like to half that if possible.

@Velocio seems to get very good upload speeds, not sure which provider he is with.

I'm with Virgin Media.

On their 150Mbps package, costs £33 per month or thereabouts.

I need the upload speed for my Plex server :)

I'm with Virgin too, 50 mpbs, I'm lucky if I get 5mbps up.

My Virgin upload has always seemed to be about 10% of the download speed

I signed a virgin contract about 3 weeks ago, and their 'technicians' came to install at my flat. They put the cable through the wall, hooked up the box, then couldn't get it to work (something about the signal not being stable) so left assuring me I'd have a phone call from their manager to organise the repair by the end of the day.

Without much surprise and 3 weeks later, following 8 calls to Virgin, I haven't heard anything from anyone, or so much as received a courtesy call.

Now, I don't really want to cancel my contract, as I'm not sure I can get a better deal, and I've been assure that until my internet works I won't be billed by Virgin.

Is there either any way I can force them the repair the line and get it working (such as official consumer complaints), or is there for c. £30 pcm another provider who will give me reliable 50mb without a landline?

Start emailing important people at Virgin. Can't quite remember who I emailed when I had complaints, I think it was the CEO or similar, but it got much better results.

Tweet their official twitter with somethnig like #VirginMedia that usually works too.

Same I came to this thread wondering if I should go with Virgin Media or not. Might give it a shout anyway. The fibre isn't a bad deal.

Anyone got a 3G / 4G wireless router they can lend me for a month? Need broadband in the new place and Virgin have royally fucked us so no install until December.

I'd rather not pay for the router as well as the sim card if i don't have to...

Sweet holy 200Mbs.

Only three weeks from moving in, to install but i'm so happy.

The earliest they can offer is December 24th which is fucking useless for a LOL 'QuickStart' delivery of a hub. Does anyone have any tricks to speed things up?

EE in Chiswick / Hammersmith is brilliant. Shame about the shite router that comes with. But I suppose all routers from broadband providers are going to be arse right?

Anyone got any first-hand views on Gigaclear? Supposedly very fast symmetrical fibre to the premises broadband for rural places. Looks good... Maybe too good to be true?

Anyone have a suggestion for 4G dongles? Seeing as Virgin aren't installing until the 24th I need internet at home.

I'm with Vodafone for mobile (4G iPhone plan so could tether but I estimate I'll need at least 20GB data uploaded between now and 24th). Don't want a contract, just PAYG 20GB if that exists.

Got a Three dongle but raced through about 50 quid of data so am having an Internet free week save the remaining scraps here on my phone.

Virgin hub came today but they didn't pack a splitter and the previous owner took their wall box so it's basically useless. Engineer coming on Wednesday to install.