Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

https://youtu.be/8vMbB4xhstc

No use to me, but it's faster than everything other than virgin in the immediate area. Not keen on them having a monopoly on this tech though.

Quick update after my move to zen broadband. Been with them a month now and it’s been solid. Speeds slowly ramped up over the first 2 weeks from 50mbps to 74 currently. No dropouts no issues. They were really quick to enable ipv6 on my account when I requested it. The fritzbox router is a brilliant bit of kit too, by far the best ISP router I’ve had.
I got a referral from someone on here, and I’d be happy to do the same for someone else looking to switch. Both get £40 gift voucher.

Very tempted. Any issue with the switch over? Downtime? Drama?

I was pleasantly surprised. On changeover day the old internet stopped at about 4am (from logs - I wasn’t awake!) and the new connection was up and working at about 8am if I remember rightly. I’m not sure if I needed to or if it would have picked it up automatically, but the only thing I did in the router was put my account info and password into it.
So downtime was only before 8ish, and happened really smoothly. Like I said, it took a couple of weeks to get to the speeds I knew we should be getting, but it increased every couple of days with line resync-ing or similar.
Let me know if you want the referral link.

Virgin media are putting prices up again! Id like to stay with because I cant be bothered with switching, but £3.50 pm rise takes the piss.
Gonna be calling to renegotiate and threaten to leave. Any one know what I should be aiming for just landline and broadband?

I'm paying £25 PM for just over 100mb.

Twice I've had price rises cancelled: at the end of the contract in Jan and the recent £3.50.

The recent hike was a blessing in disguise, as it's not written into the contract, so gives you the right to cancel without penalty.

Get on a comparison site to check what you can get for what price. Depends what speed you want, if you want calls included, all that kind of thing. Zen is £35/month for unlimited 80/20 broadband, no calls included. Zen also guarantees no price increases ever once your contract is up.

I tend to push for whatever the new joiner deal is.

Could I get a referral link for Zen broadband as I intend to switch.

I’ll DM you later on this week, my contract isn’t up till June but because of the price hike, I can get our sooner but I am not sure if they leaving process is the same. Sky really is taking the piss, in my 18 months contract that includes 2 x April, they have increased £2 and then £3. Was gonna leave last April but WFH and COVID meant any changes would risk no internet for days... now worse case, I can pop into the office.

And 4G is a no go. Too slow and some areas in the flat don’t have stable 4G...

Question for the floor - is the cheaper plan enough for gaming? I am not a gamer and very rarely play games but I want to get a VR headset because lockdown has finally broken me. Would the cheaper plan be enough? I live in my own so for nobody to fight with me.

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The most important thing for online gaming is ping time (measured in milliseconds), which now days is at least adequate with all major ISPs unless something is wrong somewhere.

So imho, a 40mbps connection would be ample for playing games.

I play a fair amount of games (FPS mainly) and had 25Mbps broadband until recently and my internet connection was never an issue for that.

Guess saving a fiver a month is welcome! 😉 thanks!

No prob, just DM whenever you decide you want it. Agree with the above ping comment too. 40/10 with a low ping is fine for games.

Plus net is utter utter shite.
I am in a fibre desert so have to have a BT line, so zen and hyper etc are off the table.

Every single day my wifi drops to a crawl at 1MB download for about 20 mins.
Timing is completely random.

Fucking useless

Every single day my wifi drops to a crawl at 1MB download for about 20 mins.

Timing is completely random.

What are speeds like connected directly to the router with a cable?

Normally, if your wifi is intermittent its a problem with interference with your wifi rather than a problem with your broadband. Anybody using a microwave?

Just fyi, zen don’t operate a fibre network in the same way as hyperoptic. They operate on normal BT lines both adsl and vdsl I think. We have fttc with them.

If Plusnet and BT are available, so should Zen and Sky? I mean they practically use the same lines, don't they not?

Yep you are right. Good idea to get on a comparison site or two, stick your postcode in and see what they show. If you want the very best to sort out a shitty line go with AAISP. Very niche but superb technically and customer support. AAISP.net - they are not the cheapest but they are the best. I was with them ages but needed to save a bit of money, so moved to Zen.

Nah I am going with Zen, just need to find the time to call Sky to see how I can end the shitty relationship with them early.

Sorry, that advice about comparison websites and AAISP was directed more at wjprince, after I had agreed with the statement you made about all providers operating off BT lines. I confused matters by replying to you, while the bulk of my message was to someone else. I'll get the hang of this forum thing one day!

Nah mate, all good. I did have a look at AAISP and they look solid, but they area bit expensive for me. ;-)

I just called Sky to cancel my contract and they had zero interest in retaining me. I mean, I could be tempted if they gave me a decent offer, oh well... their loss.

I was offered the new customer deal when I used "chat" to cancel few months ago, I was a customer of just 18 months. (I had already ordered Vodafone broadband to the new address, so...)

I guess they would offer me the new costumer deal too if I asked, but in the previous years, when I renewed, they always insisted to charge me another set of set up fees and admin fees and every time I had to make a complaint to have those fees waived... 🤷🏻‍♀️