Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

Switch over day, no internet for about 3 hour now. Office, here I come, it’s been a while.

Ahh! gutted it took so long for you.

Apparently it was activated at 3pm. In the end, I went to the office so only just got home. The router stopped flashing hopefully it’ll work. 🥰

And we are back online! OK, I was busy and enjoying the no internet time... 😬

Virgin were brilliant in Brighton - advertised speeds, no down time etc. But in Devon they're shit. I'm paying 50% more here than there for a third of the speed (on a 200 account here but never get more than 100), was on 350 in Brighton and usually got that. They raise their prices by around a fiver a year but I've had 3 periods where the whole day is gone in the last 4 weeks (but conveniently returns before the auto compensation thing kicks in which would refund probably £2 which more than makes up for a days productivity lost...).

The other suppliers around here are junk unless I want to pay 250 minimum to get onto giganet. Ffffu etc.

Looking to change from BT:

So looking at:
63mb with now on a 12 month contract £24 a month and £5 postage;
66mb with Plusnet on an 18 month contract £25 a month and £70 reward;
63mb with Voda on an 24 month contract £22 a month and £70 reward.

Anyone got any experience of the three providers, and their standard routers.

What has vodafone been like?

Good, for the first few weeks we were having some interruptions, they even sent the OpenReach engineer multiple times to debug the issue. Turned out to be a squeezed cable (vs. door) inside the flat which I caught, few taps with a chisel and it's now bombproof. They even defined a discount for a while (I think two months?) while the issue was ongoing.

Thank you.

We have Plusnet and the routers have not been great for wifi.
Get lots of drop offs throughout the day.
I'm hard wired for work so not really an issue and our Roku TV devices, which use wifi, seem to have enough buffering to not get effected. Could be an issue with particular GHZ but as it's not aggravating me I've not fully investigated.
The Plusnet customer service has been exceptional though. We had a problem with reduced speeds and blackouts. I rang them, didn't sit in a queue, didn't get fobbed off, they ran a test there and then, diagnosed an issue, and then got Openreach to come out a few days later.

Vodafone are an awful company with awful customer service. But that is based on previous phone contracts.

Has anyone attempted to use Virgin Media without their SuperHub modems?

Which is to say, is anyone using Virgin Media with a 3rd party terminating modem rather than putting a hub in modem mode?

I have the 1Gbps service, and the hub frequently goes down to 100Mbps. I've checked cables, connections, swapped out devices... and the hub ethernet just keeps dropping to 100Mbps and kneecapping the service I'm paying for.

I'm a little loathed to speak to Virgin Media support... I expect nothing but for them to send another box that will prove over time to be similarly affected or worse. But I don't mind throwing money at the problem, probably by buying a Surfboard S33 or something like that... but really I want to know if anyone has done it?

Yes VM used to not allow 3rd party terminations, but OFCOM ruled they must as of a while ago... so it should be possible.

It's surely worth getting the Virgin replacement at least once.

I'm on the 200Mbps service with the SuperHub as a modem and I get the full speed pretty much all the time.

Have you also ruled out it being the line before the modem? I imagine it will be impossible to get Virgin to troubleshoot that if you aren't using their modem.

My first port of call would be the forums https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/custom/page/page-id/CommunityHubForums They were way more helpful than the phone customer service when I dealt with them.

Hoping someone might be able to help - we're moving house and I've been trying to confirm whether we'll have a fibre to the cabinet / fibre to the property connection.

From what I've been told the latter is preferable but I've not had a clear answer from the previous owners, Virgin or any of the online postcode checkers. Is there a foolproof way to confirm this? Ta!

Try the broadband checker on this site - https://www.aa.net.uk/

Edit - might not throw up much but they seem to have more info than most.

If you know the postcode, this should help

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

Thank you @JonD and @Stonehedge - both really helpful sites I hadn't found, looks like it's definitely fibre to the cabinet!

Samknows has been around for ever. I remember using it in the mid to late 90s to get exchange info. Every time I use it or recommend it to somebody it sends me into nostalgia mode!

Router in the same place, just different times of day.

1 Attachment

.

1 Attachment

I'd be very happy with a consistent 20 down/10 up, but that seems to be out of the question.

What are the times of day? Are they throttling you at peak times? In this day and age, id be looking to move provider with that kind of drop.

Fast one was 10am, slow one was 3pm.

I reset the router, been keeping half an eye on it since:

26th of May:
16:43, 15 down/7 up
16:46, 24 down/7.7 up
16:59, 21 down/7.6 up
17:42, 27 down 9.1 up
20:06, 27 down 15 up
20:39, 15 down 7.9 up
20:53, 30 down 6.5 up
22:12, 21 down, 9.6 up

Not really sure this goes in here but Wembley stadium 5G is pretty good…

1 Attachment

Yes, but you would say that, because they control you now.