Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

I have actually. My dad does this because he was getting charged 65 a month from Vodafone for a 10GB monthly cap on 20mbps broadband until I saw his bill... they also had him on a 40 a month 5GB data plan for his mobile phone.

He'd stayed with them for 15 odd years because his niece once worked there and had him on her friends and family discount scheme.

He's not with Vodafone anymore.

However my house has walls like a nuclear bunker. I have to be outside to get a clean signal. So not sure how well I'd cope with 4G. Also I suspect they'd cap even an 'unlimited' plan with the amount of data I'd need going up and down.

Pity none of the cable alternatives are anywhere near west london.

Wait, what?
I'm in West London, paying Community Fibre £27 a month for 920Mbps symmetric FTTP with a 1ms ping.

Ealing. No CF and no Hyperwhatsit

Thanks. My plan was to grab one and test it out before I killed off Virgin. Can't really afford for it to be shit. Annoying I can get 5G just outside but not inside (on my phone).

What's the community fibre TV offering like - my only hesitation about leaving virgin is that I use + enjoy the TiVo box and channels (yeah I'm a philistine, I know).

Can anyone who has made the switch confirm it's not a downgrade on that?

Literally no idea, I haven't even thought about DVRs since about 2009. Since then I just streamed and/or torrented everything.

Edit: apparently CF do have a TV package. No idea how it compares to anything else, as I'd never even thought to check.

Bad luck. They have a map showing they're "in" Ealing, but I guess actual coverage is street-by-street.

They were "in" Hammersmith & Fulham for a while before I was able to switch at the start of the year.

Yeah, I checked them out and they're close but not close enough.

I just want decent broadband for the lowest price and I want rid of the TV and phone shit.

Yeah I guess steaming's possible, just annoying (means ads on loads of stuff, plus things expire). CBA with torrents (not least as I don't really agree with it morally)

This is one of the main reasons I'm still with Virgin (plus I have a decent package and very few faults).

Reviews of the TV service are very scarce and I don't really want to go to a service where I'm having to piss around with loads of catchup services to watch things.

Yup - ditto. It's not as fast as I think it should be but I don't have cut-outs so hesitant to move, even though it is expensive

I was a fibre customer (£64 a month) then cancelled and signed up as a new customer for £85 a month all in volt bundle thing (1Gb fibre, full TV package, two boxes and an O2 sim). Turns out, they're shit at getting the sim bit sorted and never added it to the contract or sent it out and that was £25 of the deal so I'm paying £60 a month for the next 18 months for TV and fibre.

J'habite a Cambridge so no rural Scotland discount if that's a real thing.

You need to start the leaving process before they'll give you a proper offer
It's 30 days notice and they'll pester you to stay a few times. Find out the cheapest option you can get from uswitch, hotukdeals or similar and then tell Virgin you're leaving. Wait til they call you to persuade you to stay etc.
I was on £35 for the 500mb, no tv or phone. and £16 with O2 for ~60GB data, unlt calls/texts

then the volt bundle thing bumped the internet to the 1gb package and doubled the mobile data for no extra money

it recently went up to £42 for t'internet and the mobile price up a few quid too, so I guess I'm at about £60pm for internet and phone (at least until CF next month)

CF engineer installing my broadband said the TV package was to be avoided.

They are not really in tune with the market, not even their own, the new offer would be a slight speed downgrade from what I had with them before.

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Have been using the Three 5G router for a few weeks, been a bit of a godsend as we take it to the new flat where one room is finished and my partner works from there and then we take it back to old flat for the evenings it’s not as fast at the old place but we get decent up and down which is way more than we had with virgin and it’s £24 not £50. pretty happy so far but we will need to get a new router or some kind of mesh thing as concrete and cinder block walls mean wireless drops in the further bedroom.
what i do like is just plugging it in anywhere and not a mess of cables and sockets by the from door. it actually feels like a proper solution not the stopgap before getting community fibre and building a niche cupboard inside the front door to house the cable/socket/router gubbins when we finally switch though that’s not urgent now the 5G is proving usable.

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I have a Three SIM in my phone - is it wrong to make the assumption that tethering to my phone will simulate the experience of one of these Three broadband boxes? ie. does phone tethering knock off some throughput or does the carrier limit it or any other kind of crap?

Thinking I just try and run a day with both of us tethering and that might give an idea of how good/bad Three mobile broadband box might be

Is there any plausible way of dealing with virgin? my contract is due to end and after waiting 45 mins on chat, they've given me an offer for the M250 package

they are the only FTTP here (no surprises) and I just need broadband only

@musa as a few messages up

You need to start the leaving process before they'll give you a proper offer
It's 30 days notice and they'll pester you to stay a few times. Find out the cheapest option you can get from uswitch, hotukdeals or similar and then tell Virgin you're leaving. Wait til they call you to persuade you to stay etc.

Or do as I did and literally leave and sign up as a new customer (in wife's name) Ended up having the new service start 5 days before the end of the last one and the guy who came acted like it happened all the time and just switched the equipment over with no hassle.

Sounds like a fucking waste of time and resources to me. Stupid telecoms pricks.

yeah I read that earlier - already got the offer via the leaving process route
funnily enough - dont see much offers via uswitch. - new customer price is what they are offering me albeit 50p more

saw an offer earlier but it went after an hour when I refreshed the page

New customer price is normally what I go for when renewing. In the past it has seemed a decent price for what you get (assuming that you are happy with the service).

We were due to get Virgin M250 installed today, but I think the engineer turned up and had a look at the front garden and then fucked off without speaking to me, and delayed the install date by 2 weeks as they need to dig a trench for the fibre cable. The front garden is owned by our upstairs neighbours and we have access rights to our front door so we'd have to negotiate that with them

Don't think 5G is an option as we've got chunky stone walls and the signal is terrible except right in the window

So it seems like if we want fibre (inevitable within 5-10 years?) at some point someone is going to have to dig up the front garden.

It looks like OpenReach have done the street around the corner but not ours. Our neighbour (on the corner with the other street) can get gigabit through OpenReach but we can't. My understanding is that Virgin have their own infrastructure and everyone else uses OpenReach, is that right? So if we want to avoid digging up the garden twice, my thinking would be we just stick with shitty 60Mbit and wait til OpenReach have got to our street as we'll have a much greater choice of providers? Do (e.g.) Hyperoptic, CityFibre, etc. have their own infrastructure or are they on OpenReach as well?

Community Fibre and Hyperoptic can both just run the fibre to your house from the nearest telegraph pole, assuming you already have one for the Openreach VDSL.

No idea if either are useful for you, but they don't have to dig anything up (except perhaps to reach the pole in the first place)