Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

Thanks, that's great to know if/when they get here. CityFibre are "preparing to build" apparently but Hyperoptic are not. No Community Fibre in Edinburgh.

The current copper cable comes from a telegraph pole through a tree, looks a bit sketchy but I guess preferable to wrecking our neighbour's garden mere days after we move in

My understanding is that Virgin have their own infrastructure and everyone else uses OpenReach, is that right?

Nope, at least CF and Hyperoptic from that list have their own networks, although my understanding is that CF have entirely their own network while Hyperoptic still use at least some Openreach infra behind the scenes.

FWIW current fibre cables are thinner than the copper cable going though your neighbour's tree and are fitted with a spring loaded coil of extra cable on the house end - a bit like a retractable dog lead - so I doubt running it through the tree would be an issue.

Cheers.

Doesn't seem sensible to dig up the front garden if there's going to be a bunch of alternatives within a year or two so I'll have to cancel Virgin and stick with a measly 60Mbps for now 😑

So im in a area that until recently has never had virgin or really fast internet.

I'm currently on BT Fibre, but fuck me its chronic. Upload 7-9mb and Download 44mb but in reality it doesnt work anywhere near that.

Upload a 1.4gb file and it took 35 mins, is there anyway I can get BT business to sort it or am I gonna have to ride out this shit contract till I can move.

I’d maybe avoid VM if these news stories are anything to go by: https://www.which.co.uk/policy-and-insight/article/which-tackles-unfair-broadband-price-hikes-by-demanding-ofcom-investigation-of-unlawful-virgin-media-contracts-aHbcc2V9AUqT

Can you get BT fibre to the house? I’ve got that and get pretty consistent 150 down, 50up which is what I pay for and seems to be very minimal deviation from that over the day.

@frankenbike running it through the neighbour’s tree wasn’t an issue when mine went in last week

Trying to order some more wifi discs for my BT Broadband (BT Complete Wifi - their equivalent of a mesh network). I've got one disc but I need another 2 to get the flat completely covered as a couple of rooms are "poor" (they let you have 3 max).

Can't just order them online, no, that would be too easy.

• Directed to use the app (which is useless as it just redirects you to a page on bt.com that no longer exists).
  
• Tried the website and the "Message Now" button for online chat never appears.
  
• Tried to call, it just directs you to a conversation with a "BT Diagnostics bot" over text, and the bot wants to drop and reestablish my broadband line, which I don't need it to do.
  
  

Going to try to use words like "complain" and "human" to hopefully speak to a real person.

Back on the renewal jobba with Virgin again.

First offer for the package that I'm paying £55 a month for was a renewal price of £120/month!
Next offer was £70/month which I was tempted by before considering it is a 25%+ increase on my current bill so said I wanted to cancel.

That took 20 minutes and I'll see what happens next. I now have Community fibre available so fairly sanguine about not getting a better offer.

Main thing I'd miss would be the TV box, don't want to be pissing around having to flick between loads of apps to watch stuff on catch-up. I just want to record stuff (with series link) and have it for when I want it.

If you have the option switch to Community fibre, do it. I switched to 4th utility which is a similar deal and the quality of the internet connection is worlds better. I have a computer that is connected to a VPN all the time and with Virgin it would lose connection every couple of days
and then fail to reconnect, now it can run for weeks.
The new cable is super thin compared to the old chunky Virgin one.

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I've never had much in the way of problems with my Virgin connection, I suspect not using their router improves things greatly. I would like the improved speed (particularly upload) of Community Fibre.

Main issue is what I'll replace the Virgin TV box with, there don't seem to be that many decent options for that.

My Virgin cabling is decent because it emerges directly into my cupboard with all TV/network stuff and another cable in that rat's nest isn't an issue. Would need to ensure Community Fibre could also terminate there.

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Sweet Jesus that cupboard is terrifying

PUT IT AWAY

nsfl

If you look closely, you'll see in the top right there's a labelling machine so I can keep it all nicely organised ...

Anyone got Hyperoptic in Hackney? They’ve come knocking with a very good deal - free for a year, then only £25 a month for 500Mb, 24 month contract.

When we got CF wired in they seemed pretty happy to terminate it wherever we wanted (within reason). Also nice thing about the router is that it's a stock Linksys Mesh jobby so you can just buy off the shelf extenders rather than having to pay CF £5 a month in perpetuity

I had it in N16 for years before I moved out of area. It was rock solid and they had good customer service.

Leyton, but it's the best ISP I've ever had (and I've had more than my fair share).

Shout if you'd like a referral code, we'd both get £100 Amazon vouchers.

So they’d pay me £100 to use it for a year. Nice.

I just hate that these things are always amazon

I already have a router and wired APs. Probably need to check that they will work with CF, I assume the Linksys router can be put into modem mode somehow or something.

The instal is a modem and then the Linksys router, so you should be fine using your own (and maybe see if you can get a discount for not using the Linksys one? Or just flog it on eBay?)

@aggi, when I stopped paying VM for TV I just hooked up a Roku streaming stick to the TV and used smart services only. The money you save can go towards Netflix etc...

We haven't looked back and none of the family miss anything about cable TV.

Next week I will be switching to Zen and stop being a Virgin customer for the first time in 20 odd years.

Streaming bugs me for a few reasons.

It's slightly delayed which is particularly annoying for live sport.
Some don't let you fast forward, some you can fast forward but you can't see what you are fast forwarding so you don't know when to hit play, some have compulsory ads.
It's scattered across loads of different streaming apps so you have to have an idea what you want to watch first rather than just see everything that you've been recording.

If there was some nice, integrated front-end I may be keener but I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist.

I'm just about to switch to CF if you're happy to share a referral code.

PMed

Can’t you just get a Freeview recorder box?