Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

Virgin broadband engineer is here later. I'm switching from Plusnet, purely cost and speed based. I've got a feeling it's gonna be an ordeal though

Thanks for the replies, I've just checked the Zen pricing again, I guess it's not too bad, £49 for 100mb and phone. Vodafone are offering the same for £25 which seems suspiciously cheap. No hyperoptic in my area unfortunately. I think I will have to wait until after lockdown anyhow. I can't risk downtime, working from home and wife is remote teaching everyday. Are ISPs even doing installations at the moment?

Are ISPs even doing installations at the moment?

Anecdotally I've heard waits are still very long. Just not enough engineers to go round and its affecting most types of install.

We're in the middle of a 9 month wait for Hyperoptic to put in a couple of bearers to our building and all the road work has been done...they just don't have capacity to do the end point work.

Useful price comparison chart of all Zen products:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps/zen

Their cheapest FTTP product is £35pm (but why would you get FTTP for only 35Mbps connection?)

Their cheapest proper FTTP (100Mbps) is £39pm.

Why are you moving away from Virgin if it's been decent? Personally I find their product really good, customer service a bit shit (much better service through the forums than the phone though).

I wouldn't move to another FTTP at the moment unless your current provider is not working, lots of install delays at the moment.

was going to ask this question as well, but got sidetracked.
If virgin is fine and you've not experienced their bad customer service why would you leave, unless it's too expensive?

Yeah it's price, we're out of contract and really struggling to get a good offer from them. It's slowly creeping to £70/month. I've been onto retentions numerous times, and currently trying through their complaints department but they seem very reluctant to make a decent offer. My bargaining skills must be a bit rubbish. We've been with them since before they were Virgin so they probably know I can't really be bothered to switch.

To get a decent price from them I actually had to start the process of leaving. I then got the same price as a new joiner which I was fine with.

I was with bt for almost a decade and had no communication with them apart from bills, no upgrade on my outdated router or anything. Just the same service with the price rising a little bit at the end of each contract, until it was getting to £70. It was only when I’d made the decision to leave that the retention team kicked in and even then it was still £20 more than the deal I got with zen. As @aggi you’ll only get decent offers if you’re willing to leave..

The UK internet market is a bit crap. There really isn't a lot in the way of real competition for most people.

If you have either Virgin cable to your property or fibre to your property - just go for that and do your best to get a deal but accept it if you cannot get a deal.

But frequently it's one or the other, you don't get to play them off against each other and choose what is best for you.

The real problem though is that the vast majority of the country only has fibre to the cabinet (which may be 500m-2km away), and then the engineers really don't care about how bad the twisted pair is up your stairway and across the flat and seldom take care to make sure that's good. As long as any signal can get down the wire they sign it off and leave... so you may have fantastic internet to about 1km away, and pretty good internet to just outside your house, and then absolutely shite internet inside your house.

The market is terrible, the service awful, the onboarding of a new customer a trauma, the annual price hikes insulting considering the lack of investment in your service, the bundling of unwanted features a PITA (especially landline, TV, etc)...

... and yet once you have working internet, whatever you do - don't fuck it up by changing provider.

whatever you do - don't fuck it up by changing provider

Ha! the nagging voice in my head. When I read about the nightmare experiences some people have with their broadband I think I'm okay paying the price I'm on. I've never had to worry about the service, we have the occasional 15min drop out and have had a couple of bigger outages in all the years but other than that it just works. Seeing all the new customer deals gets me going though.

This sounds a bit dense, but having never switched I don't even really know the process. Do I just call Virgin and say I want to cancel, what if they call my bluff? I guess I need a viable alternative that I'd actually be willing to move to.

What would be the closest equivalent to a 100mb Virgin line? I'm guessing it would be 100mb FTTP, that's what I've been looking at anyway.

Thanks for all the input and advice.

Do I just call Virgin and say I want to cancel, what if they call my bluff?

Worst comes to the worst you can cancel the cancellation at the last minute. However, when I told them I was cancelling they offered me a better deal within a couple of days.

One of the reasons we have EE 4G home broadband is because of the poor quality of our cabling and BT wanting a six figure sum to sort it out. Was easier and cheaper for us to negotiate with Hyperoptic to cable our block for FTTP for about 20% of the price BT wanted to do our FTTC and get 4G internet in the meantime while we wait for the fibre to be blown through to us.

BT literally couldn't give a toss about a block of 70 flats with 20Mbps intermittent internet in London and would probably leave us like this for a decade before getting round to do anything.

I dream of 20Mbps, we get 8 down and .25 up due to a 1930's block and paper wrapped solid copper phone lines.

Therefore I am seriously considering the 4G/5G option - looking at the coverage checkers EE seems to be the one that covers Forest Hill the most. Can anyone comment?

Get a selection of pay as you go SIMs (or ask your neighbours) and do speed tests on your phone - see which one is fastest and then go with them.

I bought a Huawei B535 router for £90 and am currently on a £35 a month giffgaff sim. Speeds are 50-90 mb/s down and 10-20 upload. Service so far has been fairly reliable.

Giff-Gaff is O2 is it not? That's zero 5G in my area.

Looks like my choice is EE or nothing, based on the networks various coverage checkers (I've now gone though them).

If I order the EE 5G router/contract presumably I can cancel within 14 days and return it if the coverage is rubbish?

Yes, O2

We’re currently only on 4g. Very limited 5g where we are and the speeds we’re getting on 4g are ample.

We've been 4g EE for quite a while for the same reasons as you. Shitty 1930s wiring and BT wanting too much money to replace it.

Weve got strange circumstances as EE rent a spot on our roof for a mast so we have excellent signal. We get anything between 30Mbps and 200MBps depending on time of day. We've found it to be a very good service to get away from our shit broadband while we wait for hyperoptic to do their thing.

EE 5g is very patchy in South London at the moment. Haven't actually detected a 5g signal around Lewisham or Bermondsey for months. Not even exaggerating.

You're very unlikely to get 5G inside your flat at any speeds that are worth it.
Even if you're living with a mast on your roof, 5G waves do not penetrate buildings very well, if at all, and your type of construction definitely won't help.

Do you have a 5G capable phone? If so, I would try an EE PAYG sim first before ordering anything.

There's this thing, although I can't actually make the EE site sell it to me:

https://shop.ee.co.uk/dongles/pay-monthly-mobile-broadband/huawei-5g-cpe-pro/details

Which has what looks to be an external arial.

Huawei <-> 5G?
I think there's been a discussion about this,
all the way up to the House of Commons.

Hone router is not network core.

Ok, using the Ofcom speed checker:

Three mobile 4G on iPad Pro: 0.8Mbps down, 1.6Mbps up

This worked once, then crashed repeatedly and I couldn't get it to work again on any device.

Moving to speediest.net:

iPad Pro/Three/4G: Download 0.18Mbps, Upload 4.14Mbps
iPhone 12/EE/4G: Download 12Mbps, won't show Upload on mobile annoyingly but I routinely turn off wifi to upload photographs from my phone that I've taken with my camera
M1 Mac Air/Zen ADSL: Download 9.12, Upload 0.55Mbps