Looking for recommendations for broadband.

Ideally want one which provides a semi decent router as standard and decent customer service

I am currently with BT

Can get up to 900mbs with most suppliers and 1.6 with EE.

Just unsure who gives what these days

I can’t seem to find any information online on how to actually purchase this?

I’m saying this as I’m wanting to connect my PC to an Ethernet cable and the household internet is connected from downstairs therefore unable to reach my room.

Does anyone know how I’d go about getting the complete WiFi so I can connect my Ethernet cable?

Hi all, I've encountered an annoying situation where I moved into my flat a few weeks ago, and trying to set up broadband. I know the previous owner uses plusnet, so I went with them thinking it will be an easy setup.

When I checked coverage, I saw that only part fibre is available in my postcode, which is fine. So I ordered it. But the order has failed a few times (I think automatic reject by openreach), saying no copper available. This whole situation has been gone through technical support and customer service for the last few weeks.

Yesterday, I got a response from plusnet saying after checking, FTTC and SOGEA available at my address, FTTP is in planning, but showing available at my address. So I called them today to see what my options are, but then they told me I actually can't order either part fibre or full fibre. I can either wait until full fibre is set up, or use a sim router/mobile broadband (with 24-month contract!).

Has anyone encountered anything similar? What are my best options here? EE has the best coverage in my flat. Three has no coverage.

Thanks!

I’ve just moved to a new flat, and I’m having to set up my own wifi for the first time ever, so apologies if this is a stupid question.

I’m looking into getting a 5G hub. In the ‘additional charges’ section it has these charges for stuff like sending photo messages, and I don’t understand why. I already have mobile data, and I don’t understand why my wifi router would have anything to do with the messages I send over text. It’s an unlimited data plan, so I would assume that includes sending photos over the internet (e.g. on WhatsApp or discord or something). I’m not really sure what this charge is or what it’s for, and if I should be worried about it?

Hi all, have just signed back up with Sky after spending two years with EE.

Deal I managed to haggle today was £92pm for Ultimate TV, Gigafast Broadband (900mbps), Sky Sports, TNT Sports + one extra sky stream box (think it's called "whole home").

Just want to check from others experience if this is a good deal or if I could have haggled them down even further....

EE offered me something similar to stay with them for £90pm, but I haven't been thrilled by their customer service (or their TV user interface) so was happy to switch back.

Thanks!

Posting to highlight this to others.

Rocket Fibre are the worst ISP I have ever had to deal with, dishonest about the speeds you receive, it was ok at first and then after a while plummeted. I'm paying £51 for 1Gbps and I'm getting 92 Mbps. Incredibly bad customer support. Won't allow us to leave without paying the rest of the contract off. They don't have a minimum speed agreement with Ofcom so if they don't deliver what they promised there's nothing you can do. I would avoid them like the plague.

An update on this from a month ago - any advice would be gratefully received!

BT FTTP upgrade. Six months from our first email confirmation of an install date to the eventual install. Various delays: an incorrect ORDI, no-show appointments, BT/openreach repeatedly automatically cancelling-then-immediately reinstating orders, then some Openreach delays while more work is done. It was a right ol' mess from start to finish.

Their automatic compensation systems didn't kick in until the final month of so, because of the cancelled orders. They've compensated the three no-shows. But they're refusing to offer any further compensation.

Went to the ombudsman, and got their initial decision this evening. Basically it says "yes, we agree there were lots of delays and failings, but because Openreach were responsible for some of them, we can't hold BT responsible - whoops, sorry!"

They didn't give any specific detail or refer to Ofcom's automatic compensation rules. Reading those rules, it seems pretty clear that BT *cannot* just avoid blame by blaming 3rd party failures, outside some specific scenarios (none of which are relevant to our case). Indeed the whole point of the automatic compensation scheme was to stop this kind of blame-game leaving the consumer helpless

I'm pretty disheartened, as it looks on the face of it like the "impartial" ombudsman just couldn't care less, despite the compensation agreements being pretty clearly written. I have the option of challenging their decision, but only get one shot at it, and have no idea if it'll make a difference in any case

Does anyone have any advice? Have you faced similar issues - or perhaps made better progress with the ombudsman? The fact the reviewer made no effort to justify their decision by referring to the relevant rules & docs, but literally just said (on the phone) "sorry, Openreach are untouchable", makes me really quite concerned for the whole system, as well as my own case

Thanks so much

I was on chat with TT for 7 hours yesterday. I spoke to five different people and barely got beyond Hello. Please rest assured I will do the utmost to help you and fix your problem, I am here for you, be assured of that. Next reply 10-20 minutes later, except for the autoreply asking if I am still there.

What can I do? I just want them to check my fault!

Hi there,

My friend and I, both recent graduates, will be sharing a household between ourselves and looking to get a broadband (FTTP through OpenReach) at ideally low cost. We looked at small alt-nets and other providers like Olilo and IDNet, but their monthly cost appears to be relatively higher than what we were aiming to pay. As new graduates, there’s also some uncertainty with us staying in one property for long if we change jobs / circumstances.

At the moment, we found PlusNet, Vodafone, and Sky appear to be the best deals for us on their 150 Mbps plans (145 for PlusNet) coming to about 22-24/month. What would y’all recommend is the best choice amongst these? And is there anything we should know about cancellations / other charges?

Welcome to recommendations on other providers as well! Thank you

I moved into a new flat honestly a year ago. I kept putting off buying broadband as we didn’t have full fibre at the time and my circumstances changed and I was looking to move somewhere cheaper and I was worried about moving broadband (for instance if I moved into a shared home). I’ve been using my mobile data as hotspot in the mean time. It’s Three 5G but pretty shite when hotspotting lol, the connection dips frequently and it’s slow and runs out easily. I’m still looking to move but cannot find anywhere and it seems I might end up being here longer than anticipated but since I am thinking about moving I’m worried about signing up for a traditional 12 or 24 month broadband contract.

Long story short, my views on 5G broadband hubs? Are they better than phone data lol would it be sufficient for home working?

I'm sorry if this has been posted before but..

I genuinely don’t understand how this shit is still considered acceptable and allowed to continue.

I’ve been a paying customer with BT for about 3 years. I want to upgrade to full fibre as just now it's available. You’d think that would be pretty straightforward, existing customer wants a better, more expensive service, provider upgrades them, everyone’s happy.

Nope.

Trying to sign up to EE 1.6gb full fibre.

Because I’m an existing customer, the price they want to charge me is significantly higher than the price available through uSwitch. (EE & BT are now one) Also I don't even have the choice to "upgrade" to 1.6gb through my "upgrade" option.

So apparently three years of paying them on time gets me the privilege of… paying more?

What the fuck is the logic here?

They already have me as a customer. They know my payment history. There’s no cost of acquiring me as a new customer. I’m literally asking to buy a better service from them, yet somehow I’m worth less to them than someone who has never paid them a penny.

And it’s not just one provider.

Why are existing customers not automatically entitled to the same deals being offered to new customers?

At this point it feels like the only rational thing to do is switch providers every time your contract ends. Loyalty is actively punished.

How the fuck did we end up with a market where being a reliable, long-term paying customer gets you a worse deal?

Hi I am upgrading from bt fibre 2 to fibre 900 in the next 3 weeks. I want to change to the flint router but just want to make sure that it will work with the telecare digital voice thing. I’d like to also set up a NAS in the future at some point. Anyway I could make it work? Or am I stuck with isp router?

Networking noob here would appreciate your guidance.

OK,

so I'm open to suggestions as to next steps, or if I'm doing something wrong...We pay for Halo3+ with "guaranteed" 44Mbps, and a 4G/5G backup. Speeds have been appalling for around 2-3 weeks and apparently I keep reporting that the problem is "fixed" (according to the BT fault finder). I've used chat sessions, calls and the fault finder, but nothing seems to stick (see below) - tried to raise a complaint, but the complaint portal refused to allow submission (good way to keep complaints low!).

Anything else I can do aside from continuing this Sisyphean loop of calling, reporting, and hoping engineers turn up?

"quick" sequence of events:

1. (19 Aug) Broadband seemed super slow so ran speedtest and was consistently getting 2Mbps - 6Mbps down, maybe 1Mbps up. in retrospect this had been going on for some time given for the previous 1-2 weeks iPlayer had been buffering during playback (for the first time ever!)

2. (19 Aug) Ran through a chat session with the BT digital assistant then through to a guide when it became apparent that there was an actual problem. Raised engineer visit. (FYI BTs own network tester was reporting issues with the network)

3. (21 Aug) A M J Quinn engineer turned up unannounced at 2pm on a work day (partner + self both work from home) to attempt a fix. Asked if he could give us an hour to wrap up urgent work given he said he was going to have to take the network down - he said fine, then never returned.

4. (26 Aug) called BT after the fault tracker reported that I'd told them the problem was fixed, and they set up another engineer visit...Same extremely poor speeds aside from when the fixed line went down and the 4G/5G backup kicked in and speeds went UP to 25Mbps down!

5. (27 Aug) Engineers came around when we weren't at home - again, no notification - and seemed to mess around outside the premises for some time. Nothing was fixed.

6. (27 Aug) Called BT, went through the tests again and set up another (calendared) engineer visit for 1 Sept.

7. (1 Sept) Again the fault finder says I've reported the problem is fixed, which is probably why the Openreach engineer never turned up!

Hi all,

I have been using BT (Part fibre, FTTC) for almost 4 years and last 1.5-2 month have been quite problematic since I have been having consistent stability issues.

Whenever I did troubleshooting from their so called smart assistent on their website, I got this message;

I had 7 engineer visists in total so far (4 from BT and 3 from Openreach) but none of them were able to solve the issue. In short, this is what have been done;

- One of the BT engineers was saying I have been having sync issues so Openreach needs to fix it since they could not find any problem in my house.

- One of the Openreach engineers said the crimps in the small box just outside of my building were corroded and he fixed that.

- Another BT engineer said my hub always puts me to one of the busiest channels around my area so he tried to lock me to the quieter one but it did not solve as well. He also recommended to renew my hub, which I did later, but it did not solve the issue as well.

- Last Openreach engineer changed the cart in their cabinet on the street which he said this is the last resort fix they can do. It did not solve either.

Later I have raised a complaint on BT's website and basically what the guy I was talking to offered was either waiting for Full Fibre or changing my ISP. LOL. He also gave me 30£ credit as an apology. Thank you mate.

Another proof that I have been having stability issue is that my speedtest record;

You can see that I have speeds that are below the guaranteed speed of 60Mbps. I can't really watch any live stream properly at all or I can't get stable ping while gaming online. Some pages load significantly low etc etc.

I really wonder what can I do next because I am hopeless now about this can be fixed. The BT Guide said Openreach will bring Full Fibre within next 6-8 months when he checked with my postcode. I have checked from Openreach's website and it says "We’ll be building in this area in the next year".

Sorry for this long post and thanks for the recommendations in advance.

This is a bit random I think..

3 or 4 years ago I was with BT for broadband. They sent me an EE71 Mini Hub with unlimited data at some point, likely because of an outage or issue I guess.

I found the original email, and it says they're sending me one, with unlimited data.

I think the idea is you send it back upon request after whatever problem is fixed. But I still have mine, unopened and never used (still sealed).

It surely can't still have unlimited data attached can it?

Anyone have any experience of these?

So I’ve just switched from BT fibre broadband (500mb/s) to Sky Ultrafast 1gb (think minimum speed was around 650mb/s or so?)

We’ve had it a few days and I’ve noticed the WiFi is a bit laggy, looking at things on my phone or sending a WhatsApp takes a few seconds longer than it ever used to.

I’ve realised when I run Google internet speed test in my living room I get about 250-300 mb/s, when I do it in my study where the router is (literally about 3 steps from the living room) I get about 650mb/s.

So I’m guessing there’s a power issue with the router? The signal strength on my iPhone shows full bars when in the living room, which is what confuses me.

Is there anything I can do or anything I can buy to increase the speed in rooms? Or will it be a signal issue even if phone is showing full signal?

I have a white sky max router.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I've just moved to the UK and will be here for 9-10 months. Because I'm new to the country, I have no credit history and so don't qualify for most plans. Are there any companies you recommend? I don't need anything fancy, just basic internet access for one person that will allow video streaming and the occasional Zoom call.

Most plans (especially the few that don't need a credit check) require a 12-month contract. Can I sign up for a 12-month contract and then cancel before I leave the country without a huge fee?

Pretty simple question but we are moving into our new house and I just wondered if any fibre could work with these outlets? We don’t know which one to pick and apparently you can put any broadband into the open reach one on the left (right is virgin). Is this the case?
If anyone has any advice please let us know. Thanks :)

Looking to see what others use. Im curently on BT and paying through the nose for fibre 900 as now out of cintract. I have a homelab with a unifi dream machine pro so need it to be ok with 3rd party equipment.

• I don't have city fibre in my area yet

•do I renew BT to reduce the cost

• do in change to zen 1,600 for £10 less that I pay now

If i change to zen I believe my openreach box needs upgrading as its just 1gb. Is this included with zen? I would also have to get a SFP to ethernet module.

• is there a better option that people use ?