Broadband providers, service & speeds

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After nearly 15 years it looks like its time to leave Virgin Media for broadband etc. They are not up a spot of negotiation and the price is about to jump by £25 per month. Having fibre right up to the house, we have been spoilt for speeds and the number of devices that can be connected at the same time. Kids are always on their tablets etc :rolleyes:

Wondering what your experiences of providers are - I see Plusnet & NOW TV seem to have good offers for new customers, but I know nothing about them.

Many thanks.
 
I'm with BT and despite their reputation have always been satisfied. The supplied router is good, they offer good WiFi mesh solutions and there is BT Sport if you like. Also discounted deals on mobile packages. They try and increase your price every couple of years at which you suggest you can find cheaper and they haggle!
 
When we moved back in 2012, I left VM (by proxy, having been a TeleWest and Yorkshire Cable customer) as there was no service where we were moving to. We switched to BT at that point. I have to say, they did everything they said they would when they would ... our router arrived on time and our service began promptly thereafter in accordance with the schedule.

I have had no outages despite living at the end of a wet piece of wire, circa 4Mb/s on a good day which got some work done and boosted to about 20Mb/s for the last few years. It's enough for what I do. Full fibre to house is available now and I'll upgrade next time I negotiate prices. I have haggled three times since moving in 8 years ago. Each time, they brough the price down and offered more service items (once I got a lot of Cloud, another time free everyday calls and this last time the put free mobile onto my landline).

Yeah, BT are alright!
 
I must say Zen is new to me. I'll check them out.
I've been with Zen for about 20 years now and I wouldn't switch without a knife at my throat.
They are not bargain basement, but they guarantee they will never increase their price.
I've only had three issues in all that time (all were BT/OpenReach problems) and every time Zen answered the phone immediately and the person on the line understood what I was talking about. They even had my exotic imported router in their database and didn't freak out. They diagnosed the problems quickly and made sure they were fixed asap. (When a BT engineer had swapped my phone line with that of a neighbour the fix took a day or two).
Customer service instead of "as cheap as possible". That's my choice.
 
I have Plusnet - I find the speeds perfectly acceptable (I average 30mbps), streaming on TV and kids tablets works fine together. It's decent value. I haven't very often need to contact them, but that is definitely not great, it's often difficult to get through on the phone. Web chat can be a little better, but contacting them is the weak spot
 
I've had good luck with BT in the past. Common complaints seem to be about getting problems resolved if they happen, but I didn't have any. They were the most expensive though.

I had decent experience with Talk Talk but that was years ago. I had the most problems with them though, even if only a few a year.

I've been with Sky for a good few years now with no problems as such. By that I mean there's been a little bit of connection issues during the Covid lock down but very little. Considering how much streaming etc has been used during lock down they have bee pretty damn good I'd say.

When I first started with Sky I called them and leaned heavy on them for a discount price as I don't use a landline to make calls. They gave me a deal at £18 a month unlimited Broadband. That's gone up to £20 after a few years but I'm still happy.

I think the quality of Broadband and the service you get depends a lot on where you live, so being specific about your area might be beneficial when asking for recommendations or peoples experience.
 
I'm on Virgin and despite considering moving to another provider (for phone, TV and BB) I find them better than friends that have other providers, who always seem to have issues. One went to Virgin and is really pleased he made the switch. I have the cheapest package and speeds are ~100Mbps. That is actual speed measured by an app.
 
Post dial-up, have always been on cable here. Originally Cable & Wireless, then became Virgin. Had a few minor blips along the way, but its generally been very good. Currently average 200mbps here and its generally 180 - 230 range.

I work in IT and support a mix of private clients and small business. The service you get nowadays is largely down to the quality of phone network in your area, unless you have had infrastructure upgrades to fibre or semi-fibre.

In terms of human service from providers, I hear good things about Zen and PlusNet and also Utility Warehouse. Trickiest one to deal with is Talk Talk because of the *!?**!!! account level filtering they apply by default, which causes all sorts of connectivity problems unless you login and disable it.

Fyi, if you want to measure your broadband speed, open a web browser and use the address fast.com
 
Thanks for the replies everyone. Appreciated.

I was on the verge joining Plusnet when Virgin made an offer I couldnt refuse. Instead of going up by £15 - offered a £1 increase on an 18 month contract. Works for use, as the 100mb service seems excellent.
 
I'm out in the wilds and run two systems one is over BT copper supplied by Zen and an EE 4g service. The former is basically a backup system and it never gets more tham 2mb but fine for business use. I've been with Zen just over 20 years and wouldnt consider moving. They seem very good at kicking BT's arse when theres a problem, tech support is excellent and rarely wait long if I ring them even with their Covid problems.
 
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