Recommmend a fibre broadband ?

[siadwell]

Has yours got faster or more stable speeds?

The engineer showed me two sets of test readings which were 2-3 times what the old product would have been. However, I can't say I've noticed any difference as yet. The main reason I switched was that it will cost less than the previous product (where we kept exceeding the allowance and paid a lot for extra).
Mind you, speed and reliability were OK before so that's one reason we were happy to stay with PlusNet.

 

[cyberknight]

Well the phone line is back up and i am getting a whopping 0.6 mbits atm , to be fair the phone engineer said they are still working on it which according to sky call back ( feckers got me out of bed even though i told them to ring later ) .
According to stats for fttc as i said i am looking at 15 mbit max .
I know that changing isp will not alter the line i just wanted some opinions if i decide to switch , this is the second time it has happened in the last 6 months .

 

[ColinJ]

Frequently get glacially slow speeds and dropped connections. Frequently have to change channel which seems to fix the problem but it's usually only a matter of minutes before it's just as bad again.

If you mean wifi channel, then that has nothing to do with the broadband service to your house. You are either competing with neighbours on those wifi channels OR possibly other wireless devices in your house. My sister's cordless phone ringing used to make her wifi drop out until I found a suitable channel which worked ok. Try moving the main phone base station as far away from your wifi router as you can.

I have also had the dropout problem when I had poor quality ADSL filters on the line, and once when I forgot to put a filter on an extension line, before I went cordless.

 

[jongooligan]

If you mean wifi channel, then that has nothing to do with the broadband service to your house. You are either competing with neighbours on those wifi channels OR possibly other wireless devices in your house.

TBH I don't know what it means. When we talk to 'Kevin' in Mumbai this is what he invariably recommends. I guess he is working from a script. As this seems to cure the problem they close the ticket. Trying to explain that the fix only lasts for 10 mins and we'd like them to deal with the root cause is met with total incomprehension and we start at the beginning of the script again. Very frustrating.

Don't want to hijack the thread so I'll just repeat - BT NOT recommended.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

One question. What's the point of installing fibre optic to the box on the corner then copper to the house? Why not fibre optic all the way? Seems illogical.

Back in the UK, I was with Virgin broadband for several years. They only screwed up in the last month before I moved but it was the replacement modem, not the connection.

I have a fibre ready router too. I think it's the normal situation at the moment with the network being upgraded. To have fibre all the way I expect I'd have to pay quite a lot more for that bit. Fibre to the cabinet comes effectively free.

 

[marknotgeorge]

I've found that the Brightbox router EE sent us when we upgraded has a much better wireless signal than the Netgear we had before. It's also got 5GHz which helps too, although only our phones can benefit.

 

[Venod]

Been with TalkTalk for a few years, quite a way from the nearest box so we get max 38meg on fibre, not the best customer service & had one or two outages but that happens with other ISPs, we have phone & mobiles with them also, mobiles sim only @ £7.50 a month with generous data, texts & free minutes, calls to other TalkTalk mobiles free. a lot of people are not happy with TalkTalk but they have been OK for us.

 

[Andrew_P]

Sky here on BT Lines, went from Virgin to Sky as it was free for 6 months and I didn't like the TiVo box.

Honestly the only time I have noticed 17mb & .89mb up instead of Virgins 50mb and 4mb up is when I changed Laptop and had to update my dropbox.

BIGGEST problem with Sky was them trying to lock you in ot their rather poor router, once I had found my way around that the dropouts stopped.

 

[si_c]

One question. What's the point of installing fibre optic to the box on the corner then copper to the house? Why not fibre optic all the way? Seems illogical.

ADSL speed is based on distance to the exchange, the further away you are the slower you get. By moving the point where the ADSL link is terminated to the cabinet and running fibre from there to the exchange means that they can run ADSL much much faster than possible otherwise as the distance is shorter. In addition no duct work is necessary to pull fibre to the premises, and cheaper hardware can be used by the customer. It's not as fast as raw fibre to the premises though.

 

[si_c]

Another vote here for Plusnet...

Plusnet are pretty good at the moment, but they are owned by BT....

 

[stephec]

Plusnet were good when we had standard broadband last year. Customer service was good after a ten minute wait.

Before that we had BT infinity, the actual product was great, but the thought of having to deal with their customer service still causes me palpitations.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

[QUOTE 3485584, member: 45"]Don't they just need to visit the cabinet?[/QUOTE]
Couple of years ago I was subcontracting for a company doing a lot of work for Plusnet, spent a lot of time in their call centre in Sheffield & got to know a few people well, at that time each FTTC was a visit, as they had to set up the fibre part of the DSL link before adding in the router. Maybe the set-up is easier now they have more experience with the product, this was in the early roll-outs

 

[andyfraser]

I've found that the Brightbox router EE sent us when we upgraded has a much better wireless signal than the Netgear we had before. It's also got 5GHz which helps too, although only our phones can benefit.

That's odd. I replaced the horrible BT HomeHub at the old flat with a dual-band Netgear router and it was really good. Now we're on VM we're using VM's dual-band Super Hub (or whatever it's called) and it's good too. Turns out it's made by Netgear too.

Sky here on BT Lines, went from Virgin to Sky as it was free for 6 months and I didn't like the TiVo box.

That's odd (part 2). I hated the Sky box we had at the flat. The user interface felt clunky and I couldn't always make it do what I wanted. I really like the VM TiVo. It works really well and we can now record 3 programmes at once instead of 2.

 

[Flying Dodo]

Plusnet were good when we had standard broadband last year. Customer service was good after a ten minute wait.

Before that we had BT infinity, the actual product was great, but the thought of having to deal with their customer service still causes me palpitations.

I've had Plusnet for 18 months. In that time there's been 2 failures in service. Both times, it's taken them over 1 hour to answer the phone. I've decided to switch back to BT, partly due to cost as they're cheaper than Plusnet for the type of service I want, and also because BT can provide a fixed IP address which Plusnet can't. I had to hold on the phone for nearly an hour to get a MAC number from Plusnet. In the past when I've been on BT, I've never had to hold more than 15 minutes to speak to a human.

 

[Broadside]

Couple of years ago I was subcontracting for a company doing a lot of work for Plusnet, spent a lot of time in their call centre in Sheffield & got to know a few people well, at that time each FTTC was a visit, as they had to set up the fibre part of the DSL link before adding in the router. Maybe the set-up is easier now they have more experience with the product, this was in the early roll-outs

I had BT Infinity in my last house, they had to install an additional white modem in between the wall socket and the normal wifi router, so they do have to come in to the house.

I have since moved house and am back on a low grade connection, 2.5mbit/s download until I installed this gadget and I now get 7mbit/s, well worth it for anyone with a low speed connection but you will need to connect your broadband router direct in to the master socket.