[Misc] Broadband help

Simster said:

Virgin is a broadband provider that also provides television, whereas Sky are a television company that also provides broadband.

Ultimately, you ought to always get better television with Sky and better broadband coverage with Virgin. My recommendation would be to go with the company whose core business matches your priority.

We are with Virgin and I can't say they fill me with confidence, so the day Sky prove to consistently match Virgin's broadband coverage in my area is the day I switch to them.

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This is my perception as well. Unfortunately Virgin for BB and sky for TV is not the most economical option by a long chalk...

um bongo molongo said:

Seeking the collective wisdom of NSC. I currently have Sky broadband plus sky Q. I like sky Q, but the broadband is absolute gubbins. I’ve spent about 6 hours on various calls with them getting me to switch things on and off again, with the net result being it’s worse than before I called up. The WiFi is deathly slow. I’m considering switching to Virgin as on the face of it, the WiFi looks faster. So, NSC, should I switch, and if I do, should I switch to Virgin TV also or keep Sky and run it on Virgin’s broadband?

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I've had Sky fibre broadband for 6 years or so (std Sky before that) and have never had a problem (several people use it for streaming, and I use it for gaming too). But then I'm not using the wifi, I use my own routers for that. Where is your rooter, and where are you having trouble using it (is the signal having to go through more than one wall etc)? A box from one of the competitors may not improve things. You might need either multiple boxes, or a better router from a manufacturer like Netgear.

You should be able to look at the cost and offerings from Virgin, Sky and BT, and work out what's best for you.

Can you not ask them if you can try new router on the understanding that it works better ?

I'm with Sky now still get the same 80 everyday but im only 20 metres from the green box.T hat really is one of the most important things the further away the weaker (they say) the signal becomes.

Another thing with BT was if my internet went down my BT tv went down including the sport.

With the Sky dish, no problem .

I had the same problem with BT. I was getting 80mbs all day long about 40mbs on wifi. Then one day it all changed. Because i live in a flat, it turned out the person upstairs just had BT installed. My wireless wifi signal was on the same channel as upstairs so it was conflicting. I managed to solve problem by changing channel on router (not easy) tried all channels then selected best on that was 18 months ago and is still ok.

happypig said:

This, but use a wired connection to run the speedtest, not wifi.

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Run both, the issue may be with the device WiFi so if wired result is good, eliminates the router and Openreach / exchange side of the service.
Ideally use two WiFi devices to test, this may identify that its just one device that has an issue and you're looking in the wrong place.

phoenix said:

I'm with Sky now still get the same 80 everyday but im only 20 metres from the green box.T hat really is one of the most important things the further away the weaker (they say) the signal becomes.

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Because cable to the cabinet [green kerbside] from the BT exchange is now mostly fibre optic but the cable from the cabinets to households is all copper which weakens singnal strength over distance.
Virgin use Coaxial cable

A wired connection should give you the maximum speed from your router to your broadband provider. Wired from the router to your PC for instance is normally Gigabit speed i.e. 1000mb. Some older devices may have a slower 100Mb connection but if you are on a maximum speed of 80 Mb for instance, that won't matter.

A wireless connection depends on several things:
1 The modem/router from your provider (I'm on Virgin and I think their provided router is crap for wireless)
2 It also depends on the device wireless adapter (my old laptop for instance can only connect to the router at a slow speed because the wireless adapter on the PC is not the latest spec of high speed adapters). So you can actually get different speed test results from different devices
3 The distance from the router to your device and what's in the way (walls block wireless signals depending on the material i.e. brick/stone is going to attenuate a signal a lot more than a stud wall).

For item 1, you can normally run your supplied router in "modem" mode and attach a decent wireless router to provide a higher quality wireless signal
For 2. if the problem is the adapter on your PC/laptop, you can buy a small modern USB dongle that will probably be a lot better than the adapter provided with your 4 year old laptop
For 3, you can buy addition routers that you can place elsewhere in the house that can pick up the "original" signal and in effect provide a repeater to areas of your property that don't get a decent signal