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[Technology] Whats the best company for home broadband?







Drumstick

NORTHSTANDER
Jul 19, 2003
6,958
Peacehaven
If you able to get it Virgin is top notch.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 


Marty___Mcfly

I see your wicked plan - I’m a junglist.
Sep 14, 2011
2,251
Im with SSE- got a great deal (fibre plus line rental £11 per month) Never had any problems.

They currently do line broadband + line rental for £18, or fibre + line rental for £23.

The deal I have meant moving my electric and gas to them, if you do that it’s then £13 for fibre + line rental- don’t think you will beat that!


https://sse.co.uk/phone-and-broadband
 


LamieRobertson

Not awoke
Feb 3, 2008
46,890
SHOREHAM BY SEA
Got a call this morning offering broadband and a telephone line for £11.99.......however when I suggested his nose was tickling the ear I had the handset to, the line went dead
 


Bodian

Well-known member
May 3, 2012
11,959
Cumbria
https://www.zen.co.uk

Been with them for 15 years have only ever had two problems, both of which were dealt by a real person over the phone from their offices in Rochdale. Works out about £25 a month which has been the price for a number of years.

Quite amusingly, I clicked on your link and got this:
Capture.JPG
 






ropey9

Active member
Feb 25, 2009
181
Sweeping generalisations, but all are good when they work all are bad when they are bad. Typically the customer experience service is the same, you get a support drone going through the same script every time you call with a connection issue, this happens even if you call with the same problem 10 minutes after the first call because they "accidentally" dropped the call.

BT (3 months) - had broadband with them years ago, it never worked from setup, spent 3 months of intense frustration before canceling the entire thing and getting a full refund. It was pointless going with another carrier that used the BT backbone as the issues were line related. So switched to Telewest (Virgin).

Telewest (2 years) - install more invasive (new cabling from the road over a brick paved drive) but all worked perfectly for the time it was installed. Never had to call them with any issues.

Sky (9 years) - Had them at 2 different addresses, in the main no problems, when there was a problem (Scottish call centre at the time - may well still be) in the problem was fixed quite quickly (still script based responses). I can only remember a couple of issues one that required a new router and the other a NOC reset both were resolved on the first call after going through the script.

Talktalk (6+ years, current provider) - broadband was good when it worked which to be fair was most of the time, the issues were calling them when there was an issue. Always the same script always the same pain, one issue escalated to an onsite "engineer" visit that I would need to pay for if the issue was internal, the engineer plugged a new router in and left 2 minutes later saying the issue wasn't local. Next bill the engineer visit was on it, another call to billing arguing this. When fibre become available I switched immediately, since then (4 years) just one outage which I didn't need to call about as it was reported in their website and affected the whole area. I found the best way to resolution with Talktalk was to immediately escalate the call to a manager after the first call if its not resolved. This forces them the deal with it properly and you will get a little perverse pleasure when they chase you to close down the ticket which they can only do if you confirm you are happy.

Changing providers, If I had a reliable service with my current provider I would stay (unless the savings are substantial), if I was going to change I would knock on a few doors to see who was using what and how happy they are (as someone said earlier in this thread, BT in one area is completely different to BT in another).

Good luck
 






Rugrat

Well-known member
Mar 13, 2011
10,215
Seaford
Anyone got experience of vodaphone broadband? As I have currently have SIM only mobile deal they are offering Superfast 2 broadband (63mps) deal for £21 a month. Obviously actual speed will depend on my location and located BT wiring set up.

A quick check on Google suggests some issues and poor customer service. However, I'm mindful that people tend to only review when things are bad. Accordingly, would be interested to hear from anyone who has good experience with vodaphone.

I've got them and fine. Superfast fibre at £25 inc line rental

I've never had a need to call them but i know if I did it would be a nightmare ... they're all equally useless in that respect
 


Best Foot Forward

Active member
Apr 29, 2008
197
Burgess Hill
Another down vote for virgin. Wifi keeps dropping out but they won't admit their router is crap

I have been with Virgin for around a year and had similar challenges with wifi dropping out.....all due to the crap router. Purchased a "fit for purpose" router for about £70 and put the Virgin box into "modem mode". Now get 200Mb+ at all times with no drop-outs anywhere in the house.....works perfectly.
 


Audax

Boing boing boing...
Aug 3, 2015
2,959
Uckfield
Anyone got experience of vodaphone broadband? As I have currently have SIM only mobile deal they are offering Superfast 2 broadband (63mps) deal for £21 a month. Obviously actual speed will depend on my location and located BT wiring set up.

A quick check on Google suggests some issues and poor customer service. However, I'm mindful that people tend to only review when things are bad. Accordingly, would be interested to hear from anyone who has good experience with vodaphone.

I recently switched to Vodafone. The router they provide is poor in terms of providing a stable wifi network, from what I've heard. Within my house it's certainly worse than either of the services we've had previously (Now TV and BT) - constantly losing internet connectivity on Device A, while Device B nearby is still going strong, etc. Google research suggests it's the Vodafone supplied router at fault, but I'm going to try the below DNS setting change today see if I can stabilise things a bit...


Regarding Vodaphone BB if you do go for it I would suggest you set the DNS servers in your router to use Google (8.8.8.8) rather than the default Vodaphone DNS as they keep having issues with their DNS servers going down.
 




Coldeanseagull

Opinionated
Mar 13, 2013
7,806
Coldean
I have been with Virgin for around a year and had similar challenges with wifi dropping out.....all due to the crap router. Purchased a "fit for purpose" router for about £70 and put the Virgin box into "modem mode". Now get 200Mb+ at all times with no drop-outs anywhere in the house.....works perfectly.

I was looking at a TP-Link router not so long ago, so now I'm weighing up my options. Spend hours of fun trying to explain to mrs mumbai what their problem is and then losing my rag, spend best part of £100 on new router, or see if BT have manged to fix the 'only getting 256 kilobits speed through their archaic wires that run to Coldean before commiting to adsl':shrug:
 


Best Foot Forward

Active member
Apr 29, 2008
197
Burgess Hill
I was looking at a TP-Link router not so long ago, so now I'm weighing up my options. Spend hours of fun trying to explain to mrs mumbai what their problem is and then losing my rag, spend best part of £100 on new router, or see if BT have manged to fix the 'only getting 256 kilobits speed through their archaic wires that run to Coldean before commiting to adsl':shrug:

I went for the TP Link Ac 1750 router, which is available from Amazon at £69. Plugged it into the Virgin hub (which was switched to modem mode) and the difference has been incredible. Not a single issue since......and no more calls to the Virgin CS team (thank god!!).
 


pauli cee

New member
Jan 21, 2009
2,366
worthing
I've had BT and Virgin in the past. I've found the Virgin broadband far superior, with BT very noticeably having more problems and for longer durations. However Virgin customer service is one of the worst experiences a human being can endure, so if you do have a problem you're probably better off asking the cat for help. I'd be loathe to recommend Virgin because of their customer service but, and I hate to admit, their broadband was good.

Shame really, as their customer service was always one of their biggest selling points for me, but once it moved to the Philippines,(?) it turned to shit so I left. Am now Talk Talk, and am missing Virgin........
 




METALMICKY

Well-known member
Jan 30, 2004
6,115
I recently switched to Vodafone. The router they provide is poor in terms of providing a stable wifi network, from what I've heard. Within my house it's certainly worse than either of the services we've had previously (Now TV and BT) - constantly losing internet connectivity on Device A, while Device B nearby is still going strong, etc. Google research suggests it's the Vodafone supplied router at fault, but I'm going to try the below DNS setting change today see if I can stabilise things a bit...

That's interesting as quite a few comments out there about the supplied vodaphone router being poor. However, maybe the setting change you will try might be the solution?
 




Coldeanseagull

Opinionated
Mar 13, 2013
7,806
Coldean
I went for the TP Link Ac 1750 router, which is available from Amazon at £69. Plugged it into the Virgin hub (which was switched to modem mode) and the difference has been incredible. Not a single issue since......and no more calls to the Virgin CS team (thank god!!).

I think you missed the UNT out of the virgin team:whistle:
 


Weststander

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Aug 25, 2011
64,359
Withdean area
https://www.zen.co.uk

Been with them for 15 years have only ever had two problems, both of which were dealt by a real person over the phone from their offices in Rochdale. Works out about £25 a month which has been the price for a number of years.

We’ve been with Zen for a similar time, would highly recommend.

The only occasion I called them was when we upgraded to a new third party server. They were incredibly helpful, proving to unhelpful BT that the issue was their’s in hardware along the road.

We upgraded to pay about £38 a month, giving us unlimited usage. That’s four of us using it for business, streaming movies on Netflix (up to 3 users simultaneously), Amazon Prime via a firestick and online gaming.
 








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