Buying first home... what to do!

Degeneratemoo

We're buying our first home and hopefully it should complete in the next few weeks. I've been looking at what to do for the phone line and the internet.

Initially I was looking at either Sky or Virgin, Sky came out at £39 (inc line rental), Virgin was (I can't exactly remember) more. I was tempted to go with Sky but decided to check out some reviews of the BB on ispreview. They get some awful reviews.

It seems that a lot of big name providers are either using speed throttling during peak times or are simply not coping with the demand that's being placed on their network. Talktalk, Orange, BT, Sky and Virgin all have awful reviews. Even O2 (who was going to be my second choice) have seemingly gone downhill over the last few months. They won awards for their BB in 2009 and now people are writing reviews saying that the traffic management system recently put in place has reduced speeds to a crawl.

I'm tempted to go with the current provider in the number 1 slot on ispreview, they're called Xilo and seem quite reasonable for the price, plus they do 1 month contracts so if it is rubbish it's not hard to move.

Unless anyone else has any suggestions?

Regarding the phone line I think I'll just go with the unlimited BT one at £4.99 plus the line rental per month. When I check the current owners phone number (which they are leaving active), I'm told it's not a BT phone line, I think it's registered to Talk Talk, would I have pay a charge to get it back to BT?

dylanuk

It sounds like you've been following too many negative reviews - keep in mind the people that post reviews tend to be unhappy.

O2 are still very good. Equally Sky is one of only two providers in the UK to offer 'truly' unlimited broadband (Virgin being the other one) - you need to get Sky Unlimited or Virgin 50Mb XXL for the truly unlimited service though. There's a review of Sky or Virgin here: http://www.chooseisp.co.uk/broadband.../sky-vs-virgin-media.html

I'm on O2 LLU and I'm pretty sure there is no speed throttling. If you're out-of-area and have to get O2 Home Access though it's probably not worth it as that does get bad reviews.

ISPs such as Orange, TalkTalk do seem to gather more negative comments than most - also Virgin Media can be quite bad for speed throttling if you get broadband Size M or Size L.

If you can afford to get Sky Unlimited, Virgin Media XXL or O2 Premium - and you'll be fine. Go with O2 Premium if you're on a budget, or Sky Unlimited if you're also getting Sky TV.

jem16

Degeneratemoo wrote: »

Even O2 (who was going to be my second choice) have seemingly gone downhill over the last few months. They won awards for their BB in 2009 and now people are writing reviews saying that the traffic management system recently put in place has reduced speeds to a crawl.

There is no traffic management on O2 LLU service.

The negative reviews are for O2's Access service - i.e. using BT equipment because the exchange is not LLU for O2/Be. So you need to check out your exchange.

Degeneratemoo

As far as I can tell my local exhange is LLU, I'm probably about 1.5-2 miles away from the exchange. Xilo offer a comparible price to O2 so I'll have to see.....

macman

Degeneratemoo wrote: »

As far as I can tell my local exhange is LLU, I'm probably about 1.5-2 miles away from the exchange. Xilo offer a comparible price to O2 so I'll have to see.....

Exchanges aren't LLU-ISPS's are (or are not) on a particular exchange. samknows will tell you which LLU providers are available LLU. Do an exchange search, then look for 'LLLU Operator's Presence' column.
O2 is the one to go for if available LLU (but not if non-LLU).

Degeneratemoo

Aside from the speed, are there any real differences between the Standard and Premium O2 BB packages? The maximum line speed I've ever been quoted has been around 5 meg. Since all of the O2 BB packages are 'unlimited' I guess I might as well go for the Standard one?

macman

They're basically the same. Use the 02 speedtester on their website to give you an indication of what speed you can get, if less than 8Mbps go for Standard. You can always upgrade at any time to premium if you want to.
But bear in mind that if you use the mobile discount and the right cashback deal, you can actually get Premium at the same 1st year price-zero.

Degeneratemoo

Finally ready to move this Friday.

Sadly missed out on the recent O2 Quidco deal (which was great!) but still likely to go with them. Cannot afford Virgin XXL to get the unlimited service (works out around £60 a month) so with a BT line it'll be around £29 all in and we'll use the freeview.

Just noticed that O2 will be providing home phone very soon, not sure how long I can wait for them to get sorted though. Will work out at £25 for their standard broadband and anytime calls.

kwikbreaks

If you get BT to provision the line you'll be stuck with a 12 month contract anyway. It's not clear to me whether O2 will be offering to provision lines or if they'll only take on existing BT lines. Either way it has been promised for quite some time and still hasn't materialised.

macman

There's no mention of O2 offering line provision in any of the PR for their home phone service.
I feel that they're really chasing the existing 02 broadband customer base, rather than looking for new home phone customers. That's why they're not offering home phone as a standalaone product.

kwikbreaks

> There's no mention of O2 offering line provision in any of the PR for their home phone service.

I didn't think I'd seen it mentioned but wasn't certain.

I'm not convinced the small savings offered by these third parties are worth taking though. I've currently got line problems and had BT OpenReach out 4 times so far and it still isn't fixed - I wonder how well O2 rather than BT retail would handle that?