how much disruption when switching broadband ?

psychic_teabag

Hi,
I've been with my broadband provider for ages, on a legacy package, so I'm almost certainly not getting value for money. I'm starting to wonder if I should be treating broadband like insurance : loyal customers subsidise the new-customer introductory offers, so I should be switching every 12 months, getting bungs from quidco, half-price offers, etc.

Anyway... I work from home, so don't really want much downtime during a switchover. The salespeople assure me there's no disruption, but it seems to be that for this to be the case, there will have to be a window when both broadband services are available, so that I have time to reconfigure my router to switch to the new provider. Is this how it works ? If the something is switched from one provider to the other asynchronously, I'd presumably have no access until I reconfigure my router.

Or am I over-analyzing as usual ?

closed

have you tried blagging a discount from your existing provider, ring their number, and go straight to the "I want to leave" switchboard saying better deals are available elsewhere, what can you do

Depending on provider, you may get a free router, so swap it out on the day of the switch. You'd have to change to router settings to match the new provider if you keep the old router.

psychic_teabag

My existing provider is talktalk (with a legacy tiscali package) - broadband only. Their essential package is pretty good, but requires I take their line rental. Not sure I want to commit myself further to them - haven't really had any problems with them myself, but there seems to be lots of horror stories on here.

I'd probably keep my old router. The question is whether I have to synchronize my change to the router settings with the switchover, or whether there's a window so that I don't have to go without.

Does "swap it out on the day of the switch" mean that I will effectively have both providers available for the whole of the day so I can switch at my leisure. Or does the switch happen at midnight ? Or do I have to synchronize the switch to the time when the switchover happens ?

closed

Just calling them and asking for a discount often works, especially if armed with a competitors prices. How much are you paying TT, and how much are you paying for line rental/calling packages to bt?

Are you on bt's line rental saver/locked in to a contract?

There will be a little downtime, could be just a few minutes, maybe longer - they will probably just say you will be switched on xx day, with no time, so when it stops working you can put your new details into the router, which takes seconds. That's in theory!

You won't have both providers at the same time, it's one or the other.

psychic_teabag

I don't think I'm tied to a contract with BT - probably been with them for about 10 years. Think I'm paying £43.80 quarterly - it's just line rental (though I probably get a weekend call package that I can't access).

I'm paying talktalk about £15 per month, for broadband plus weekend calls I think. That's also just rolling (well past the tied-in part of the contract).

(Yes, I know, by bundling I should be getting both together for about that price. Been putting off making changes for ages.)

sophlowe45

I've been told 6 to 10 working days after I give them my MAC code.

closed

By bundling you should be able to get it much cheaper. umpteen options out there.

If you have no intention of moving: (because either of these suggestions may lock you into a 12 month contract)

you may be able to save money by paying bt line rental saver upfront, and getting free evening and weekend calls (call 150 and haggle for it at no extra cost). Also ring talk talk, and ask for a discount. Don't ask, don't get.

I presume your free weekend calls are through BT, if that's who the line rental is with?

If you do look around, check with both companies to see if you are in any contract first.

macman

You can't have two broadband services on the same line simultaneously. On the day of transfer the downtime should be no more than a couple of hours, and often much less.
However if you are on a TT LLU service then switching direct to another LLU provider may not be possible, you may have to do a return to donor via BT.

brewerdave

macman wrote: »

You can't have two broadband services on the same line simultaneously. On the day of transfer the downtime should be no more than a couple of hours, and often much less.
However if you are on a TT LLU service then switching direct to another LLU provider may not be possible, you may have to do a return to donor via BT.

He's not on LLU -he's paying rental to BT.

OP - two things - look on Sam Knows web site for options available at your exchange - http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search ---but take note of what macman says about going full LLU.
Secondly if your line is ESSENTIAL for business use - consider a proper business package with some sort of service level agreement.
On a standard personal use broadband package its possible for a phone line fault to screw up your b/band connection for weeks if not months .:eek:

psychic_teabag

Thanks all.

I've been putting all this of for too long. The first switch is the hardest because I used my talktalk email address extensively to start with. Have been changing to a forwarding account plus gmail, but there's still lots of mail coming in via talktalk. But I figure either I have to switch eventually, or I'm stuck with talktalk forever. (I assume I don't get to keep my email address - one supplier I talked to assured me that the email address belonged to me no matter what...)

I think the weekend calls are coming from talk-talk - it was a calls + broadband deal. I rarely make calls, and use 18185 during the week if I have to, so don't really care very much about the call package. (Someone - Primus? - has a line-rental-only deal with no call package at all which would probably suit fine.)

The LLU switching thing was one of the reasons I was tending to avoid line rental from talk-talk - that seems like a closer tie-in than I'm happy with. I'm pondering an annual switch between BT-wholesale providers to exploit offers to new customers. Perhaps a plusnet bundle for the first year.

yeah, I don't like tie-ins. BT and talktalk want 18-month contracts. Plusnet are 12 months. (They have rolling monthly for broadband-only, but with a connection fee ?) Looks like utility warehouse offer a monthly deal ?

I don't run my own business. I am employed but work from home. Losing broadband would be a pain - fallback plan in an emergency would probably be to get one of those wireless dongle thingies. Or see if the neighbours will let me borrow a little of their connection. Don't need a lot of bandwidth, but do need access to the company intranet.

psychic_teabag

Had a look on Sam Knows, and discovered my exchange supports "ADSL Max" and "ADSL2+". I hadn't come across these before, but they seem to be changes to the protocol to allow more throughput on the same physical cable. I wonder if I need a new router to take advantage of these, or just download a firmware upgrade for my existing one. (It's getting on a bit - I've avoided changing anything that ain't broke. But I do remember a colleage mentioning that they updated their router firmware a while back and started getting much better performance. I wonder if that was related to this.)

I wasn't going to bother with plusnet's router for £4.99 p&p, but perhaps I should ..?