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Do I *need* superfast broadband in London?

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  • ari11
    ari11 Posts: 44 Forumite
    macman wrote: »
    The only valid way to compare is to total all the first year costs-not base it on how many months you get 'free'

    I totalled all costs over the term of the contract and divided it by months in the contract. SO BT was ( (12*16) + (11.75 * 12 + 15.45 * 6) ) / 18

    Thanks for the Plusnet tip. I'll take a closer look at them. The effective monthly cost was £22.38 (vs £23.65 for BT).
  • ari11
    ari11 Posts: 44 Forumite
    StuC75 wrote: »
    That transfer of data is still Uploading - in that there is a stream of data going back from your machine to the works VPN.. rather than just a straight reliance upon downloading data..

    Fibre packages do tend to have a bigger upload capacity and ping times - and this something very important when working remotely - since poor pings can make such a services difficult to use..

    Thanks I'll take a look at upload speeds as well. I've mainly been concentrating on download speeds. Couldn't work out how I would use uploading but now I know!
  • WTFH
    WTFH Posts: 2,266 Forumite
    I'm on unlimited and work from home every other week. Running at about 14Mb down and 1Mb up. I've not had any issues with performance for work, but I've not tried watching a movie on office time! (although I regularly have other devices doing updates while working)

    To watch streaming TV (iPlayer etc) in HD, you want to have about 3Mb download, so you've got no issues there.

    Stick with Unlimited ADSL.
    1. Have you tried to Google the answer?
    2. If you were in the other person's shoes, how would you react?
    3. Do you want a quick answer or better understanding?
  • dave_dph
    dave_dph Posts: 652 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Is virginmedia cable available at the new address? You can take broadband only with a minimum download speed of 30Mb and no need for phone line. Better than any adsl service in my opinion.

    If you do need a land line number then you can use a voip service with no monthly rental cost.

    There is an installation fee for 'broadband only' of £49.95, but this can be offset by cashback through quidco or topcashback.
  • macman wrote: »
    I can't imagine why you would favour Plusnet over BT if BT are more expensive. PN run on the same network, but are always cheaper and have infinitely better (UK based) CS.
    Am guessing you meant 'BT over Plus.Net' rather than the other way around. I'm a Plus.Net customer, by the way, and agree it has benefits with a UK call centre, but the other poster explained not being from UK, so can understand limited knowledge of all the history of all the UK ISPs, and BT is a "safe" choice (even if it is bottom of my list :rotfl: )
    macman wrote: »
    If you have a line issue, then it has to be fixed by BT OR regardless, who have exactly the same relationship to BT Retail as to their independent ISP ...
    Perhaps worth explaining an abbreviation - OR or Openreach being the engineering section which handle the majority of phone, fibre and internet connections across the UK, where a regular phone line (rather than Virgin Media cable) is concerned.
  • ari11
    ari11 Posts: 44 Forumite
    Hello,

    No virgin media in my area (which I was surprised about as I thought they would service all of central London).

    I ended up going with Plusnet Unlimited Broadband. 18 month contract. I hadn't heard of them before but researched enough to know they are a fairly solid provider.

    My deal was:
    - £2.99 a month for 12 months, rising to £9.99 a month after that.
    - Line rental saver £131.88 for 12 months, £14.50 line rental after that.
    - £5.99 postage cost for router (one-off)
    - no implementation cost
    - quidco £38 cashback

    Thanks to everyone who chimed in!
  • Been using them for years (10+) off and on (a couple of house moves meant I was using Three mobile for a year or two in the middle). Hope install goes well and you are happy.

    PS You can get a fixed IP address from Plus.Net for a small fee (one-off £6 I think) if you need it for any reason (such as firewall at office). (Some ISPs charge a monthly fee for a fixed IP address... and I think one used to charge about 5 times the PN fee.)
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