Best combination for Broadband: speed, reliability and price

Sausage11

Hello All,

I'm in North Herts and am out of contract with Virgin Media. I have a phone and BB with them. I never use the phone - it's not even plugged in.

I've found Virgin's service increasingly unreliable (and I find their telephone system unbelievably patronising!) so I'm looking for recommendations on the best overall package in terms of speed, reliability and price.

I've very much appreciate any recommendations.

Thanks!

mattyprice4004

All ADSL broadband is the same speed, and Fibre broadband is up to 40Mb or 80Mb depending on which you choose.
Plusnet would be my vote. Good support, and well priced.

patman99

Be aware though, that Plusnet use content filtering to restrict bandwidth for p2p services. This appears to be active from 13:00 - 21:00 hours and can really mess-up on-demand services such as iPlayer, 4OD etc.

Also, take the speed they can offer you with a pinch of salt. If they tell you you can get 20M/bs, you will in reality more likely get 14Mb/s.

When with Sky, I was told I would get upto 17MB/s but actually averaged 21MB/s.
Plusnet told me I would get 'at least 17MB/s', so I switched. My average speed (confirmed by 'SamKnows') is 11MB/s with speeds dropping as low as 6.5MB/s.

bib1

patman99: is it that SKY have their own kit in your exchange and PlusNet are just selling you BT Wholesale?
The difference in actual throughput you are seeing would then be down to traffic on SKY vs BT?

mattyprice4004: I've always assumed that maximum ADSL speed is all the same (distance from exchange) but actual throughput is dependent on local traffic?

But I'm always ready to learn.

macman

OP, if you have VM cable then you'll need a BT based landline installing or reconnecting first before you can get any ADSL service-there are no other cable providers.
Since broadband is exchange-specific, start with an exchange seaarch on www.samknows.com for your available LLU options.

bib1

macman wrote: »

.....broadband is exchange-specific.....

Feel like I'm barging in here on someone else's conversation :eek: but ....
When you said "..broadband is exchange-specific..." did you mean what I was asking about?

bib1 wrote: »

.... is it that SKY have their own kit in your exchange and PlusNet are just selling you BT Wholesale?
The difference in actual throughput you are seeing would then be down to traffic on SKY vs BT?

macman

"When you said "..broadband is exchange-specific..." did you mean what I was asking about?"

Yes. OP has only told us they are in 'North Herts': that tells us nothing about what is actually available LLU on their exchange. To know that, we need either a full postcode or the exchange name.

anotheruser

Back to the question:

I would go for Sky.
When I was with them, they were fine for me and I got good speeds, although I was within 100 metres of the exchange (the proper exchange, not the box on the road-side).

You will find people will have the opposite views to me though... it's all swings and roundabouts.

Sausage11

Hello all, thanks for the information so far.

I've done the exchange search on Samknows and my exchange is Hitchin. I'm not sure what else to make of the information provided.

Could you make any suggestions as to quality of the providers (speed, reliability and price) on this basis?

I've just had an engineer out from Virgin and this is working quickly atm. But I'm very much open to other providers.

(Separate question: How do I check how fast the VM service is?).

Thank you!

motorguy

Sausage11 wrote: »

Hello all, thanks for the information so far.

I've done the exchange search on Samknows and my exchange is Hitchin. I'm not sure what else to make of the information provided.

Could you make any suggestions as to quality of the providers (speed, reliability and price) on this basis?

I've just had an engineer out from Virgin and this is working quickly atm. But I'm very much open to other providers.

(Separate question: How do I check how fast the VM service is?).

Thank you!

Our house is quite far from the exchange and we were initially with SKY. We were getting 150kb/s - i kid you not. Sky said there was nothing they could do - over use at exchange, etc, etc. Their customer service was naff too. We were with them a year and no improvement in speed over that time at all

Went to BT, immediately got 1.2MB/s, and that has went up to 2MB/s in the last year.

Still not fantastic but where we built is quite rural.

macman

Your LLU options on that exchange are Sky or TalkTalk.
Use speedtest.net to check your speed.