Great Hunt: What stops you switching broadband?

Techie42

We don't have a landline in our house. Instead, we use Virgin Media Broadband and Skype, so no use for a BT line. I need a good broadband connection for my job anyway, and the cost of Skype per quarter is less than BT was each month, so savings all round!

Most broadband providers want you to pay for line rental to get a good discount on their broadband package, which is no use to me anyway as all my family live abroad (Turkey) and none of the providers offer cheap calls to Turkey (and other services are not as cheap as Skype anyway).

We use our mobile phones to call anyone in the UK (which is not much), and Skype to call abroad, so no use for a BT landline or "weekend" / "friends & family" discounts.

The whole approach to broadband and phone lines is a rip-off, and it's about time they were split; we haven't used a dial-up internet service for many years now, so there really is no reason (other than profit) to sell them as if they need to be related / connected.

mr-mixalot

Its all about speed

100MB+ with Virgin compared to up to 50MB with BT

Price wise they were the same so no brainer for me

Steve_Rich

Like many people here, I was afraid of switching. I run an online business from home, didn’t want to be cut off for days. Didn’t want to lose my email address. Didn’t want a “bundle” as my BT phone deal is fine and I don’t watch enough TV to justify paying.

On the other hand, 15 years of Talktalk (since the Lineone and Tiscali days). Intermittent “slow” days getting more frequent; ineffective, sometimes dangerously stupid fault fixing advice from “customer service” and £17.99 a month for the privilege? Last straw in August was ‘dial up’ speed for a week, strangling my work.

Cost isn’t much of a consideration for me with Broadband, reliability and customer service I feel are worth paying for, as I earn my living from it.

So I grasped the nettle; and if it helps anyone here, this is what I found:

RESEARCH: Two types of ISP provider “domestic” and “business.” Domestic offer mostly packages, and those rated best by “Which?” were expensive on “broadband only deals.” So called “fast” broadband is often capped at 25Mb. “Business” providers often sold non-packages, and matched the expensive “broadband only” deals on price, but for far higher speeds and “customer service” guarantees. They seemed happy to sell to "sole traders" or anyone, so the "business" term is a bit of a misnomer.

I got so confused, I spoke to the small IT company who built and maintain my computer. Turns out, they had their own “business broadband” plan, provided by a less known company. £426 a year, including VAT, for 50Gb per month download (£1.50 per Gb if you go over – unlikely), and uncapped (I get 48.5Mb) speed. Best of all, they provide the “customer service” locally, and if there is an outage, will quickly come up with a suitable ‘work around.’

I went with it.

EMAIL: Talktalk say my old email address will continue to work. For how long, even their own advisors couldn’t agree. From “6 months to forever” according to whichever customer message board or advisor you believe.

You can continue to receive email from your old address for as long as they allow you to, but can’t send any more or change details. If you do want to “send,” you adjust the settings in the “out” bit of your email system, so it goes out via your new provider.

Either way, I paid for a “domain name” – around £6 a year from Domain Monster, and £6.99 to add a mailbox to it. That’s mine forever now, and my email will continue no matter who provides my ISP in future.

If you are worried about switching ISP, I’d say to buy your email address now and set it up, then as emails come in, change them over. After 3 months or so, everyone should have your new address, so you can look for a new ISP provider with confidence.

THE SWITCHOVER: You don’t need to beg for a MAC code any more. As soon as I said “yes” to moving, my IT company gave me a date (2 weeks later) for Openreach to call and make the physical engineering changes.

About 2 days after I said “yes,” my IT company phoned, and ‘came in’ remotely on my computer to my router and configured that to my new fixed IP address and “open the WAN port” ready for Openreach.

ON THE DAY: Openreach came when they said they would. To change to “fibre optic” they had to put a different front on the main phone socket in my house, and also on the extension I plug my router into. The good thing is you don’t need those “splitters” that hang out of your sockets, once that’s done.

My home has eccentric phone wiring, plus the engineer found problems at the box in the street when he went to connect the fibre optic – it took him 2 goes at that – but in the end, I was “off line” for less than 1 hour.

He plugged in an extra “modem” box that he brought with him, and connected that to my existing router’s prepared WAN port, and away he went. Job done.

The only other problem was that BT had a “cap” on the line, limiting me to 8Mb download speed. So, when I first did a speed test, the number shot to 48.5, then plummeted back to 8. As the engineer hadn’t sent through his “finished installation” report, it took them 8 hours to lift that... but now...

... I have fast, reliable, evenly speeded broadband 24/7, I’m not competing with kids playing games and doing homework, no evening slowdown... and I even notice now how slow some websites are to load. It’s them, not me!

Best of all, I speak to my own IT people if I have a problem (that’s how the “cap” issue was identified and promptly fixed) and will NEVER HAVE TO COMMUNICATE WITH TALKTALK EVER AGAIN!!!! YAY!!!!

Wish I had had the nerve to change far sooner.


Oh, a final kicker. After changing, Talktalk sent an invoice crediting me with £2.21 for the unused part of the month. Instead of refunding it to my card automatically, they hope that you won’t do what I had to do (as they won’t tell you to do it either)... which is: log in to your old account, be lucky enough to notice that there is a button marked “claim your refund,” be prepared to fill in that form, and wait 10 days while they decide whether to authorise the refund and send you a cheque in the mail.

I always knew Talktalk stank, but what a clincher, eh?


Anyway, hope all this helps some of you to decide on changing.

kwikbreaks

Bite the bullet and get a gmail /yahoo/hotmail account or if you don't mind spending a little your own personal domain and hosted email address. That way you can ignore ISP provided emails and move around freely.

Sticking to the same ISP unless you have a very good reason is losing out on cashback + introductory deals or retention deals should you decide to stay instead.

KCS1503

I agree that the different elements of the packages should all be available separately at a reasonable cost. Why is it that you can get a Virgin Media broadband, TV and phone line for not a lot more than just the broadband alone.

I think that Virgin Media should be forced to resell their line connections for use by other providers in the same way that BT were through Openreach. If that were to happen and all players could offer 152mb (or 300mb) broadband then that would shake the market up.

Come on Ofcom how about that as a suggestion - a level playing field....?

givememoney

We are happy with BT. We like a landline and touch wood no problems since we ditched Virgin many moons ago. It's probably dearer than others out there but money isn't everything.

Cycrow

KCS1503 wrote: »

I agree that the different elements of the packages should all be available separately at a reasonable cost. Why is it that you can get a Virgin Media broadband, TV and phone line for not a lot more than just the broadband alone.

You can get virgin services all seperate if you want.
The problem is, that they all come down the same cable, that cable has to be paid for.
so each service includes the cost of running the cable.

when you have multiple services, as you only need the one cable, you only have to pay the line rental once, so the other services becoming cheaper.

Both phone and tv are essentially delivered down the broadband connection

KCS1503 wrote: »

I think that Virgin Media should be forced to resell their line connections for use by other providers in the same way that BT were through Openreach. If that were to happen and all players could offer 152mb (or 300mb) broadband then that would shake the market up.

Come on Ofcom how about that as a suggestion - a level playing field....?

I dont think that'll be too fair to virgin. BT had government funding to create their network, Virgin had to pay for it themselves (and are still in debt from installing the network).

Pincher

I can't believe it myself, but the EETV box maybe the clincher for me to keep the broadband with EE.

Four tuners!

It makes the Sky+HD box feel like a constipated old codger. Two tuners, sad.

Nilrem

Cycrow wrote: »

I dont think that'll be too fair to virgin. BT had government funding to create their network, Virgin had to pay for it themselves (and are still in debt from installing the network).

Aye

BT had to open up their network as in the majority of places they were a monopoly supplier with the last mile almost completely paid for when it was in public ownership.

VM have no monopoly (there is almost nowhere you can get VM but no service via BT lines), and was paid for entirely by private funding through the various companies that merged to create the single company that is now known as VM (with many of the investors losing money due to the costs).

Technically it would also be fairly difficult for VM to open it's network up as every bit of equipment on it needs to be thoroughly tested*, and there are also issues with things like the modem configs (IIRC there is a limit to how many different configs the system can cope with).
So for any third party to use it VM would have to manage and supply all the equipment, manage the things like speed configs. You cannot put a third party providers equipment in a VM local hub as all the data travels over the same physical lines (unlike BT's system where the line to each property is an individual one so it's "just" a matter of connecting that line up to the third party ISP's ADSL box in the exchange).

VM/NTL did have a partnership with AOL at one point where AOL sold a branded service over the cable network, but literally everything bar the billing was dealt with by the cable company (I think even most of the tech support was done by NTL call centre staff as AOL's staff wouldn't have had access to most of the tools needed).

I always find it telling that the like of Sky sometimes complain about VM not being open, but they themselves never invest in any of the last mile services but rather picggyback on the BT network.



*As unlike ADSL a single poorly made device connected to the network can affect an area's performance (things like people extending the modem cable using cheap satellite cabling can introduce noise that affects performance on an entire streat).

Cycrow

Nilrem wrote: »

VM/NTL did have a partnership with AOL at one point where AOL sold a branded service over the cable network, but literally everything bar the billing was dealt with by the cable company (I think even most of the tech support was done by NTL call centre staff as AOL's staff wouldn't have had access to most of the tools needed).

Yeah i worked for a company who had a similar arrangement with Telewest, we did all the billing and contact with the customer, including the technical support (althou most of the time we had to contact Telewest, just the customers didn't contact them directly), but everything else was handled by Telewest.

This was limited to the local area however, rather than nationally, and was mainly aimed at students