Need a cheaper internet provider

fkelanne

I have been with Bt for 2 years now. And pay £45 a month just for Internet.. scared of changing due to I've not had a problem with but at all if I change I just see problems lol. How do I find out who is the best provider in my area?

wongataa

Apart from Virgin all ISPs use the same wires from your house to the exchange. Virgin use their own separate cables. So if BT works fine all the others should work fine too.

iniltous

If you don't want the potential hassle of changing provider, using a new email address (if you use a @btinternet one) etc, and you are currently outside of any minimum term, try calling BT, ask for their retention people.
Say you are going to find a new provider as you feel the price you pay is more than you would pay if you switched , they may well offer you a large reduction on what you pay now, in return for a new minimum term of course.
As far as other providers, unless Virgin Media are available, all others will use OR's network, and will provide similar performance (provided the chosen package is similar) , customer service and price will probably be the main difference between providers, not 'performance' of the connection

JJ_Egan

fkelanne wrote: »

I have been with Bt for 2 years now. And pay £45 a month just for Internet.. scared of changing due to I've not had a problem with but at all if I change I just see problems lol. How do I find out who is the best provider in my area?

You say best and you say cheaper .

If you are paying BT £45 pm just for internet what internet exactly is it .or are you including the line rental in that £45 and that's circa £20 pm making BB £25 pm .

Tell us what service you are on please and how long you have left on your BT contract .

teddysmum

wongataa wrote: »

Apart from Virgin all ISPs use the same wires from your house to the exchange. Virgin use their own separate cables. So if BT works fine all the others should work fine too.

Not true in the case of LLU where they have their own dedicated parts of the system. I've just gone from Sky (LLU) to PlusNet (BT) ADSL and have a terrible service, now. My speed is now 2Mbps lower, which is more than a third less ( PlusNet and others claiming it's because LLU lines are faster).

wongataa

teddysmum wrote: »

Not true in the case of LLU where they have their own dedicated parts of the system. I've just gone from Sky (LLU) to PlusNet (BT) ADSL and have a terrible service, now. My speed is now 2Mbps lower, which is more than a third less ( PlusNet and others claiming it's because LLU lines are faster).

LLU suppliers have their own kit in the exchange. This can cause differences between LLU providers and ones that use Openreach kit. Most issues though are down to the wires which are the same.

kwikbreaks

Most faults are down to the wiring between the exchange and the modem/router. Quite often it's the wiring within the property that has issues leading to lower than best possible sync speed.

Most capacity issues are down to how much backhaul the ISP is prepared to pay for although since the advent of mainstream use of various streaming services the ISPs have been forced to up their games and I don't recall seeing many such complaints recently about phone wire based services.

With cable the main thing causing poor speeds is the degree of torrenting going on in your street. Cable has very limited local bandwidth capability compared to a phone exchange and doesn't tolerate the hammering the upstream takes from 24x7 seeding over a VPN which some indulge in.