Youfibre - any good?

MandyQue

Youfibre recently rolled out their services where I live and I'm tempted, but I'm worried about going to a new, unknown company in case the service isn't so good.  I'm currently getting up to 100mb on Virgin Media and I rely on these speeds because my autistic daughter gets extremely upset if she can't watch her youtube videos.  I'm on benefits, but the VM one would reduce speeds down to 15mb, which I don't think will be good enough.  

Does anyone have any idea what I should do?  I'm scared of moving and ending up worse off just for trying to save money as I tried before and the TalkTalk connection was worse than the worst dial up I had 20 years ago, there was hardly any signal at all.  I've looked at Youfibre on Trustpilot and they score highly, but most of the positive reviews sounds like they were made just after installation, there's little mention of speeds and performance.  

Fidden

If it is fibre to the premises (FTTP), then speed and stability should be better than other technologies.  I have no experience of Youfibre themselves, but the technology is stable and similar to cable via Virgin in terms of uptime.

Neil49

Here's some information from Google with regards to Internet speed requirements for YouTube

YouTube: Minimum Speed Requirements

Google state that YouTube videos can be streamed in standard definition for just 500 Kilobits per second (Kbps), with live events requiring at least 1 Mbps. To watch YouTube in HD, 720p videos require a minimum of 2.5 Mbps, while those in 1080p need at least 4 Mbps. A number of videos can also be viewed in 4K Ultra HD, but require 15 Mbps to play smoothly.

Obviously these figures exclude any demands from other users at the same time but basically, if it's just your daughter streaming in HD quality then 15 MB is more than enough. Your issue is going to be more the consistency of the line speed at peak times. 

MandyQue

Neil49 said:

Here's some information from Google with regards to Internet speed requirements for YouTube

YouTube: Minimum Speed Requirements

Google state that YouTube videos can be streamed in standard definition for just 500 Kilobits per second (Kbps), with live events requiring at least 1 Mbps. To watch YouTube in HD, 720p videos require a minimum of 2.5 Mbps, while those in 1080p need at least 4 Mbps. A number of videos can also be viewed in 4K Ultra HD, but require 15 Mbps to play smoothly.

Obviously these figures exclude any demands from other users at the same time but basically, if it's just your daughter streaming in HD quality then 15 MB is more than enough. Your issue is going to be more the consistency of the line speed at peak times. 

Thanks, I'm not technically minded so these things need explaining to me in short words!  I am concerned about the speeds dropping off when she's online, I'm usually on my laptop at the same time, sometimes streaming from BBC Sounds or youtube on my headphones to block out the racket lol!  

I think I might take the risk with You Fibre, I just don't think the 15mb service will be enough during busy times, managing an upset autistic adult is quite the challenge!  

endurium

MandyQue said:

Thanks, I'm not technically minded so these things need explaining to me in short words!  I am concerned about the speeds dropping off when she's online, I'm usually on my laptop at the same time, sometimes streaming from BBC Sounds or youtube on my headphones to block out the racket lol!  

I think I might take the risk with You Fibre, I just don't think the 15mb service will be enough during busy times, managing an upset autistic adult is quite the challenge!  

I'm replying to this thread quite late but I thought it worth mentioning that the fluctuating speeds could be due to the wireless router used, whether it's one you've purchased or is supplied by your ISP.  Generally the routers supplied by most ISPs are pretty poor in terms of handling multiple clients, the exception being Zen who provide a pretty good router and YouFibre.

Did you switch to YouFibre i the end? If so, how'd you get on?

uvarvu

YouFibre are far from an unknown company, they are one of the biggest in the altnet world.    I’ve been with them for over a year and the service is excellent.    Very low latency, 1gig up and down for £27.99 a month.