Which broadband service provider? 11 March at 9:28PM in Broadband & internet access 6 replies 245 views

Chucklechops

Hi there,

After renovating my house, I'm looking to install broadband for the first time, and I'm finding the options overwhelming.

I live alone, and work from home full-time (9-5, Monday to Friday, occasionally on the weekend). Apart from that, I would say I use the internet moderately - I mostly watch stuff on YouTube. I don't download films or do anything that requires high mbps.

I'm therefore thinking that I won't require fibreoptic & that a standard contract would suffice - is this a safe assumption?

Also, I'm looking to sign up with one of the big companies - BT, Vodafone or Sky - unless someone could recommend a smaller company that has at least a few years' proven track record.

I suppose the criteria I'm interested in are speed, reliability, service (in terms of support), and cost.

I'd be very grateful for any advice or suggestions. 

Neil_Jones

If you work from home and you cannot afford extended downtime, pick a business provider.  It will cost you more money per month, but you'll get dibs on fault resolution.  Which you won't get on a home package.

oldernonethewiser

I used to be with Plusnet, no problems, now with Now again no problems. 

Currently paying £22 per month for approx 65 Mb/s

Nothing business related but if that was key then I would be looking at a business package. 

TimSynths

How have you managed so far working from home without broadband? Just hot-spotting from a mobile?

iniltous

If you are looking at ISP’s that use Openreach to deliver service, then the underlying network is the same regardless of who you use , because it’s Openreach kit, some ISP may have a better ‘SLA’ ( more expensive ) service level agreement with OR ( like a 2 day repair, instead of a 3 day repair if things need OR attention ) and the ‘backhaul’ , the things OR don’t supply , may vary , but none of these providers makes this information easy to obtain, so it’s hard to judge on that criteria, but as a rule of thumb I would suggest the cheapest companies will be saving money somewhere ( to offer the cheapest prices ) and by skimping on things like SLA and backhaul, is the way they offer a cheaper price, basically they are cheap for a reason.

Most providers don’t charge any more or less for different OR technologies , so if for example you think 40Mb is OK , it doesn’t matter ( price wise ) if that’s FTTC or FTTP ( fibre to the cab , or fibre to the premises) , if older ADSL is available, marketed as 17-20Mb , chances are it won’t be much cheaper than FTTC anyway,

TBH , FTTC type speeds are probably the minimum you should consider.

Basically pick an ISP after check the internet for reviews, baring in mind , people tend to post if they have had bad service, but don’t post if the service is good , and the bigger the company , the more customers, so it could look like more complaints, but may actually have better service than a smaller company, and consider pricing, personally I use BT FTTC and have never had an issue , but that’s not to say it would be different if I used another provider , 

daveyjp

Starting point is what services are available to you.  Many areas are still on the old BT, now Openreach, infrastructure and nothing else, so you need to look at providers over that.

Other areas have Openreach, Virgin FTTC and AN other cable FTTP, in my case Cityfibre.  This opens up a huge number of options and as competition has grown don't assume FTTP is expensive.  £20 a month for a 100/150 meg service.

onomatopoeia99

Chucklechops said:

Hi there,

After renovating my house, I'm looking to install broadband for the first time, and I'm finding the options overwhelming.

I live alone, and work from home full-time (9-5, Monday to Friday, occasionally on the weekend). Apart from that, I would say I use the internet moderately - I mostly watch stuff on YouTube. I don't download films or do anything that requires high mbps.

If you WFH and haven't had broadband before, do you need broadband to WFH?  Sounds like you have been managing without until now, so broadband isn't critical to you earning a living.

This is important because if you rely on your broadband to pay the bills then your priority should be service and fault resolution with cost a minimal consideration.  What point saving £10/month if extended downtime costs you £100s in lost earnings?

If you just use it for youtube then it won't matter so much if it goes down for a week or two while a bargain bucket ISP sorts itself out.