EEWIFI / BTWIFI - Finally time to Dump BT after 40+ years as customer????

DarthDaisy

I am investigating the best ISP for my Uncle's household to move to, they are multi generation bunch of all ages from 3 to 97, currently paying £75 for BT basic broadband and £35 for sport they don't really need.

Although Sky ends up at the top of the list on MSE I am NOT inclined to suggest them because I have had bad experiences with Sky and there are posts on this very forum that suggest any offer from Sky is just hot air with price increases possible soon after sign up.

MSE even put this alert up:

"Alert. Unlike most big providers, Sky's price doesn't include all future mid‑contract rises. Sky says prices are variable and so doesn't give pound and pence increases, though hikes are likely each spring. If these happen without advance notice, you'll have 30 days to leave penalty‑free. This also means the 'equivalent monthly cost' shown is likely a few pounds lower than what you'll actually pay over the contract."

How OFCOM can allow this is absurd, the whole idea of a fixed contract was fixed prices, they were supposed to be preventing mid contract hikes and now it seems mid-contract hikes are fine as long as Sky say so.

Of the MSE deals Vodafone seem to be front runner, 500Mb Expected speed Fibre broadband (FTTP)

This equivalent monthly cost adds in...

• ‐ The current £27/mth price
• ‐ A price rise to £30.50/mth on 1 Apr 2027
• ‐ A price rise to £34/mth on 1 Apr 2028
• And then subtracts from the total cost...
• ‐  £125 reward from Vodafone

Cost is at least predictable but what on earth is this "expected" speed nonsense, does it mean they can say "oh something unexpected came up so you have to settle for 30mb" ?

One thing I would not like if it were me taking out the contract is that all MSE deals are 24 months minimum, again this surely going to hurt a lot of people, especially if they have to move to an area the ISP does not cover.

I have also been looking at Starlink, the website said that there was a £25 a month offer for "selected" areas, but when I put in the address it set at £75 a month. Still for them it was about what they are paying BT now.

SpaceX Starlink seem to have two choices, ROAM or RESIDENTIAL

They have a data cap on ROAM unless you pay more, so it is £96 for unlimited contract plus £196 for a bunch of kit. The service is prioritised lower than residential but latency is apparently still very good.

I am not clear whether their family could use the RESIDENTIAL service around town and the UK. For the home they offer no upfront cost for kit but potential cost for difficult installations, they also include a "router mini" which it seems would work for the extension.

It seems to me that SpaceX are missing out on something here; competing with BT head on with a hotspot service. BT hive off around 10% of every customer's bandwidth (unless the customer disables) so Skylink could do the same, albeit that it would take time to get coverage.

To get that coverage quickly they could sell the service at a knockout £10 a month (perhaps with the customer paying for the kit) then in a few years when they have adequate coverage they would be able to compete with Broadband and mobile alike, plus have a hotspot network.

I do feel that the Mobile networks simply choose not to compete with broadband, if SpaceX were to go head on against them I think it would force both mobile and broadband to compete.

I have friends and family abroad who get amazing speeds, basic speeds in rural areas over 300mb and latency is amazing, even web friends in Bangladesh have very fast mobile internet that seems streets ahead of the UK. When I visit one of my kids they have 175mb Virgin which was really dire, they invested in a MESH network but it seems the network is the issue. When they renewed it was increased to over 200mb but was still rubbish compared to family members in EU. One wonders how much you have to spend a month for the speed in the UK to actually "feel" fast. I remember borrowing a neighbour's wifi some years ago, I had just 12mb but it "felt" faster than 35mb fibre feels today.

We are told prices are high because of investment in the network but I am not seeing it. Mobile data speeds are very basic, they seem to have an initial speed which then drops back to dire. Calls are compressed and I am sure everyone had come across the delay where the person you are talking to is about 20s behind you on mobile.

So for my Uncle's home the cost of SpaceX Skylink residential would be about the same and they could use the cancelled sports (£35) to offset the costs of Lebara mobile contracts.

So can anyone give me some feedback on any downsides them using Vodafone and maybe them using SpaceX Starlink?

Things like Vodafone taking ages to become operational or whatever?

DarthDaisy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81978088#Comment_81978088

That is not very friendly is it.

It seems that on this forum people want to take a thread completely OFF TOPIC and when you try to bring it back they make nasty comments.

I think the issue of getting it around the whole building will either be resolved by investing in MESH as previously mentioned (in earlier posts you seem to have ignored) or perhaps taking a punt on SpaceX Starlink.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6665791/new-bb-supplier-shortlist-so-far-starlink-or-vodafone/p1

oldernonethewiser

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6665791/new-bb-supplier-shortlist-so-far-starlink-or-vodafone

How fast do you need or want? (Two different things obviously)

Prices for broadband in the UK are very competetive. £75 per month for a basic service is expensive.

"Mobile data speeds are very basic, they seem to have an initial speed which then drops back to dire. Calls are compressed and I am sure everyone had come across the delay where the person you are talking to is about 20s behind you on mobile."

In highly populated areas speeds can be poor if everyone is using the network, if not speeds can be more than adequate. Never had an issue with the delay you are describing.

flaneurs_lobster

If you think that trying to supply an entire household's internet access by each person accessing next door's router is a suitable solution then yes, I took the OP off-topic because of disbelief.

What happens when next door swap to Sky?

There's also the minor issue that each person so accessing needs the account login credentials of the BT account holder - those give contract and purchasing rights across the account and shouldn't be shared.

DarthDaisy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81978105#Comment_81978105

Well it is not me who is spending the money but my Uncle, they are just lazy at negotiating or changing suppliers, BT seems to have taken advantage of that and I suppose who can blame them. There was a time when BT customer service meant something, now they have offshore call centres and AI chat bots like many others who do not give a damn about customers.

If it were my money I do not think £25 a month is competitive but I know my level. When I visit family and friends I do not find their broadband feels fast at all, not like it does abroad. I have also had family in the EU come to the UK and say they feel the broadband is slow here.

I think they will cope with the 400mb that SpaceX Skylink offer on residential or even the 250mb that they offer on roaming but I can't see them liking the faff of roaming dish. The fixed antenna is a one off, someone else does it and the mini router seems as if it might solve their extension problem. Apparently they can return all in 30 days if it does not perform.

I asked about the 500mb Vodafone simply because it seemed better value for money.

Something tells me that the SpaceX Skylink will feel faster than the 500mb broadband.

I think you are lucky to have not experienced poor speeds on mobile, to me the whole idea of investment is that there should be more than enough capacity. Since when is "adequate" a service level, to me it just shows a poorly performing market.

You can hear the speech delay on any talk radio show, just listen to LBC or BBC local radio and you will hear the presenters pulling their hair out.

DarthDaisy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81978110#Comment_81978110

Again you have failed to read or understand the OP

The main house has the BT Router and it is adequate with the devices BT has provided, the issue was they could never provide an adequate service to the extension. it was only when the whole broadband service was down they were told about what was then called BTWifi and they discovered the extension could see it. When the service was restored they investigated making the BTWifi more reliable and got a router to pick it up and boost it into the extension. You are right about the neighbour moving to Sky possibility but they can apparently see several BT SSID's. Anyway, it will not be a problem for long, they are leaving BT as soon as they can, this forum has been invaluable at showing the pitfalls of leaving in a disorganised way. I was shocked at seeing what they were paying.

I totally agree with you about the BT EEWifi using the credentials of the main account being totally inappropriate, thus far none of them realise the login credentials have been saved to their devices. If the account manager option is anything to go by then creating additional logins for family members would be a botch up too, we never even got it working, it got stuck in some sort of authentication loop, a new account was created, both email and mobile provided but it would not complete on the mobile, the number never arrived after two days of trying.

Also if a userlist were created and it required the creation of a BT account, how would you have a teenager do that when they are not old enough to enter into a contract? BT should provide a number of logins per household, there are 13 potential logins required for their home and more as the kids get older.

They make a point of logging out and in around 21:00 when they give them the evening meds. The way it works is that if one device logs in then that connection is held for 24 hours, or at least it was, now it seems to drop randomly for no reason.

As the person on that EE forum I quoted said, BT sells this as a key benefit but if the whole household can't use it when out and about then it is hardly worth having and if it does not work because BT/EE have implemented this new system then that is the nail in the coffin for BT. £1300 quid lost and good riddance to bad rubbish.

littleboo

There is a lot of what I assume is hyperbole in your posts, but:

BT and EE don't use off shore call centres

In one of your other posts on this subject, you said that the family were using BT/EE WiFI from next door to address poor WiFi coverage from their own router. This is/was a dogs dinner of a workaround which didn't address the underlying issue. They/you either need to address it yourself through a mesh system or similar, or subscribe to a "Whole Home" type of service from the ISP.

How are you arriving at 400Mbs or 250Mbps as a requirement? The two are quite different and both quite a lot more than most households would use. If they were using next doors BT/EE WiFi, then those users have been getting a bandwidth constrained service - did they notice? Do they need a symmetric service?

What do you mean by the 175Mbps Virgin service being "dire" and the 200Mbps service being "rubbish"? How are you quantifying that, is the household over-subscribing the service? What was the service like directly attached to the router?

What people may or may not get in other countries is irrelevant, unless you plan to move there.

QrizB

I have also been looking at Starlink, ...

I am not clear whether their family could use the RESIDENTIAL service around town and the UK.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what Starlink is.

"Residential" is for a fixed location, like a house. "Roam" is for a mobile installation, like a boat or campervan.

But - it requires all users to be within the WiFi bubble of the Starlink router (or of whatever additional access points you attach to it). It's not something that can be used simultaneouslyby different family members at home, in town and on the bus. And it's not pocket-sized, it's a backpack-sized unit that's designed to be powered from the mains or a vehicle.

It will not replace the BT WiFi service that your family members have been accustomed to using away from home.

Other than that:

can anyone give me some feedback on any downsides them using Vodafone

I'm a Vodafone broadband customer. My ~70MBps part-fibre service is more than adequate for my household of four, even when my kids are gaming/streaming. We were previously happy on the slower ~35Mbps option but switched up as it cost less at last contract change.

VF have famously poor customer service but if you never need to call them, that's not a problem. And the couple of times I have had to contact them they've been no worse than any of the other cheap broadband firms I've dealt with over the years.

Cost is at least predictable but what on earth is this "expected" speed nonsense, does it mean they can say "oh something unexpected came up so you have to settle for 30mb" ?

There will be a nominal speed, an expected speed (which depends on line conditions) and a minimum speed (below which you can ask them to fix your line). For my current VF contract the nominal speed is 80Mbit, the expected speed was 74MBit and the minimum speed was in the 60s. Your 500Mbit will be full fibre and you can expect to get something close to that number.

DarthDaisy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81978238#Comment_81978238

You know it probably was a dogs dinner, but when all else had failed and it worked they just stuck with it, their mentality may not be in line with your own or mine, but they have so much more going on in their lives and as long as it worked and it was simple to manage they stuck with it. I did say I have been telling them for years to dump BT. They spent a lot of money on MESH but that was years ago, so if I say MESH they immediately close down.

THe 400mb and 250mb are the speeds of the SpaceX Starlink products, they are not a requirement, but consider this, BT have left them to rot in terms of technology upgrades while milking them for what others describe as expensive and I consider exorbitant. I had assumed that BT had been upgrading them over the years to justify the increase each year, but no the plan says

Normal available speeds

Your normal available download speed will be 36 Mbps
Your normal available upload speed will be 10 Mbps
Minimum guaranteed download speed
Your minimum guaranteed download speed will be 18 Mbps

For £75 a month!!!

Plus penny pinching charges for odd phone calls that for some reason are not included in their landline. I asked them about this and they have no idea what the calls are or who is making them, they hardly ever use the Landline. On top of that is £35 a month for sport.

I guess it is their own fault but they are old fashioned and don't like to rock the boat.

So I checked what is available using the Vodafone broadband checker

They says it is a full fibre area and offer speeds up to 1.6gps and look at the prices they could pay for that…

Prices locked until 2027
1.6 Gbps
estimated download speed
View speed details
from
£65
a month
Price increases to:
£68.50 on 1 April 2027
£72 on 1 April 2028

The weird thing is that on the BT/EE Wifi they were getting 30mb, I had no idea that was the case or that their account was providing so little for so much. Honestly most of the household just use the service for basic internet, they all work most of the time or are in education. I think the problem has been that no one person is responsible they just pay the bills on DD and as long as it keeps working they just roll with it. The inability to log in has forced them to finally face this head on, I helped them get a bunch of MSE Lebara SIM deals on 9 month deals, so that part of their usage is now covered. I am still facing reluctance on the technical hardware solution despite the fact that they will be saving over £1000 a year so they can afford to spend a good amount on a modern MESH system. If that does not work I think they may be able to get a second account for the extension if worst came to the worst. Still the Starlink is a consideration the idea that one could bypass the mess of UK broadband is appealing, even if just for a trial.

What do you think I mean when I say the 175Mbps Virgin service being "dire" and the 200Mbps service being "rubbish"? That was in a property that has two adults and two kids under 3 and they had a MESH system, a fancy one at that. I referred them to this forum, I do not know if they ever joined but I know they had major issues, sure you can run any service wired to the router and cable will work better, that is a no brainer, but the wifi at 1m from Virgin router was dire and rubbish. I stayed there for 3 days myself and it felt sluggish despite the amazing MESH, but MESH can only deal with the basic service being provided.

They are in London and I am told that Virgin are oversubscribed so they move customers around, things improve a bit for a few weeks but then it falls back, they told me that the only time Virgin seem interested is when it comes to renewing the contract. They said the WHO song "won't get fooled again" was appropriate because they renewed on the promise of the 200+ service being the issue. Again they are not big users, they work from home a few days a week, do a bit of streaming where they watch together, so nothing a 30mb broadband could not cope with.

Personally I think the UK is being sold a sack of !!!!!! when it comes to Broadband, I think latency is fundamentally flawed, just change the load settings on sites like fast.com and see how much it is affected. We are told that there is all this "investment" in the network but just look at the posts in this forum, the installation issues, the end/start contract issues and today I read that if someone had fibre from one company it can't be used by the next supplier.

"Forgive me if you know this, if you go with service via another infrastructure supplier then you'll need another fibre supply with another ONT box etc"

To me that is the true "dogs dinner", surely we must learn that once an investment is made to a property it should be able to be used by any supplier, otherwise it is not an investment at all

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6662019/haggling-with-ee-with-multiple-networks-in-the-area

I won't pretend to understand all the tech stuff involved but surely a network goes from home to exchange to some sort of bigger pipes around the country.

What people may or may not get in other countries is totally relevant, what I want is to move their level of service to HERE. It shows what can be done, I am not talking about the allegedly amazing internet in places like Singapore, but rural places in Spain, France and Portugal even and mobile performance in Bangladesh.

Everything in the UK seems to be a botch job, we have 4m faulty smart meters but if you look at Canada and the US they have apparently been very smooth, EU Countries too I believe, yet the cost to the UK consumer is so high you would think we had a rolls royce system, best of the best, £15bn and counting.

Surely we should be capable of running a cable to a home to some sort of fibre modem and just swap out a router maybe or use our own router and then have the next supplier use as far as the modem.

DarthDaisy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81978262#Comment_81978262

I think I got the jist of what Starlink offer, although prices offered seem to change if you quit and come back

The front page said

But once you put in your address you get offer a service for £75

Residential Max

"Our best performing home internet service with maximum speeds available.

• Best Wi-Fi Experience: Router 3 and optional free mesh for expanded range.
• Free Starlink Mini for Travel (£159 Value): Optional Mini rental with flexible, discounted service plans. Available after checkout."

Not sure what that "mini" is or what it costs, I just wondered if they had more in some way as I suggested. It is a bit bizarre to pay so much more for roaming for a lower priority and speed.

Thanks for the Vodafone info, they are front runner on MSE deals, do they charge extra for a Landline and if so how much?

I need to have a discussion with the family

I need to understand if anyone in the family actually renewed in some way and I need to confirm they do not want the sports package or want to switch that to someone else.

Key Details for Leaving After a BT Contract Ends:

• 30-Day Notice Required: Whether for broadband or mobile, you must give 30 days' notice to end the service.
• No Early Termination Fees: Since your minimum term (e.g., 12, 18, 24 months) has ended, you are penalty-free.
• Switching Provider: If you switch to a new provider (e.g., to Sky or Virgin), you do not need to notify BT; the new provider handles it.
• Direct Cancellation: If you are not switching, you must contact BT directly to cancel.
• Service Continues: If you do nothing, your service will continue on a rolling monthly basis.