Virgin price increase.

Just had an e-mail from Virgin Media, "Good news,we are increasing your speed to 8Mg and but we are increasing the price to £17.99 per month"
Been with Virgin for yonks and I think it's a bit of a cheek, that's a price increase of £3 per month for nothing and on a pension I'm not sure if I can afford it. I get adequate speeds now, I just use the internet for banking,shopping and browsing,I don't download music or films etc. Do I stay or move to BT at £15.99 per month. ?

I think you'll find there are better and cheaper options than BT . For example, Plusnet's value broadband at £11.99 per month (cheaper in certain areas) may suit your needs. My advice is to first use the checker at http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php to see which providers (if any) have LLU presence at your exchange, and then go from there. LLU options are likely to be cheaper than ISPs offering a BT based service.

Good link, thanks Futaura,
BE @ £7.50 or Plusnet @ £5.99 look inviting, but who are they and what's the service like ?
I'd also like to keep using my Netgear DG834 router,how would I reconfigure it ?

Thanks.

Be generally good and fast.

Plusnet - reasonable, the 10GB for £5.99 if your usage is below that is fine. There is traffic management, which may affect you.

For reconfig of the DG834 for Plusnet, easy, alter the ADSL service username/password. For Be I'd recommend switching to their router at least at the start.

Andrew Ferguson, andrew@thinkbroadband.com
www.thinkbroadband.com - formerly known as ADSLguide.org.uk

Thanks MrS.
Be sounds good then,except for changing the router but if there's a couple of RJ45 ports it'll be OK ,wife suffers from migraines and wireless seems to effect her.
As a matter of interest - does just changing the username and password on the router reconfigure it for most ISP's ?
djh22.

Hmm ! just checked Be website and it says it's not available on my phone line, might have to be BT anyway, unless Virgin offer me a deal to get me to stay of course.

Yes - when you change supplier, they'll normally give you a new username and password which you can simply change in the router. FYI, Plusnet are part of the BT group.

That sounds easy enough for even me to do , Lol.
Plusnet part of BT , not sure if that's good or bad.

In reply to a post by djh22:

Hmm ! just checked Be website and it says it's not available on my phone line, might have to be BT anyway, unless Virgin offer me a deal to get me to stay of course.

do you have any LLU operators on your exchange TalkTalk Orange ?
if not call retention's and ask for your MAC code, say you are moving to Plusnet as its much cheaper.
i guarantee they will match the price if you have been with them any length of time.

Well, yes, that's debatable . I don't mean to advertise Plusnet, btw - in fact we used them at work until last week when we switched to BT Business Broadband - not because we ever had any trouble with Plusnet, but because it'll save us money on phonecalls, etc. That said, I agree with Mr Saffron about traffic management - it fairly obviously kicks in at 4pm and limits download speed quite severely. I personally use TalkTalk for broadband at home.

It's certainly worth exploring the options out there - there are various comparison sites out there that can help with choosing a good/cheap supplier, and of course these forums give a good indication of ISPs' reputations.