Based on getting the best between Price, Performance and Features (Static IP) I would say Sky Pro!

I only really recommend a few providers as it is based on contracts, they are BT, Sky, Zen...

There may be others but prices start shooting up and also some other reasons, like Pulse8 as well as being expensive monthly seem to have an odd way of signing people whether it be migration or new line (ruling out any previous migrations issues) they seem to charge for ADSL circuit to be installed and activated (which is costly anyway as its wholesale price not subsidised) and then charge another fee to upgrade that circuit to FTTC!

I'm currently in a wee pickle myself as I've been tasked by my grandfather in-law to get his monthly outgoings for telecoms reduced to bare minimum due to him recently being forced into retirement, he was pretty into a deal he had seen from TalkTalk but after advising him on a few requirements and prices don't include Line Rental and some other bits, I've now got the job of sorting the best deal without o much fuss as it will be remote now that I live in another city.

Currently he has Sky's BB Unlimited with Anytime Calls, Sky are increasing his Line Rental in December by £1 to £17.40 but then following that in January his phone tariff is going up from £5 to £8!!!

However after looking around, I feel Sky are going to be the best deal and also be the easiest to manage from a distance.

So Monday I will be in negotiations with them over getting a new deal for new contract.

Plusnet is a viable option price wise but is not worth the hassle with the network issues and the fact that currently I see too many complaints about migrations/activations going wrong and then the inability to contact there support.

Can I ask, have you used TalkTalk Fibre yourself? Their DNS sucks so pages "feel" like they load slowly (easy to switch to google dns anyway), however a torrent maxes out the full 80Mbps night or day and speedtests the same.

Their customer service sucks but their connections are just fine.

I personally was a big supporter of Sky, however I was using all my own hardware. When my own hardware broke and I was forced to use the Sky Hub, I realised how poor it was. It would constantly fall over with the demand I placed on it, reboot itself etc. Also weirdly, I started to get evening throughput issues (dropping from 80Mbps to sub 10Mbps) so moved ship. I currently have a VirginMedia line and a talktalk one. Both are superb for me.

Your BQM looks great.

what made you forced to use the sky hub? I am not.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

Your BQM looks great.

Aye, looks very good when you consider the ammount of data being transmitted near constanly over the last week or so...

And then also during the same periods there can be multiple live streams going on too...

These things whern't possible with Plusnet

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

There may be others but prices start shooting up and also some other reasons, like Pulse8 as well as being expensive monthly seem to have an odd way of signing people whether it be migration or new line (ruling out any previous migrations issues) they seem to charge for ADSL circuit to be installed and activated (which is costly anyway as its wholesale price not subsidised) and then charge another fee to upgrade that circuit to FTTC!

I contacted them about the charge for moving my BT phone to their line package - it's a bug on their website. There's no charge for taking over a BTw line from another provider. My usage has never gone above 60GB so no prizes for guessing where I'll be going once I manage to get out of my Plusnet contract.

if migrating a FTTC connection 'now' there should only be a £30 charge which is fine...

unfortunately if its new connection there is a charge for the £90 managed install charge, £50 for DSL circuit activation and then £30 fibre activation...

£50 is not really required but Pulse8 confirmed that they order a new ADSL line and then an upgrade to fibre order is then placed and done following the ADSL lines provision.

I can assure you this is confirmed, 3 times in fact!

Been noticing the issues with Apple's servers for a little while now but since ios9 and lots of new updates I've noticed it's got worse. I realised it must be plusnet at fault when I switched off wifi and downloads were much quicker on 4G. App downloads in iTunes on the mac are also really slow. I've done some checking and found the downloads speeds were much lower than what they use to be and were around the ~1Mbps somethings getting up to 30Mbps if Im lucky but around the 15Mbps Range typically. I use to get 70Mbps when doing speed tests a year ago but now Im lucky if I get 60Mbps. I wish the apple downloads were hitting 60Mbps but 40Mbps is around the max for them now I've unplugged the modem to see if that helps. So far everything is download faster again but for how long I don't know.

Plusnet seems to be getting slower and slower for a lot of things.

In reply to a post by maximono:

Plusnet seems to be getting slower and slower for a lot of things.

My parents on BT Infninity report very slow downloads from Apple app store for iOS and Mac this week too.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

if migrating a FTTC connection 'now' there should only be a £30 charge which is fine...

unfortunately if its new connection there is a charge for the £90 managed install charge, £50 for DSL circuit activation and then £30 fibre activation...

£50 is not really required but Pulse8 confirmed that they order a new ADSL line and then an upgrade to fibre order is then placed and done following the ADSL lines provision.

I can assure you this is confirmed, 3 times in fact!

Weird, i rang them pulse8 today, i asked for some clarification regarding FTTC migration and associated fees, they informed me of the unusual and somewhat pointless process that tt go through, that is place an order for ADSL (which is apparently needed to get your line connected to their LLU kit in the exchange) then basically simultaneously they upgrade this to a GEA service,

So they don't actually provision a adsl service that you are no longer able to receive,due to it being jumperd and filtered in the fttc cab
But they do ( tt business) apparently, charge them a whopping £75 fee ,for a FTTC migration, which pulse 8 say they are passing on , But considering BT openreach no longer hold SP's to a 12mth min term for FTTC migrations and charge a lot less for migration fees, than they once did,
Maybe it's because they are offsetting their overall costs incurred from adding new FTTC customers , so those who migrate are getting shafted imo

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 23-Oct-15 18:03:28)