Recommended Fibre Providers

Hello,

Who are currently considered decent providers nowadays, I know at one point TalkTalk Business was considered a decent supplier has that changed since the hack on their consume side? Who else is out there that is considered decent for fibre?

Thanks
Sam

Edited by deleted (Wed 28-Oct-15 17:26:06)

Depends on what you want and your budget.

The hack of TalkTalk doesn't necessarily impact on the wholesale side so using companies that wholesale their services might be an option.

Pulse8 have been pretty popular lately here but they are quite small and may not scale well - time will tell.

Andrews and Arnold are a good ISP but can be expensive.

Zen is still generally considered to be a decent ISP.

PlusNet are going through a series of support issues.

BT are OK - support is not the best but their network tends to be pretty good.

Sky also are looking OK.

Uno may suit you. Or possibly Vivaciti.

But, it all depends on your budget and requirements.

I've just moved to SKY Fibre Pro. So far really impressed, dedicated support number / forum for Pro users, fixed IP and great speeds.

Consider EE for FTTC (Fibre To The street Cabinet) and take a look at the website to see your given line speed.

https://broadband.ee.co.uk/

I moved from Plusnet to Zen in September due to many issues with PlusNet's network, support and invalid changes to their contract agreement with myself,

I'm rather pleased with the service provided by Zen and the support has also been very good, pricing is around the same for BT's packages so not exactly what I would consider expensive, I went for their small business fibre 2 and enhanced care line rental which will mean faster resolution times for faults.

Note to make though, my connection uses Zen's own network from the exchange, and depending on your regional location most Zen connections will connect via BT Wholesale though other using BT Wholesale's network have reported just as good performance.

Sky's network is considered pretty good but not really a great business option if you want to use your own or more advance routing equipment as Sky only support the service being used with there own router and do not let users have the details required to login to the network, however extraction o these is possible.

The exchange you are connected to may depend on the performance of providers, so if B where to only be available I would recommend BT Business to have best chances of priority on the network.

Providers using the same network as TalkTalk Business may be OK but currently I've not had the experience of using or dealing with any yet and the only thing I would say is Pulse8 seem to have been popular on here but there's a great deal of confusion with relation to costs of connecting,

Some reporting higher than usual connection costs and I personally asked them for a quote on a new line and they wanted a extra £50 payment for something that would not be required, recently it was reported in another thread that the charge for migrating a line over is now £75 where it should be around £30.

I Hope This Helps!

Hello,

I am considering Sky Pro as it seems to be a decent product and offers a static IP which would be nice. Sky are also enabled in the Drumchapel exchange. May even consider BT Business as I understand it has a higher traffic priority.

Resellers of TalkTalk (Pulse8 etc) haven't been affected by the hacking that took place last week. The only thing they provide to TalkTalk is the information required to perform the provide...

Have had a few performance issues with Sky Fibre Pro lately. Don't get me wrong Sky have sent out a BT OR engineer to check the line, checked exchange congestion and so on but nothing has fixed the peak time drop in throughput so far. It isn't helped by the fact that you have to use the provided kit to comply with their T&Cs. I dumped it anyway, went with a BT OR modem and my own router and the latency spikes disappeared.

Also remember that Sky line rental is going up to £17.40 a month, Sky Fibre Pro is £30 a month and if you want a call package it is now £8.

I would have considered Zen except they do not have LLU on my exchange so it would be WMBC, which might not be a problem but I don't want to be stuck on a 12 month contract to find out.

Then there is Pulse8, Adam is very open and have spoken to Sam in support as well. Their residential and business packages all run on TalkTalk Business so from the start your traffic is prioritised over TalkTalk residential (whatever that actually means ). It is a rolling monthly contract, the migration costs did confuse me a little and they cannot do a straight Sky LLU to TalkTalk LLU at the moment so it would be a downgrade to ADSL and then an upgrade to Fibre again, elapsed time at least 20 days. So it is easier (for me at least as I work from home) to order a new line at £130 and get the old one disconnected.

Residential fibre is £44 a month including line rental, no call packages but you do get per second billing.

I don't work for them and as I mentioned Sky are my current provider who I would happily stay with if they can sort this throughput issue out.

In reply to a post by Skilty:

Residential fibre is £44 a month including line rental, no call packages but you do get per second billing.

Not just per second billing, but the daytime call charges are 1ppm and night 0.8ppm. At one penny per minute that's 800 minutes before you catch up with an £8 per month call package.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by Skilty:

Residential fibre is £44 a month including line rental, no call packages but you do get per second billing.

Not just per second billing, but the daytime call charges are 1ppm and night 0.8ppm. At one penny per minute that's 800 minutes before you catch up with an £8 per month call package.

Yep which is what makes it so attractive for me. Checking our home phone I think we used 150 minutes last month.

You do pay £2 per month per fixed IP and £1 for caller ID, which I forgot to mention earlier. Taking it to £46 a month if you want a fixed IP for BQM.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by Skilty:

Residential fibre is £44 a month including line rental, no call packages but you do get per second billing.

Not just per second billing, but the daytime call charges are 1ppm and night 0.8ppm. At one penny per minute that's 800 minutes before you catch up with an £8 per month call package.

But if you make a lot of calls to mobiles from your landline then pulse8 will only give you 100 mins for £8 (@8ppm) whereas with the Sky anytime call package it includes unlimited calls to landlines and mobiles and 0870/0845 numbers. Also I imagine the latter would cost you a small fortune with pulse8.