Upgrade to fibre... Sky, BT or PlusNet... which one?

So it's time to make the jump to fibre... my current broadband provided by Sky is pretty good - 14mb / 1mb but I am having occasional latency spikes which so far Sky haven't been able to fix.
Hopefully the change to fibre will do the trick, but if it doesn't, which ISP could I rely on to get it sorted? (Well I guess not Sky, unfortunately)

My current thinking, in order of preference, is:

1) BT - they ought to be the most likely to fix my latency problem? I could make use of the BT Sport channel too.
2) PlusNet - cheapest, but the plusnet forum suggests they're struggling with so many customers and speeds are falling (is that true?)
3) Sky - easiest! But they have failed to fix my glitch (so far).

Has anyone got any thoughts on their relative merits? Are my perceptions correct?

(And... I noticed I could get the BT deal cheaper through uSwitch - it's £3 less per month, with an extra M&S voucher... would I be able to do that via QuidCo? It would certainly make BT look quite reasonable)

Here are the stats off the availability checker:
FTTC Range A (Clean) 40 31.5 8 5.8 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 35 19.3 8 4 -- Available

Here's my thread regarding my ping problem:


cheers,
Ross

I would be tempted to:

* Change the Wifi channel to some other value, and check if that stops the slowdown.

Irrespective of above
* Update from SKY LLU to SKY FTTC


I did both and all of my issues vanished (house close to me on same wifi channel) and then extra speed for broadband.

BT - just worked for me. Good speeds, BT Sport in HD on sky box. Have the app/wifi when out and about.

Not the cheapest but have been good to me.

I am sure all 3 you've listed have horror stories associated with them.

BT would also (I think) have a engineer visit to fit new faceplate - so this could work to your advantage by getting the engineer to look at master socket/profile too.

No, I think it's all self-install these days. Can't recommend BT - I'm looking to leave atm, got my MAC.

Yep, BT is definitely self install, although they will send an engineer FOC if there's any issues within the first 28 days.

Plusnet seems to be an engineer install affair though.

In reply to a post by RostokMcSpoons:

1) BT - they ought to be the most likely to fix my latency problem? I could make use of the BT Sport channel too.

Not true. BT the ISP (real name BT Retail) are a separate company to the ones which operate the FTTC and ADSL network infrastructure (BT openreach and BT Wholesale). They are in no better a position to fix issues than any other ISP and their size can mean that they will put up with more complaints than a smaller ISP would.

2) PlusNet - cheapest, but the plusnet forum suggests they're struggling with so many customers and speeds are falling (is that true?)

I think they are getting on top of it. They claim that the problem is external to their network (in this case I infer BT Wholesale). Almost any ISP could suffer the same issues if that's the case.

3) Sky - easiest! But they have failed to fix my glitch (so far).

Ah well, swings and roundabouts

The advantage Sky has over BT or Plusnet is that they operate almost the entire network. That means they aren't beholden on any of the BT divisions to sort out network issues. In some cases that's good because whereas Plusnet (or BT Retail if it happened to them) can only stamp their foot and shout at BT Wholesale Sky can send their own engineers out and fix things as quickly as they want to. Unfortunately it's also true that in some cases Sky might decide not to bother. A fault with BT Wholesale can impact a lot of people and many ISPs so that's a lot of customers shouting, some of which are businesses with loud voices. But a fault in Sky's network might only impact users and their shouting might not bother Sky very much.

I went with PN. I could've gone with Sky and got a bundle with my TV/Phone/BB. Unfortunately at the time Sky weren't offering static IP and didn't offer a full 80/20 service.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 28-Apr-15 15:03:28)

Thanks all for the replies... though the message is a bit mixed and I'm still not absolutely certain what to do!

Btw, those latency spikes are affecting all the devices in the house, whether they're connected by Powerline, or via Wifi (there is one other local wifi using the same channel, so I will switch it at some point)
The Sky engineer showed me how to ping from the router, so I'll do that the next time I get a spike - that'll rule out anything connected downstream won't it?


I can see from my wifi analyzer that most of the wifi signals are Sky boxes - is there any advantage in avoiding Sky or will all the fibre connections potentially cross-talk regardless of ISP?

I guess if I can get BT Infinity with some cashback off Quidco, for £15 through uSwitch, that the BT Sport will swing it for me, if there's not much else to choose between the three.

Edited by deleted (Tue 28-Apr-15 16:29:36)

Cross talk is the same irrespective of provider.

The main reason you are getting a mixed message is because there isn't a "right" answer. Performance varies and people use Internet for slightly different things. A provider that one person loves may be hated by another - and the actual difference may be miniscule that causes those perceptions.

None of them are perfect but they also generally are not terrible - but you will always find individual cases of great or horrendous service.

Re. PN's customer help problems. I phoned them mid-afternoon on a weekday about two weeks ago. The phone was answered after just a couple of rings and my problem was sorted out in about 30 seconds! Personally in nearly 7 years I have never had a problem with their customer services.