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.

Would any anyone has an explanation as to why BT with its 7.6 million subscribers versus just under 1 million for Plusnet, have less issues and problems reported on their respective forums here? I am just curious.

In reply to a post by ajb1946:

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.

I had an online chat with them twice earlier this week when my email server played up. I got to chat with someone within a couple of minutes. Of course it turned out to be my fault anyway (router needed powercycling not just restarting :-/ ).

BT attracts those who prefer to engage via the phone

PlusNet attracts those who prefer to do it all online and has always had a more vocal community, both when things are good, i.e. chasing their referral fees and if things misbahave

Thanks. Interesting.

I've got a feeling that a significant number of Plusnet users who prefer to engage via the phone were put off for life from engaging with Plusnet that way when they had their well publicised waiting time problems.

In reply to a post by alext05:

Would any anyone has an explanation as to why BT with its 7.6 million subscribers versus just under 1 million for Plusnet, have less issues and problems reported on their respective forums here? I am just curious.

My problem I had a couple of days back was due to work done at the cabinet, someone broke a crimp on my line, so it would have happened who ever I was with for Fibre.

I had a bit of a problem with low speeds after, but that is now sorted and to be honest I know I have only had plusnet for a couple of months, I have had no real problem until now and when I phoned them up they answered pretty quick.

Better customer service than what I have had from other large providers,, but most I have got in touch with CS for other people.

I have heard that plusnet seems to be struggling, but not found it here.

Thanks, I have been with Plusnet for 18 months now and found them, on the whole, to be fine.

I am happy to stay with them for now but there are certain things that I am closely monitoring at the moment (gateway issues and peak time speeds that users are reporting on their own forums) that might be pointing to the fact that network is starting to struggle a bit with the number of users, although Plusnet are claiming that they keep adding the capacity all the time.

I hope that whatever the problems they are fixed soon, but not sure I would be coming myself to another 18 months in order to get a deal.

In reply to a post by alext05:

Would any anyone has an explanation as to why BT with its 7.6 million subscribers versus just under 1 million for Plusnet, have less issues and problems reported on their respective forums here? I am just curious.

A point I have always noticed, but don't expect you will get an explanation here. Stated here many times that folks mostly only post when they have a problem, so that is the difference between the two

I suggest the vast majority of BT Broadband users simply think that what they've got is what there is. Until they get a hard fault, which happens with any ISP.

The Plusnet complaints I see here tend to be people who know a little more than that and want things as near perfect as possible.

Huge disparity in numbers of subscribers should have created at least a parity in numbers of issues reported, I would have thought, given the fact that folks often say here that the bigger the ISP the more problems would be reported.

I am guessing we are not entertaining the thought that the BT network (at this point in time, I would like to add, not over some historical period) works just a bit better maybe.

The BT network is generally fine. The usual issue you see with BT is that when it goes wrong the support can be difficult to deal with. Same is true of Sky and PlusNet (although PlusNet are better when they are good but they have their bad patches).

PlusNet can at times run some of their backhaul very hot and overload it. BT and Sky generally don't see those issues so much - BT is such a large scale that they can generally smooth the peaks and troughs in backhaul.

Top notch support comes from the likes of A&A. Bottom end support is potentially the likes of TalkTalk (although recent reports suggest most customers are now happier with them).

Thanks, ian72. Great assessment.

Thanks again everyone for all the helpful info... after the many, many horrible people I meet online-gaming, it does restore some faith in humanity to come to a forum like this where people are nice to each other and actually help each other out. Cheers

I've got one question about Sky... the box they provide has a separate light that flashes when downloading catch-up content... is that QoS'ed such that it doesn't interfere with online gaming? What'll happen if I go with BT / PlusNet - would my wife downloading something to amuse here whilst I'm gaming cause my connection to lag horribly?

I am not sure about Sky or BT - you might want to ask in their forums. On Plusnet, I didn't have problems with my son gaming and me streaming plus a few other mobile devices used.

Generally, if everything is fine with the network and your own connection, I don't think there should be any issues, but someone else might provide a more qualified answer here. All the best with whoever you choose.

Unfortunately, you will still meet some silly gamers. FIFA 15 anyone? The good news - they are in minority.

Cheers, I decided to stop prevaricating and so I've taken the plunge and gone with BT.

I really hope this fixes (or BT can fix, post-switchover) my latency spikes, I had a 2 hour period on Sunday where my internet became quite unusable... 10% packet loss and average pings > 300ms (pinging from the router to google.co.uk)... now I just have to sit tight for another 2 weeks with my fingers tightly crossed!

Good luck . Let us know if it works or not. It could help the next person with a similar problem.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 05-May-15 13:30:25)