Looking to move to fibre or cable - where next?

We are currently on BT for phone and Sky (ex-o2) ADSL for Broadband.

We don't want to give the Murdoch empire any more hard earned cash, so looking at other options.

I've got a shortlist of:

BT - Attracted by the Reward Card and TopCashBack incentives, free BT Sport for 12 months and the free Home Hub, but concerned about the Indian call centres if anything goes wrong.

Zen - Ex-customer of theirs so know what I would be getting, but some concerns they might not be as good as they used to be

Pulse8 - Amazingly responsive to me email questions. Slight concerns about TTW, but this is more about the £72 cost of restablishing a BT line sjould we ever want to go back to BT. i believe the TTW Braodband service is pretty rock solid and probably better than BTs.

Aquiss or Uno - Very good reviews on ISP Review. Slight concern with Uno's capped pacakages as I have no idea what our current usage is. No response from Uno to my out of office hours email yet.

Virgin Media - Never really been that motivated about VM, but my son has used them at Uni and I have work colleagues that rate them.

I would welcome your thoughts and experiences with any of the above.


As an aside, I'm not really a big fan of the larger players discounting prices for the first year. At leaxt VM are fairly overt about it, ny BT suck you into thinking the 2nd year costs are the struck out figures on their ads and hide their real figures in a link to a tariff guide.

Is it just me that tyhinks all ISPs should be forced to be just offer a standard undiscounted prices?

Funnily enough Sky Fibre is currently free http://www.sky.com/shop/broadband-talk/fibre-optic/?...

The 25GB usage is free, the £10 per month unlimited 38Mbits package is very good value at £10 per month

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Sep-16 12:59:31)

In reply to a post by jaydub:

BT - Attracted by the Reward Card and TopCashBack incentives

For me the former was no problem, The latter was bad, I waited 3 months to be told I didn't qualify for both whilst all of my friends were getting their payouts from Quidco - my one and only time I have ever used TCB and never will again.

Just look at quidco as well, pays to shop around.

I'm currently dealing with BT over a evening slowdown. Makes me want to pull my teeth to be honest. BT should have an engineer arrangement button on the customer section. All the call centre does is "turn it off and on" "come off wireless" "send out an engineer"

I plan to move as soon as I can ( end of contract, price rise or bad speeds) You don't know an ISP's worth until the day comes you need them.

Stark contrast. BT £48,99
AAISP £45 - a million times better by all accounts.

What are the BT and AAISP products you quote at the end there? And ADSL2 or FTTC or FTTP?

Sorry for being vague.

Well, I pay £48,99 for BT which is £30 Infinity 2 and line rental of £18,99

AAISP's 1TB Home package I believe is (and I got this wrong) £50 a month to me (also FTTC). I'd rather pay the small extra and experience AA when I need them. I sit in their chat most days and I can see the quality of service.

Yes BT is unlimited and in the past believe when I've used it - but I am not getting on in life and can't be bothered with unlimited anymore when the price you pay is sacrifice of service. I'd much rather get limited to an initial 1TB limit and then know they will sort things if they go wrong.

I think I am right anyway, I've been watching for a few months now.

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Sep-16 16:23:29)

And the line cost?

You're right to be wary of BT's call centre, but for me the savings are too big to dismiss. 55/10 is 12.50 per month (+19 line rental) with £100 cash back from BT and about the same again from somewhere like topcashback.

Add the fact that it's only a 12 month contract, the fact that there are normally retention deals towards the end of the 12 months and the decent router makes it hard to beat.

AA is £50 and the line rental is in that.

Edit: Oh bugga no it's not it's £60 a month with £10 for the copper pair.

However the argument is valid that the tools and support make it worth it.

When I did a dummy order I was not given the option for the copper pair.

Edited by deleted (Sun 04-Sep-16 16:41:03)

I expect you do know it doesn't have a phone service on the line? Pointing it out just in case. You can have VOIP on it but that costs.

I pay £14 to Pulse8broadband for my line, which is £13 rental + £1 caller display. 1571 is included. Call costs are peanuts. And I kept my 44-year old number LOL.

So Bob presumably as you are with A&A for Broadband, your phone line must still be routed by Pulse8 through BT.

I thought they were all TT wholesale, but perhaps that is just if you take their BB and include calls.

Correct that my line is Openreach WLR3 not LLU. Whether the bundled line is WLR3 or LLU I don't know, but expect LLU seeing as it is claimed to be £7 cheaper.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I expect you do know it doesn't have a phone service on the line? Pointing it out just in case. You can have VOIP on it but that costs.

I pay £14 to Pulse8broadband for my line, which is £13 rental + £1 caller display. 1571 is included. Call costs are peanuts. And I kept my 44-year old number LOL.

Yup I haven't used a landline for calls since 2003. I pay £18,99 because I didn't know there were alternatives but I have "got wise to the fact" as they say.

I see pulse8 is £6 line rental? I'm having a look around today as it's my day off

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Yup I haven't used a landline for calls since 2003. I pay £18,99 because I didn't know there were alternatives but I have "got wise to the fact" as they say.

I see pulse8 is £6 line rental? I'm having a look around today as it's my day off

Pluse8 Line Rental is £13 as noted here: https://pulse8broadband.co.uk/line-packages

If you take both their Broadband and line rental then the line rental works out at £6 a month.

As CJT says, and as I posted. Phone line with Pulse8 is £13 - click the "Phone tab". And make sure you are always on the "Home" products not "Business".

The £6 is the phone component of the bundled LLU broadband+phone.

Line rental with no outgoing calls allowed (except for those specified) from this provider.

One other data point: A year ago, I narrowed my choice down to Uno or Pulse8 (migrating from 20CN Plusnet to LLU TTB).

In the end, I went with Pulse8, because they promised no migration charges, rolling contract. And because they were willing to try Annex-M on my line, cheerfully downgrading me if it didn't prove worth it.

In reference to pulse8broadband.co.uk/faq:

Are there any cease or migrate away charges?
No, we do not charge you anything if you decide to cease or migrate your telephone / broadband or fibre service away from us.

I'm aware that several users migrating from Uno have been caught out by what they see as a �sneaky� charge.

Anyway, extremely happy with Pulse8. I'm on a �difficult� rural line, yet can saturate my 15/1 sync all day every day. I pay the extra £1/month for �higher� traffic priority, plus 80p/month for elevated care.

That's ADSL2+ I gather?

I'm still mulling over the Zen vs Uno vs Pulse8 vs Aquiss question.

Aquiss are the most expensive of the lot and Uno's usage restrictions worry me.

So possible Zen or Pulse8 then, however I do have a preference to keep the phone with BT WLR, so possibly favouring Zen, but then again.....

I think I'm rapidly becoming the King of Procrastination!

In reply to a post by jaydub:

I think I'm rapidly becoming the King of Procrastination!

Nah! Just a beginner at it.

In reply to a post by jaydub:

Aquiss are the most expensive of the lot

Do you want to drop us a line/email to see if we can work on anything for you?

Hi
Have you looked at Origin Broadband?
K

In reply to a post by keymaster:

Hi
Have you looked at Origin Broadband?
K

I'd be very wary of Origin as I were with them on Digital Region and when they moved over to BT.

Despite about four network changes in that time they always had very poor single-thread performance and a maximum MTU of 1480 on their network.

I'd like to think they improved but I wouldn't gamble a long contract on it, especially as Zen cost about the same.

Zen were having issues at peak time but things seem to have improved recently and they were nowhere near as bad as Origin for single-thread performance even at their worst.

The only thing Origin have over Zen are 24/7 support, but then when I reported problems I never got the impression they were able to do much about them, so it was more a false sense of security..

Its such a shame as I wanted Origin to do well but it just felt like they didn't really know what they were doing setting up their network. Plus they are putting people on carrier grade NAT by default and any casual user will have no idea why their gaming performance is poor as they don't actually mention this.

This was all nearly a year ago now but I doubt its changed.

Edited by alexatkin (Sun 11-Sep-16 07:54:11)

Hi
I have two lines, one with Origin and one with Zen, what a co-incedence and they are not the same price - Origin one is £38 all in including anytime calls.£44 with no call package.
My experience was better support and 24 hours from Origin, however Zen line manages about 1 - 1.5 meg faster.
This is in same property so I would say fair comparison.
I have had both for 18 months, Zen has been issue free, Origin messed up a bit in first month with some teething issues but no drama since and I have always found guys on phone very pleasantr and helpful - erven at 2am.
K

In reply to a post by jaydub:

No response from Uno

If you've submitted that on our contact form in the last day or two, please can you re-submit it?

Small oversight on our end when we removed TLSv1 which has been identified and fixed - meaning we won't have got your message i'm afraid.

Really very sorry!

Matt

Hi Matt,

You did respond the day after I posted this comment and it's only fair that anybody reading this thread is aware of it.

Just come back of our hols and need to make a decision.

I've spoken to Sky and they have confirmed our BB usage has been around the 100GB for the last six months with the exception of the last couple of months when both adult kids have been at home when our usage has mysteriously risen to 250GB!

Having dome some spreadsheet analysis and assuming that I will remain with the ISP for two years and taking into account phone costs, it looks as though BT comes out the cheapest option, after cashback offers closely followed by Sky and Pulse8. Zen, Aquiss and Uno are all coming out about £10/month more.

In terms of response to emails and phone calls, Uno win my vote, but I'm reluctant to go on a fixed monthly allocation package. Not sure I want to be checking usage every other day to check that we're not about to go over limit.

Aquiss have been very disappointing, with barely any response to emails and a very middling response to the call I made to them.

Zen seem to have gone off the boil in recent months as well judging by some of the recent posts and their sales guy seemed to have a knowledge gap about recent bandwidth problems.

So for various reasons, I'm more tempted by the cheaper options: BT, Sky or Pulse8.

I almost pressed the button on Pulse8, but when I called to get a few final questions answered I was slightly concerned to get a guy telling me I needed a MAC code. Almost certainly one of their web hosting guys, but it does reinforce the fact they are only a small provider there are only a couple of guys who know their stuff.

And then of course, there is Sky and BT. Both sell the BB cheap and then make their money on calls and are probably going to give the worst customer service experience, although to be fair I've only had to ring Sky once in the last 2 or 3 years.

If I stay with Sky, I will be looking to get a Sky Q router though, as I'm not impressed with the SR102. Anybody know the current cost of this option as I'm struggling to find the appropriate info on the Sky site?

So no clear favourite, although Pulse8 are definitely leading by a short head running into the final straight.

No issues with BT over here.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

I also have TalkTalk fibre, no issues either. Cheap and cheerful.

I would personally say BT or Sky out of those options. Any reason you have not considered TalkTalk, yes customer service is not good, but the service never drops for me and speeds are 24/7 good. The provided router was not brilliant, and I did change it.

EDIT: Have you spoke to sky retentions to see what deal they can offer you?
If you got broadband, line rental and phone with them it will likely be quite a good deal.
Much easier than changing ISP when you are happy with the Sky Service.
Discounted prices are just part of the game so every so often you have to jump through these humps to get a good price, when your offer price ends.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 26-Sep-16 13:14:07)

One big advantage of the Uno phone package I find is the line rental, which comes in at under £14 per month. Their call prices are good too, evening and weekend rates at under 1p per minute - not to mention their no 60 minute call limit. I never begrudged my wife going over the 60 minute limit for "free" calls with Plusnet and sometimes ended up paying £2 for a 80 minute call. With Uno that would cost under 80p. We have never gone over £6 per month on calls with Uno and I believe the call packages from other providers now come in at about £8.

I am on a FTTC allowance of 100GB but have never got near that because the evening and weekend use doesn't count towards that allowance. Uno's customer service is good too.

If my exchange gets congested now because of people flocking to Uno I'll kick myself!!

Pulse8 are TTW resellers, so yes I have considered them indirectly.

I have a preference for paying a real rate for Broadband and then taking advantage of the cheaper call packages that Pulse8, Uno and Aquiss are able to offer.

I haven't considered talking to Sky Retentions, so that's certainly worth trying, particularly as I will need to speak to Sky about the cost of the Q hub.

I guess I'm lazy and don't really want to have to jump through hoops every 12 months. I'm also not that keen on other people subsidising my negotiated rates, but hey I'm a Yorkshireman, so I can get over that.

In reply to a post by napolibill:

One big advantage of the Uno phone package I find is the line rental, which comes in at under £14 per month.....

I am on a FTTC allowance of 100GB but have never got near that because the evening and weekend use doesn't count towards that allowance. Uno's customer service is good too.

Agreed on phone call rates. Uno, Pulse8 and Aquiss are all very competitive on the call rates, along with no connection fees and per second billing.

Thanks for pointing out that Uno's packages are at peak time only. As I work from home 4 days a week anyway and do have to shift some largish files about, it may not provide that great an advantage though.

In reply to a post by jaydub:

Hi Matt,

You did respond the day after I posted this comment and it's only fair that anybody reading this thread is aware of it.

Then it's fair to also point out that I sent a sales e-mail 2 weeks ago and never got a reply, not even an automated one.

Depends on what you were trying to sell them!!!!!!

LOL

I was trying to buy not sell!