Wanting to leave Virgin but other options so much slower...

Owing to recent price hikes and channel cuts it seems time to leave Virgin - especially as my contract expired last month. I currently have the Vivid100 fibre option, and went for virgin TV etc as the house I moved to unusually has no ariel for Freeview. There is a satellite dish on the house but not connected and I don't want to get caught up in continually inflating Sky contracts, especially as I have no interest in sports or the sort of films they show.

I thought if I could find another decently fast broadband supplier I could buy a Humax box and stream what I want via YouView. But, looking at both the ThinkBroadband and Money Saving Expert comparison charts although options for 66Mbps show when I type my postcode, when I go to the various sites to apply I'm told the best on offer is 8-19Mbps standard ADSL. I rather doubt this is likely to be good enough to cope with Hive, streaming TV and a variety of PCs, phones etc. Does this mean I am held to ransom with Virgin? Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on alternatives? the postcode is BS3 3BP.

The Services list says:
Exchange Name Bedminster New Te (SSBED)
Exchange Distance 0.50km
Classification Market B
Virgin Media Cable Yes enabled
BT IPStream Max Yes enabled
BT WBC Yes enabled (estimated speed: 15 to 24 Mbps)
Openreach FTTC Yes enabled (estimated speed: over 40 Mbps)
Openreach FTTP No not enabled
Openreach G.fast No not enabled
TalkTalk LLU Yes enabled
Sky LLU Yes enabled

Thanks

Frances

PS - meanwhile Virgin keeps you on hold repeatedly then cuts off calls when you have been holding for 12 minutes!

Edited by deleted (Wed 25-Jul-18 13:41:31)

You are getting lousy results from the Postcode checker because FTTC/FTTP results have been removed from it. The reason being that a postcode can have several different fibre feeds with wildly differing speeds depending on how far you are from the feed.

If you go to this page and at the bottom of that choose the Address Checker you will get a more useful result. Strangely, the best thing for you at the moment in the Address Checker is to enter just your postcode. That gives you a dropdown list of every address in your postcode.

From that list you can select your own address to see what it says, but also neighbours who are not on VM as yours will be an estimate where theirs will be nearer their actuals.

Ummm

I forgot you gave us your postcode. I've just used that as I suggested to you and it doesn't look as if you can get FTTC/FTTP. I haven't checked every address though. It can occasionally happen that some can between many that can't.

Thanks that was a useful idea. I checked virtually every house but all the results appear to be the same - no fibre apart from Virgin. Maddening.

So either hard negotiation with Virgin is required to get the cost down, or I wait until son returns to Cambridge in Oct and wean myself off everything but the basics for a while and return to reading ...

Maybe Freesat?

https://www.freesat.co.uk/

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Maybe Freesat?

https://www.freesat.co.uk/

+1 There is no need to pay Sky to watch satellite TV.

Having a Terrestrial TV aerial installed is not that expensive. This Link will tell you what reception you are likely to get. Best to select 'Detailed view'.

Have checked our systems, and yes some EO lines were marked as on cabinet 1 by mistake, fix should roll-in tonight.

On the TV, even if limited to ADSL2+ at the distance to the exchange speeds should be fine for catchup TV via the broadband. All depends on how many video streams you will want to run at a time e.g. 8 Mbps should manage two streams at the same time.

Also you could downgrade the virgin connection to their 50 Mbps service and ditch the TV and use FreeSat if you have a dish already in place.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Maybe Freesat?

https://www.freesat.co.uk/

+1 our TV has it built in and we used to watch it through the Sky dish but when they did the Q upgrade they messed it up so we can't use it

to the OP, I had FTTC running next to VM for a while and although not as fast I found the FTTC to be more than ample for getting things done - IMHO it's not always a bad thing to go back to FTTC if you can get a stable connection (and if VM is giving you problems)

Post deleted by MrSaffron