30 day ISP

Hi,

My BT 55/10 broadband contract is due for expiry soon and as I may be moving to a Virgin Media cabled street soon, I don''t particularly want to lock myself in with a Openreach based ISP for 18 months.

I'm looking for a 76/20 ISP with a low minimum term or one that will allow me to leave without ridiculous penalties.

My exchange is WNDAW.

It may be cheapest just to stay with BT. It is difficult to get short term contracts for VDSL especially the 80/20 contract. Usually you have to pay a large up front fee for no contract or you pay quite high monthly fees.

BT want £54.99 on month 19 or re-contract for £34.99 a month on 76/20 for another 18 months.

Don't particularly want to lock in on BT for another 18 months.

I basically agree with Ian, but another possibility is Pulse8Broadband.

Worth taking into the equation is what termination charges you might get from BT if you stay with them and simply cease the line and broadband when you move.

Pulse8 provides TalkTalk Business Wholesale connections.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 10-Oct-19 11:16:25)

You do not have to recontract with BT. You simply continue at the standard monthly rate, whatever that is.

The term �Contract� only applies to the minimum term. At the end of it you automatically go onto a standard monthly contract, but the prices may be higher. You would also have to check out call costs in that case.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 10-Oct-19 11:10:51)

What is �month 19�? Is that the standard out of minimum term price for what you have?

I�ve just fixed the link in my first post, to go to the correct page.

I'm on a special rate of £29.99 for 18 months. On month 19 my bill will increase to £54.99 unless I re-contract.

I like the look of Pulse8. Strangely enough they have Wellington down as my exchange for FTTC (which is about 3 miles away) but Dawley, my actual exchange for ADSL.

With Pulse8 are they at the mercy of any TalkTalk shaping like on TT retail? I have heard exchanges low on capacity TT throttle stuff like VOIP and Netflix etc.

The FTTC can and quite often does come from a different exchange because it is more efficient for BT. Pulse8 services set their own options on TT and in all cases I can remember are not affected by TT shaping (TT put that on at the retail level rather than wholesale).

What router are you using with BT? If it is BT provided it probably won't be possible to use it with a different ISP so you might need to also consider the costs of purchasing another router. Also, if you have free BT services like caller display you may be charged for these on a different ISP.

You will need to take account of router costs and the rental with the new ISP and work out where the break even is comparing with staying with BT. If you think you will be with them for longer than the break even then make the jump - if not it may just be cheaper to stay where you are.

Also, as Bob says check termination fees - you will be cancelling the line at some point and different ISPs will have different charges for termination.

Edited by ian72 (Thu 10-Oct-19 11:46:32)

Pulse8 do not have termination charges.

Activation charges may apply if you do not have a working telephone line and no existing FTTC service. No contracts, termination charges, minimum call costs or connection fees. Calls charged to the nearest second. Speeds subject to line quality and distance from your local Fibre enabled cabinet.

As you say, there are all those other charges to consider. P8 do not have any call packages, just ultra-low prices on calls. Like no call setup charge that biggies have out of package deals.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 10-Oct-19 11:55:50)

As Ian says, it looks like your BT Hub would need replacing to work on P8.

As a Rule, routers from SKY, BT & PlusNet are not compatible as they are locked down, so please contact us if you are un-sure and we'll check for you.

I wouldn�t advise telling them you expect to leave early!

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 10-Oct-19 11:59:37)

aaisp can do short contracts.

I am using the BT SmartHub at the moment but I do have an Huawei HG612 and an old RTN-66u upstairs from my previous house. I'm tempted to get a better cable router to use with the HG612. It will also give me compatibility with Virgin.

I don't use the landline for calling so do not require any calling features.

Sounds like you have a straight calculation to do then looking at the costs of the various items for BT, Pulse8 and Andrews and Arnold as the likely candidates and take your pick based on that.

Unfortunately due to my usage AAISP are incredibly expensive.

Do you get a static or dynamic IP with Pulse8 as standard?

All the details are on their website - fixed IP is an extra £2 per month.

As shown on the page I linked to in my first post .

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

Hi,

My BT 55/10 broadband contract is due for expiry soon and as I may be moving to a Virgin Media cabled street soon, I don''t particularly want to lock myself in with a Openreach based ISP for 18 months.

I'm looking for a 76/20 ISP with a low minimum term or one that will allow me to leave without ridiculous penalties.

My exchange is WNDAW.

This ISP will give you FTTC for 1 month contract here: http://www.optanet.com/fibre-broadband-fttc/

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

I like the look of Pulse8. Strangely enough they have Wellington down as my exchange for FTTC (which is about 3 miles away) but Dawley, my actual exchange for ADSL.

With Pulse8 are they at the mercy of any TalkTalk shaping like on TT retail? I have heard exchanges low on capacity TT throttle stuff like VOIP and Netflix etc.

TalkTalk do not throttle, the service performs basically the same as BT. There is no traffic management/traffic shaping.

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

I am using the BT SmartHub at the moment but I do have an Huawei HG612 and an old RTN-66u upstairs from my previous house. I'm tempted to get a better cable router to use with the HG612. It will also give me compatibility with Virgin.

I don't use the landline for calling so do not require any calling features.

The HG612 is a legacy device now, very old and does not perfrom in the same class as new devices. I would not recommend using it.

Honeslty why do you not want to be "locked in?" The retention price by BT is a decent offer. The only reason I can see not to take it is if you are considering cancelling your broadband all together in the next 18 months.

Generally I would recommend taking a new contract every 18 months, it usually means a new hub is shipped, and if there's a newer version / better tech available you get it. Users who do not take new contracts and stay on a package for 5+ years end up with old kit, which is often insecure and vulnerable to attack, worse performance and pay higher on the standard pricing model. Those who opt for non mass-market ISPs to get short contracts, usually pay a premium in terms of paying setup fees / being charged engineer costs when something goes wrong / having to purchase their own hardware. Also, the performance of some smaller ISPs has been hit-and-miss recently, whereas the mass market ISPs are not experiencing these sorts of backhaul / routing issues overall.

There are exceptions e.g. AAISP, but if you want a cheap small ISP, as you do, you will likely have to contend with issues such as them being unwilling to issue several engineers (e.g. 5 engineers to fix an intermittent fault) as they cannot fund loss-making activities the same way as mass-market providers e.g. BT.

Your BT Smarthub is a wireless AC2600 device, replacing it will set you back a good amount e.g. 3 examples of wifi devices with AC2600:

1) https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-D7800-100UKS-Nighth...
2) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wireless-Connections-UK-Arc...
3) https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-Dual-Band...

Clearly these devices have other features which are better, but likely wont be used.

If you want to save money, you could opt for something such as talktalk fibre, the only downside is their customer service... Connection wise it's performance is very similar to BT and their hub performs the same in testing, often actually better. There is no throttling, fair usage, traffic shaping etc on any of the top 5 BT line based ISPs (sky, talktalk, bt, plusnet, EE).

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 19-Oct-19 04:16:17)

I use idnet there very good and just what you are looking for

https://www.idnet.net/

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

The HG612 is a legacy device now, very old and does not perfrom in the same class as new devices. I would not recommend using it.

I have swapped back from a brand new Zyxel to the HG612 and getting better performance. Do you have any reliable references for that statement?

Honeslty why do you not want to be "locked in?" The retention price by BT is a decent offer. The only reason I can see not to take it is if you are considering cancelling your broadband all together in the next 18 months.

The OP says he is moving house to a cabled street and would go with Virgin at that point. I think the OP's point is how to save money from month 19 as BT are increasing the price quite dramatically once the minimum term is complete. I personally would leave them just over that big jump.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 20-Oct-19 13:11:10)

All major ISPs prices jump at the end of the contract term.

Plenty of threads here discussing how the HG612 is now quite long in the tooth.

Very supprised no-one has mentioned Now Broadband. Prices are same for 1 month as they are for the 12 month contract. Catch is there is a £60 setup fee.

They are now offering me Infinity 2 for £31.99 a month but on a 2 year deal. No use unfortunately.

I know the property I am moving to has poor FTTC performance around half the speed I am getting now on 55/10 hence the reason for the switch to Virgin -which does perform well in the area.

Are NowTV good? I know it runs on Sky's network but any major differences at the network level? Routing etc

Now tv works well as far as I know, based on my one buddy who has it.

Apologies I did not realise the Virgin conundrum.

I'd happily re-sign with BT at that price but not at 25-28Mb.

We're quite heavy users, that connection will be saturated quite quickly.

I'll look into NowTV too I think.

Go to PN and ask for 2 years at fixed price 40/10 for £22.99 inc line rental

How would that fit in with wanting to go for VM at the new property?

FTTC at the new property is too slow for my needs.

Hence switching to Virgin.