advice on ISP swap

Hi everyone,

I have been on BT's FTTP 900Mbps for 23 months now, It's up in November, 90% of the time it's been fine, however I don't like the price (£66 and goes up by another £6 after November) and the BT company (as a broadband retailer).

I am also willing to drop the speed to 500Mbps but no lower than that, I would like to stay at 900 if I could, but I am open to other options (mostly just for a change in ISPs TBH)

Has anyone got any advice/suggestions for me, please?

Many thanks in advance.

Use one of the price comparison websites to find out about the alternatives. If you are not a very heavy user a lower speed may not make much difference. Generally if you order a lower speed from someone that can also provide higher speeds upgrading is likely to be easier that doing the opposite.

Giganet will do 500Mb for £37 a month on a 12 month contract with no in-contract price rises. Ive nearly completed my first 12 month contract with them and will soon be signing up for another 12 months.

In reply to a post by sjr:

Giganet will do 500Mb for £37 a month on a 12 month contract with no in-contract price rises. Ive nearly completed my first 12 month contract with them and will soon be signing up for another 12 months.

Don't they have something like a £55 setup fee on top of that?

Yes they do.

I’m going to sign up with talktalk once I can get FTTP.

£45 a month, cash back from top cash back and a pair of eero pro routers.

In reply to a post by AND_OR_ELSE:

Hi everyone,

I have been on BT's FTTP 900Mbps for 23 months now, It's up in November, 90% of the time it's been fine, however I don't like the price (£66 and goes up by another £6 after November) and the BT company (as a broadband retailer).

I am also willing to drop the speed to 500Mbps but no lower than that, I would like to stay at 900 if I could, but I am open to other options (mostly just for a change in ISPs TBH)

Has anyone got any advice/suggestions for me, please?

Many thanks in advance.

Any Alternative network where you are? May get a better deal with them. If not then maybe look at plusnet, I know they still belong to BT, but they are cheaper, as long as you don't need a phone. I think most of the large providers are more or less the same, very little to choose between them.
Do you really need that speed? If you want to save money on your internet then maybe that is the first thing to look at. You say you will drop to 500Mb/s, Unless you have a load of people using the net at the same time, you should find that ample.

In reply to a post by Kr1s69:

I’m going to sign up with talktalk once I can get FTTP.

£45 a month, cash back from top cash back and a pair of eero pro routers.

Really? Think very carefully before you do, even if you do get cashback. Talk Talk is not in the best ways at the moment money wise.

I’m following their financial challenges but as it’s via openreach I don’t think there’s a huge issue if they fail. The eero will work with other networks too so remains useful.

If the service is genuinely bad then I’d look to migrate and take the financial hit, however I’ve not heard a lot of complaints about the actual product for a while (customer service is always terrible at most large ISPs)

There’s a chance Nexfibre get here before openreach so Virgin Media are also on my list of options.

Thanks for the advice so far everyone.

Firstly, I am a single user, I live alone, I do game on my Xbox One X, but very rarely – maybe on average 2 hours a week, I spent most my online time on my PC on YouTube. I use LAN on PC and 5Ghz Wi-Fi only on TV and Mobile.

I used to be with Plusnet for 5 years before BT on VDSL 80 getting a solid 64Mbps sync, and it was always 60Mbps / 21ms day and night, with a constant 0.1 quality rate (A) result on the TBB quality metrics, it's the best you can get is 0.1 (A),

This is latency during up/download. On BT it varies between 0.8 (A) and (D = poor) at various numbers, but the download speed is fine regardless. In 24 months It's dipped twice to 600Mbps and a phone call got it sorted the next day (high radial counts) – so I was thinking about going back to Plusnet to be honest, them or Sky as I have been with them on LLU before Plusnet and they were good.

The 900 speed is great as I am a heavy user @ about 500 GB a month, I can download a couple of 20 GB files in minutes, leaving bandwidth available for other locals to use, that's one good thing about having gigabit speeds.

Now you be wondering then why leave if it works so well?

1. I just don't like being on BT itself, I don't mind Openreach connection (preferably LLU like SKY) since being on BT it's not been as perfect as Plusnet I understand people say it's a rebadged BT, but It's still its own separate company that has to operate as such, and in my experience was better than BT,

2. I don't like their router, its limited, I want to buy and use my own with 3rd party FW like Tomato or DD-WRT, so I can change a lot more stuff. yeah all ISPs routers are gash... but the more common, the more danger of hacking.

3. Price – its expensive compared to some, and obviously if I don't renew or move in the next few weeks I am going to be charged almost £80 a month for this 900Mbps – £55 is what it started at, after 5 months it went up £10, then the following April another £7, and says it will go up another £6 after my contract ends then again in April .. it will almost be be £100 by then!!! lol – I've never seen price rises at this degree on ANY ISP!!

So Talk Talk, I don't know what they are like lately, but they used to be terrible (hence cheapest), but they picked up IF you used their FORUM for help instead of Indian call centres… and their connections got better and more stable (better chipsets in their routers).

I can't get Giganet or Virgin here, annoying it's a block of flats, yet all the houses around the area have access to 3 FTTP products (Openreach, Virgin, Grain) – I can only use Openreach.

I will have a look on price comparison sites, it's more for an ISP that always supplies the 850-930 speed, even though its not guaranteed, they still do it.. Like Plusnet used too – never experienced any congestion on Plusnet.

I'll keep looking,

EDIT1: I see Vodafone are doing 900 for £34 on 24 months, no extra fees? must be [censored] for such a cheap price, bet they pay for les bandwidth than they need! -can anyone on Voda confirm?
thanks to everyone

Edited by AND_OR_ELSE (Wed 11-Oct-23 10:01:00)

Aquiss do 550/75M for £50 per month or gigabit for £55. First 6 months half price, 12 month contract, no setup fee but you have to bring your own router. Static IPv4 and IPv6, and real human beings who answer tickets.

I have their 330/50M service as that's the sweet spot in their pricing at £45. The next tier down is only £3 cheaper for half the speed (160/30M).

FTTP is a shared medium, that's why nobody can guarantee the speeds. The total available on an Openreach FTTP connection is 2.4Gbps download (1.2Gbps upload) divided between up to 32 users on one splitter, which goes back to one OLT port in the exchange. So when someone like you is downloading at 950Mbps continuously, that makes less bandwidth available for other people in your area - and vice versa.

"High radial counts" is totally meaningless. They might have said something about RADIUS I guess, which is what's used to authenticate a session, but once your session is established it has no effect on the bandwidth delivered to you.

You're quite right that as well as FTTP congestion in the Openreach last mile, there can be congestion in the ISP's own network out to the Internet. As for ISPs buying less capacity than they need, it depends what you mean by "need". Nobody buys bandwidth equal to the number of customers they have multiplied by the peak bandwidth each customer has bought: that would be mad. They monitor their usage, and increase their capacity as demand requires.

Vodafone *is* cheap, and you may find that if you need to talk to their customer service department, it's not great. But you could say the same about BT.

BTW, at 500GB per month, you're not a heavy user by any stretch. In the OFCOM market report from July 2022, the *average* household usage on fixed broadband connections was 453GB. AAISP Home::1 has two plans: normal usage has a 1TB/month cap, and high usage has a 10TB/month cap. (This is probably the best home ISP you can buy)

Downloading 20GB at 900M takes about 3 minutes. At 300M it takes about 9 minutes. Either way you're going to need to make a cup of tea and have some biscuits

Personally, I would take 300M from a high-end provider with good customer service and static IPv4/IPv6 over 900M from Vodafone or BT. But it's down to each person's individual needs, preference and risk profile.

Edited by candlerb (Wed 11-Oct-23 13:57:32)

In reply to a post by AND_OR_ELSE:

I can't get Giganet or Virgin here, annoying it's a block of flats, yet all the houses around the area have access to 3 FTTP products (Openreach, Virgin, Grain) – I can only use Openreach.

If you're on Openreach you *should* be able to get Giganet, I'm on an Openreach connection and was able to order my Giganet service as soon as the fibre was installed. If their website says no, get in touch with their customer services.
I've also just renewed my contract for another 12 months as I've been very happy with the service and doing so means no price rise for the next 12 months.

Vodafone shows as £36 for me but that is super cheap. They seem to still be in the customer acquisition phase but that used to focus on FTTC customers.

I’m still checking roadworks and engineering activity in my town - hoping openreach or nexfibre are available before Christmas.

In reply to a post by Kr1s69:

I’m following their financial challenges but as it’s via openreach I don’t think there’s a huge issue if they fail. The eero will work with other networks too so remains useful.

If the service is genuinely bad then I’d look to migrate and take the financial hit, however I’ve not heard a lot of complaints about the actual product for a while (customer service is always terrible at most large ISPs)

There’s a chance Nexfibre get here before openreach so Virgin Media are also on my list of options.

I suppose being on Openreach you will be chucked to another provider if Talk Talk fail. Talk Talk service itself is ok these days by the seems of it, it is only when things go wrong that the problems start.
Plusnet is a large ISP and their customer services was ok, or it was the few times I used it.

When you say the router is limited, what do you really want to do with your router? Unless you have a huge network, BT own router will work ok. It is a bit bloated and once some of the stuff is disabled it works well.

If you live alone then even a 100Mb/s will do what you need, some people pay for more than they need.

Plusnet was fine for me, I can't say much about other FTTC providers as I was only on plusnet, but going by other people, they are more or less all the same, apart from customer service, prices and router. If you think BT router is limited, then plusnet's is even worse in that respect. I preferred Plusnet's router.

I think Vodafone makes it difficult for you to use your own router, if that is what you want.