Looking to move from BT but unsure where to go!

Hi all
We are thinking of moving away from BT as for £65 a month it's getting a bit pricey and the connection seems to be getting worse.

We live in a fairly large old Victorian House in Devon and we have two rental flats to the side of the house which use the BT broadband for their internet connection too. We are also hoping to run a private health clinic at the front of the house (just one room) so will need a fairly good connection.

Should we be looking to get two broadband supplies in to cover the various business options and if so how do we make sure that the coverage is good for the whole house and flats? If so which is the best provider?

I am afraid I know next to nothing when it comes to technology and internet etc so any help will be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

Kieron

Aquiss.

In reply to a post by kj73:

Should we be looking to get two broadband supplies in to cover the various business options and if so how do we make sure that the coverage is good for the whole house and flats? If so which is the best provider?

That sounds like you are expecting to do this with Wireless. You need to divide this into 2 problems:

• Getting good enough internet into the property for all of the expected uses
• Getting good Wireless to the various parts of the property

For the first part, I would concur with the suggestion of Aquiss BUT for the second part, Aquiss expect you to provide your own router. That does not rule out Aquiss, because for the most part ISPs send out cheap, or useless or undocumented routers which will be expected to give reasonable service in about 85% of cases.

Given the description of the premises, you might get away with it using an ISP provided router. But your likelihood of success is way below 85%. So you probably need to get a professional in, unless you can DIY a wireless solution of put in a wired network. But don't expect an ISP to provide a solution for Wireless in premises on the scale of yours.

If you accept that the network your side of the router is your problem, Aquiss are as likely to be good as any.

Letting two rental flats use the connection may have something to do with the seems to be getting worse bit.

Zen, who certainly used to have a good reputation, do basic business broadband for £29+VAT per month. The router they supply is probably one of the better ones supplied by an ISP but you will almost certainly need some kind of wifi extenders to cover a large house well.

It won't help if your tenants are doing lots of big downloads or live streaming HDTV.

Unless you have fibre to your house, or an alternative fibre based supplier or are willing to wade in the horrors know as Virgin you are limited to 80Mb/s maximum and it may be less depending on how far you are from the fibre cabinet. This is enough to support a lot of use but may struggle with multiple heavy users.

Edited by ppppenguin99 (Wed 29-Jan-25 07:00:53)

many thanks for your help and assistance I really appreciate
Kieron

Thanks for your response
Normally I would agree with you but seeing as both of them are currently empty and have been for a while I think that is unlikely

Many thanks for your reply, I really appreciate your help with this
Cheers
Kieron

Thanks for you help

+ 1 for Aquiss

I am moving to their Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) service in the very near future, and I previously used their Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) service in 2016 without any issues.

Also recommend investigating a router that works for your needs, are you going to be using WiFi mainly or a mixture of WiFi and wired connections?

For the Private Clinic you may want to go for a separate business connection which can include guarantee's on repairs etc.