In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I have Smarty on my mobile and it uses the 3 network, before this started I was getting 40 Mb/s, which was faster than my FTTC network from Plusnet, now 4g on my phone have gone down to under 20Mb/s sure I understand that things may be slightly different using a 4G base station than my phone, but I do not think it will make much difference.

Not really any difference, in most cases a modern handset is significantly better than 4G routers. As everyone is stuck in one location (at home) at the moment, there is a lot more load on the networks. People using unlimited data to stream video in separate rooms is the best guess I’ve read.

(Interesting, if you "Delete" a post, then edit it back into being, your sig does not re-appear).

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 17-May-20 22:02:06)

My new OnePlus 8 Pro phone beats the pants off my old Huawei P10 Lite with the same physical Three SIM. Both on 4G. The Huawei was slightly better than my Three B311 router.

Maybe I should edit my sig!
…
Done.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

My new OnePlus 8 Pro phone beats the pants off my old Huawei P10 Lite with the same physical Three SIM. Both on 4G. The Huawei was slightly better than my Three B311 router. Maybe I should edit my sig!

The 8Pro is LTE category 18 download, and it has 4 x 4 MIMO, which means 4 antennas on the phone.

If you are lucky to live in a Three area where the mast has been upgraded to the new design with 4T4R thenyes, this allows more data to get through the air between your handset and the mast over LTE. Just wait until that mast gets 5G New Radio (NR) support, as that will increase speeds aggregating NR with LTE.

The B311 is a low Cat 4 device upto 150 Mbps, and no MIMIO. Similar to a Samsung Galaxy S4 from 7 years ago.

Yes, I saw it was 4 x 4 capable in the spec. One of the reasons I went for it.

I'm looking forward to a trip into one of the 5G areas around here. The nearest looks to be about 11 miles away.

Who would I choose over Plusnet?
In the current market probably BT but that could well change before my PN contract ends in December.
There are a few very well respected ISP options such as AA and Zen but their cost certainly reflects the level of service and support offered, out of my league.

The point of my original post was to state that from my experience with PN since their billing system changed towards the end of 2018 their service has been very poor for a lot of their customers while many have been lucky and have remained unaffected and/or not required any tech/admin assistance to test the system.
Have a browse of the PN forum to gauge the ongoing complaints level.

I have always paid line rental yearly in advance, certainly saves money, however, it also becomes a factor which ties you to your contract for at least a year, I believe I would have a very good case for penalty free exit from my current PN contract all be it likely having to involve OFCOM, however, it's very unlikely I would be able to retrieve my pre-paid line rental by any means.
On these grounds I would not choose to pay yearly line rental in advance with my next ISP at least in the first contract period.

The choice of ISP is ultimately with the individual and will always be a compromise between cost and expectation of level of service, all I can state again from my experience is that Plusnet would not currently be on my list of ISP contenders.

I was with Bt years ago on ADSL, after the hassle I had with them I said I would never go back to them, yes I know plus net belongs to them, but it is slightly better, at least I can understand them on the other end of the phone, and they do treat people with a bit of intelligence, BT just reads off the script and will not deviate one bit. So I can not see myself going back to BT, also they are more expensive than others and seems to pester their customers to add stuff to their service.
The other thing with Bt is the length of their contracts, I do not want to be stuck in a contract for 2 years, I do not really want 18 months if I can help it
Zen and AA is certainly out of my price bracket, I could afford them, but I fail to see the point in paying that high a price unless you need that level of customer service

Thankfully I have had no problem with plusnet's billing, I had a look at some of these sites that show you best value Broadband, but they are a waste of time as they all show the same providers but in different positions, which just proves the point that they get paid by different providers and give you the one that they get paid more to recommend. Uno is still on my list, the other two is three and going for 4G or staying as i am.

We were with PN for many many years at a number of properties. Basically their DSL provision was very good and reliable however their back-end systems can be problematic if you have issues with them. We finally left after having issues with their Line Rental Saver 2 years running and which they were unable to fix, or even show any signs of fixing. PN's backend phone provision had a few glitches along the way but nothing too major.

As others have said there's a lot of providers at the bottom end with little to differentiate between them. We eventually went for Vodafone and have been pleasantly surprised. We use our own router & modem but did initially use the supplied router/modem which worked fine. Setting up things like fixed IP address, getting PPPoE username/password for our own router, phone set up was pretty painless using the web support and on-line chat and we've had a few months of faultless service with reasonable speeds etc.

Not to say that the other providers wouldn't have provided a better/worse service but Vodafone has been OK here.

Just to say that Zen's 40/10 and 80/20 packages appear to be cheaper than BT and Plusnets normal prices after the initial introductory discount has ended.
PN offered me a deal to stay with them which is cheaper than Zen, if they had not I would have transferred to Zen.