Broadband speed and price

[slimbob]

I have been with Virgin Media for about 15 years straight as it is the only cable ISP available in my area. They have always been really good and reliable. My last contract was 100mbps / unlimited usage £17 pcm. Bear in mind I have no phone or T.V just broadband. Then my contract ended 01/2021 and it jumped up to £19.50pcm which is still very good. It then went up to £24 pcm which is still very competitive for that speed. Last week it went up to £26.50 pcm. so I phoned up and negotiated a new 18-month contract @ £17.50pcm fixed price for 18 months was absolutely made up

What ISP do you guys use and what are your deals like out of interest.

Cheers

 

[SpyderTracks]

I have been with Virgin Media for about 15 years straight as it is the only cable ISP available in my area. They have always been really good and reliable. My last contract was 100mbps / unlimited usage £17 pcm. Bear in mind I have no phone or T.V just broadband. Then my contract ended 01/2021 and it jumped up to £19.50pcm which is still very good. It then went up to £24 pcm which is still very competitive for that speed. Last week it went up to £26.50 pcm. so I phoned up and negotiated a new 18-month contract @ £17.50pcm fixed price for 18 months was absolutely made up

What ISP do you guys use and what are your deals like out of interest.

Cheers

That’s really good, in this day and age, unless you fight, price tends to go up on renewal with most things. Apparently the government are cracking down on it so we should see this practice start to change in the not so distant future.

I’m with BT and have been since 2007. They’re the only direct supplier to this area, you can get all the third parties, but they just piggyback off BT.

It’s insanely expensive at £30pm for 55Gb (just for internet, not including the obligatory phone line also), but until we get some fiber providers here we really don’t have a choice other than mobile broadband.

It’s really frustrating as Virgin media service the town to the south and north of us and they get 300mbs speeds!

There are a few local suppliers pushing to serve the area with 1Gbs fiber and I’ve signed up to those when they get here, but could be a little wait.

 

[slimbob]

That’s really good, in this day and age, unless you fight, price tends to go up on renewal with most things. Apparently the government are cracking down on it so we should see this practice start to change in the not so distant future.

I’m with BT and have been since 2007. They’re the only direct supplier to this area, you can get all the third parties, but they just piggyback off BT.

It’s insanely expensive at £30pm for 55Gb (just for internet, not including the obligatory phone line also), but until we get some fiber providers here we really don’t have a choice other than mobile broadband.

It’s really frustrating as Virgin media service the town to the south and north of us and they get 300mbs speeds!

There are a few local suppliers pushing to serve the area with 1Gbs fiber and I’ve signed up to those when they get here, but could be a little wait.

Yes, I was made up, must admit I can personally recommend Virgin from my own 15-year experience as a customer but appreciate others may have a different experience with them.

They are very prone to put prices up but are open to negotiation. My price (yearly average) has changed very little over the last 10 years. My friend is with B.T and has always been happy. It must be annoying that you only have one direct supplier, hope you get some fibre suppliers in your neck of the woods soon. Yes, Virgin have some scary speeds available! To be honest a long time in the past I was getting 20mbps (Virgin cable) which for me is more than adequate but they keep boosting up my speed for the same price! So I have been boosted up from 20 to 100 without asking to be or paying for it. That is another very good thing about Virgin

 

[SpyderTracks]

Yes, I was made up, must admit I can personally recommend Virgin from my own 15-year experience as a customer but appreciate others may have a different experience with them.

They are very prone to put prices up but are open to negotiation. My price (yearly average) has changed very little over the last 10 years. My friend is with B.T and has always been happy. It must be annoying that you only have one direct supplier, hope you get some fibre suppliers in your neck of the woods soon. Yes, Virgin have some scary speeds available! To be honest a long time in the past I was getting 20mbps (Virgin cable) which for me is more than adequate but they keep boosting up my speed for the same price! So I have been boosted up from 20 to 100 without asking to be or paying for it. That is another very good thing about Virgin

I don’t mind BT as it’s reliable and rarely goes down or fluctuates speeds. What I disagree with is them still being the only supplier on the area, and charging higher costs for 15 year old speeds as a result.

I was with Virgin before 2007 when I was in Plymouth and would go back to them in a heartbeat, they were brilliant.

 

[slimbob]

If I decided to move in the future then the two I would consider would be B.T and Plusnet. But it is unlikely as Virgin are competitive price-wise. Hope Virgin get the finger out and lay some cable in your direction.

 

[Bigfoot]

The only real choice for us is BT. We are in a rural Aberdeenshire village and off network for most suppliers. A few years ago we got unlimited broadband from Orange for £5 per month as we also had a mobile from them. They killed that deal and wanted us to pay £25 for 10GB. We changed phone and broadband supplier. We have fibre to the cabinet and get up to about 32 Mb/s download and 5 upload (which is a pain for cloud backup). Aberdeen itself is getting FTTP for all homes and business with 900 Mb/s.

 

[slimbob]

Must be frustrating especially with Aberdeen getting 900Mbps.
Hope it's not too long till you get access to FTTP, 900Mbps must be insane as 100Mbps for me is overkill but if you are backing up to the cloud a lot I understand why you want FTTP speeds. Cheers.

 

[Bigfoot]

I think it will be quite a while before we get anything like that speed here. Incremental backups every day are not too bad, but >700GB to start with took a while.

 

[TomBerry]

I’m with Vodafone at the moment as I get a discount with my phone contract, I pay £28/month for 56 down but because I’m on FTTC and the second to last house at the end of the road I only get 25 down max

BT unwilling to upgrade cables in my area for the foreseeable future, so got no other option of getting faster speeds…

Until, Starlink! Starlink will be available in my area mid to late 2021 and put the deposit down early this year. Will be paying £89.00 a month which is a very steep price, but hoping to see very great results once received. They estimate that some people can get up to 1Gbps download once fully operational (out of Starlink beta phase) so I’m begging I can get that performance once it’s all live

Now just the dreaded wait for it to arrive…no ETA as of yet

 

[TonyCarter]

Can't tell you what 'm currently paying just for my Virgin broadband as it's part of a whole house (ultimate oomph) package of unlimited TV (all movie/sport channels in HD/UHD), Broadband (600/40), Landline (unlimited UK calls) & Mobile phone (unlimited data, calls, texts) @ £99/month. Although there was a 'new customer' offer of £79 that I tried to get, but just having broadband made me an existing customer

Decided it was easier to bundle the lot instead of relying on Freeview/Freesat HD and NowTV add-ons; BT line rental forever increasing, etc.

It used to be ~£150:

• Mobile with unlimited calls/text and 5GB data @ £20/ month
• Landline at £15/month + £7/month for unlimited calls
• VM200 broadband £40/month
• SkyEntertainment via NowTV at £10/month
• SkySports via NowTV at £30/month
• BTSport via NowTV at £30/month
• SkyCinema via NowTV at £10/month

Did consider going to SkyQ, but the Sky broadband is only capable of about 40mbs in my area.

 

[slimbob]

I’m with Vodafone at the moment as I get a discount with my phone contract, I pay £28/month for 56 down but because I’m on FTTC and the second to last house at the end of the road I only get 25 down max

BT unwilling to upgrade cables in my area for the foreseeable future, so got no other option of getting faster speeds…

Until, Starlink! Starlink will be available in my area mid to late 2021 and put the deposit down early this year. Will be paying £89.00 a month which is a very steep price, but hoping to see very great results once received. They estimate that some people can get up to 1Gbps download once fully operational (out of Starlink beta phase) so I’m begging I can get that performance once it’s all live

Now just the dreaded wait for it to arrive…no ETA as of yet

That is a massive drop in speed because of your house location!
Starlink providing potentially 1Gbps is scary fast but Elon is always pushing the envelope . Sounds like you have secured your place getting in early. £89 is expensive but you get what you pay for, sounds impressive. Like you say the worse is the wait but it is something to look forward too . When you get up and running please post back with a review. Cheers

 

[slimbob]

Hi Tony, When you work out what you are actually getting for that £99 a month it actually seems really good value, especially all the t.v!. As mentioned I am used to 100mbps so 649mbps is hard to grasp like with Tom Berry's potential 1Gbps with Starlink later this year. Things are progressing so fast. Cheers

 

[Citrus_9]

Irish broadband providers are crap and expensive Irish is a modern country, but in many services still behind and looking more like a rural country. And that's ironic, as there are big IT companies here, such as, Facebook, ebay, Microsoft, Google, TikTok etc.

My area has just a few options, but only Virgin Media can provide a decent speed. I found out there are 2 cables underground: one owened by Virgin and the other to telecom and being shared between Eir (privatised Irish telecom) and Pure. Other providers, such as, Vodafone etc, can't offer a decent and more or less stable connection.

For the context - I'm living in a newer (around 15-20 years old) area of Dublin.

During Covid we had a 240Mbps with Virgin and paid without a phone and TV, just for a broadband, around 45 Euro, but it quickly went up by 10 or 15 Euro last year. Connection and speed were unreliable and I was spending few mornings on the phone per month with them to troubleshoot, which was just to restart a router. Actual speed we were getting was around 50Mbps. Only after lots of complaints by me and the neighbours, they finally admitted a cable underground is damaged and looks that they changed it or at least saw them on a street doing something for a few days.

Since then, a connection is more stable and I experience random disconnections less frequently, but speeds were still just up to 80Mbps.

So I changed the plan to 500Mbps for a rip off 70 Euro a month. Getting something between 80 to 120Mbps. Their advertised speeds mean nothing. Broadband is slow and expensive here, in a Rural of Ireland.

 

[ubuysa]

Just to make those of you dissatisfied with your 105Mbps fibre or whatever feel better, down here in the cradle of civilisation we're still using copper wire. At least in part. I'm paying €21 per month for 12.3Mbps (it's advertised as 10Mbps so I shouldn't complain) over copper.

Two years ago they started installing FTTH in the big town where I live (Agios Nikolaos). The initial phase stopped about 25m from me at the end of my road. They had a big plan for bringing FTTH to every home and business in Agios Nikolaos but it was being done in carefully planned stages. Sensibly really, so the enginners connecting up the cables in the various cabinets were not in the way of the guys with the big wheel doohicky cutting trenches in the road for the cables. And then we had COVID.

Nobody is able to tell me when the phase containing my apartment will be completed - or even started. But they're pretty sure we'll be paying €25 per month for 100Mbps FTTH. And that's not bad in my book. Until then we just cope with our 12Mbps and be grateful.

 

[Turnips]

You lot don't know you're born!

We have two options - broadband at 1.5Mbps or 4g at 25Mbps. I can't remember the price we pay for the 4g off the top of my head but I seem to remember it was very reasonable, especially as it is uncapped.

The reason for the horrendously slow broadband speeds is that we live on a farm a few miles out from the nearest box. Sadly, there are not enough properties down our lane for the powers that be to prioritise bringing fibre out to us. We can live in hope though, can't we!

 

[SpyderTracks]

You lot don't know you're born!

We have two options - broadband at 1.5Mbps or 4g at 25Mbps. I can't remember the price we pay for the 4g off the top of my head but I seem to remember it was very reasonable, especially as it is uncapped.

The reason for the horrendously slow broadband speeds is that we live on a farm a few miles out from the nearest box. Sadly, there are not enough properties down our lane for the powers that be to prioritise bringing fibre out to us. We can live in hope though, can't we!

Man, I feel for you! I would definitely take the 4g connection, it can be very reliable these days.

 

[Turnips]

Man, I feel for you! I would definitely take the 4g connection, it can be very reliable these days.

Yeah, it was rough.

My wife and I moved back to the farm from our house in civilisation where we had fibre - which was awesome. We were then confronted with; 1.5Mbps broadband and 'well, its quicker than dial up!'. The 4g is pretty good, it would be improved if we had better line of site to the mast, but it's respectable, and with the external aerial we put up it is generally stable except in the case of really inclement weather.

It's fast enough to handle multiple TV's streaming content, and hopefully for me to game online too. If not I'll be asking some technical questions here about how to set port preference on my router...

 

[SpyderTracks]

Yeah, it was rough.

My wife and I moved back to the farm from our house in civilisation where we had fibre - which was awesome. We were then confronted with; 1.5Mbps broadband and 'well, its quicker than dial up!'. The 4g is pretty good, it would be improved if we had better line of site to the mast, but it's respectable, and with the external aerial we put up it is generally stable except in the case of really inclement weather.

It's fast enough to handle multiple TV's streaming content, and hopefully for me to game online too. If not I'll be asking some technical questions here about how to set port preference on my router...

I trialled a 4g Huwaei router with a 3 mobile broadband sim for a couple of weeks a couple of years ago. If I hadn’t had a server that needed 100% uptime I would have stuck with it, but I found after a power cut, the router would take about 10 minutes to connect back to 4g from 3G which meant too long we had unavailability.

It was a fault of the router more than the 4g connection, and if I’d had more time I would have looked for a better router.

But speeds were over double what BT could provide.

 

[Turnips]

I trialled a 4g Huwaei router with a 3 mobile broadband sim for a couple of weeks a couple of years ago. If I hadn’t had a server that needed 100% uptime I would have stuck with it, but I found after a power cut, the router would take about 10 minutes to connect back to 4g from 3G which meant too long we had unavailability.

It was a fault of the router more than the 4g connection, and if I’d had more time I would have looked for a better router.

But speeds were over double what BT could provide.

This is the exact setup that we have, kind of.

We have a 3 sim but we swapped out the Huawei router for a better alternative, again I cant remember off the top of my head just what it is, and then we added the external aerial which helped a lot. I bet if I revisited it now there would be even better aerials and routers as we have had this setup for a couple of years now.

You're right about that time fault though, and also, you have to watch the router because sometimes they try and lock onto the wrong signal. Ours used to connect to a mast at the opposite side of the house every time it reconnected after a power cut, resulting in 3g only connection. We locked it to the 'correct' mast in the end. When I say we, I mean my neighbour who used to work in telecoms - it's a bit beyond me is all of this technical stuff!

 

[ubuysa]

This is the exact setup that we have, kind of.

We have a 3 sim but we swapped out the Huawei router for a better alternative, again I cant remember off the top of my head just what it is, and then we added the external aerial which helped a lot. I bet if I revisited it now there would be even better aerials and routers as we have had this setup for a couple of years now.

You're right about that time fault though, and also, you have to watch the router because sometimes they try and lock onto the wrong signal. Ours used to connect to a mast at the opposite side of the house every time it reconnected after a power cut, resulting in 3g only connection. We locked it to the 'correct' mast in the end. When I say we, I mean my neighbour who used to work in telecoms - it's a bit beyond me is all of this technical stuff!

Get a UPS to hold the router up in the event of a power cut. Even a fairly cheap one should hold just a router up for an hour or so. My 1.5Kva UPS holds up the PC, monitor, backup external drive and the router for an hour (though I have it setup to shutdown the PC if the power is off for more than 30 mins).....