Hi all,
I’m looking for a broadband provider and wondered if anyone has a company they’re using now that they would particularly recommend or equally has had particular issues with their service locally? We’re on the Cranston Road side of FH. As lots of people are now, we will be fairly reliant on a good wifi connection for work, so any advice on this in the area would be most gratefully received.
Thanks in advance.
I know they’ve got a bad rep for customer service (and it is indeed pretty shocking) but I’ve been with TalkTalk for the last year and I haven’t experienced any lost connection.
I use Virgin Media as they can provide faster speeds than BT, TalkTalk and Sky.
I would recommend you use a broadband comparison site to get the best deal based on your needs and what is available at your home address.
Search Google for broadband deals and checkout uSwitch, Broadbandchoices, etc
Is there any interest in a bunch of us in SE23/SE26 banding together and working together to get a bulk rollout of Community Fibre or Hyperoptic? No concrete plans here, just putting out feelers.
For me, yesterday’s VM outage was the final straw.
With the meagre choice here of having to pay BT line rental, or suffer Virgin Media’s skyrocketing prices (and constantly broken status checker), it would be nice to get some real alternatives in the area.
In principle yes, although 2 questions…
How does Community Fibre/Hyperoptic come to an area - does it mean more roads being dug up or do they use existing FTTC and run fibre to your house? I already registered interest in Hyperoptic ages ago and I have no idea if/how it works. I think they prefer to do apartment buildings - bigger bang for the buck.
Secondly as I asked yesterday, won’t 5G make this all redundant?
I was with BT for quite a few years. The broadband was solid throughout that time but the speed once I went onto their Superfast 2 package I think it was was generally 1/3rd to half to advertised minimum speed. I was FTTC as opposed to FTTP. I would have stayed if they had just put me on the lower contract but their customer service was an absolute nightmare (intentionally so) so I cancelled the contract as they were not fulfilling the minimum speeds and moved to Vodafone who are effectively given me similar speeds and have automatically applied a discount to my bill (15%) the day after service started as BT should have done. All done simply through their app - I expect I’d get similar speeds with most providers (except Virgin, who I can’t get here) as it’s all on the same OpenReach network.
@willmorgan I’d be interested in putting my name down for either.
Thanks so much everyone - this is all really helpful.
And @willmorgan - that’s a great idea. I’d be keen to put my name down for Hyperoptic as have heard lots of good things. I’ve not heard of Community Fibre but assuming its the same kind of set up as Hyperoptic - if so, would be keen for either in theory depending on how the set up works.
I’m on Cranston Road and we are lucky enough to have a choice of BT FTTP (which I have) and Virgin cable. Hyperoptic says for my post code “We won’t be seeing you at SE23 2EY
for a while” so I am not sure it will be an option anytime soon.
BT fiber is fine - speeds are good and very reliable but installation was a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Can’t speak for Virgin as I have never had it…
I recommend Zen Internet, especially if you depend on the Internet.