Hiya,
I’m moving to Elsnore road in a couple of weeks and i was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a good internet provider?
I need to have pretty speedy internet for work 60+mps, but i am sightly concerned that virgin isn’t offered in the area.
what is everyone elses experience?
thanks so much!
Hi! Welcome to the area. We’re on Elsinore and can’t get fibre, although both our neighbours can. It’s bonkers. I’m afraid I can’t be much help other than to say various people on the street have had issues with BT. We’re on orange I think but it’s not great when husband and I are both on video calls.
thank you!
Ah thats mad!
thank you for the advise! 
Welcome to the area @crochetlady18!
You may be interested in our existing topics about broadband in SE23. Click here to see the list: #broadband
@crochetlady18 don’t believe the websites that say FTTP isn’t available. I am on FTTP with Plusnet and even their website tells me that I can’t get it!
Phone them up and say your neighbours on both sides have it. The below link shows all the locations that do (and you can even see my house on it!)
PS Would recommend against using Plusnet - they are cheap but you get the service you pay for when problems arise
Hi @crochetlady18 and (almost) welcome to Elsinore Road - it’s a lovely street. We do have BT fibre and all in all it’s been fine, very reliable - except since 26th August we have had no broadband at all! It’s been infuriating and we are waiting for OpenReach to fix it. The worst thing is the finger pointing between BT and OpenReach but if you’d asked me before all this I would have recommended it. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon…
I am surprised that Virgin isn’t available on Elsinore. We’re 6 streets away on Sunderland Road and have Virgin. We have 350MB download and it’s pretty consistent aside from the odd blip which happens with every provider. I think 500MB is also available in the area but you can only get that on their top package bundle. I did get an email a couple of weeks ago to say they have improved the network in my area so might be worth checking again to see if they now cover Elsinore. It’s also worth calling them as I find their inline checker doesn’t always tally with the actual services in the area.
Just looked on money supermarket’s broadband checker. Looks like only EE and BT offer fibre on Elsinore at the moment. 
I don’t think Plusnet has a FTTP or ‘full fibre’ product
@Adrian Yes they do
Doesn’t look like they do - just ‘superfast’. You rang them up to get it?!
Hi @John_Wilson thank you so much for this!
i’m gonna call them up because it does look like houses either side of the one i’m moving to have fibre, its so crazy!
Hi @MackemJo thank you!
oh thats so frustrating! hopefully it gets sorted soon! 
yup - takes a bit of effort
@crochetlady18 Getting fibre may depend on whether you’re moving into a house or a flat. When I queried with Open Reach why the house next door was able to have fibre but I’d been told I couldn’t have it in my flat they responded that they’d made a commercial decision not to include what they call MDU’s (multiple dwelling units ie flats!) in their fibre rollout for the Forest Hill exchange. 
Interesting - I guess a function of being owned by BT and more operationally integrated with the parent company than before.
ooh interesting, im moving into a flat but there is an option on the openreach website that you can check fibre on your street and a fair amount of flats also have fibre so it may be worth getting in touch again
I live in a flat - the basic way is to not tell them until they turn up. As long as they can get easy access it isn’t an issue.
In my case I showed the guy the fibre could go out of the eves with zero drilling. FTTP doesn’t have divider boxes like normal phones (we have two flats with FTTP both with individual fibres from the road)
Thanks for the info John. Unfortunately I’m in a purpose built block of 5 flats which are listed separately on the Open Reach address records. And as we have a flat roof there are no eaves so I think they would have to drill into each property. But even if they need landlord permission for that it wouldn’t be an issue as each of us are equal shareholders in the company that owns the freehold!
Thanks for that - I check the Open Reach website quite regularly and all the flats I’ve checked in my road all show no for fibre!
Many of the comparison Websites say that my Road - Whatman Road Honor Oak can get fast fibre broadband - however when you speak to the provider they say they can only provide their basic service which would be fine if I didn’t have to work from home - Open Reach and BT can put you on a waiting list as they say there are only so many lines in our area (I live in a 2 flat property and I know upstairs have fast broadband from BT - so its very inconsistent - I would like to know who we have to lobby to get more Superfast Broadband capable lines in our area? - for many of us working from home we need more than the basic service. - Any thoughts?
Try using BT Wholesale DSL Checker. It’ll tell you what cabinet you are on and whether fibre might be coming soon.
Zen internet. Best rated by Which several years running. Not the cheapest, but super fast and low contention.
Even that website has its faults. Plugging my phone number in it says I have FTTP KCI Access Level 2 which means my order has been booked (KCI 3 means delivered) - it has been about 7 years since it was delivered
Interesting… I’ve recently signed up with Plusnet who told me there was no fibre on our street (Taymount Rise). I’ve since found out my next door neighbour has it…
That’s the best checker I’ve seen. Gets it exactly right and details that I have FTTP even with a spare port at my ‘premises’ should I want another ISP on it.
Apparently I could get up to 1000Mbps on that fibre too - if I could afford it!!!
Unfortunately, it only works for BT related information. So won’t work for anything related to Virgin or any other broadband provider that uses a different infrastructure to BT.
Hmmm - this claims Waldenshaw has ‘FTTP on Demand’ Available…they’ve never told me this or advertised it. 330Mbps. Mind you the kids have pretty much all moved out and 80Mbps seems fine even for Netflix 4k so… do I need this?
Also I wonder why only 330 and not 1000 like @ForestHull - jealous. haha
Apparently I can also get “up to 1 Gb” but says speeds will likely be lower. I suspect it’s go to do with how far you are from the cabinet, whether you can have FTTP or not etc.
I suspect it’s more to do with the cabinet/hardware. Fibre light signal goes quite a long way before it needs a repeater, surely?
basically no household needs 1000GB. I can happily stream 4k movies at the same time as downloading on XBOX and working on 80GB. Max BT will offer is 330 and that is massive overkill residentially
This is a problem I’m having right now on Devonshire Road. Full fibre has been laid in the street but because we live in a flat (a block of 8, we’re all joint freeholders) Openreach are currently unwilling to install it in our building.
The reason other properties in your same street can get it will depend on the building and how the telephony in your building works - the issue is if your phone line comes in through an external distribution point or an internal one.
Because in a block of flats like ours, even though it’s a converted house, all the flats are connected to BT’s infrastructure by a distribution point inside the building. This will likely be the same for most blocks of flats other than maybe small converted terraced houses.
Until OpenReach decide they want to work on these internal distribution points inside blocks of flats then there’s nothing that you can do. I know, I’ve been trying for months.
Adding insult to injury: because FTTP has been laid in Devonshire Road it means they stopped upgrading cabninets in the street for FTTC - and that means my cabinet is still a really old hunk of junk and we can only get plain ADSL My internet max speed is 15Mb down and 0.9Mb up. If one person streams Amazon Prime, most other stuff just stops. It’s frustrating, but without even Virgin in the area to act as competition I’m stuck with it for the foreseeable.
So weird - more efficient to fibre a flat and get 8 customers surely? My son lives in Bermondsey and his apartment block has Hyperoptic (lucky bugger) because they mostly focus on flats for efficiency of install.
Now that would be fast!
I assume the same infrastructure supports business packages and retail where 1Gbps might be required.
Never say never! At the moment we’re streaming very high-resolution video (probably as high as it’ll ever need to be) - but that content is only 2D.
When holography (for example) hits the mainstream, bandwidth requirements will go up by another order of magnitude.
Businesses do need and can get - a neighbour gets that much and he can’t get networking gear fast enough to pipe it through
We have 1.2 Gbps, which is a full FTTP line running at full capacity, ie all 4 x 300 Mbps circuits. Zen is the ISP. It’s been amazing for working from home.
And we have managed to max the speed out by streaming 4K, partner doing video calls, me on constant video with my team, and with all my work equipment. So never say never!
Do you come at all closer to saturating the feed?
BT own EE!
Recent highest download usage in 24 hours was over 230 GB, so the answer is probably sometimes but certainly not always. I work in devops.
Hi - I was wondering if you had any advice / if you managed to get your problems with BT resolved? We have FTTP with BT and it’s worked fine for over a year but have now been without internet since 03rd September - Our experience sounds quite similar to yours, lots of finger pointing between BT and Openreach - every time an engineer comes out we get told they can’t do anything because they only deal with the copper wires not fibre. We’ve now been told 3 times that it’ll be fixed by a certain date and we just need to wait for an update - each time the date comes and goes and…nothing. Which results in a lengthy phone call to BT to be told the same thing again…So frustrating - if you do have any advice it would be much appreciated - and just as a warning to anyone else looking for FTTP avoid BT at all costs this is the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced. All they want to do is get you off the phone ASAP so fob you off with lies and empty promises. Really awful company!
Hi @Cosmo sorry to hear you have been having such trouble, it is beyond frustrating. In the end we were without broadband for 2 weeks and after many lengthy phone calls and broken promises, the thing that got us completely sorted out in the end was writing to the Chief Exec (Philip.jansen@bt.com). We wrote a polite but firm email setting out our story, our complaints and the fact we were not interested in the finger pointing; that our contract was with them. It was then referred to a ‘special’ complaints team and an engineer arrived 2 working days later. The engineers discovered that an earlier major fault in the area had caused damage to our modem. They switched it out and lo and behold, fixed - it took about an hour! The special complaints team kept in touch and ultimately we got compensation of £200! Good luck if you try this, I hope it works for you.
We had a problem with our internet (we are with BT) a few years ago before being changed to fibre. I’m not sure if I have written about this before, but we got in touch with the Ombudsman, who was useless! He said that if BT wanted to charge for a new hub they were entitled to!
It was the hub & no we didn’t pay!
I did write to the ombudsman again making a complaint about their service, & lo & behold a saw a complaint in a newspaper saying that the ombudsman are like a dog with no teeth!
So writing this the chief executive seems the best way to go.
Exactly what we had to do several years ago. It was crazy and dealing with BT was like watching Brazil!
After weeks of messing about we got our services and some compo…
The thing that really drove me over the edge was constantly hearing radio adverts for BT where the tag line was “BT: beyond limits”. In the email to the CEO we suggested a more fitting one was “BT: beyond belief” 
I cannot stress enough how being nice to the Openreach people pays dividends. The people at BT on the end of the phone do not care.
Both in FH and in Norfolk when we had issues we were messed around really badly by BT. On both occasions we were really decent to the Openreach people. They ignored BT and fixed our issues both times.
BT are shockingly bad, with the exception of one or two staff who stood out and helped is.
Thanks for all the advice I’ve written to CEO - hopefully that helps.
I must stress we have been super nice to the Openreach engineers that have actually showed (not that it’s helped.). I’m not a believer in taking out my frustrations on the people doing the legwork - no matter how infuriating it is - it’s not their fault there’s a fundamental problem with how BT is run as a business.
Let us know how you get on; let’s hope it does the trick. We are also polite to both the people on the phone (individually all helpful - just nothing ever happened) and to the engineers who resolved the problem. Good luck @Cosmo
I must add that after the initial install our BT FTTP as been virtually perfect - no downtime and only the occasional over contention\slow speed. We even got a speed upgrade for free at some point.
If only there pre sales and install was up to the same standard…
Hi Jo - thanks so much for you advice last week. After emailing last Saturday we’ve finally got working fibre broadband again 
I don’t think without emailing the exec like you said, that our problem would have been resolved. So for anyone reading this, currently battling with BT and Openreach - email philip.jansen@bt.com and hopefully your issue will be resolved within the week.
That’s brilliant! I’m so pleased for you 
Been with BT forever and been battling WiFi speeds. Mainly due to Xbox/gaming speeds for son. As we all have to put mobiles off home wifi as youngster moans about lagging. BT/open reach have resolved a few times. But always comes back. I’m currently out of contract as reluctant to start another 18 months of tied in contract. Would like a better internet speed. But no idea who offers best service. What is FTTP etc? & how do you know what you’ve got. Mine is a standard line as no fibre & line has been here since we moved in 25 years ago.
Did have an extra phone line installed approx 23 years ago as had a business line. But no longer use this. Would this line be any faster if they transferred to that phone line does anybody know.
FTTP is fiber to the premises - essentially you have a fiber cable installed into your home. You can get huge speeds over FTTP if you want to pay for it.
FTTC is fiber to the cabinet. Not as fast but still better than ADSL depending on how far you are from the cab.
Mostly people have had ADSL which works via the phone line. Speeds are subject to distance from your exchange and results can be variable - you most likely have this.
You can get cable from Virgin which again can be superfast.
Transferring to your other line would only be quicker if there is noise on your other line or some sort of other issue with it.
You can check to see if you can get fiber here
Thank you @Foresthillnick I’m up with the FTTP, FTTC & ADSL now 
no noise on original phone line.
Apparently we’re getting today 17mb but have ethernet cable connected to PC, our son said that’s the best we’ve been getting in a while, but at the low points 100kb.
Would love to do some online classes but speeds too unreliable. It would freeze 
Virgin’s Gig1 (Gigabit) service is now available in our area. Not sure if it’s available across the entire area but it definitely is for my postcode. There’s a postcode checker on their website which will tell you if it’s available for you. I have just signed up to it for a modest increase in our monthly charge. Have to swap to a newer Hub 4. Will be interesting to see how it goes