broadband deals - n/g | Vital Football

broadband deals - n/g

wxgill

wxgill

Vital 1st Team Regular
My broadband with vodafone is poor. The speed is nowhere near advertised. I moaned a while back and got 40% off for the remainder of the contract.

Now it's time to get a new supplier, Any recommendations?

I'm thinking of going for a 100mb plus deal.

Thanks.
 
I was fed up with BT for so many reasons. I wanted simplicity, reliability and customer service. I went for the Which Best Buy - Zen.

Not the cheapest (you get what you pay for sometimes), but one year in and I am happy with the decision.
 
I have Bt. and it has been rock solid for at least a year or two. My daughter is having major problems with sky at present. All of them seem to be a gamble with mixed results depending who you talk to.
 
Nice to see you back on form wxgill and as usual I haven't got a clue how to help you.

Good luck.
 
Use plusnet myself, no problems and they were very good at chasing a fault on the line for me and arranging engineers propmptly.
 
wxgill said:
What is that
Click to expand...
Hyperoptic is the name of a new(ish) full fibre broadband provider, check out the link in my post above.
As I said, their coverage isn't the best at this stage so check your postcode in their search tool first to make sure you can get access.
 
I know nothing about techno and am probably being whooshed here but doesn't Broadband speed depend on area rather than supplier?

If you search Rightmove like I am currently doing as we are looking to move to East Anglia, each property has a section stating Broadband speed and it nearly always says 67Mb, with a few being 900Mb which I assume means that it is an area or road where high speed has been installed.

Currently being in Headcorn, we have a package for all our energy, telephone and broadband with Utilities Warehouse and it is OK for our needs. Customer service with them has been good as well.

Is there something that enhances the speed, then? We have had a company called Trooli going round here and messing with the broadband wires in the street and we understand that they are connected with high speed fibre but will only be offering it to their own customers which I did find confusing.
 
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GillsBluenose said:
I know nothing about techno and am probably being whooshed here but doesn't Broadband speed depend on area rather than supplier?

If you search Rightmove like I am currently doing as we are looking to move to East Anglia, each property has a section stating Broadband speed and it nearly always says 67Mb, with a few being 900Mb which I assume means that it is an area or road where high speed has been installed.

Currently being in Headcorn, we have a package for all our energy, telephone and broadband with Utilities Warehouse and it is OK for our needs. Customer service with them has been good as well.

Is there something that enhances the speed, then? We have had a company called Trooli going round here and messing with the broadband wires in the street and we understand that they are connected with high speed fibre but will only be offering it to their own customers which I did find confusing.
Click to expand...

That’s right. It’s all dependent on the infrastructure.
 
GillsBluenose said:
I know nothing about techno and am probably being whooshed here but doesn't Broadband speed depend on area rather than supplier?
Click to expand...

It depends on how much of the broadband allowance each supplier has bought up in any given area or throughfare through an exchange box. So for example assume there is a fibre wire which can handle 100 mb/s and the instructure provider (which'll be BT in the UK) has sold

a) 50 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company A
b) 40 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company B
c) 10 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company C

If Company A has 50 Customers then each customer would get an average speed of 1Mb/s when all are on.
Company B has 30 Customers so each customer would get an average speed of 1.33Mb/s.
Company C is a new company who only has 4 customers so they all enjoy an average speed of 2.5Mb/s. (It isn't uncommon for new small providers to boast a higher than average speed as they have usually overbought their allowance in anticipation of their future sales targets)

Above is obviously simplistic and other factors that may impact speed is:

a) Closeness to the exchange box. The closer you are then then the better speed you will expect to get. Depending on the supplier, they might route to your house via different exchange boxes. If you do live predominantly down one end of a long road, then it might be worth finding out which broadband providers use the closest exchange box to you.

b) Subscription of Premium Superfast broadband. So in the case of Company A, if 10 of their 50 subscribers are paying for Superfast Gaurenteed minimum speed of 3Mb/s connection then the other 40 "default" subscribers will need to share the remaining 20Mb/s capacity.

Edit: ie, Suppliers will trottle the performance of basic package users in order to maintain the promised minimum speed of the Premium payers in the hope a few more people are tempted to pay more for the premium

c) Time of use. I knew someone who lived on a small resident estate that was next door to an industrial estate. During the day they would get terrible speeds as they were sharing it with the industrial estate but after 5pm when most of the companies closed for the day it was "lightning quick".

Ultimately speed, assuming you haven't bought a premium superfast package, is a combination of how much your bandwith your provider has bought up mixed with the number of people using that bandwith at any given point in time.
 
Baghdad_Rob said:
It depends on how much of the broadband allowance each supplier has bought up in any given area or throughfare through an exchange box. So for example assume there is a fibre wire which can handle 100 mb/s and the instructure provider (which'll be BT in the UK) has sold

a) 50 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company A
b) 40 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company B
c) 10 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company C

If Company A has 50 Customers then each customer would get an average speed of 1Mb/s when all are on.
Company B has 30 Customers so each customer would get an average speed of 1.33Mb/s.
Company C is a new company who only has 4 customers so they all enjoy an average speed of 2.5Mb/s. (It isn't uncommon for new small providers to boast a higher than average speed as they have usually overbought their allowance in anticipation of their future sales targets)

Above is obviously simplistic and other factors that may impact speed is:

a) Closeness to the exchange box. The closer you are then then the better speed you will expect to get. Depending on the supplier, they might route to your house via different exchange boxes. If you do live predominantly down one end of a long road, then it might be worth finding out which broadband providers use the closest exchange box to you.

b) Subscription of Premium Superfast broadband. So in the case of Company A, if 10 of their 50 subscribers are paying for Superfast Gaurenteed minimum speed of 3Mb/s connection then the other 40 "default" subscribers will need to share the remaining 20Mb/s capacity.

Edit: ie, Suppliers will trottle the performance of basic package users in order to maintain the promised minimum speed of the Premium payers in the hope a few more people are tempted to pay more for the premium

c) Time of use. I knew someone who lived on a small resident estate that was next door to an industrial estate. During the day they would get terrible speeds as they were sharing it with the industrial estate but after 5pm when most of the companies closed for the day it was "lightning quick".

Ultimately speed, assuming you haven't bought a premium superfast package, is a combination of how much your bandwith your provider has bought up mixed with the number of people using that bandwith at any given point in time.
Click to expand...

Isn't this also about Openreach owning the majority of the infastructure, who just so happen to be owned by BT. Conflict of interests?
 
Baghdad_Rob said:
It depends on how much of the broadband allowance each supplier has bought up in any given area or throughfare through an exchange box. So for example assume there is a fibre wire which can handle 100 mb/s and the instructure provider (which'll be BT in the UK) has sold

a) 50 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company A
b) 40 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company B
c) 10 Mb/s worth of capacity to Company C

If Company A has 50 Customers then each customer would get an average speed of 1Mb/s when all are on.
Company B has 30 Customers so each customer would get an average speed of 1.33Mb/s.
Company C is a new company who only has 4 customers so they all enjoy an average speed of 2.5Mb/s. (It isn't uncommon for new small providers to boast a higher than average speed as they have usually overbought their allowance in anticipation of their future sales targets)

Above is obviously simplistic and other factors that may impact speed is:

a) Closeness to the exchange box. The closer you are then then the better speed you will expect to get. Depending on the supplier, they might route to your house via different exchange boxes. If you do live predominantly down one end of a long road, then it might be worth finding out which broadband providers use the closest exchange box to you.

b) Subscription of Premium Superfast broadband. So in the case of Company A, if 10 of their 50 subscribers are paying for Superfast Gaurenteed minimum speed of 3Mb/s connection then the other 40 "default" subscribers will need to share the remaining 20Mb/s capacity.

Edit: ie, Suppliers will trottle the performance of basic package users in order to maintain the promised minimum speed of the Premium payers in the hope a few more people are tempted to pay more for the premium

c) Time of use. I knew someone who lived on a small resident estate that was next door to an industrial estate. During the day they would get terrible speeds as they were sharing it with the industrial estate but after 5pm when most of the companies closed for the day it was "lightning quick".

Ultimately speed, assuming you haven't bought a premium superfast package, is a combination of how much your bandwith your provider has bought up mixed with the number of people using that bandwith at any given point in time.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Rob. That is really informative and helpful.

However, it does make it sound like a bit of a lottery and dependant on so many things outside your control.

I presume that if you are an above average user, Premium Superfast broadband is the one to go for but, even then, it would clearly be the most expensive and the speed also depends on how many subscribers your provider is dividing their allocation from the exchange box between.
 
Burning_Blue_Soul said:
Isn't this also about Openreach owning the majority of the infastructure, who just so happen to be owned by BT. Conflict of interests?
Click to expand...

Openreach is "owned"** by BT but the stucture of the company is that BT Openreach and the rest of BT PLC is legally separate and independant of each other. BT PLC owns all the infrastructure but Openreach is a separate company effectively paid by BT PLC to maintain the network.

BT Openreach is heavily regulated by Ofcom and the structuring was agreed in the early 2000s when the regulator forced BT to split the two aspects of providing broadband.

** From memory, BT Openreach and BT PLC are owned by the same holding company rather than BT Openreach being owned by BT PLC. This way the two companies operate independantly.
 
GillsBluenose said:
I presume that if you are an above average user, Premium Superfast broadband is the one to go for but, even then, it would clearly be the most expensive and the speed also depends on how many subscribers your provider is dividing their allocation from the exchange box between.
Click to expand...

Since the Premium Broadband contact will promise a minimum speed then they will make sure any Premium payers get what they paid for so not to run into issues of breach of contract etc. Unless there is a fault in the infrastructure then premium subscribers should be fine. It is the non-Premium who get to use whatever bandwidth is left.

The thing is, people tend to only change their provider once a year once the deal has run out (if bought with a TV deal like Sky or Virgin Media) if at all. Hence the broadband speeds for your area should be relatively consistant down the years with the changes in speed not really being noticable.
 
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