Question ISP recommendations

[MYstIC G]

A'noon all. I've the boring/thankless task of picking a new ISP at home as our 18 month deal is coming to an end with the current provider (SSE). Don't really want to stay with SSE because they use Daisy for their backbone and traffic shape like anyones business. I was getting under 2MB/s for downloading Wolf II from Steam the other day

Was wondering who you lot use and if you've got any recommendations.

Previously used both Sky & Plusnet without issue. In fact only left Plusnet because they wouldn't budge on the whole "why would I pay £20 a month more for nothing?" at the end of my last contract.

Mum's got TalkTalk at her place and it's been fairly good. Not sure what they'd be like for fibre though as she only has ADSL.

 

[Moriath]

My brother hated talk talk and has gone with sky. Only just got that tho so no feedback yet.

If you got cable go virgin media all hands down.

Not much more xp with adsl guys as not had it for ten years or more.

 

[MYstIC G]

Unfortunately we're not in a Virgin Media covered area

 

[Job]

Possibly one who supports net neutrality?

 

[Edmond]

I’ve always been BT and never had a problem, Plusnet is BT anyway I think

Unless it’s BT business, they can suck my hairy balls....cunts

Friend was with TalkTalk and had no end of problems, especially when they want ed to leave them, they really made it difficult, but I know that’s all changed in the last few years, so .....

I think you get better deals in a package, so SKY & Virgin if you have their TV package works out better

 

[Raven]

BT, everyone else is shit one way or another.

 

[Bodhi]

Was with BT for 8 years, got fed up with them being morons (why aren't you using our official device? Because I joined before you were giving them out? Oh....30 mins later, please use your official BT Homehub....I don't have one.....why not? AAAAAAAAARGH) - been with Sky for 5 years now and not had a single issue. Not had any downtime whilst I was using it, get he full 40Mbit come rain or shine.

Sky's routers are a bit shit on the Wifi side, but you can turn this off an use another one easily enough.

 

[Moriath]

I only use the virgin router as the modem part and connect it to my netgear router to actually do the wifi and routing to the rest of the house.

 

[Scouse]

Unfortunately we're not in a Virgin Media covered area

Move house m8. Only way to get a decent connection

 

[old.user4556]

Just moved from BT infinity 2 “up to 80” to Sky Fibre Max “up to 76, guaranteed 55 minimum”.

Pings are the same, BT line speed was around 59 Mbps, Sky line speed is maxed out at 76 Mbps. Sky is cheaper. Very happy.

 

[Moriath]

Just moved from BT infinity 2 “up to 80” to Sky Fibre Max “up to 76, guaranteed 55 minimum”.

Pings are the same, BT line speed was around 59 Mbps, Sky line speed is maxed out at 76 Mbps. Sky is cheaper. Very happy.

Im on virgin 300

Its contended so usually see about 200 in the evenings. With 20 up its perfect for me. But there is no throttling and shaping on the vivid 300 afaik​

 

[Afran]

Not had any issues with Plusnet in the ~6 years I've been with them (except noise on the line at one point a year or so ago, but was fixed within a few days)

Best ISP I've been with so far at least and I read about many other ISP's having issues in my area when I'm not affected.

 

[Job]

Once 5G rolls out I'll be ditching wired internet, the Vigin package is 80 a month..the wife only watches what she could get on freeview and 90% of my virwing is streamed on the net.
Also Virgins UI is just fucking awful...like 90s clunkfest awful.
My Kodi box is 100X faster.

Its worth looking into 5G..the speeds are just epic and more importantly connecting fucking everything together at high speed with bazillions of sensors is at its core...the social aspects of this are quite extreme.

5G - Wikipedia

 

[Raven]

Don't even get 3G at home so a complete and utter waste of time for me.

It's cool though, when the machines take over they will all be stood around buffering.

 

[Scouse]

So @Job you're going to ditch £30/month cable for £80/month mobile network because Virgin's UI - that you *never* have to look at - is shit?

You continue to demonstrate levels of IT genius that baffles professionals!

 

[Moriath]

Once 5G rolls out I'll be ditching wired internet, the Vigin package is 80 a month..the wife only watches what she could get on freeview and 90% of my virwing is streamed on the net.
Also Virgins UI is just fucking awful...like 90s clunkfest awful.
My Kodi box is 100X faster.

Its worth looking into 5G..the speeds are just epic and more importantly connecting fucking everything together at high speed with bazillions of sensors is at its core...the social aspects of this are quite extreme.

5G - Wikipedia

The old tivo boxes were slow. The new v6 boxes are very fast. Just upgrade

 

[Moriath]

So @Job you're going to ditch £30/month cable for £80/month mobile network because Virgin's UI - that you *never* have to look at - is shit?

You continue to demonstrate levels of IT genius that baffles professionals!

Not many mobile providers give you unlimited any more.

 

[Scouse]

Not many mobile providers give you unlimited any more.

Aye. And anyway - perhaps @Job should take some of that additional £50/month he's going to be paying and spend it on a proper fucking PC for his missus so he doesn't have to constantly complain about Windows 10 not being as good as his hacked version of XP...

 

[Raven]

Capped usage is also raising its ugly head in standard broadband too, lots of the sky "offers" are actually them just reaming people.

 

[Tom]

This thread has reminded me to phone Virgin and get rid of the tv package, which is "free" but which I have never used. It's a right pile of shite. The broadband and phone are ok though.

The woman on the phone can't understand why I want to get rid of the TV. I told her I'm sick of having a tivo box, in a box, taking up space when I just want to throw it out. I never wanted it to begin with, I told them I'd like to refuse delivery in the first place but they said I couldn't do that.

 

[Raven]

ofc you can refuse delivery.

Just say no, no, just saaay no.

 

[Moriath]

But its part of the bundle. You get a discount based on the bundle. It might cost you more without it. Strange i know.

 

[Scouse]

I told them I'd like to refuse delivery in the first place but they said I couldn't do that.

They said that to me - they said broadband comes with TV and phone as mandatory.

I told them I wanted broadband, no TV, no phone. They said no again. I said, yes you can, or I'll just go with Sky or BT or some other shit company - and they eventually relented - said of course I could just have broadband if I really wanted that and no TV - but I'd have to have a phone otherwise it wouldn't work.

So I said, sod off - it's cable - it doesn't come down the phone network. I don't want TV, I don't want a phone. Just give me fucking broadband.

So they did.

 

[MYstIC G]

Thanks for all the input fellow Freddies

Move house m8. Only way to get a decent connection

Yeah, I have to admit I'm really starting to miss the old Telewest days. I don't really want a phone line but where we are it is a necessary evil. I did chuck my details over to Hyperoptic on the vague chance they might have had some interest out this way but unfortunately not

Just moved from BT infinity 2 “up to 80” to Sky Fibre Max “up to 76, guaranteed 55 minimum”.

Pings are the same, BT line speed was around 59 Mbps, Sky line speed is maxed out at 76 Mbps. Sky is cheaper. Very happy.

Interestingly this sort of stuff was what started to get me in a mess with all of this. It seems now that a number of the ISP's charge an additional fee for what appears on the surface to be no more than upping your BT line profile. I suppose at least Sky have the decency to say "if the profile doesn't work, we won't charge you for it" which is certainly lacking elsewhere.

I've opted for TalkTalk in the end. I was leaning towards Sky and getting back their TV because we've got a communal dish at our place but the prices still seem completely insane to me for what is mostly repeating or rubbish content. What won me over in the end was that when I switched my Mum to TalkTalk I was really impressed by the YouView experience (specifically the search covering live & IPTV). All in all this lets me keep our fibre costs pretty reasonable and I've chucked on some extra family channels. I'm keen on getting away from using a bog standard "ISP" router as well and TalkTalk are pretty open about you being able to use your own one to suit. The current trend of all these things not being wall mountable and being designed to sit on a coffee table is awful imho and actually I think the only thing I might miss about SSE is the one box wall mountable Thompson router they use. I keep looking at DrayTek stuff at the moment but I'll see how I go as they're a fair chunk of change.

Anyway, all in all be prepared for my "OMG t3h H0rr0R" post sometime mid-December should I regret all this

 

[Moriath]

Good luck

 

[Embattle]

Just moving off plus.net back to BT since they had a good offer on at the moment, also dropped from infinity 2 on plus.net to infinity 1 on BT because I generally only got 60mbps on Infinity 2 under plus.net so no real need when BT offer 52mbps on Infinity 1.

 

[Job]

The old tivo boxes were slow. The new v6 boxes are very fast. Just upgrade

Its the catchup thats bad, iPlayer through virgin is just beyond horrendous, I think they must have one access point and about 20 seperate scripts, it buffers, drops out to 1080..720, telly hunts for hdmi, then it appears, buffers for another minute, starts playing, the stutters for 30 seconds, if you foolishly try to speed through it just freezes.
Meanwhile iplayer on my Kodi box, is instant start and instant time search.
The Youtube channel is pretty well unusable, it takes a good 5 minutes to get a video up, which then buffers like fuck, all the vids play at 480 in a small box, the search is like swimming through treacle.
You tube app on Kodi is as fast as you could possibly want it, 1080 full screen.
An android Kodi box with write to disk would shit all over virgins entire TV network.

 

[Scouse]

If 90% of what you watch is streamed over the net anyway why not just get rid of the virgin TV box and phone line, get a proper PC, stream through that (or put Kodi on it) and save yourself £50/month?

Come on @Job. Joined-up thinking...

 

[Job]

Aye. And anyway - perhaps @Job should take some of that additional £50/month he's going to be paying and spend it on a proper fucking PC for his missus so he doesn't have to constantly complain about Windows 10 not being as good as his hacked version of XP...

What you are saying is I should upgrade so that my PC can run all the telemetry, spyware and update bloat that microshite have infested windoze with, if I shut it all down the PC runs like a dream...you know, like it should, not for the fucking financial advantage of microshite so they can use my electricity and my cpu for their own processes.
The OS should sit in the background and do OS stuff, like run programs, connect peripherals and thats fucking it.
But no, microshite have deemed their OS to be the lord of your computer, they force updates, run spyware..in fact bit by bit they are determined to make you a guest at your own PC.
If youre happy with that fine, keep upgrading as they update and add more shit for themselves.
As Im typing another reminder for the update which will probably finish off this PC, I opted for mobile so dont download..it did anyway, they just fucking ignored that...trying to find out how to delete the download...fucking, fucking cunts.

 

[Job]

If 90% of what you watch is streamed over the net anyway why not just get rid of the virgin TV box and phone line, get a proper PC, stream through that (or put Kodi on it) and save yourself £50/month?

Come on @Job. Joined-up thinking...

Actually cos the wifi wont reach the conservatory, I use my Vodafone 4G to stream in the TV there....full bars anywhere in the house from a cellsite 500 yards away. meanwhile WIFI wont go 40ft.