Broadband advice please

[Littlepeahead]

For the last few years I’ve been with EE, the broadband is free and I pay £16.00 per month line rental. I also have SkyHD TV with the sports package. That costs me £67.00 per month. So I’m paying £83.00 per month.

Recently my EE broadband and wifi has been awful. It keeps dropping out or going really slowly. Pages take an age to load up on some devices like Stu’s Ipad. Even on my phone it’s slow and I’m only using it to load email/Facebook/the Org, not videos or games. I spoke to EE's technical bods and they couldn’t work out what the problem was.

Then on Sunday night I tried to download a non-HD 30 minute TV show to my Sky box which is cabled straight to my EE box and after an hour it was still only 30% downloaded. Previously this would have taken just a few minutes.

Yesterday EE’s sales team called to ask how my service was and of course I moaned at them big time. They said it was probably because lots of new people in my area have decided to get broadband and I’m only getting 2mbps – I have no idea what that means but it sounds fishy to me that all my neighbours have suddenly decided to get broadband. WHat were they doing before - pigeon post? EE’s solution was to say that there is now fibre in my area and I could upgrade to that for quite a lot more per month as I’m on ‘a really old contract’ by which they mean cheap. So that would be £25 per month including line rental.

I’m suspicious that EE are making my connection slower than a drugged slug so I switch to fibre and pay extra.

But Sky also offer fibre in my area and as I have been with them for years I’m wondering if I’d be better to call them up and say I’ll switch to their broadband if they can offer me a decent bundled price for it with TV. I’m already hacked off that they’ve lost some of the cricket to BT sport with more likely to go when the deals are renewed so I’m quite willing to haggle hard with them.

So mighty org – what’s up with my broadband and should I switch to fibre? If so, what’s a fair price to pay for it – I only use the internet for basic stuff. Stu watches a few music videos but nothing major and neither of us are gamers.

[Heorot]

We switched to a complete Sky package comprising phone, line rental, broadband and a fairly basic Sky HD (no sports). Because of the phone, the cost varies but is usually between £60 and £70 per month. Broadband is unlimited and plenty fast enough for what we need at 10.25mps today. That's pretty good for where we live out in the sticks 12 miles from the nearest exchange. We just use the internet for surfing and emails, no gaming at all. We might watch a few Youtube videos but not much more.

If you use the Uswitch speed checker it will tell you the fastest broadband in your area. http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/speedtest/

I went with Plusnet Fibre (They can work anywhere that BT Infinity can, and are a subsidiary of BT)
Paying 22 a month plus line rental, and its the only fibre provider that i am aware of that allows static addressing.
current speeds 64mb/sec down, 15mb/sec up. No complaints.
Been with them 2 years now with no issues. Can highly recommend (But ditch the router they give you, its pants, get something a bit more fit for purpose)

[timwilky]

Would love to leave Virgin. But cannot get ADSL, never mind fibre. (Even if like VM it is to the cabinet) as the GPO did a cheap and nasty install 60 years ago and we are still suffering the poor infrastructure.

Great, I get 200Mb download but only 12Mb upload. Dynamic address, but not changed in the last 2 years. But no plans for IPv6 which I desperately need (So tunnel using hurricane electric). Fecking expensive, a phone that I do not need/want just to lower the package price etc. But worst bit. Indian call centre who think a reboot will cure the problem and want to remote connect to my computers in order to view the problem and will I remove my firewall. As if.

[Littlepeahead]

Tim, could you translate that into English please?

[pookie]

what speeds are you getting when running http://www.speedtest.net/
Are you on unlimited downloads or maybe a case of them throttling your capacity.

[NTECUK]

We had a problem with slow speed .was water in the joints at the box .
You can hear the audio noise during a call.
Maybe a open reach hardware issue

[aesmith]

Lots of people on the Plusnet forum complaining they got worse speed than when they were with Sky. If your exchange has Sky LLU then that seems a good option.

[Littlepeahead]

I called Sky retentions. They've offered me my existing TV package with Sky Sports, landline and unlimited fibre optic broadband for less than I'm currently paying for EE and TV combined on a 10 and 12th month deal. The only set up cost is delivery of the router.