Broadband providers recommendations

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creamtime

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Joined
Feb 18, 2004
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Anyone got any good tips? I will need a line installed, usage in terms of bandwidth not massive, just streaming TV downloading occasional movie, standard phone / tablet stuff.

Top ones on money saving expert are shell, talk talk and John Lewis.

Seems pretty standard that they rack up prices at the end of contract.

Cheers all
 
Line installation might be the costly part in that...

If it is v costly for install thought about mobile broadband? Plenty of unlimited (conditions apply) plans for £20 or less a month...
 
tomtom said:
If it is v costly for install thought about mobile broadband? Plenty of unlimited (conditions apply) plans for £20 or less a month...
Click to expand...

This is well worth looking in to, it's a good low hassle option. At work we use a Three data sim that costs ~£50 a month and is properly unlimited as far as I can tell (~150GB / month usage, no throttling that I've been able to spot).
 
remus said:
tomtom said:
If it is v costly for install thought about mobile broadband? Plenty of unlimited (conditions apply) plans for £20 or less a month...
Click to expand...

This is well worth looking in to, it's a good low hassle option. At work we use a Three data sim that costs ~£50 a month and is properly unlimited as far as I can tell (~150GB / month usage, no throttling that I've been able to spot).
Click to expand...

I’ve two colleagues who use 3’s unlimited mobile broadband - (£20 a month I think) and both having teenagers find they get speed throttled during peak hours (they’re in the 200+ gb a month usage bracket).

I regularly tether on my EE account - and regularly get 40-50mbps download and often faster upload (doesn’t have the same issues as the wire to door options).

If you’re paying for an install - worth checking virgin. Despite customer service horror stories they install a cable/fibre to the house rather than using BT open reach and a phone line... so their install might be less than BT’s etx...
 
Hmmm plus net looks appealing but they can't install a new line while all this virus business is happening. Mobile gets a bad write up for home use in all the review sites, say it's a bit of a faff and slow...
I appreciate that mobile is low hassle but ages ago I had a dongle and remember it was a PITA.
 
TobyD said:
Hmmm plus net looks appealing but they can't install a new line while all this virus business is happening. Mobile gets a bad write up for home use in all the review sites, say it's a bit of a faff and slow...
I appreciate that mobile is low hassle but ages ago I had a dongle and remember it was a PITA.
Click to expand...

I assume it depends a lot on the quality of the signal you get. At work it's full strength 4G on every network I've tried so we're probably close to a mast.

These days if you get a 4G internet contract they usually come with a router that you just plug the sim card in to, so essentially the same as a normal broadband setup in terms of connecting devices.
 
Now we are in 2022 I am just wondering if anyone has anymore feedback of using 3 4G home broadband? I am considering ditching Virgin due to them taking the piss with pricing and ADSL isn't an option in my area as speeds are low (estimated 2mb/s-7mb/s so i would expect less) and i would need to get a new phone line installed.

I am in a smallish town/village so don't expect that it would get too busy on the network at peak times so shouldn't see the same amount of slowdown people in London and busy cities complian of, think i am more worried about the general reliability of the network and if any throttling occurs even though the tariff is for 'unlimited' data...
 
sxrxg said:
Think i am more worried about the general reliability of the network and if any throttling occurs even though the tariff is for 'unlimited' data...
Click to expand...

General reliability is decent in my experience, assuming there's a spot in your house where you get good signal. Because the router is static if it has a good connection to the nearest tower it'll typically stay that way.

The throttling is obviously provider/contract specific. We had a 4g setup at work for a while which was great, think we ended up using a couple of TB of bandwidth over a year or so and never ran in to any throttling. This was on a three sim from memory.
 
From my armchair I would presume throttling is more likely in the evening than during work hours? I think I'd quickly get very ticked off if suddenly I was unable to stream TV on a Friday evening or something, but not sure if that ever happens.

My parents in rural Suffolk ended up using a provider that delivered the service via a series of masts and a dish on the house roof due to the same issues with appalling adsl speeds. Might be worth checking if such a local service exists?
 
I've been using a Vodafone 4G wifi dongle for a while. In Skye it was great, 60+ mb/s download. In Aberdeenshire it was less so, varying between 2 and 10. Now I'm in Inverness and live close to a school it's very variable, especially when the kids flood out and stream at 3.45pm. In my new flat, the signal is terrible, so I decided to go for full fibre at a similar price. I've never experienced any throttling, but this might be due to having unlimited download. If you want to go for 4G, I recommend you try and do some speed tests before you go for it, e.g. using speedtest.net. Beware though, as my giifgaff phone signal (O2) is always 5-10x the speed of the Vodafone signal I get here.
 
I have a 5g home router from EE on an unlimited data package. The EE maps were accurate in Stirlingshire but I had it on test and return agreement anyway.

This is giving me 160 Mbs with no noticeable lag. It was price comparable with the 4g but that might have been their error.

It needs to sit in the window to get 5g. It gets 4g when there is no 5g.
 
The following mapping shows some people are getting it up your way.

https://www.nperf.com/en/map/5g

This is measured from peoples devices. It was the data that convinced me to have a go.
 
I'm on a 4G home BB package (unlimited) with Three at £11/M as we have other contracts with them.

We don't tend to dip below ~40mbps up and ~30Mpbs down (often it's significantly better; I've just tested now at 42/27) and we both WFH without any major issue*. I CAN see the mast from my upstairs window (about 1km away).

*we're served by one mast so when they take it out of service we don't have anything. This is more a function of where we live than the technology though.
 

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