Alternatives to a BT line for receiving broadband?

Hi All,

I currently receive my broadband through AOL, calls and all! I pay line rental to BT but wish I didn’t have to because I find the company inflexible and hard work! I live off the beaten track so there are no cables etc to choose from as an alternative to a BT wire. My question is,

Am I missing an obvious choice in receiving a good broadband connection? I’m not really bothered about free calls from my land line because we all have mobile phones with free calls and to be honest, it would be nice not to have to answer the land line phone to irritating BT etc phone calls when your eating your dinner!

Please help!

Thanks.

cable, satellite or 4g mobile are the alternatives.

Given that you’re rural sticking with the existing copper connection is likely to be your only real choice.

tbh, whoever you pay for the service the local loop will be maintained by BT, though.

always found the utility warehouse brilliant.

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ime you get a more responsive service from bt and bt openreach if your a BT customer.

im in a similar position and have tried other companies – just to be frustrated by their seeming lack of care- they all blame BT openzone for having limited service appointments availible.

yet since ive dealt direct with bt ive had issues fixed next day. – inc when the guy cutting the road side with his lawnmower went through the pipe/cable.

cable, satellite or 4g mobile are the alternatives.

This. Given that you’re in the sticks, it’s going to be your phone like or satellite as the only real options. Satellite connections are expensive and only offer better download speeds, ping and uploads will still be slow.

You could try getting BT/Openreach to investigate if there’s any problems on the line if your connection is inconsistent, but there’s not a lot they can do. You could probably get a line through Sky or another provider but how much better to deal with they’ll be, idk.

Satellite is an option of last resort (when you can’t get any other sort of broadband) and if you’re rural I guess you don’t have a good 3G/4G service from anyone?

As wwaswas says, you’re probably going to have BT somewhere in your sevice. Other than paying them line rental, why are you having any dealings with them?

Here in my part of Cumbria we’re trying to sort out our own fibre based broadband service, because if we don’t do it ourselves noone else will and we’ll never get much more than 2Mb/s.

I hate having to phone an organisation like BT because of its none friendly attitude and that’s when you can actually speak to a person ones you have pressed every button on your phone. I’m having a problem with the line and BT want £129.99 to come out. It could be anything or anywhere and AOL cannot do a thing until the line has been checked so that is where I am! 😐

tooway satellite.

Where abouts are you? Were in Lancashire and have Sonic Internet which is effectively a big wireless network that we recieve from them, no need for any phone lines and the speed is million times better than copper!

It’ll only cost you the £129.99 if there isn’t a fault or the fault is found in your house.

To test this, find your master socket and unscrew the face plate which should reveal another normal BT socket, this is the “Test” socket. Removing this faceplate disconnects any internal extensions which may cause faults on the line.

Now plug the phone or the router into the test socket along with the microfilter, if the problem persists then generally its a BT fault somewhere. Always try new a new microfilter as well, you’ll probably have a couple lying around if you’ve swapped between suppliers and had new routers sent out etc..

+1 for utilitywarehouse

Virgin have been pretty good for us. I’ve been with both over the years but the last two places I’ve lived when we’ve phoned up BT they’ve wanted £100+ to connect the line (even though there is a physical wire to the buildings), we’ve said no thanks and gone with Virgin.

All in we are about £40 per month – Calls, Didgital TV and 20Mb broadband. Been really happy with the service and they’ve been out next day to fix things.

Here in my part of Cumbria we’re trying to sort out our own fibre based broadband service, because if we don’t do it ourselves noone else will and we’ll never get much more than 2Mb/s.

grizedale what company are you trying to get to do this? I ask cos a pal of mine does this near Rutland