Broadband… Need for speed? No BT socket

I get a lovely steady 250MBPS but at a tearfully expensive price via VM.

We don’t have a BT / OpenReach line coming into the house currently (cable was damaged / removed at some point around 15 years ago).

Two questions:

1. If we go for a non VM provider do I need to get the line reinstalled first and if so anyone know how to start that process, AND
2. How fast do I really need?

The speed issue is one of, if I can’t get what I need I have to suck up the VM cost and move on as the aggro of bad service isn’t worth the price issue.

Usage

• Often one of us working from home (Teams and general office stuff, no graphics or CAD but some 100MB+ files).
• XBox gaming x1
• Streaming x1-2
• YouTube/general internet stuff (for family of four)
• No smart stuff to speak of

Without “ruining our lives” will 50-60 MBPS be likely to do it?

Without “ruining our lives” will 50-60 MBPS be likely to do it?

We had a 60meg setup Sky via the Openreach box

Just me and the Mrs, both working from home on laptops, streaming stuff to TVs, me playing Xbox lots, Sonos streaming lots of audio round the house. 60meg was absolutely fine. Now on a 500Mb thing with talktalk and it’s honestly no different from the previous year 60mb setup

You will most likely be going fibre if it’s available as it’s all most of the main players will supply now.

It’s a new line anyway so not having an old copper one makes no difference.

Just go online and check for providers.

EE then sky are the biggest now . Or city fibre via vodaphone

We’ve found because we have Virgin media cabling in our street that openreach haven’t bothered with fibre. We can only get fttc rather than fttp as a result. And the nearest cabinet is quite a long way from where we are – so the speeds would be a chunk lower on downloads vs Virgin. Otherwise I’d have moved by now.

Every few years we have the dance with Virgin where we downgrade some of the package etc to try and reduce the cost that they’ve gradually been increasing over and over again.

Last time I said I’d lose the Virgin tv boxes and just go to Broadband only as they’d said there was no other way to reduce the cost. Then magically someone rang us and offered us a deal to keep Virgin tv as well as the broadband. I did cancel our extra box though and replace it with freesat.

Without “ruining our lives” will 50-60 MBPS be likely to do it?

Yes.

A lot of people go for the fastest line they can get but in reality they only use a tiny fraction of it.

If going fibre (and why not, it’s as cheap as non-fibre a few years ago) you’ll get a completely new line, box, socket anyway:you can strip any ‘copper’ related gubbins out as not needed. We went with PlusNet who organised Openreach install and it’s been faultless for 18mths.

Edit: beaten to it above

akso Edit: speed wise, similar needs to yourself, we have a 170Mb package, and it is more than adequate. Not sure what a lower limit would be for family harmony… maybe 100Mb at peak usage?

We’ve found because we have Virgin media cabling in our street that openreach haven’t bothered with fibre. We can only get fttc rather than fttp as a result. And the nearest cabinet is quite a long way from where we are – so the speeds would be a chunk lower on downloads vs Virgin. Otherwise I’d have moved by now.

I could have written that exactly that!

I think we’ve only fttc available for the same reason as despite checking multiple providers not one offers ultrafast (100+ speeds).

We peak at 30 Mb download (FTTC) and that copes with me WFH as well as multiple streaming, gaming etc. Only times it becomes an issue is when the lad decides to download a massive game in the middle of a Teams call. BRSK has just completed full install so be moving when I can though.

Definitely no fttp here according to OpenReach.

Anyone know how we trigger getting a new/replacement line installed?  I found something on money supermarket about landline installation via your “phone provider” but I thought landlines were being stopped (I know the cable is for both).  I’m not inclined to buy a phone package when we never use the home phone.

Give Zen a ring (01706902573), you’ll speak to a real person in Rochdale and I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you if it’s do-able or not. I’m sure the Outreach people will be able to chase the old line and reconnect you. You don’t need a traditional ‘land-line phone’, in fact Zen only offer ‘digital voice’ should you need it.

Have you tried the “I’m leaving” line with Virgin Media to see if they’ll offer a retention discount? Sounds like they’re just as evil as they were when they were known as ntl.

We have fttc and as it is a very long way from us we get an average of 12-15 mbps. It vary rarely causes any problems for us but we don’t stream any video other than IPlayer and occasionally the ITV and CH4 catchup services.

Gigaclear have installed the infrastructure for fttp but the horror tales of the local installation teams cockups have meant that we are in no rush to ‘upgrade’ anytime soon in light of the above. At some point we might need to I guess and I am tempted to install conduit from the box to where I want it myself to avoid said installation damage

Edit: The other problem with getting Gigaclear is that as you are then obliged to use them or one of their ‘partners’ for the foreseeable future you are trapped into their pricing structure without any leverage at contract renewal time unlike fttc

What sort of prices are you paying for your broadband?

What sort of prices are you paying for your broadband?

This.. if you are paying a “tearfully expensive price” it’s likely to be any add-ons (TV, phone packages etc) that are hiking the price – just broadband should be ~£30-40. If you don’t want to ditch the extras you will need to factor the cost of those on top of broadband if you switch.

We’ve got download speeds around 36mbps. 3 children all streaming + sometimes streaming in the lounge too. Son does online gaming on consoles. I do Teams calls (normally no video, but screen sharing most of the time). 99% of the time all that can be going on at the same time with no problems. the other 1% of the time there might be the slightest bit of hesitation but nothing really noticable. The only one who gets frustrated sometimes is son when he has a 7gb game update to download and it takes a couple of hours to do.

We have the joys of KCOM for our fibre (East Yorkshire). I have the little connector box in the path at the end of our drive. Friends round the corner use them, so I rang them to sign up – “oh there’s a fault on the line on your street from when it was installed a few years ago. It’s on the list of things to fix but it’s a long list covering the whole of the county so it could take them a couple of years to get round to it.” Great.

Without “ruining our lives” will 50-60 MBPS be likely to do it?

I upgraded from 40mbps to 80.. Only time it benefits me is downloading a huge game is faster.. But day to day it makes no difference.

It’s a bit like driving a Ferrari to Tesco… If you’re not gonna go more than 40mph you might as well be driving a Honda jazz.

Any individual wifi client is likely to be getting 30-40mbit. Teams calls even with lots of video being thrown around are considerably less. 4k netflix is around 20mbit.

I only get 500mbit FTTP for the 70mbit upload as I have to move multi-GB files around sometimes. I’d actually be pretty happy with a symmetric 50mbit if I could get that.

Game downloads are quick especially if you can cable to the router – but then if you don’t mind your console being in standby mode just set it to auto-update overnight and it doesn’t matter how long it takes.

Put your details into https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/AddressHome and it will show what exactly is available from your exchange and if FTTP is coming soon. It’s unlikely to be long and it would make more sense to me to stick it out with Virgin for a bit until you can get fibre installed rather than get a copper line at this point.

Put your details into https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/AddressHome and it will show what exactly is available from your exchange and if FTTP is coming soon.

FTTP is not available.

The exchange is not in a current fibre priority programme

oh joy. Good job that the 35mbps works OK for now. But I fear as the world gets more data hungry then it will become limiting. My long game is that 5G will become a viable option but currently when my phone connects to 5G here the download speeds are lower than they are on 4G.

You don’t need to worry about getting the physical line replaced.  Just place an order with your CP of choice and just be prepared for an aborted first visit if the work is more than they can manage.

Apparently Virgin is going to go wholesale which will give you more choice over your existing fibre or coax connection, and Openreach is also pushing for this.

Broadband ISPs React to Virgin Media O2 UK Going Wholesale

Openreach Calls on Virgin Media to Open UK Cable Ducts to Rivals UPDATE

A lot of people go for the fastest line they can get but in reality they only use a tiny fraction of it.

*Guilty* Want vs Need

(tbh we all should have had fibre from the start but the govt screwed it up and chose mixed tech models).

As soon as I got the nod for fibre I chose the 1000/50 plan. In the process of upgrading the NTD’s in around 10 months which will allow 2000 down and a range of upload rates.

(Wife WFH vpn, kids gaming, streaming media a plenty, cameras) Absolutely zero slow down even if we’re all hammering the internets, zero buffering, flicking from 4k movie to 4k movie on netflix is instantaneous .

Just threaten to leave, thats what we did when our price was jumping from £25 to £45 for 270ish mbps from virgin (we started on 100mbps but they kept upping our speed). We set up a sky installation, and a week or so after cancelling someone rang and offered us 1Gbps for £24. Which was a no brainer, games updates download alot quicker as do image files that I need to work.

Any individual wifi client is likely to be getting 30-40mbit.

That’s a bold claim.  My desktop PC gets around 200Mbps on a bad day, at the end of the building.

A couple of random thoughts:

1) If you order DSL and don’t have a landline, the DSL provider should engage with Openreacharound to have one installed.

2) When comparing prices between DSL and VM cable, remember that you’ll have to add line rental onto it which will probably be North of £20/month extra.  This reason alone made FTTP worth it for me, I took deep joy in ripping out the old copper line and tossing it in the bin.

3) As for speed, the Xbox is the killer here.  I don’t really benefit from a 500Mbps connection most of the time, but it puts a smile on my face when I power up the Xbox and it needs a 10GB download before I can play Diablo.  It’s the difference between “I’ll come back tomorrow” and “oh, is that all?”

you’ll have to add line rental onto it which will probably be North of £20/month extra.

Prices you see on comparison sites now include line rental. So generally around £25-30 all in per month. I think it was a regulation change a few years ago to show the total price.

Thanks all.  Going to give the “cancel/retention” line a go.  It’s got 15+ years of incremental increases on it and if I’m honest we’ve not picked a fight over it before.

I was offered 1GBPS for £72 a month which isn’t much more than current charges but it’s more than we need and a new 18 month contract to boot.

Thanks also for the heads up on line rental – we will check that.

I was offered 1GBPS for £72 a month which isn’t much more than current charges

By way of comparison, my provider (Brsk) charges £32/month for 1Gbps on a 2-year contract (or £49 on a month-to-month contract).  And that’s FTTP so no line rental.