There’s been a few threads on here about switching broadband. We’re with Virgin. Fast internet (200mb), basic Tv and a landline we don’t use. It’s expensive and I’d like to switch but wondering if it’s worth the hassle.

We thought about just getting a broadband deal. Something fast. The basic virgin TV services aren’t any better than what can be found online these days. But we don’t have a TV Arial or any other way of receiving TV. Many years ago it broke and we weren’t using it so it was just removed. Would make it a problem to get normal TV and Freeview (which I would like to be able to do).

We don’t have a BT phone line. There’s a wire to the house but neither us nor the previous owners used it so I guess some work may be needed to get it up and running. Are you still tied in to having a landline for internet or are other people using similar approached to Virgin?

Who’s good and could be a straight swap for virgin? All the switching companies seem to rely on you using the same equipment which virgin aren’t part of? Also who’s quick at turning it around? Looked at this through lockdown and went against it as my wife is working from home. Not sure even a few days on a mobile would be a good idea from a data/performance point of view. She’s got a works phone but not sure on data package. I’m going back into an office 🙁

I switched from Virgin a year or two ago. Painless. We also had a BT line into the house which hadn’t been used for 30 years.

We went to Vodaphone fibre. They sent an engineer out. He reactivated the BT line and also moved the socket to the position we chose in the lounge.

Paid an aerial company around £100 to supply and fit a roof aerial for freeview.

Went from £70 a month with Virgin to £25 a month with Vodaphone. Download speeds wen from 70ish with Virgin to 30ish with Vodaphone. Other than downloading films from Amazon Prime to a phone being a few seconds slower we have noticed no difference.

Should have switched sooner. We had een with Virgin so long they wouldn’t budge on our monthly rate which was far higher than new customers could get. Oviously assumed we were bluffing if we threatened to leave. Sometimes you need to vote with your feet.

Unless you can get fibre to your house, you’ll need a phone line. They don’t need to charge you for phone service any more though, they can do broadband only like virgin will, but if you need a new line installing then you’ll pay for that.

We switched off virgin a while ago, an Apple TV with the streaming apps suits 99% of our viewing and we don’t bother recording any more. Have a portable aerial plugged in (strong signal area here) for kids cbeebies but that’s about all that ever gets watched live.

Just kicked Virgin into touch, went from £85 a month for cable and broadband to £18 for broadband and landline from Plusnet, we’ll recoup the cost of a freeview digibox and a Firestick inside four months. The box is not as good as V6, but V6 ain’t worth sixty-odd quid a month!

I switched from Virgin a while ago, customer service was terrible – went with Zen Internet, who’ve been spot-on with reliability.
Engineer had to come and change the cabling cos the phone line had been disconnected, but it was all included in the set up charge (can’t even recall if there actually was a set up charge!), but all was pretty painless. And I now have a land-line phone.. er, what’s that for again??

We switched from Virgin to Plusnet (BT) last year. Very painless and halved the bill. We were on 100 Mb/s with Virgin and our BT line gets 70 Mb/s. Both are way above anything we need to use, so didn’t notice any change.

The only problem with Virgin was their continual above inflation price increases. If you can be bothered to complain each time they reduce it, but they started upping the price every 6 months and I just couldn’t be arsed with them any more.

Another possibility: if you have the internet, you can do telly over the internet fairly painlessly.

We have a small computer* with HDMI out that drives the TV. It runs a normal browser (Firefox) and we use that for BBC iPlayer, 4OD, Netflix, Disney, Prime, etc, etc. All just works, and the benefit of the computer v.s. a smart TV or whatever is that there are no smart TV apps to keep in sync with the online streaming service.

Other similar approaches exist of course, but this works well for us.

* A fairly long-in-the-tooth Chromebox which is getting a bit creaky now but still works. I had to mess around a bit with it to replace the bundled ChromeOS with an Ubuntu install, but once you have a desktop and browser you’re off to the races.

We went to Vodaphone fibre. They sent an engineer out. He reactivated the BT line and also moved the socket to the position we chose in the lounge.

How is the Vodafone router? We went from Sky (which was OK) to Plusnet and the router was appalling, crap signal upstairs. Ended up having to get a BT hub which is (luckily) compatible. Our Plusnet deal ends in Dec and Vodafone are looking favourite at the moment – but I’m a bit wary of getting caught out again.

We went from Sky (which was OK) to Plusnet and the router was appalling,

I just bought a brand new BT router off Ebay (£30 ish) to replace our plusnet one, although having moved the Plusnet router the signal seems better.

I just bought a brand new BT router off Ebay (£30 ish) to replace our plusnet one, although having moved the Plusnet router the signal seems better.

They’re dead easy to get set up and we noticed an immediate difference to the signal upstairs. We were just relieved that there was an easy fix – don’t want to be caught out again.

The only problem with Virgin was their continual above inflation price increases. If you can be bothered to complain each time they reduce it, but they started upping the price every 6 months and I just couldn’t be arsed with them any more.

Similar here – price kept going up and every time we challenged it, they offered more channels at the new price, which would inevitably go up 12 or 18 months later to reflect the extra channels. As we only watched about 5 of the 7 million channels we could get, it was a big waste.

Currently paying £38/month for 50mb broadband with virgin. I tried getting vodafone 2 years ago just before the first lock down which left me without internet for nearly 2 weeks (very stressful). Vodafone sent me a 5g dongle thing in the interim, but they were unable to give me a time frame for the installation engineer to turn up so I ended up cancelling the plan and returning to VM.

I’m very tempted to go for the current vodafone deal on MSE, but I think i’ll give VM a ring first to see if they’ll match it. I don’t want to have to go through the rigmarole of waiting for engineers who never turn up etc.

Oh, I forgot to say: another +1 for Zen Internet.

I’m currently paying 30 quid a month for their Unlimited Fibre 1 package, which is FTTC and apparently delivers an average 31Mbps. I’m a fair way from the cabinet, DSL Reports suggests I get 36.9/5.61 Mbps, YMMV.

Anyway, 30ish Mbps is fine here for WFH, TV streaming, video conferencing, etc; and Zen themselves are very good to deal with and hassle-free.

Unlike providers which use the Openreach equipment, switching in or out of Virgin should be simple as you can have overlap – just order the new service, wait for it to be up and running the cancel Virgin. OK, you’ll pay for an extra month of Virgin, but that has the be worth it to avoid stress when WFH

Consider:

If you want non-Internet TV, you’ll need an aerial or a satellite dish. That’s likely £100 – £200 for installation.

If you want any form of DSL (so basically, any Internet that isn’t Virgin or Fibre to the Premises) you’ll need a land line. That will be whatever Openreacharound want this week plus an ongoing monthly fee of £15-£20 for line rental on top of whatever you’re paying for other services. Virgin’s “line rental” is different, it’s not a regular BT phone line, it’s a VoIP connection hanging out of the router so is effectively free.

Virgin’s customer service is toilet, but in terms of bang-for-your-buck they’re tough to beat short of a 4G SIM from Smarty. I get 200Mbps cable broadband, a top end TV bundle (which I never use because it’s in the wrong room) and a VoIP phone line (which I never use because it’s no longer 20 years ago, Marty) for £44 a month.

When I switched from Virgin I went from under 40Mb/s to 68 over copper from Plusnet. Out was a new customer deal that added up to about 22/ month but I’ve just gone with them again at 26 I think. Good service. bt ‘engineer’ was good as gold.

My switching broadband story is that I now pay £25/month for VM 100Mb fibre.

VM had worked very well but the price was progressively escalated way above inflation and recently I received a new letter saying it would be about £38/month. I had prepared for this by setting up my primary email to be gmail and swapping all my important internet accounts to that instead of the old ntlworld email – including my contact email registered with VM.

I called to say I was leaving and the initial response was take it or leave it, so I said please disconnect me. I registered with Vodafone, but a few days later VM called back and asked why I was leaving. I said the price was way higher than other suppliers so I had signed up with Vodafone. He asked me who an how much and then said they would match the £25/month price. So I stayed because it was least hassle and risk. But no doubt in another year or so I’ll be having a similar conversation again when they start the insidious price hikes again.

But no doubt in another year or so I’ll be having a similar conversation again when they start the insidious price hikes again.

Yep!

Thanks. Never thought that we could have overlap – that is one I’ll look at.