Which Provider – Standard Fibre Broadband?

Moving into my first house shortly and trying to get broadband sorted.

Full fibre hasn’t made it my corner of West Yorkshire yet (Halifax), although looks like City Fibre will be installed at some point.

Just trying to decide which provider to go with, anyone have any recommendations?

I understand the previous owner had Sky, but it doesn’t come up on any of the comparison sites.

Current front runner is Plusnet, but I’ve been seeing some terrible customer reviews since they became part of BT, yet media reviews of them are still pretty good?

Not interested in bells and whistles such as TV or phone line, just want something that can handle me working from home, streaming music and watching the odd video on demand series.

I’ve had good experience with NOW broadband. Owned by Sky and uses their back end. Consistently fast

Been with Plusnet for probably getting on for 10 years now.

We don’t get full fibre here – we normally get around 27Mb download speed. If you look on the comparison sites, they all advertise ‘up to 60Mb’ but when you click through, go through all the hoops and put your actual postcode in, they give the same download speed as Plusnet quote. So, we just end up sticking with them.

They tell us in plenty of time when our deal is coming to an end and there’s always a ‘new deal’ which is generally cheaper than any competitor’s quote. The only downside is the router provided by them doesn’t seem very good. I think there is a newer one available now which is supposed to be better (and you would presumably get, as a new customer) but I solved that with a mesh system so am not overly fussed about swapping it over.

Customer service wise – never had any complaints with that side of things, either through the live chat thing or when phoning them. Sure, you can be on hold for a little while, but that seems to be the norm for any customer service scenario where you need to actually speak to anyone.

I switched directly from BT to PlusNet and it was very poor by comparison – kept disconnecting and they could never find the fault/said it was within tolerance. Switched back to BT after 12 months and the problems all went away. I would pay extra for BT in that situation again.

i’ve switched from BT to Zen, slightly more expensive but good service and far better router.

Plus they answer the phone if you call them, no price increases during contract period.

I know people slate them but I’ve been with TalkTalk for years with very few issues.

£26.00/month for standard fibre (60 odd MB) and a phone line (which we’ve never used!).

I’m with Plus Net and have been for about 7 years, switched from copper to full fibre earlier this year and very happy with it. Early Plus Net routers were crap though so I use a BT Home Hub and Disc (their mesh set up) and its faultless.

Whichever one is doing the best deal, there’s little between them.

Not Talk Talk

Nothing wrong with the service but I recently moved to them and only found out this week that they’re close to going bust. Very under reported

Talktalk: The telecoms titan on the brink

I just signed up to switch to them yesterday. 😀

NOT Vodafone. They were so bad they let me out of the contract 18 months early. The service went down 3 times in 2 months. Worst one was 4 days and their customer service was shockingly slow and useless.

We moved to BT. Same speeds (around 30MBPS). It’s £2 per month more than Vodafone but been faultless so far.

Isnt the provider in some ways a mute point unless customer services is the top of your list?

ie they all use the same copper cable and exchange etc. Some may have better SLAs with Openreach who maintain the infrastructure.

We’ve used Plusnet on and off over the years and they’ve been great. If there has been any issues, they’ve been very helpful. I’d avoid Vodafone, horrendous to deal with

I change regularly (deals on Money Saving Expert) and all the following have provided the same level of fibre (FTTC) connectivity and internet continuity to me in recent years.

BT, Plusnet, Shell Energy, Now, Vodafone

The quality of the supplied router has varied though with the likes of Now and Shell not being the best.

12 years with Plusnet here and they have been very good (FTTC and then FTTP). The couple of times I’ve had an issue they’ve had Openreach round within a couple of hours to fix.

As there is full fibre on the horizon, your priority should probably be not locking yourself into a ridiculously long contract!

I’m in Halifax and have been with Plusnet for several years.

WFH, streaming/gaming without issue.

The majority of suppliers will be using the Openreach infrastructure (aka BT), so its just a case of picking the one with the best deal.

I’ve just renewed for ~£28 per month and constantly get 70mbps

We had PlusNet but at the start of Covid lockdown the connection became unreliable. Tried multiple routers and a cat5 connection but still no joy. Raised a ticket but it was all okay, allegedly.

Ended up throwing my toys out the pram and went with Zen. Same line and in theory kit in the exchange, but much more stable. Both had the same headline speeds of 80/20 down/up but Zen was so much snappier. Also the supplied router is actually good quality. In total I think Zen went down around once per year, that we noticed.

They cost a few quid more, but money well spent in my experience.

Isnt the provider in some ways a mute point unless customer services is the top of your list?

ie they all use the same copper cable and exchange etc. Some may have better SLAs with Openreach who maintain the infrastructure.

I was under this impression too.

May be LLU, which allows ISPs to drop their own kit into the exchange.

https://d2haref.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/copper/local-loop-unbundling(LLU)

We’ve been on Now for ~4 years. Was a deal when we started to get BB plus free phonecalls to landline or mobiles, that were under 60mins. Went up to £26.50pcm ~2 years ago, recently increased to £29.50 iirc.

My parents have had Plusnet for many years. Very rarely have they had any problems but interactions with their customer service has always been a good experience. A new router was sent out recently with only several days of the contract left, and after I explained we will be switching to Gigaclear when they’ve completed the install in the area.

I have a contract for 450gb Community Fibre in another place. That has been rock solid service since it went live 18 months ago. I’ve dealt with their CS team once regarding a billing issue and it was sorted with no bother

I’m about to switch to Zen, so if anyone has a refer a friend code-thingy they’d like to share I’d be most obliged . . . ?

Apart from a couple of years with Zen when I could get FTTP in the last house I’ve been with Plusnet and force9 I think it was called back then for years. Not had any problem with their service. When I moved house a year ago did a speed test to check the line and was only getting 2mb so called them and they managed to get an openreach engineer round the next day (just luck though) who fixed the fault. I don’t use a house phone but obviously need a line for FTTC and I think it’s £29 a month.

I’ll probably stick with them as I’m fairly sure my little corner of Aberdeenshire won’t get FTTP until everyone else has moved onto the next thing.

Zen. You get what you pay for and, by and by, most ISPs provide a quick connection, so that’s not the decider. IMO the issue most people complain about is poor customer service; decent broadband isn’t the luxury it was bitd and when things go wrong you need decent CS. Zen delivers that in spades.

Currently getting 251MBps download and 48 upload, and that’s out in the sticks, although we do have FTTP.

Not the cheapest, but certainly (one of?) the best.

Cheers all for the recommendations.

After some good feedback on here and elsewhere online, I have decided to go with Zen.

You have chosen wisely.  I cannot fault my time with Zen.

Really, for broadband-over-the-phone-line we’re moving into an era not dissimilar to utility providers.  No-one moved from British Gas to Octopus and commented on how much better the gas supply was.  Rather, they’re better to deal with when something goes wrong.

It’s 2024.  DSL is dead.  Line rental is line mental.  FTTC is a stopgap, a stepping stone.  If you’re serviced either by VM cable or an FTTP provider, grab it with both hands.  I pay ~£30/month for 500Mbps and no landline line rental fees.

I’ve also been with Plusnet for the last 11 years & no complaints, but I’m now moving to a smaller fibre provider (pole now at the bottom of my garden – I could move onto Plusnet fibre but I’d be paying more for a slower service).

When I asked Plusnet if it was possible to pay to keep my Plusnet email when I leave they said no, it would all be deleted.

I’ve previously been with Line One, Tiscali, Virgin, and all of those previous email addresses are still functional, so this was a suprise.

Just something to be aware of.

I’m surprised that ISPs still offer email addresses, let alone that people actually use them.

Do you/will you get 5G at your new place?
If so you could consider getting an unlimited data SIM and buying a router.

We do this and it works out at £15pm from ID mobile. So saving about £11pm on a wired internet connection.

Speed is more than enough for a few devices streaming, WFH, gaming etc.

Another probably moot point to consider, as my mother once said – fast internet is the same as slow internet, but for the impatient amongst us.

A couple of years ago I moved from Virgin Media (good internet – awful customer service) to NOW.  They have been fine so far, which sounds a lot better than some others.

Well I’ve just called ZEN and apparently my exchange has ‘capacity issues’ at the mo, so it’s no swappage for the time being. I’ve just duck-ducked ‘capacity issues’ and can’t find an answer, any ideas? Looks like I’ll be paying through the nostrils for out-of-contract Sky for the foreseeable.

. . . and for those of you who might be even vaguely interested it’s been sorted and order placed. It appears that the rumours of Zen being incredibly professional are true, at least afaik. I like good customer service and dealing with people that tell the truth.

I’m interested, not least because it’s the sort of question I get asked on a weekly basis and I don’t really know a current answer aside from recommending Brsk or B4RN both of whom have a limited catchment area.  I appreciate the feedback, as above I was sorry to leave Zen.