Internet Providers.

[Nigel H-J]

Currently I am with SSE which is now part of Ovo, and found out that my present broadband contract will expire next month so looking for a new provider.

One provider (Virgin) seem to have a very good 18 month offer for broadband and telephone which I am looking at. Presently I am paying around £26 a month for 35Mbps and telephone line.

Virgin are offering £25 a month for an 18 month contract with speeds averaging 108Mbps and free week-end calls £35 setup fee. One reason I am considering this is that I had Virgin around 25 years ago and the service was provided by cable, I would really want to get away from having it come down the landline due to losing connection every single time it starts to rain and then comes back on again a few minutes later.

I only wish to pay around £25 a month as there are deals which come cheaper but have slower speeds, I really want in the region of around 65Mbps and reasonable upload speeds as I really want to download MS2020 again but will only do so when I have a new contract for the 12 August 2022.

Would be grateful if any-one can suggest any other suppliers that have a good reputation and offer reliable service, it is a minefield out there so far and I have been left scratching my head when I see some providers offering phone and fast broadband for £26 - £29 for speeds of 10Mbps??

As written above, I need to at least order very soon, given what I have so far seen, Virgin is going to be very close to being my provider but just need to be sure.
Scroll down and it is first on the left.

https://www.virginmedia.com/broadband/b ... -and-phone

Regards
Nigel.

[TSR2]

Hi Nigel, I’ve been with virgin for 3 years now. Similar to you, there is traditional copper wires in our street, but the maximum bandwidth available was 5mb. That meant there was no competition really as virgin was the only viable option.
What I would say is make sure the Virgin deal is for their cable service (as they also offer broadband over copper where their cable service isn’t available).

I’ve had no issues with my cable service other than their trying to bundle phone, mobile and TV packages with it (fir less money than just the internet) which infuriates me, but one the deal is done, its been very reliable. I have to renew in September actually.

[Nigel H-J]

Ben, very many thanks for your reply, we did have Virgin many years ago quite possibly 25 years ago and it was cable but after leaving and being with other providers which were phone line, I removed part of the cable as it was getting a bit tattered so a new one will have to be installed but the box is right outside our home.

Many thanks again Ben, will be ordering very soon.

Regards
Nigel.

[cstorey]

I have now been with Plusnet for some years ( I am on my second contract ) and pay about £30 month including all calls at all times to landlines. It really depends how many outgoing calls to landlines you make as to whether this is a good deal or not. What its speed would be like for your area I cannot say

[Nigel H-J]

I have now been with Plusnet for some years ( I am on my second contract ) and pay about £30 month including all calls at all times to landlines. It really depends how many outgoing calls to landlines you make as to whether this is a good deal or not. What its speed would be like for your area I cannot say

I also had a look at their offers however even though we have a phone it is not used much at all as we tend to use our pay as you go mobiles (Tesco)

However the mobile phone signals are not good here!!

Many thanks for your input but I am going to go with Virgin as the speeds are just what I want.

Regards
Nigel.

[GHD]

I am witih Virgin gettint 380Mbs download, 37Mbs upload

The thing to remember is never to allow the contraxt to be renewed automatically.

This year I threatened to cancel my TV service. After a short discussion they offered me a 100Mbs upgrade to broadband with no chage to ny TV and phone for less than I paid last year.

[Paul K]

Virgin here ( the ISP, not me ). I was offered 500Mb/s when I moved in, but settled for the 200 as it was easily fast enough - no matter what your bandwidth is, British television is shite. I've only had three outages in 20 months, one of which was planned, the other two were very late at night, and all was dandy in the morning. No problem with Virgin at all, so far.

[Nigel H-J]

Hi George, thanks for the tip regarding renewal of contract. I had this when I was with Sky, they gave me a price and it had gone through the roof, after a bit of a talk they relented and gave me the same price I started out on.

My present contract runs until 12 August and had been speaking to the helpline due to slow internet (they agreed that my connection was very slow and are sending me new connectors to the router) During our discussion I asked when my contract expires and he replied that when it does, it becomes an open contract which costs a lot more!! Be interesting to see if they e-mail me nearer to the date when it stops and ask me if I want to renew.

Virgin here ( the ISP, not me ).

Thanks for your input Paul, as previously written I am going to apply tomorrow for the 18 month contract, looking forward to having much faster downloads!!

Regards
Nigel.

[Nigel H-J]

Just to let you chaps know I have signed up with Virgin Broadband and will be live on 10 August, so many thanks for all your advices and help.

Just had a look at a download calculator and never being an optimist I just put a download speed of 80Mbps even though my download speeds will be around 110Mbps or thereabouts.

If I have to download 100Gb it will only take 2.222hrs, unbelievable when I recall it took 5 days for MS2020 and then re-formatted the drive by a sticky finger!!

Handy tool by all accounts: https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/download-time

Regards
Nigel.

[TSR2]

Hi Nigel,

Great news.

With regards the download calculators, its not quite as clear cut as that. All ISP's perform what they call "Network Shaping" or "Network optimisation." Simply this means that they will monitor network peaks and troughs and manage the bandwidth. The other thing (and possibly more importantly) is that all sites that are distributing large amounts of data will throttle your connection. (And not just MSFS). So if you had to download 100GB for example, and you had a 100Mb connection, its not a straight forward equation as the servers you are connecting to will limit the speed that any one person can get, particularly at times of high usage.

For example, when there is a new MSFS update, hundreds of thousands of devices will be trying to download it, so they limit the speed that each person gets so that everyone gets a fair bite of the cherry. When they are less busy, people get faster speeds. (very simply - it's a bit more complicated than that.)

You'll still get you 100GB in a few hours with a 100Mb connection though