SKY: Prices up again!

Likewise here.
There are good reasons for not tying your e-mail address to your current provider as well. I pay a few quid a year for a top-level domain name and a cheap hosting service which I only use for e-mail redirection.
The BT exclusivity on my FTTP installation has just expired so next renewal I’ll be looking for a better reduction as I’ll have a genuine choice of provider as a bargaining tool.

Haggling over the price is a must otherwise you’ll be paying way over what you could be for the service.

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Can I ask why folks don’t use the BT Halo hub? Whats better about anything else and what do folk recommend?

I use a router I’m familiar with from my previous work which gives me the ability to go beyond the standard configuration of the BT supplied one. Due to the construction of the house (2 foot thick Cotswold stone with later standard construction extension) I’m running my network in a way I don’t think the BT router supports. I also have a VPN configured on the router so the entire house network is behind the VPN rather than individually on the computers, and the BT router (last time I looked) doesn’t support this either.
There’s also the flexibility issue. As Richard implies, changing ISP would simply be a configuration change on my existing hardware rather than swapping out equipment.

Also, I’m a tecchie and get enjoyment from doing this sort of thing :grinning:

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Virgin use their own network, everyone else use the Openreach network. So swapping either way between Virgin and another provider will always be more hassle than from provider to provider on the Openreach network.

I always used BT as my provider while I was working for them. When I retired I swapped to TalkTalk. One good thing about TalkTalk is that if they offer a good deal for new customers existing customers can switch to the same deal. As for customer service, they are a PITA to deal with. I’ve been with them for nearly six years now and always been able to get a good deal but have to keep a check on prices and switch deals every year or so.

As someone else commented Plusnet is owned by BT and have all UK call centres. Worth considering if the price is right.

Consider the fact that everyone apart from Virgin use the Openreach network. By regulation Openreach have to charge all operators the same wholesale price for the service. So why do prices vary so much? Well you may well be offered a bargain price to entice you in. If they get a large number of customers paying low prices they will almost certainly bump up the prices and hope you don’t notice or can’t be bothered to do anything about it. Hence to keep your prices down you have to keep renegotiating or swapping providers.

What else can explain differences in prices? The most obvious one is customer service. If there is always someone on the other end of the phone when you need them then you will probably be paying for it. A cheaper service is more likely to have long queues and staff in low wage overseas call centres. You get what you pay for.

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Thanks guys!

My house has a similar problem, except it has 1920s high density bricks and foil backed insulated plasterboard in the old bit, and modern steels in the extension, all impeding fast wifi as well as heat loss. Ethernet installed in the 1990s gets around the problem; the wiring offers a vast number of solutions and easy upgrades.

A couple of years ago in my friend’s old Victorian London terrace we managed to tactfully hide our amusement while stressing out the know-it-all blasé BT Engineer who was meant to be helpful in solving the problems with installing all the BT wifi repeaters over three floors (four power ring mains, three lighting rings, all seven on individual RCDs).
The BT guy did not realise all the walls and ceilings were insulated with the foil backed stuff a couple of decades ago, even the window glass has (metallic) dichroic coating, and nothing gets through without wired help, not even mobile phone.
We ended up chucking the big cumbersome BT wifi lumps and fitting a wired Gigabit switch for each floor and attaching a TP-Link wifi node to each switch.

I don’t know if the latest BT stuff uses less power, but those earlier ones got very hot, and we estimated his alternatives saved him significant electricity.

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You are all lucky you get a choice the only companies who could give were BT and plusnet ( same company really). Tried BT first, 8 days after installing I still had no internet so cancelled. Tried the only mobile company that had 4g internet in the area but it got slower and slower. I’m now with plusnet with a staggering 4 mps on a good day. 2 mike’s down the road people also have a choice. 2021 in the UK!

Had my text from Openreach earlier, do you still want us to attend on Tuesday?
Also the same blurb about possibly not entering the property but not a definite we can’t or won’t.
Drill at the ready.
Incidentally we have an Openreach engineer living in the avenue, I don’t know him but maybe now is the time I should get to.:thinking:

Not that I am condoning it but my brother in law lives next door to his best mate from school, they share the cost 50/50 and he has a hard wired link to his mates router (hub/switch/…) with a WiFi point in his house so they both get the same WiFi for half price. Ok they share bandwidth but it’s never been a problem he says, the fact they share the cost means they pay for the best and it’s still cheap.

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I don’t think I could be more jealous of speeds like that. We moved to a significantly more rural part of Scotland just before Christmas and the available landline options were the Post Office or BT with a blistering 1Mbps estimated speed.

Needless to say that did not fly in these days of remote working (for the OH) so we’re on a Vodafone 4G data sim deal and getting up to 22 Mbps on a good day. That’s actually better than our last place, which was a very urban Central Belt town. The Sky/Openreach FTTC only got 20 Mbps at best and wasn’t overly stable.

We have an external antenna which I’ve still to fit properly. It’s currently stuck to the top of a window facing the mast but hopefully getting it outside and higher up will give a decent boost.

Apparently we’re in one of the initial rural FTTP Openreach rollout areas, to be installed by March 2024. I’m not holding my breath for it.