Fibre broadband with no download limits. Recommendation?

[Garacesh]

I used to sing EE's praises with regards to internet. Anybody that badmouthed it would be treated to a 30-page essay about how amazing it has been for me, how there has barely been any issues in the two years I had been with them and how their phone staff were friendly and (usually) as knowledgeable as could reasonably be expected for a phone jockey.

 

Since moving into my new house, however.. Ooohoho that has changed. It took nearly a month to get my new phone line fitted (with multiple BT Openreach guys paying multiple visits). There were problems from Day 1. Choppy connections being the biggest one, of which I discovered during my own troubleshooting that the faceplate/splitter BT Openreach had provided (the one attached to the master socket into the house) was faulty. I took it off, bought my own splitter, and my net no longer randomly cut out..

 

But then!

Housemate downstairs streams a YouTube video. Suddenly BAM, no other device in the house has any internet connection. Other PC's, phones over WiFi, nothing. Not a sniff of data. Can't even resolve DNS requests or ping out. Absolute nightmare.

Downloading something from steam at 3.2 MB/s? BAM. Same issue. No net for anybody else (a nightmare if something updates whilst someone else is gaming). I cannot stress enough how literally I mean nothing.

 

I phone them up and they start drilling through the usual routine (check cables, etc, basic Layer 1 stuff). I says no offence, but I've already done all this. I don't mean to be condescending but I work in IT. I can guarantee I have already checked every single point of a Layer 1 error short of de-sheathing the cables to check for breaks. After getting rather stuffy, the nice Indian man proceeds.

What about my WiFi settings? I say irrelevant. Hardwired devices lose connectivity, too.

Could there be any issues with the wires? No. This network is certified Cat6. I installed it myself. I've ran a cable tester and they're all good.

 

Basically this goes on and on. I'm arguing it's not my internal network as the only thing that has changed is the phone line and a few cables. The hardware is identical (literally the same router and modem) and no settings have been reconfigured. Guy tells me to go to the router settings and disable the firewall etc. Uh, no thanks? I like having intrusion detection on my network? (Also, again, nothing has changed.)

I query if there has been an update to my router recently. I could understand altering settings if they've pushed an update down the line (they can remotely access my router to update or change settings) and he says no, they haven't done that. So again, I ask, if my settings have not changed, how could there be an issue with them?

 

Finally I manage to convince him to do a line test. He does. No fault, apparently. So I ask him to escalate to BT and have them check the exchange. It's possible I'm just wired in badly. It's entirely possible that's where the fault lies and it's nothing to do with EE. He says he's done that, I haven't heard back from them yet (this was around 2 weeks ago)

 

I says right, whilst I'm here, I need OpenReach to supply me with a new faceplate. He says sure, that'll cost me £60. Excuse me? Yep, £60 callout fee. He advises I go to a shop and buy my own faceplate for around £5. Whilst I appreciate that's a lot cheaper and completely within my ability, I should not have to incur any financial cost to repair an issue that has arisen from me being supplied faulty hardware.

 

Losing my patience, I decide I want to see a copy of my contract with EE. Yes, sir, certainly, sir. It will be emailed to you within 5 days. Did I get it? Did I heck. Right, sod this, I've had enough.

 

Phone the Retention department. Get an actual English guy this time. (I don't mean this in a racist way, but it shows their priorities when technical issues are outsourced but the retention department isn't...) and the guy takes one look at my account and says "Okay, I'm not going to much you around. I'm supposed to argue the toss but looking at this I can see why you want to leave. We'll get you your MAC code."

 

Hallelujah!

 

So. As of today I'm in possession of a shiny new MAC code and taking suggestions on who gets my money. (Just not Sky, or O2 since Sky now own it)

[localzuk]

I'd suggest looking at Andrews and Arnold. Quite expensive, but they're small and focused on the end user. You speak to actual engineers, and not script readers.

[glennda]

Zen…… not always the cheapest but by far the best customer service and support imho

[Garacesh]

Zen…… not always the cheapest but by far the best customer service and support imho

 

Zen is local-ish to me.. And we do have 7 of our Ingress guys work there...

[ZeroHour]

I'd suggest looking at Andrews and Arnold. Quite expensive, but they're small and focused on the end user. You speak to actual engineers, and not script readers.

 

This page is kinda epic! Real internet connection

The only problem is I think my bill would be £100's per month for fttc.

Edited September 1, 2014 by ZeroHour

[localzuk]

This page is kinda epic! Real internet connection

The only problem is I think my bill would be £100's per month for fttc.

 

How much data would you be using!?

 

The 100GB data for FTTC comes to £40pm. Or £60pm for 300GB, and then £10 extra per 50GB. So, £100 would be 500GB data per month!

[featured_spectre]

I could blitz 500GB in a month with ease. Just downloading my steam and origin library would push it to nearly 1TB

[glennda]

Zen is local-ish to me.. And we do have 7 of our Ingress guys work there...

 

Can't recommend them enough, we recommend them to all our clients and they are faultless, whether it's ADSL, FTTC, EFM or Fibre.

 

We have one client moved 190 ADSL circuits over to them with a further 300 more in the pipeline, everything is done when they say it will be

 

[visioN]

I could blitz 500GB in a month with ease. Just downloading my steam and origin library would push it to nearly 1TB

 

Yeah but you don't need to do that very often do you?

[featured_spectre]

no, but then there is also content to my cloud storage. I often buy films on DVD and put them on my network storage (Which I can connect too from anywhere). Captain America Winter Soldier takes up a little over 2GB alone, multiply this by nearly 1000 films (granted I don't do it often, but every time I buy a film I do it). Then when I want to watch them, I stream them from wherever I am, and it uses up data at home.

[mac_shinobi]

no, but then there is also content to my cloud storage. I often buy films on DVD and put them on my network storage (Which I can connect too from anywhere). Captain America Winter Soldier takes up a little over 2GB alone, multiply this by nearly 1000 films (granted I don't do it often, but every time I buy a film I do it). Then when I want to watch them, I stream them from wherever I am, and it uses up data at home.

 

Just curious - where and how are you buying and saving your movies onto a NAS or similar device ?

[featured_spectre]

buy DVDs as and when I like, generally from charity shops/ebay/whatever takes my fancy. IF it is a new release, then tesco as they usually stock them on the day and no rush to buy them.

 

I hook up my external DVD drive into the NAS, tell it to copy content.

[Arthur]

Zen…… not always the cheapest but by far the best customer service and support imho

The only bad thing about Zen is that you can't get any IPv6 addresses from them, whereas you can with Andrews & Arnold.

 

Zen don't seem particularly forward thinking.

[bobt]

Leased Lines, Managed Hosting, Business Broadband Providers - Eclipse Internet

 

^^ Highly highly recommended.

[SpuffMonkey]

Take it you're not in a (hush my mouth) Virgin area...I've always found it very robust - yes they cap your speed at peak times if you use it heavily - but tbh the capped speed is better than I can get through a BT line at full whack.

[Garacesh]

I'm not entirely sure about Virgin. I've heard too many mixed reviews to really justify paying them take my BT line out and fit one of their own. If their service is carp then I'm going to have to have someone change me back to a BT one and the less I have to deal with Openreach, the better!

 

I do applaud them on their efforts to build their own infrastructure rather than rely on BT's, but last time I contacted them the connection fee was £80!! I just don't feel risk vs reward balances out.

[localzuk]

I used Virgin for a year, and they weren't bad (well, so long as you put their stupid "Super Hub" into modem only mode and used a separate router). However, that was during the time when the top level account didn't have any speed caps. It does now, sadly. So I doubt I'd ever use them now.

[pooley]

Plusnet working fine here, I hammer it and its been pretty stable.

[nicholab]

Plusnet I have pulled down 80gb in a month.

[Zoom7000]

Take it you're not in a (hush my mouth) Virgin area...I've always found it very robust - yes they cap your speed at peak times if you use it heavily - but tbh the capped speed is better than I can get through a BT line at full whack.

 

They only cap uploads now. They don't cap download speeds anymore.

 

http://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-thresholds.html

Edited September 2, 2014 by Zoom7000

[Zoom7000]

I'm not entirely sure about Virgin. I've heard too many mixed reviews to really justify paying them take my BT line out and fit one of their own. If their service is carp then I'm going to have to have someone change me back to a BT one and the less I have to deal with Openreach, the better!

 

I do applaud them on their efforts to build their own infrastructure rather than rely on BT's, but last time I contacted them the connection fee was £80!! I just don't feel risk vs reward balances out.

 

As a new customer you can always phone up sales and they will pretty much waive the fee if you threaten to go to Sky or someone else. You can also usually get a decent amount of cashback if you go through Quidco. I got £150. I then got my connection fee refunded plus the 6 months half price extended to 12 months because they couldn't install the phone line due to an external fault. Since moving on to the SuperHub 2, my connection has been near flawless on 152Mbps.