I've been with Plusnet for 15 years for both my business and home accounts as well as my tv. Never had any issues regarding speed or customer service, basically they are a sister company of BT but with cheaper packages and better customer service, anyone thinking of trying it PM me, there's a referral system where I get money off my account each month
I wouldn't recommend them though if I wasn't happy. No need to haggle with them either, I guarantee when you're coming to the end of your contract someone will bell you and offer a better deal before you have chance to shop around and that deal will be competitive when you compare. Unfortunately where I live there is no cable so everything is coming through BT's infrastructure. Sky are so annoying, they keep advertising deals which are only available to new customers, thing is they post them to your house even though they know you are already a customer and can't get those deals then claim to be trying to save the rain forest, well stop posting pointless sh@t through my door and save on paper!
When I had my TV with them they would creep up my bills all the time, I went through the usual every year ringing the retentions team to get a better deal but since they were reported to Ofcom and Watchdog for being too persistent stopping people leaving this has actually damaged competition as they are not as likely to try and keep you which is a bummer, I know people who have threatened to leave and Sky have just said fair enough even though they just wanted a better deal. Its in much the same way as capping gas and electric prices, if people can't be bothered looking for a better deal which takes minutes everyone will end up paying more because the people who don't shop around subsidise the people that do, not good for competition in my eyes and a bad policy.
speed and no probles. But one site showed me what connection speeds local (our Street) customers got, and it seems it don't matter who your with, it's where you are and that can meen just over the road get's better then you!! Just don't know the answer??
The problem comes from exchanges which are loop loss unbundled LLU some isp's put their own equipment into the exchange so they have some level of control over bandwidth, the likes of TalkTalk and Sky but if there is no connections left in that exchange BT will just drop you onto their own line and will only swap you over as more connections become available hence two people on the same road with the same ISP in the same exchange can end up with very different speeds if the BT equipment is running "hot"
That is the case. My 200Mbps connection started slowing in June, it's now at 3Mbps and has been for weeks.
People also need to look at their own equipment, when a line is set up it runs at the fastest speed possible speed then goes into training mode, basically if data packets being sent to and from the exchange get lost and need resent this uses more bandwidth so your isp will slow down your line. biggest cause of this is noise on the line, essentially the exchange couldn't read the data because of interference. Biggest causes of this is electrical equipment surrounding your router, try and make your line as clean as possible and keep things like transformers etc away, Basically don't keep a rats nest of cables around your equipment and minimum phone extensions. One of the worst offenders is the bell wire on old copper legacy wires which used to make your phone ring now redundant as your phone usually has its own power supply these days. being copper it acts like an aerial and picks up interference from surrounding electrical equipment especially if it passes by street lighting. This wire can be safely removed although it is BT's equipment and you should not touch this, you can only touch things after the box installed by BT, Yeah whatever. Best way to check is lift the phone and press a key to lose the dial tone and see if you hear crackling noise on the line.
Other tips are don't keep knocking off your router by the power or if you do leave it for a while before switching back on otherwise the exchange will see this as a line drop and automatically drop your speeds and if you are going to reboot your router which is good practice every now and again anyway try and do it early in the morning with street lighting off and less congestion so you will get an initial speed. If you manage to hold that speed the exchange will try and give you more until you start dropping packets then they will hold you at that.
I've recently signed up for Youtv and broadband just because there is no contract and I can leave any time I want and where I am staying is temporary. the guy who came to connect me up on Friday couldn't do it, even though there is a green box just outside my house my line actually terminates at another box a mile and half away, the house I'm in as been empty for a long time so BT have robbed the wires for someone else's property for being redundant plus the box outside isn't fibre enabled without BT digging up the road so they just pile everyone in to the nearest box that has and run it hot until they can be bothered enabling the next box. general rule of thumb is the longer the lines from the box to you the slower the speed you will get. BT don't care as long as you have an active phone line and they get their money. then they leave it for you to argue with your isp over your speed and your isp will always try and blame issues at your end. If your isp have to call out BT to see what's wrong with the line and they have provided an adequate line then Bt will charge your isp for the call out and in turn they charge you. unfortunately that's the way it goes with broadband.