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How fast & costly is your internet connection?

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westv

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I just got an email from KCom telling me they are changing my package as they will be "retiring" my current one.
I'm curious to know what speeds/prices others get.
The new package will be full fibre 300Mbs download/75 Mbs upload., unlimited data use, £49.99 a month. All in apart from call charges (we never use the house phone anyway).
 
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birchesgreen

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I'm on Virgin M200 Fibre Broadband (200+ MB download) which apparently costs 34pm, though i have their TV (and sports channels too) so i pay quite a lot more than that!
 

WelshBluebird

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Can't get decent broadband via the phone line (max 8Mbps down) so we rely on 5G from EE. And it isn't cheap!
£350 for the 5G router, then £40 a month for unlimited data (but actually limited to 1TB). Average between 100Mbps and 200Mbps down, and about 30Mbps up.
Also pay £10 a month for a VPN from Andrews & Arnold which actually gives me a public IP address (EE use CGNAT so without anything like the VPN I don't get a public IP address and so can't use a lot of online gaming services and the like). With the VPN my download is limited to 100Mbps but that is still more than enough.
Absolutely making sure the next place I move to has fibre (at least FTTC, but preferably FTTH) before moving!
 

507021

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I have Virgin Media's M100 Fibre Broadband which costs £45.50 a month.

We're probably going to upgrade to M200 soon though.
 

superjohn

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I have Plusnet unlimited fibre which also includes a phone line. Usually around 40Mb and guaranteed no lower than 30Mb. I live alone so that is perfectly adequate for my needs, streamlng TV through an Amazon Fire stick never buffers and I can easily be streaming and downloading podcasts simultaneously.

£22.99/month on an 18 month contract with no setup or router charges. Supposedly goes up to £35.98/month at the end of the contract but I’ll look at the options at the time.
 

507021

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I have M500 and don’t pay much more than that, but I do get a loyalty discount

Ours is more expensive because it's our only Virgin Media service, our TV package is from a different provider (for now).

We could do with faster internet for when my eldest daughter starts secondary school in September, so I'll give Virgin Media a ring at some point and see what deals they can do for a combined M200 broadband and television package.
 

507021

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Loyalty discount?
News to me.. please tell more.

I don't know Geezertronic's circumstances, but I received a twelve month loyalty discount because I kept the account open after my Dad passed away.
 

Tazi Hupefi

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900mbps on BT fibre to the premises. In reality it’s 1gbps when I changed the router from the default one and wired everything up.

Got a good offer I believe at £49.99/month. Just checked and “full price” is £5 more, so I get a bit of a discount.

I have some sort of “guaranteed” speed of 500mbps I think, but it is consistent at over 900mbps to date.
 

Trackman

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I don't know Geezertronic's circumstances, but I received a twelve month loyalty discount because I kept the account open after my Dad passed away.
The only one I know is just renewing the contact, but I wouldn't call that a loyalty discount.
 

david1212

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I am on Plusnet standard FTTC so 'up to 36mb/s'. Regardless of the provider the Openreach network can only deliver around 22mb/s. Hence to my mind pointless upgrading to Faster Fibre. I rarely would use / notice an increase anyway.

There was an issue with the swapover from Sky. Plusnet do not subscribe to the voluntary compensation scheme hence I suspect always fall to the lowest priority.

The service is reliable with the occasional dropout or non-availability for a few hours.

I did pay line rental upfront but now discontinued hence £22.99/month.
 

Geezertronic

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I have my TV via Sky and my internet/land line (not used) via VirginMedia. The loyalty discount is because I have been with VirginMedia over 15 years so when I rang up last year about my bill, I asked about a loyalty discount and received one :) Same with Sky.

Don't ask, don't get - always worth checking
 

87 027

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OP states current provider is KCom implying they live in the Hull area. This is a somewhat unusual market for telecoms as the local telephone system was never absorbed into the national Post Office telephones department which eventually became British Telecom. It remained separate and was run by the local council (as Kingston Communications), being floated on the stock exchange in the late 1990s.

This means that the OP probably has a somewhat more limited choice of internet providers and packages compared to anyone in a BT area where there are many competing players operating over Openreach’s infrastructure (e.g. Sky).
 

nlogax

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About 50 quid p/m for 100 mb/s with Virgin Media. I've found their fibre service to be hugely reliable and I can count the number of outages I've experienced over the last decade on the fingers of one hand.
 

westv

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OP states current provider is KCom implying they live in the Hull area. This is a somewhat unusual market for telecoms as the local telephone system was never absorbed into the national Post Office telephones department which eventually became British Telecom. It remained separate and was run by the local council (as Kingston Communications), being floated on the stock exchange in the late 1990s.

This means that the OP probably has a somewhat more limited choice of internet providers and packages compared to anyone in a BT area where there are many competing players operating over Openreach’s infrastructure (e.g. Sky).
That's true but my reason for starting the thread wasn't so I could compare providers, I was just curious to know. Looking at the answers it looks like there doesn't seem to be any huge difference in the fibre area.
Are Virgin Media FTTH?
 

Geezertronic

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About 50 quid p/m for 100 mb/s with Virgin Media. I've found their fibre service to be hugely reliable and I can count the number of outages I've experienced over the last decade on the fingers of one hand.
That really is expensive for the 100Mb package :|
 

nlogax

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That really is expensive for the 100Mb package :|

It is. I've been with them for a long time now and I've been watching the prices slowly crank up and up for what I remember being 30mb/s tier at 20 quid a month in 2010. I should probably do something about it but in the grand scheme of things it fell to the bottom of the to-do list.
 

87 027

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Are Virgin Media FTTH
No, they use a completely separate technology called DOCSIS (data over cable service interface specification). The network is being upgrading to DOCSIS 3.1 which is theoretically capable of gigabit speeds
 

westv

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No, they use a completely separate technology called DOCSIS (data over cable service interface specification). The network is being upgrading to DOCSIS 3.1 which is theoretically capable of gigabit speeds
Oh yes, I forgot about cable. My previous wife's family had that when it was Telewest.
 

87 027

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There’s an interesting article below stating that BT were working on fibre in the 1980s and the nation could have had faster internet sooner if it wasn’t for Mrs Thatcher’s intervention to promote cable as an alternative



“At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do.

"Unfortunately, the Thatcher government decided that it wanted the American cable companies providing the same service to increase competition. So the decision was made to close down the local loop roll out and in 1991 that roll out was stopped. The two factories that BT had built to build fibre related components were sold to Fujitsu and HP, the assets were stripped and the expertise was shipped out to South East Asia.

"Our colleagues in Korea and Japan, who were working with quite closely at the time, stood back and looked at what happened to us in amazement. What was pivotal was that they carried on with their respective fibre rollouts. And, well, the rest is history as they say.”
 

Geezertronic

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OK, you've spurred me into long-overdue action. I'm looking at the competition and Virgin's own newbie offers. Watch this space :D

The VirginMedia website suggests new customers can get M500 broadband for £46 a month on an 18 month contract
 

ainsworth74

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I'm looking at the competition and Virgin's own newbie offers. Watch this space :D

I'm with Virgin Media (M200 at £50.24 as I only get broadband from them) and the problem for me is that it's either Virgin Media or it's Openreach over copper from the exchange. So I can have either M200 (I think we can get up to M500 here if I wanted to pay for it actually) or, at best, 2mbps from someone using Openreach infrastructure. Which was just about tolerable before I switched to Virgin Media in around 2017 but would be impossible to go back to now (even before the pandemic meant we were doing more stuff online!). Funnily enough when the engineer installed it he said it was quite a common set up in my area to just get VM for the broadband because people were getting fed up with Openreach not upgrading to us to FTTC (and seem to have no plans to do so seeing as they still haven't after many years of rolling out FTTC widely!).

But that does mean that I always feel in a somewhat weak bargaining position as I can't really threaten to leave them as I would very much be cutting my nose off to spite my face. Still though I don't appear to be getting rinsed as looking on the VM website my package is advertised at £50pm after the initial 18 month contracts introductory offer at £34pm.
 

westv

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We may only have one serious provider in Hull but at least we have near 100% FTTH. :D
 

skyhigh

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(and seem to have no plans to do so seeing as they still haven't after many years of rolling out FTTC widely!)
I'm pretty sure they've ceased new FTTC installations now

Edit: ignore that, looks like I was wrong!
 

ainsworth74

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I'm pretty sure they've ceased new FTTC installations now
Ah, in which case it would seem my area is consigned to 2mbps maximum via Openreach or 500mbps+ through Virgin Media in perpetuity.
 

Dai Corner

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Ah, in which case it would seem my area is consigned to 2mbps maximum via Openreach or 500mbps+ through Virgin Media in perpetuity.
The reason Openreach are not expanding their FTTC network any more is that they're concentrating on FTTP (Fibre To The Premises).


Our Fibre First programme doesn't just mean we're building new networks - it means we look to build with fibre whenever we start a project. Read about how we're bringing fibre to homes and businesses, and the areas across the UK where we're extending our network.
 
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JamesT

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There’s an interesting article below stating that BT were working on fibre in the 1980s and the nation could have had faster internet sooner if it wasn’t for Mrs Thatcher’s intervention to promote cable as an alternative



“At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do.

"Unfortunately, the Thatcher government decided that it wanted the American cable companies providing the same service to increase competition. So the decision was made to close down the local loop roll out and in 1991 that roll out was stopped. The two factories that BT had built to build fibre related components were sold to Fujitsu and HP, the assets were stripped and the expertise was shipped out to South East Asia.

"Our colleagues in Korea and Japan, who were working with quite closely at the time, stood back and looked at what happened to us in amazement. What was pivotal was that they carried on with their respective fibre rollouts. And, well, the rest is history as they say.”

I’ve read a different slant on that story. BT was privatised by then, so it wasn’t Thatcher making a decision as to whether to roll out fibre everywhere but BT’s board. When BT was privatised, there were some conditions placed on it to avoid it using the monopoly it started with to overwhelm competitors. One of those was that it couldn’t use its network to supply television services. BT had gone to the government saying they’d roll out fibre everywhere if they were allowed into the TV market. Thatcher said no to that, so BT took their ball home. Presumably they’d decided the numbers only added up if they could do more than just telecoms services.
 
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