Broadband and phone line

[fractured]

My mam is currently looking to swap from virgin as its crazy pricing. She is 87 and enjoys watching the TV and films with her when we visit.



Her current set up is fibre broadband, phone line and unlimited calls. Cost is going up to about £95 per month.
I have just tried plusnet but they say they can't offer her fibre and a phone line.

So can you folks spread any light on what is available and an idea cost. She isn't flush with money so any savings will be welcome.

Hope you can help.

Mick

 

[OJCar]

Plusnet might not be able to offer Fibre to her house and a phone line but they certainly do Fibre to Cabinet and phone line
(This is typed down it ! )
https://www.plus.net/broadband/fibre-and-phone/

Getting better speeds than previous ISP could dream of

Just moved to it , just coming on a month, absolutely no connections dropping unlike the previous ISP where the line was dropping 3 to 5 times a day.
Costing £34.27 per month with Unlimited UK and Mobile calls.

 

[julianf]

I'm with Sse. Our exchange is not unbundled, so it's all running on bt hardware, so they're all as bad as each other. The only difference is how much you pay and what call center puts in the request to open reach engineers when there's an issue.

If your (her) exchange is not unbundled, whoever is cheapest will do. Again it's exactly the same service whoever you buy from.

If the exchange is unbundled, find out who has hardware in it, and go with one of them, as that will be way cheaper.

There's a website... Sam something or other, where you can put in the phone number and it tells you the companies with hardware in the exchange.

 

[gaz1]

My mam is currently looking to swap from virgin as its crazy pricing. She is 87 and enjoys watching the TV and films with her when we visit.



Her current set up is fibre broadband, phone line and unlimited calls. Cost is going up to about £95 per month.
I have just tried plusnet but they say they can't offer her fibre and a phone line.

So can you folks spread any light on what is available and an idea cost. She isn't flush with money so any savings will be welcome.

Hope you can help.

Mick

what does she run now as theres plenty of films and channels via there basic package

we are at 78.00

tvL
m100 fibre
talk unlimited

 

[OJCar]

I'm with Sse. Our exchange is not unbundled, so it's all running on bt hardware, so they're all as bad as each other. The only difference is how much you pay and what call center puts in the request to open reach engineers when there's an issue.

If your (her) exchange is not unbundled, whoever is cheapest will do. Again it's exactly the same service whoever you buy from.

If the exchange is unbundled, find out who has hardware in it, and go with one of them, as that will be way cheaper.

There's a website... Sam something or other, where you can put in the phone number and it tells you the companies with hardware in the exchange.

SamKnows

https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

Not had a landline for 18 months now. I pay £30 a month for two Vodafone SIM only contract giving 160gb a month. Plenty for lots of on line viewing.

 

[Neilj]

Get a few alternative quotes and then give Virgin a call and say you want to cancel 'because XYZ offered me a better deal'. That'll end up being a conversation with someone in the retentions department and then haggle with them, a lot! I do it every 18 months or so with Sky and I normally get a good 50% off the headline price if I sign up to another 18-24 month deal

 

[Screwdriver]

I just switched to Vodafone and they include digital voice with broadband.

BT were great but kept bumping up the price. Vodafone same service level, 1/3rd the cost.

 

[keithski122]

Get a few alternative quotes and then give Virgin a call and say you want to cancel 'because XYZ offered me a better deal'. That'll end up being a conversation with someone in the retentions department and then haggle with them, a lot! I do it every 18 months or so with Sky and I normally get a good 50% off the headline price if I sign up to another 18-24 month deal

We're with virgin and everytime we do this they cannot bring it lower than we already have, even if we go on a lesser package it would cost more.Somehow we've got on a really cheap deal, £44 a month for broadband, upgraded telly package and phone with free weekend calls.

 

[bigegg]

She probably doesn't need fibre.

My house is at the end of a very long copper line - I'm lucky to get 16mb/s (that's mega _bits_) so downloads peak at about 2MB/s.

I can watch streaming services in HD, so I would argue that paying 3x the price for something she doesn't use is a waste of money.

 

[mike os]

Not had a landline for 18 months now. I pay £30 a month for two Vodafone SIM only contract giving 160gb a month. Plenty for lots of on line viewing.

I'm seriously considering this ... my wires connection has gone really bad ... 2 different isp's, 2 different routers... same issues but it's not the line or exchange apparently

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

I'm seriously considering this ... my wires connection has gone really bad ... 2 different isp's, 2 different routers... same issues but it's not the line or exchange apparently

Smart TV and PC connect to the phones no problem, I'll never go back to being gouged by broadband providers.

 

[striker]

Not had a landline for 18 months now. I pay £30 a month for two Vodafone SIM only contract giving 160gb a month. Plenty for lots of on line viewing.

So do you have 80gb per phone contract, when ones approaching the limit you switch to the other. I'm not sure how this works. Are your phone's a mobile broadband hotspot? And your pc and TV link to these?

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

So do you have 80gb per phone contract, when ones approaching the limit you switch to the other. I'm not sure how this works. Are your phone's a mobile broadband hotspot? And your pc and TV link to these?

Exactly, turn on hotspot and away you go.

 

[mike os]

Exactly, turn on hotspot and away you go.

How much data do you use ? And how much tv ?

 

[gaz1]

fibre donst always mean fibre to the property it means to the box on the street then wire to your property
virgins already there bt is way behind and already gone back to profit first before installing fibre onto more boxes

it depends on what you use it for

if your a heavy net user your better off with a good interent connection virgin has always offered a good net connection at high speeds bt hasnt and neither do the rest of them

if you go full fibre you also pay for it

and race i would kill that amount in weeks

tv is ackward there is freeview, sky, virgin theres also net to view, firesticks for younger its ok for the older its harder to learn again

phones well that depends on the numbers your ringing some numbers are not free and you have to pay for them even the same for mobiles even if your on free minutes per month like a contract phone

 

[RaceDiagnostics]

How much data do you use ? And how much tv ?

We watch a few hours on on line every day and the data doesn't run out but is usually running low. Our data refreshes in 5 days from now and we have 40Gbytes left.

 

[MattF]

Not had a landline for 18 months now. I pay £30 a month for two Vodafone SIM only contract giving 160gb a month. Plenty for lots of on line viewing.

I've been using a 4G router since I moved into this place. Knocking on 4 year now. Never had a landline here. It serves my needs perfectly.

 

[mrsbruce]

We're with virgin and everytime we do this they cannot bring it lower than we already have, even if we go on a lesser package it would cost more.Somehow we've got on a really cheap deal, £44 a month for broadband, upgraded telly package and phone with free weekend calls.

yup, every time, at the end of the contract, me and Virgin do the ‘contract dance’. But if you don’t haggle with them, they will bump up the package to a silly amount. Last time, it was 40 minutes on hold, but dropped it from the proposed £73 per month, to £47.

 

[addjunkie]

Not had a landline for 18 months now. I pay £30 a month for two Vodafone SIM only contract giving 160gb a month. Plenty for lots of on line viewing.

Were 4g too, use an ee unlimited one through a LTE dish on our barn, as land line only goes to 2.2 on a good day. Think its 34 quid. But has to be EE as no signal on others. Have one for the house and 1 for-the holiday cottages. When contracts up think we will go starlink and voice over Ip