Need some advice folks (ISP switch UK)

[RL317]

Afternoon all. Just got my inevitable BT price hike email so I'm now free of my 18 month contract should I cancel in the next 30 days. The price hike is only £2.50 but paying £36.50 a month for just 50Mb is enough as it is, and something's wrong with my connection anyway. Big time. I need to change to see if gaming issues disappear once and for all.

 

I've had a good look around online and, since Hyperoptic still isn't in my area (well, they only provide gigabit to a single apartment block on the edge of my local town centre, 5 minutes away ), I've settled for choosing between Plusnet and TalkTalk. Both can give me 80Mb down and 20Mb up for less than I'm paying for laggy 50Mb on BT.

 

With Plusnet I can pay £28.99 for 80/20 on an 18 month fixed price contract, get the free Plusnet Hub One and even get the line rental saver by paying up front (basically £45 saved over the contract - have any of you ever done this?). With TalkTalk I can pay £29.50 for 80/20 and it's a 24 month fixed price contract (and locking the price in for that long sounds great to me), and it comes with the WiFi Hub free which is apparently worth £120 lol. I'm guessing BT would want their Dumb Hub back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Couple of questions. If any of you are on ISPs that use BT's infrastructure, would you recommend it? Does it all work basically the same as BT's broadband (ie no traffic shaping or other weird annoying stuff)? Can I use my Huawei HG612 Openreach modem or TP Link VDSL modem/router with these similar-but-not-quite-BT ISPs? How are your gaming experiences in general?

 

I want to move from BT because even though on the surface it looks great - negligible latency, <0.2ms jitter average, barely any bloat - playing FPS games is more depressing than when I was on Virgin Media. I'll get flat 7ms pings to my local server and the game will play as if I'm on 500ms, either dropping packets or just delaying them with poor UDP RTT. I guess I'm just hoping whatever ISP I choose will be different lmao.

 

Thanks in advance for any and all thoughts on the subject.

[BIG__DOG]

I switched to talkralk last october n highly rate them. Remember plusnet is a bt company.

[Zennon]

I am with Talk Talk no authentication woes, no PPPoE just plug and play. Yes its plug and play with a HG612 to the Netduma.

 

Plusnet uses BT backbone as it is BT so it uses PPPoE too.

 

My gaming with TT is bang on, loving gaming's always

[sharpz44]

I should have done this but because I use bt sport it would cost a fortune on sky and love my UFC and champions league,plus needed to keep the bt emails which they now charge £7.50 month if you want to keep them, I wanted to move to sky but not using there garbage equipment , I never considered Talk Talk due to the really bad reviews ,actually the most complained about ,however looks Zennon and Big Dog do ok.

[RL317]

I am with Talk Talk no authentication woes, no PPPoE just plug and play. Yes its plug and play with a HG612 to the Netduma.

 

Plusnet uses BT backbone as it is BT so it uses PPPoE too.

 

My gaming with TT is bang on, loving gaming's always

I switched to talkralk last october n highly rate them. Remember plusnet is a bt company.

Cheers fellas. As far as I know, ISPs such as TalkTalk, Plusnet and Sky all use BT's infrastructure - is that right? I've noticed a section on all of their websites that describes how to switch to them, and all of them have different steps for Virgin and then all the others. My logic behind the move is that, while of course I'd be keeping the same line, I've found forum posts and stats that imply being on a different ISP (on the same "backbone") means your traffic is routed differently somehow. There's that and the fact that obviously each ISP is different in ways so I'm just hoping that whatever this issue (UDP packet problems/lag/loss) will be cleared up one way or another. I've heard glowing reviews from people on ISPs like TT, Plusnet, Zen etc. If that doesn't clear up then, well... at least I'll be paying far less for more Sky is the only other FTTC provider that seems to be as expensive as BT.

 

I also had an issue about a month ago where my modem got stuck in a reboot loop attempting to upgrade its own firmware, and when it came back online 40-60% of my bandwidth disappeared and I was suddenly on interleaving for the first time. The engineer who popped round was great, but I couldn't really understand what happened. As far as I recall, he said I was essentially left on "one wire" rather than two which saw more than half of my bandwidth disappear lol. He fixed it up quickly and I was put back on to fast path within an hour, but random issues like that have put me right off BT, along with their regular unwelcome price hikes every year. I can't believe I was paying £36 a month even a year ago for this service when I can pay 35% less for the same service elsewhere TODAY

 

I should have done this but because I use bt sport it would cost a fortune on sky and love my UFC and champions league,plus needed to keep the bt emails which they now charge £7.50 month if you want to keep them, I wanted to move to sky but not using there garbage equipment , I never considered Talk Talk due to the really bad reviews ,actually the most complained about ,however looks Zennon and Big Dog do ok.

I was considering taking up BT Sport myself as I miss getting my regular fix of Prem/CL football, but I'm such a skinflint being off work through recurrent illness that I decided to suck it up and put up with highlights on BT Sport's YouTube channel LOL

[Zennon]

Cheers fellas. As far as I know, ISPs such as TalkTalk, Plusnet and Sky all use BT's infrastructure - is that right?

BT rent the lines out be that copper and or fibre with no bandwidth then the ISP can use that to connect to their network.

[RL317]

BT rent the lines out be that copper and or fibre with no bandwidth then the ISP can use that to connect to their network.

Yeah I thought that it's basically all BT up to a certain point.

 

But is Plusnet actually a BT company while TalkTalk is not? I may go for TT then since the price is frozen for 24 months! 50p a month difference is nothing considering my current contract.

[Zennon]

Plusnet is a BT company yes.

 

I would not use the TT router and stick to a HG612 or whatever cabinet compatible modem if you decide to use TT.

 

We can only give our views on our lines and both myself and BD have great conditions, you may have a line fault or there is congestion in your area that is out of our hands as a disclaimer.

[RL317]

Plusnet is a BT company yes.

 

I would not use the TT router and stick to a HG612 or whatever cabinet compatible modem if you decide to use TT.

 

We can only give our views on our lines and both myself and BD have great conditions, you may have a line fault or there is congestion in your area that is out of our hands as a disclaimer.

Gotcha. TT seems like the more attractive option anyway - 50p extra a month but £45 saved over the contract if I pay the line rental up front, and of course the price is frozen for longer. I think I can choose not to take TT's router on the site when I place my order so I'll just keep my current gear in place to simplify things. That means I won't have to send anything back should I move again in the future. I've got a TP Link combo that can work in bridge mode or as an all in one solution, or I can run the HG612 + R1 for the best performance.

 

Appreciate the input guys.

[BENORMOUS]

Im with plusnet,its ok ive stopped obsessing over having amazing internet now days and just crack on with what ive got,i only currently play pubg and BF1 and its played fine now for a good few months,not disconnected my modem for months not felt the need to,price wise you cant go wrong with Pnet i pay for 40/10 something like £23

[BENORMOUS]

Im also using a HG612 modem +duma