Millions of Brits stick with current broadband provider rather than risk no Netflix Millions of Brits would rather pay through the nose for services via their existing broadband provider than switch suppliers and risk a prolonged period without access to the web, a poll has found. Some 35 per cent of customers said the fear of broadband blackout would deter them off signing up to another provider, according …
Yes I could switch to somebody cheaper but then I probably wouldn't get the same quality of service or speed that I enjoy at the moment. it's not like Gas or 'lecy where you get the same product so switching to a cheaper provider makes sense. You certainly get what you pay for!
And if the new provider will not guarantee what speeds and QoS one will actually get it becomes a leap in the dark so often better the devil you know.
For me, and I guess many, it is not just about money. While it is nice to pay less than more, the savings are not always that significant. Plus, while one company may be cheaper than another now, the situation could easily be reversed in the future. If my crystal ball worked it would be a whole lot easier to choose.
After years of latency, lag and buffering problems with VirginMedia I switched to a different ISP and my connection has been flawless ever since. Changing ISP's could potentially bring back those kind of issues so that is my reasoning for not switching.
The peace of mind and quality connection is worth the couple of extra quid.
Three have not kicked me off the totally unlimited One Plan yet so I can tether 4G as much as I want, so any downtime between switching ISP's or say moving house is not an issue.
The problem is those sorts of outcomes are unpredictable. You were fortunate to have the connection improved but it could quite easily have been worse. The focus is always on line speed, but not on reliability and latency.
Changing ISPs is pretty much pot luck and in my mind not worth the hassle. The customer service is crap whoerver you go with anwyay!
> The customer service is crap whoerver you go with anwyay!
A&A have really great customer service - they have real engineers who know what they're talking about answering the phones at their UK office, and they have a reputation for yelling at BT Wholesale/Openreach a lot to get problems fixed. But they're more expensive than "bundled" broadband from your phone provider. I think they're worth it!
(Not affiliated with them, but am a happy customer - two ISPs refused to fix my line fault, the first fobbed me off and refused to send anyone, and the second tried to charge me to send an engineer to fix it. I moved to A&A who fixed it with one phone call plus one engineer visit).
I tend to agree with you, the problem is you don't know how good your current ISP is till you switch. After 15 years with PlusNet I was tempted away with a new customer offer that saves me £540 over the 18 month contract term. That's not a typo: it does save me £30 per month. Interestingly with my new ISP I get a much faster connection too. As such from now on I will probably switch every time.
Quite.
My switch, bought on by a house move, from Plusnet fibre to VM has cost me about £10 a month more, but I get the TV into that and I now get 100mbit. Worth it but not allowed for in these reports.
Obviously when they hike the prices up I'll probably be off but until then it's a no brainer
I switched from Virgin to SSE after Virgin kept upping the price every 6 months.
It was a gamble but it paid off.
Consistently 50-70MB download, 20MB upload (pissing over virgins measly 2mb upload I was getting previously) and all for £21 a month including line rental fixed for 18 months (Sadly this deal seems to have now disappeared).
It's worth asking around your neighbours to see what they're getting with their suppliers.
They should allow 1 month trial periods or some such thing though.
allowed for all the Virgin Media cable users who could save money by going to ADSL. This may save money, but can't match the performance.
But given Virginmedia's persistent and aggressive price hiking, and deteriorating reliability, I would not advise people to join, and I've got to the point where I'm shortly to tell VM to sling their hook. Also worth noting that Virginmedia upload speed is crap, whereas if you're on a premium ADSL package (and the line delivers) you'll have upload speeds 2 or 3x as fast as VM.
IMHO very few users will see the difference between a good ADSL package and VM's supposed superior speed. They will however benefit from Virginmedia's patchy reliability, and legendarily poor customer service.
But while you can keep your number when moving from any provider TO Virgin, if you try switching from Virgin/Cable back to BT or Sky etc you'll get told no, can't do it.
Happened to me and lot's of people I know on several occasions.
"But you have the right to keep your number!" you say...
Uh huh, try telling that to the providers, they'll flat out tell you it's not possible when you move back from cable.
Not necessarily true.
I left Virgin and took my phone number with me about 8 months ago with no fuss other than them bitching I hadn't notified them of my intention to leave before I started the process of switching.
When I pointed out that they were already 18 months into 'fixing' a piss poor broadband service which wasn't due to be finally resolved for at least a further 3 months (not great when Management works from home) they got less whiny.
Sky held onto a number that had been family's since the late 80's. And I had paid to move in the the late 90's. Fortunately, it was not important enough to make a fuss about. (Other than any time someone asks for a recommendation for Sky or not).
Talktalk lost a business number that had a pedigree back to at least the 60s. (I can remember it being a 4 digit number, and I have seen adverts with a previous number with the same last 3 digits.)
Uswitch has been paid by TT to promote this news story for a commission. TT needs new customers and is desperate. Hence this story plant.
Except Vermin, please be aware that all the ISP's feed off the BT tits. SO changing providers will still be at the mercy of BT Openreach and when they decide to move you, without loss of service.
No they don't - there are ISPs that don't use an Openreach last mile. BBrn, gigaclear, fibrecity.
But none of those allow other CPs to use their cables so the only thing you can do is switch back to an Openreach based solution. The ones you list are mostly present in areas where they offer a far better connection than openreach so it's not much of a choice.
If you're in a big city, KCOM, Colt and Verizon will lay a fibre to your door.
Eh? KCOM are rolling out fibre everywhere they cover (Hull and environs) but I don't think they operate anywhere else. Do Colt and Verizon actually lay any local loop cable in the UK? I'd be moderately surprised. I thought only openreach and VM laid local loop in the UK.
Yes, Kcom have a national network with their own last miles where capacity warrants it. Colt and Verizon both have local networks. Next time you're in London have a look at the boxes in the pavement - the lids identify the owner.
It's probably fair to said that they won't install a fibre for a price a domestic customer is likely to want to pay though.
My Virgin media "fibre broadband" can't cope with iPlayer without commonly experiencing intermittent buffering - the thing their adverts say doesn't happen with them. I assume it's due to high contention in my area as the data rate shouldn't be that high (standard def streaming, not HD). Why don't I switch then? Well, because there is no way to know if the service from the alternative will be any better. As far as I am aware, there is no means to evaluate an alternative before taking the plunge and, as the article says, there's a lot of hassle in doing a switch which may leave me in a similar or worse state than I already am.
Are you watching via a smart TV, STB or games console? I'm with Virgin, and iPlayer does not work for me at all when watched either via Tivo or the Samsung smart telly - can't even show SD, never mind HD.- buffers and buffers and buffers until iPlayer itself says "can't play this content". Completely unwatchable. However, watching iPlayer via XBone is silky smooth and the UI extremely responsive. All the devices are connected via WiFi and are around ten feet from the Virgin Superhub which is in a different room, otherwise I'd have used wired connections. Virgin does not get off though - I think it's the shitty Superhub as even my Echo is unable to stream music without dropping out (even if only for a second or so). Many people buy a dedicated router and just use the hub in Modem mode, and I plan to buy one soon myself.
I plug a laptop into the telly as it happens. Running Chrome in that particular case, though both IE and Opera have similar problems.
I've heard rumour that nexflix boxes do a good job in a shoddy download environment: any reg readers have any info on that?
Last year I switched from BT Infinity (fibre) to Virgin only to find that during peak hours (16:00-midnight) I was getting less than 1Mb down making iPlayer unusable. Look on the VM forums to see how many people are stuck in VM areas which are over-contended with no plan to upgrade,Thankfully I was able to cancel the move during the 14-day cooling off period and (as an added benefit), BT regarded me as a new customer so I was able to take advantage of their introductory offer. At least with a fibre service, you have a dedicated path from your house to the cabinet & exchange.
I had VM when it was still Cable&Wireless, 1999 and had 1mpbs home line to my house when most people were still listening to their modems dial up to get on t'internet! Even my company only have a 512mbp ( albeit commercial line ) at that time. Ah memories...
I did have a brief 2 year stint with SKY around 2007 and I was lucky if I got 1mpbs on a good day!!! Dumped them and went straight back to VM, started off on the slowest/cheapest speed and never looked back. The IP stays more less static for months at a time. Rock solid and touch wood it's only failed once for 30 mins in 3 years and the speed probably wobbles with a drop of about 20% at 4pm when the kids get in from school, by 7pm it's back up to full pace again. Other than that I've happily downloaded 200GB some months on the lowest speed and they've never said a dicky-bird.
@whitter.
Use a VPN- VM have been doing this for years and it is a pain in the arse.
My mate was trying to watch my twitch stream (big streamers worked fine) and it was constantly buffering even down at 480p (nobody else had issues (BT) even at 1080p) he then switched to watching my steam stream and perfect stream at 1080p. They throttle traffic they don't think is important enough for them. Fuck VM will never recommend them. plenty of bandwidth and still throttle like mad during peak hours, they even have the balls to claim that they don't throttle traffic for top tier customers!!
It's not common but does happen. The most common issue is when the gaining CP doesn't get informed or fluffs up the activation date. In theory the losing CP is supposed to be notified of a successful gain before disabling the account but sometimes it goes wrong.
I've had it happen to me once (had no internet for nearly 12 hours) and to a couple of friends. One of them ended up falling into the BT rabbit hole. The losing CP closed his account three days early (someone trying to get things tidied away before the weekend I suspect). The gaining CP's order hadn't gone through(blocked by the weekend). That left Saturday, Sunday and some part of Monday during which he was in limbo. At some point during that period openreach gave his cabinet connection to another customer. What knocked it into a cocked hat was that the cabinet was full. openreach refused to give him back his connection so he had no choice but to drop back to ADSL for two months.
To be fair he did get two free months free internet but that's poor compensation when you go from a 50Mb/s connection down to 4Mb/s.
The average saving just for switching provider is £9.80 per month, said uSwitch. It found Brits could be missing out on up to £327m savings per year, if the results were extrapolated across the population.
Does this "average" include the people who can't save anything? Because, if not, that extrapolation is complete and utter marketing bollocks.
I've changed ISP twice in the past 2 years and on both occasions my connection speed has increased slightly. I think pulling the plugs out and fitting the new ones at the exchange cleans the contacts.
The downtime has been insignificant. Go out for a walk when the internet disappears and it's back when I return.
More likely due to a better modem/router or the way connections get renegotiated between the router and the local node it connects too after disconnections.
Unplug your modem/router many times a day and it will negotiate a slower speed thinking the line cannot handle the current sync speeds. Unplug it once a month and there is a good chance it will negotiate a higher speed if your line is good enough although the increase could be negligible.
As someone who still clings to my ntlworld.com email address like the NRA would with a rifle, I think the value of a static email address is important. I could change to a gmail type address, but that defeats the point of having a long lasting, static email address.
I had my own domain, but my ntlworld.com email address pre-dated that. You missed the point. Changing ISP's or creating my own email addresses from a new domain has the same net effect. I lose my old email address and have to start again with a new one.
Ah, but your ntlworld.com address is reliant on someone else maintaining that domain and service - so when Virgin (or whoever they get sold to in the future) decide to drop it, you'll still need to get a new address.
By owning your own domain, you are in full control - you can switch email service whenever you want (or host your own if you're up for it), and no-one else can muck you around.
The sooner you switch, the less pain you'll suffer in the future. There really is no reason to use the email address that comes with your ISP for anything, other than receiving the ISP's junk...
I went with a 'me.uk'. Although oddly when I first got it it cost me more than '.co.uk'. That's no longer the case though. I've also had a few "Dot what dot UK?" conversations but not recently. I also run my own mail server and have managed better availability and uptime than the servers provided by most of my friends' ISPs. Although since several of them are with BT that's perhaps no huge achievement.
According to the Ofcom website there were 24.7 million broadband connexions at the end of 2015, 1 million up on 2014. So if we assume that there are now about 26 million broadband connexions the estimated savings of £27 million a year work out to about £12.50 a line a year. Who is going to move supplier for that when you know that the rates change frequently and you may well end up paying the same or more during the first year?
I switch every year as the offer for new customers has always beaten that for me trying to renew. So, every year I go down the now well trodden route of switching via Quidco. Last year was a switch to BT and after £300 cashback, my monthly fibre connection cost was practically zero. Their customer service was however, even worse than TalkTalk's the year before. This year I'm with the Post Office (TalkTalk reseller) and so far their ADSL2 speeds have exceeded the fibre speeds (FTTC) from BT last year and I'm saving over £15 per month compared to BTs renewal monthly cost.
It always amazes me how much marketing spend all the Telcos are prepared to spend on acquiring new customers yet aren't prepared to spend to keep them. I guess they just rely on customers' lethargy to later switch.
I'm hesitant to ever switch to Virgin as have also heard of the impossibiilty of keeping your phone number when subsequently moving away from them.
My mom is 67 and she's been with the same bank for 30 years. She's been with the same energy suppliers for the last 20 years. She's been with the same home insurance provider since her and my dad bought the house in 1984.
When I ask her why doesn't she switch and get a better deal, she said "They always promise you that it'll be cheaper but it never works out that way".
My response of "So you switch again" didn't go down well.
Moral of the story: People are creatures of habbit. Only tight people and millionaires switch providers to get the best deal.
She's not wrong. I worked for an electricity company and we crunched some numbers and found that over a ten year period only fanatical switchers saved a bit of money, and not that much. If you switched once or twice within te years you ended up paying the same as if you stayed with the first provider. Of course, this was at a time when prices were going up a lot.
I have been tempted to leave Virgin because their call centre is a shambles but I really can't fault their service. Since the Blueyonder days and now with VM the service I've had has been absolutely first class.
Threatening to leave now and again is of course helpful in terms of keeping your costs down so I make use of that tactic from time to time. Virgin is far from cheap though so I won't be feeling to guilty about that.
Pretty sure lots of users also stay with who they're with because it is faster service than moving to a cheaper solution? I live in a rural location that benefited (2 years ago) from the installation of FTTC through a government grant. The trouble with this is there is only a single provider that can use this FTTC (small private company), if I were to move to anyone else I'd be back on a copper line to an exchange that is over 6kms away and I'd be lucky to get 1.5meg, I get 32meg on my FTTC connection.
No brainer really.....yes I pay more but I'm not going to move provider unless I move house!
I think that choosing an ISP based solely on cost sends a message to the market that we may come to regret. If customers, en masse, tell ISPs that they don't care about speed, backhaul capacity, customer data security, network resilience or the quality and security of the provided router, just price, guess where we end up? Such a message must also weaken the case for things like fibre to the home.
If success in the market requires cheapness first, service second, that's what we'll get.
I changed last year from BT Unlimited to Sky, saved myself quite a bit of money as I downgraded the speed, got quidco credit and have a new customer offer for 12 months.
Think I'll change every 18 months from now on, paying full price year on year doesn't make sense to me. If the service is rubbish with the new provider switch back within the cooling off period.
I did give BT an opportunity to keep me on as a customer but they weren't interested - and I'm not really surprised if so many people too scared to switch.
I switched from BT to another supplier without telling BT until it was all completed. Had two suppliers into I knew it all worked. How?
Switch to Three. Get one of their LTE routers, sign up with Voiptfone, port your old number across. Takes about an hour, and the savings can be very good. No landline charges cover the cost, and I now have a fast broadband that works all the time, instead of 1.9 mb/s and a line that more often than not was out of service. Get off the Openreach network and experience internet proper.
It is my submission the switchover problems are a failure of OFCOM to kick a*se.
Would you tolerate a day without water, electricity or gas is you chose to switch suppliers? So how come the telecoms industry can get away with it?
I live in a country with several country-wide cable, InterNet, landline and cell providers - some government-owned and others privately owned. They are co-operative competitors.
Somewhere, I have yet to discover where, there is a meeting point, a bloody great terminal box. maybe, could be a shared facility (building) and from these mysterious destinations (deliberately rated as a national security item) emanate cables, or drops, to individual business and residential premises.
The first building occupant pays about USD$50 to any service provider who, in turn, contracts it to a cable pulling cable company to install the fibre cable into the subscribing building. By the time a building, either single or multiple occupancy, is authorised for occupancy all utilities are up and running. I built a double apartment-over-a-commercial-space building (I think the Brits called them 'parades') and I had to tell NOT to come in until called.
One telephone call to MY choice of provider(s) resulted in a single modem being delivered (another USD$50) by courier and by the time I had plugged the thing in I had 100 Mbyte InterNet and, had I wished it, cable and telephone service. All within a day or two of my initial request.
In Canada the telco's, some many years ago, pulled in cables along every street in the cities and where streets intersected, the intersecting cables made 'appearances'. When service was ordered some Squaddie would start at the switching centre and streetbox by streetbox connect intersecting cables until dial tone appeared at the subscribers premises.
In my present country of residence the rural areas are served in a similar fashion. A cable emanates from a town or city and follows a highway, underground, and every time it passes through a village or hamlet 'appearances' emerge every 500 metres. In the event the trunk cables are overhead, the DSLAMs (digital subscriber line access multiplexers) are pole mounted!
Everything points to an abject failure by the UK regulator and BT in doing their work. Why is it so difficult for a new service to be connected to a drop by a technician, who is more than capable of disconnecting an existing service?
I've got Virgin fibre and it was one of those "first 12 months is a damn sight cheaper than the last 6" on an 18 month contract.
I resent paying so much for it because on the few occasions I've phoned them the customer service has been appalling. For my use, a slower connection would not be too much of an issue.
But here lies the problem. If I switch to ADSL the monthly cost might be lower... but there will no doubt be fees here and there from Virgin, and certainly some downtime, and the question of reliability.
If someone works from home (I don't) and charges 50 quid per hour for their work, they'd only need to be offline a few hours before any potential savings went down the pan.
Sometimes sticking with what you've got, because it just works, is the most practical option - even if not the cheapest.
Obviously you could go without access for a couple days, it wouldn't kill you.
I cancelled home phone & signed up with a free VOIP provider. I used the savings to buy a newspaper subscription, yes I did!
What's your phone bill? Oh- mine? Oh yes, mine's free now, thanks.
Then I cancelled digital TV and built an antenna with wire coat hangers and 2x4 board and cardboard covered with aluminum foil, now I've got digital broadcast TV - free. I used the savings to buy 2 year access to Motor Trend On Demand, superior to Netflix IMO. To each of us our own.
For internet (because you need that for VOIP and MTOD to work) I bought an old cable modem and hired 3rd party ISP for less than 1/2 price.
Sorted!
Unfortunately, Ofcom's use of soft pillows to do the probing means their findings are entirely devoid of any useful consequences.
I do not care about Netflix, but actual data transfers are more important than having a talk-talk contract on paper, or random number bills from Virgin.
The reality is that all UK ISPs are scum. And Ofcom are a significant part of the reason why.
I've been using Plusnet for a few years and their charges have been increasing. I have just switched to First Utility that has recently started a broadband service. Both parties managed the process with a planned changeover date. On the day I was in the house. Plusnet went off and I cranked up the new First Utility router that had arrived a few days before as planned. Seamless switch over and the performance of the new unlimited download service is good. Nice interface with the router showing the connection and the up and down speeds.
So it worked for me. While broadband is low cost and delivers huge value to me, it's a competitive market and is reason for making the change.
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