Forum Topic

Broadband

Hi everyone - am currently with Plusnet and up until recently have had no  problems but now the  speed is so slooooow and they are putting  prices up in October.Any recommendations to change to? Am in West Putney/Upper Richmond Road near junction with the High Street/Putney Hill. I've heard EE is good.Thanks!

Lucille Grant ● 2046d18 Comments

No worries Michael!

Lucille Grant ● 2045d

Thanks Ed. The sites I've checked do ask for postcode. EE offers better options than Plusnet for speed and price.

Lucille Grant ● 2045d

CF seems to be WIP at present. I still get a terse 'we're not your area" when I put in my East Putney postcode but worth a try , Lucille. The data rates look good and I guess they can guarantee them over fibre subject to contention ratios.https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/07/community-fibre-invest-400m-in-mass-london-fttp-fibre-rollout.htmlLucille, apologies if one or two of my posts took this  bit off topic.

Michael Ixer ● 2045d

Lucille,It may be worth putting in your post code, I think they use a different model now. Some parts of putney are covered but I notice they do not appear on some switching sites.

Ed Robinson ● 2045d

Thanks Ed - I'm in a block of flats and some years ago community fibre was offered but I was quite happy with my broadband then so didn't go for it.

Lucille Grant ● 2045d

There is community fibre. Not a recommendation just a mention.I considered them but they were very slow and when I asked some pre-sales questions - but they may be fine for residential use. https://communityfibre.co.uk/

Ed Robinson ● 2045d

I've heard that Virgin are useless if there are problems, Maxine. Am also checking out fibre options.

Lucille Grant ● 2046d

I’ve had a lot of problems with plusnet over the past year. I can understand the odd slowdown with people working from home but I’ve had regular crashes and after the last outage I had enough. I dislike virgin but as it’s full fibre I may grit my teeth. I hate their sales tactics and have specifically told them I will only look at online deals as I don’t want to speak with them directly.

Maxine Campbell ● 2046d

That's investing. I can't remember the last time Plusnet was out for a significant period. They often seem to do a reset overnight that breaks connectivity briefly. (Not a problem for email or browsing - or Facebook as they usually work on a retry but I've has a couple of large overnight uploads of images to Dropbox interrupted overnight.) Plusnet are dependent on BT OpenReach for the local loop FTTC and VDSL. I must admit the few times I've needed support they've been pretty good at responding and one time was to do with some internal household cabling to the master socket which a helpful BT engineer sorted out.

Michael Ixer ● 2046d

"..(maybe three times in two years) where its been down for over a day" :(Thanks Matt, that was my experience a couple of years ago.

Ed Robinson ● 2046d

Thought so. There's no FTTP in East Putney 🙁

Michael Ixer ● 2046d

for the 99.99% of time its up its very reliable. But we have had the occasion (maybe three times in two years) where its been down for over a day. its the full fibre connection, not xDSL

Matt Palmer ● 2046d

Is that via DSL, Matt?

Michael Ixer ● 2046d

Matt how reliable is Virgin now?Last time I switched to them the kids rebelled!

Ed Robinson ● 2046d

we're on Virgin, also West Putney, get 150mb down, 30mb up

Matt Palmer ● 2046d

Very happy with Sky here in West Putney 23mb up and 160mb down.

Freddie Francis ● 2046d

No speed problem with Plusnet here, even when two separate Zoom sessions underway.I noticed their prices are going up but they are offering a new deal as compensation to beat the rise.Remember, if you change providers and things go wrong it may take a few days to sort at the moment!

Adrian Pearce ● 2046d

I also use Plusnet and does seem slower - although most of the time Zoom works ok while my wife uses Office 365!  I'm not sure how much is Plusnet and how much is a general increase of Internet traffic with more people working or juysdt being at home. Unfortunately there's no Virgin fibre/cable TV service in most of Putney so one has to use DSL along with its limitations.  I think others have made recommendations of  alternative suppliers.I did get an improvement recently by changing the channel Plusnet configure on the wireless access point they provided with the FTTC offering. Plusnet and others seem to use channel 1 while others seem to cluster around channels 6 and 11. I downloaded a free copy of  Wi Fi Analyzer which shows how local With Fi networks are clustered and select an alternative channel other than one oif those three improved consistency of access. You might find some benefit in swapping to a less busy Wi Fi channel or connecting a device by a cable to the router to see if that helps.

Michael Ixer ● 2046d