Home Broad Band: BT vs Orange or Others

[johnboy]

I wondered whether anyone has recently changed from BT to say orange and whether they have regretted it from a performance / accesibility / email etc point of view. The cost saving suggests a change os worth it: currently I pay £45 for unlimited broadband and free evening and weekend calls, I can reduce this to £39 but Orange deal is £27

 

[skyenet]

I would stay well clear of ORANGE. I had Freeserve/Wandado which transferred to Orange and they got even worse then. I used to go into Orange shops and use their phones to ring customer service and it often took 30- 40 minutes to get through. Broadband speed was low as well. So glad to get out of their package.

I do have a very old Monthly Phone contract with them where I only pay for actual calls/texts made. Its juts like having PAYG but never having to worry about topping up. I only really use it for Orange Wednesdays.

My friend works for 02 so I got a Friends and Family deal and I am on their "The Works Broadband" for £8.13 a month. Double the speed of Orange and excellent local customer service. Certainly happy with them. My phone and line provider is PRIMUS and line rental and weekend/evening calls is about £12 a month.Though looking at 02's website I might be cheaper moving that to them as well.

I would recommend checking out Moneysavingexpert.com and see what their recommendations for broadband packages are. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/

 

[Northern Monkey]

Don't go near talk talk shower of wankrs!!!

 

[Fanum]

Ignore what everyone says when they slag off any particular company

for every 1000 happy punters, there will be 1 disgruntled one, and they will speak up while the 1000 others stay quiet

Personally I was fine with Orange.....always reliable, good speeds, great service.

Now with Sky (BB only) and no complaints with them either (only changed because of new property)

Ask LOCALLY......that's the only way you're going to find what is recommended in your immediate area.....some companies have a good infrastructure in some areas, crap in others, so getting a thumbs up for orange from me in Harwich is meaningless when it comes to the speed/downtime on the line when you're in Reading

 

[cookie]

there's no shortage of people ready to slag off orange and talk talk. very few words spoken against o2 or Be though. you do need to be on an exchange where they have their own equipment installed though. ditto sky.

 

[NLC]

£6.95 for unlimited broadband is what I pay with o2. They tried to raise it to £14 two years ago and I said goodbye. They called and said would I take £6.95 I said sure. The speed of the broadband depends on how for you are from the exchange and whether the provider has upgraded the equipment. I was on Sky (which was free to be fair) and it was terrible. I think the new BT Infinity is quite fast or the Virgin which uses fibre optic and cable but only what I hear.

 

[longdog]

Just my half pennorth for what it's worth.......

I have been with BT for 11 years, but only because I can't get Virgin cable to be honest. I have had a reasonable service with BT blighted on just 2 occaisions.

The first was in 2010 when my broadband speed dropped to between 100-68kps, tes, down from 5Gb. BT said it was fine as "we only promise speeds up to XGb and we don't stipulate a minimum speed, so you're fine".

Obviously I wasn't fine and it took me 5 months, 8 new hubs, (when there wasn't anything wrong with any of them!), 1 visit from a technician, 14 visits from engineers, all of who said "you've got up to 7.5Gb here mate, nothing wrong with your line". Funny, then why am I only getting 90kps??? The I started posting on Twitter which coincided with yet another engineer calling. This brought a twofold benefit; one, the engineer actually listened to me, (I'm not a total dumbo with computers and braodband), and instead of simply checking my connection with his BT laptop, (and his very own BT IP address), he agreed to do his checks using my laptop. Sure enough, when using my IP address, I had crawlband!!!

So I ended up toe-to-toe with a BT lady in Belfast who had responded to my Twitter posts and said there was nothing wrong with my line. After several arguments over the phone, after each call she checked with her manager, they finally agreed that I was right and BT had capped my broadband! The result? 7.5Gb speed and reliable speed at that!!!

The other issue was last month when my wireless connection started dropping out, after a couple of calls to BTs incredibly unhelpful offshore help centre where they agreed there was possibly a fault with the BT wireless hub but refused to send me a new one, I threw in the towel and re-fitted my old faithful Netgear hub and router.

You will never get a 100% reliable provider, best thing to do is to check the OFCOM results. Bear in mind that most broadband provider use BT lines.

This is a good place to start if you are wondering which provider to go with.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps.html

 

[Gossy]

I wondered whether anyone has recently changed from BT to say orange and whether they have regretted it from a performance / accesibility / email etc point of view. The cost saving suggests a change os worth it: currently I pay £45 for unlimited broadband and free evening and weekend calls, I can reduce this to £39 but Orange deal is £27

Check your BT contract, my 12 month one had rolled on for a couple of years, I had a fault on my BB connection , it was fixed within 5 days, I wanted a new style hub and asked how I could get one, they offered a free one and a reduced monthly fee for 12 months, was warned that after 12 months the price would rise again to what ever it would be , but I could ring them again , I basically got 1/4 of my monthly bill just for asking.! It sometimes pays to ask

 

[mr_magicfingers]

I heartily recommend Be Broadband. You need a BT line but they're customer support is excellent and they don't do any sort of traffic shaping and unlimited means unlimited.

 

[Pauly S]

try this..

here..

 

[(RIP) Tunneruk]

VIRGIN BROADBAND!

It's that good that I had to shout it out.

I have been with both Sky and Orange, both of which have have call centres abroad if you have a glitch, and you will have a glitch no matter who supplies your broadband.

I've been with Virgin (fibre optic) and is it utterly superb, incredible speeds and if you need to talk to someone technical (Which you will do at some time) the call centre is in good old blighty and their engineers that come out to install are mustard.

Got to hand it to Branson

 

[rce]

+1 on BE Broadband (O2 is same network).

Only downer with BE is that you have to sort out your own email supplier.

I am a broadband whore and have tried a fair few and O2 & BE have been the best of the bunch (BE slightly better than O2).

Line speed has never varied much (less than 3meg) but the difference in connection experience has been chalk and cheese.

Most recent three are O2, but was looking at changing mobile phone providers so was going to lose discount and Plusnet had some good deals. Plusnet was diabolical, worse broadband mistake I have ever made.

Now with BE which costs me more but boy is it good by comparison with others.

Would love cable (fibre) but we can't get it and way it is looking will not get in the foreseeable future.

 

[JKW]

VIRGIN BROADBAND!

Got to hand it to Branson

+1 for Virgin Broadband - is much faster than any of the exchange-based technologies (i.e. everyone else) and I've never had an issue with their customer service - which has actually improved since the Virgin takeover.