I have just been moved from PlusNet to BT for home fibre broadband, FTTP.
BT has been technically incompetent, and from a customer service point of view a total disaster in every way with most agents lying and failing to do what they say.
Can anyone name a good home fibre BB provider please?
The only one I’ve heard of as good is Zen.
We have been with zen off and on for 15 years or so - but fibre for the last 3-4 years. They can’t change open reach’s problems (our fibre has failed with them I think three times for a total of about 8 weeks in the last 2-3 years - but never zen’s fault - one neighbour’s tractor pulled cable down, second someone demolished telegraph pole, and third time fibres in the cabinet trashed by a nesting bird looking for bedding) but experience with zen themselves is good
I thought that Plus Net was opened by BT…?
I am with Cloudscape - but not Full Fibre…
Zen are the only Which? recommended ISP March 2022.
That plus Zen’s Trustpilot rating is good enough for me - I’m signing up.
Yes, PlusNet is part of BT Group.
I think they moved me to BT because they don’t offer FTTP/fibre?
Zen Internet here, FTTC wires only.
Couldn’t be happier.
I have a permanent IPv4 & IPv6 addresses.
I think BT (as parent) is now being selective as to where and via which brands (PN/BT/EE) it offers FTTP.
As other have said, and various Forumites have experienced of late, OpenReach as the installing party leave a great deal to be desired and there appears a chasm between comm’s from BT to OR and v-v. And it can be the same with other providers where new cabling is required – the industry as a whole has issues with OR.
It appears PN are now offering FTTP in some areas?
Got to say that my experience of BT is largely positive.
Had a problem when we moved to our present property with fluctuating speeds which BT solved promptly by replacing the cabling to the master socket. We have had FTTC for the last 5 years or so and it is rock solid at 70mbs down only dropping on a software update.
We have BT Halo3 with extender discs which are excellent and the EE back up module which will be a real plus when 5G arrives although that may well be in line with hell freezing over where we are.
Now going FTTP on Monday with the Openreach connection already completed to the house and just the internal wiring to be done by BT.
Openreach have taken about 6 months longer than slated to get FTTP up and running in our town but that has largely been down to ducting problems in another neighbourhood.
Let’s hope I am not tempting fate!
After the amount of rubbish that other services gave me many years ago, I went with Zen and haven’t changed for 15+ years. Never had one issue with them, never slow, no drop-outs and great intelligent people on the other end of the line. I still read people’s problems with service providers and can’t believe they still put up with rubbish in 2022.
I’ve been doing some research on this. You can now get FTTP from Plusnet but you have to phone up and ask for it; their web site doesn’t show it yet.
Prices are a little better than BT e.g. I hear £55pm for the 900meg service.
If you happen to be in the Somerset area then Truespeed are excellent. Nempnett Thrubwell has better broadband than Bristol!
Believe its near impossible to avoid OpenReach… Other than going with Virgin Cable…
As an ex-BT manager and a BT pension holder it pains me to criticize them, but my current bad experience cannot mainly be blamed on Openreach - although they were days late switching on my line.
The problems since then have mushroomed and include an awful website and numerous customer service people lying to me.
I just changed to BT from Virgin when I moved. BT has been fine, the line was up and running for me when I moved in and whilst not as fast as my old Virgin line speed is in line with what I pay for. I had planned to return to Virgin once they cable my area, but I think if service continues as is, I will be sticking with BT.
We had BT for a short while around ten years ago. Stopped working one day, BT open reach guy came round and essentially someone nearer the cabinet had been given our slot. So we were cut off. I stopped the direct debit and BT started to sue me for non payment. Only managed to stop the nightmare by getting email of someone senior and pleading with them to sort. Never going to use BT ever again. Total nightmare
Have been with Zen for about 10 years from adsl to fttc currently. Cannot fault them and would recommend to others on reliability grounds. Cannot comment on their customer service as never had to call them.
According to Ofcom’s latest ISP broadband customer survey, most providers have in recent years improved… and BT, Sky, PlusNet, EE, Virgin are all roughly the same with around 80 percent customer satisfaction. Talk Talk falls a little behind.
As with all providers there may be issues. I doubt if any service agent from any quality company willingly lies, but they may be working with partial or poor quality information. FTTP info can be questionable for a specific address until a survey is undertaken. I do find this is a reliable Openreach service based availability using address fixed line number or UPRN (where no number or fixed line exists)
https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL
Obviously this won’t confirm actual available capacity for your address with FTTP.
As stated above, out of the big players only Virgin doesn’t rely on Openreach that I am aware of. The current major national investments in fibre infrastructure coupled with Covid (and yes its still very much out there and growing again) is challenging field work forces of all companies.
Note under the BT banner you will start to see a consolidation of consumer communication services including broadband and mobile coming under the EE brand as the company refocuses its branding for consumers to make more sense of its acquisitions.
I do believe the quality of the backhaul and net security with BT companies is good nationally with typically good excess capacity and obviously support BTVision multicast at resolutions inline with local to the home bandwidths.
I think most of the big players offer ipv6 now, do check though, especially a smaller player. For increasing number of services and streaming ipv6 increasingly works more speedily than the older ipv4.
Hi Simon
The article you linked to is more than 13 months old, so the data it refers to must be older than that.
I heard a rumour a few days ago (after signing up with BT Broadband) that BT is planning to, in effect, close down BT as a UK consumer brand.
That does not suggest that all is well with BT consumer services.
When I worked at BT (1998-2007), the BT name and brand were trusted by most people in the UK, but when I spent half an hour looking through BT feedback on Trustpilot it seemed that things had changed for the worse.
Jim
Jim, sure the Ofcom 2022 report hasn’t been published yet that I am aware of… but most ISPs have been improving and investing in consumer customer services in very recent years (look at the Ofcom stats). Many services, and I am sure BT would agree with them as well they took a service quality hit through the 2010s… but you can plot the aofcom score cards over the years and trends should you wish.
But if you have a link as it has been published please post.
All companies have moments of trust and distrust. I have worked for Sky and BT and both of those companies have addressed challenges with improving customer satisfaction. With satisfaction comes trust usually.
Ah - excellent news for BT, they come top in the 2022 Ofcom survey.
Their score has shot up from 80% to 88%.
I do hope this is representative of reality, as otherwise I was getting worried about my pension!
