Fibre First has arrived! Should i Switch?

[zero967]

Hi There,

I have just received the usual letter from Virgin Media saying they are putting my bill up by another £3.50/month on my £40/month BB only Vivid 100 (100mb D/6mb Up), now usually they only up my bill by £1-2 but this is a bit much.

Coincidentally, BT Openreach have just finished the rollout of their Fibre First Towns/Cities which now covers me, i am now wondering if it would be time for me to switch?

I have been looking at the providers offering the new 160/30 and 330/50 services but according to the Openreach site: BT Openreach Fibre-First Providers there are only a small amount of providers with more jumping on the wagon as it rolls down from Openreach but the issue i have is most of the providers listed or that i have found seem to be not that competitive compared to what i am currently paying Virgin Media for my service.

My current service is VM Vivid 100 (108 Down/6Mb Up) which i am currently paying £40.00/Month (From Sept 4th £43.50). This is just for BROADBAND ONLY.

The only providers i have found to be fairly reasonable with their price for the 160/30 FTTP/H package is BT (when you work out what we pay for line rental and package and then add internet on it works out the internet for us is only costing us £30 for 160/30) and TalkTalk do the 160/30 for a MIND BOGGLING £28 INCLUDING Line Rental but they market it as the Faster 150 service but when you read their URL at the top of the page it says /gfast in the URL which is not in my location as we now have FTTP/H anyway.

I have been looking at other providers who are offering 160/30 service too such as Zen, iDnet, Spectrum, Aquiss and others as well but their prices unfortunately don't really seem to beat Virgin Media's much to my disappointment as Virgin Media's routing is getting worse and they put the prices up at least 2-3 times a year now on average.

Any suggestions?? I just want either BB only FTTP/H line for less than £40 a month (connection fee no more than £60) or BB + Line Rental less than £40-45 a month (connection fee no more than £60), don't really want any TV services as we have Sky already and no i don't want to go with Sky's service.

Thanks for the help and advice

 

[timeless]

currently lm with Sky and FTTC around the high 30s to 40s is pretty average, at least the last time l really looked at prices, personally TalkTalk would be a provider ld steer clear of mainly due to their bad reviews over the years.

currently l pay around £27 on fibre Max (just line and fibre, though l believe Sky has to be in area) and get around 65meg the deal lm on might still be going though lm not entirely sure it is for new customers (you see checking for deals when your out of contract can get you pretty good prices) still worth checking their current offers and unlike Virgin, BT and TalkTalk they have never slapped me with a fair usage policy, though ld have to check reviews and offerings to give much more of an opinion.

 

[Mark.J]

I think you mean FTTC timeless , that's a different kettle of fish to what the OP is after.

Generally I think you'll find it hard to get 100Mbps+ FTTP on Openreach for much less than £50 a month and that's due to the wholesale costs. Structured Communications can do it for £49.99 but the catch there is you have a £60 one-off setup fee.

However keep your eye on the site as I may be reporting something that you find useful over the coming weekend.

 

[timeless]

ugh, edited it to fix my typo been on some pretty funky awake times as of late and ld only just gotten up around the time l replied lol, making allot of typos as of late which is a bad thing considering lm helping out a friend with his website at the moment (the reason for my annoying times).

 

[onephat]

Zero, Have you tried ringing Virgin retentions to see what deal (if any) you can get out of them. I’ve recently renewed my package with them (although i have the 500mb BB, full tv, phone sim etc etc) but i ended up paying significantly less than a new customer pays. Worth a try ?

 

[brookheather]

Why not go for FTTP 80/20 which is about £30 including phone line I think? Do you need more than 80 download speed?

 

[zero967]

@brookheather Do you have an idea who is offering FTTP/H 80/20 for £30 a month? I've found Uno offering just Fibre 80/20 for £37.99

 

[Kits]

Aquiss have an offer on at present where first 3 months are £17.00 then £34.00 for 80/20

 

[baby_frogmella]

BT Superfast Fibre 2 (FTTP 80/20) is priced ar £39.99 /m (incl line rental) but if going through Quidco there's £225 cashback (£110 cashback + £115 reward card), which works out at ~ £30 /m over 24 months.

 

[Kits]

Why tie yourself to 24 months when you can get a 12 month contract for just a few pounds more and if you do not want a telephone line that isn't compulsary? That is a few pounds more than the £30 not the £39.

 

[zero967]

Contacted VM about my bill and advised of me leaving them to which they offered me discount off my bill for 6 months (dropped it from what it was going to be in Sept which was £43.50/month to £38.00/month) so i've decided atm i will stay for now but come 6 months time i will probably be on the hunt once again, hopefully they will have a lot more providers offering FTTP/H options and also hopefully the prices will have dropped a little too not to mention since the rollout of Fibre First in my area they will want to get people on their network so maybe as more providers jump on board they will start competing to the point where even the set-up/connection gets discounted too.