Yesterday, we became proud owners of our house in Chichester which we’re hoping will be our “maison secondaire” for many years while we continue to live in France.
We’ve been living in France for 18 years and when we left our broadband/phone provider was BT (how simple was that!)
These days I’m having to learn about a whole new world. I’ve no idea who the provider was to our new house - it was tenanted and the tenant is long gone.
So, which provider do I go for? PlusNet seems well regarded (is that just because of the advertising?)
I’ll be buying a smart TV (does that make a difference?)
It’ll mainly be just the two of us, several times a year, so it will be TV watching, emailing, web surfing, OH playing Civilisation. And that will be about it.
Do I need a landline?
I’d be grateful for help. Thanks. I really don’t have a clue!
I used Plusnet before leaving the UK and was quite happy. Before my mother died, I moved her to Vodafone and it was pretty poor, a real cowboy installation.
The problem with answering this question is that almost all providers can be great if you are lucky and abysmal if you are not. It can also depend who the actual fibre supplier is.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Andrews and Arnold if you are at all “techy” but they are not for those without deep(ish) pockets.
Other than that I have a TalkTalk connection which, so far, has performed within expectations.
It’s pretty much as Billy said Sue, so if you can maybe wait and ask the locals.
Talk talk are complete rubbish where I live, we have Sky which is ok and just about our only choice at the moment, sorry I can’t be more helpful but I do think it’s a bit of a lottery.
The physical connection will usually be provided by BT Openreach but you can sign up with anyone you like for the broadband service.
They will probably push you towards fibre; if it’s already in situ and the price is the same that’s fine; if not then plain old copper broadband will work and for two of you 70MBps should be plenty.
FWIW I am with Vodafone for broadband and the service is fine - as mentioned the physical connection is down to BT Openreach so that can be good or bad depending on where you live. I left BT because they were upping the price and justifying it with all the add-ons like football which I didn’t want.
A broadband connection will come with a landline number; whether you use it is up to you.
For mobile I use Lebara who are good value and use the Vodafone mobile network which is the best signal locally.
As others have said, I would ask your new neighbours! And you cna sue one of those Meerkat websites to compare prices. USwitch is quite good for that.
My plain old copper contract is costing way more than if we had access to fiber, most providers in our area say they can’t offer us a contract until we have fiber, it’s left us with a choice of 3 providers, two we have never heard of hence Sky.
Or CityFibre, or Virgin, or Hyperoptic, or Gigaclear, or Community Fibre, …
There are lots of alternative infrastructure/wholesale providers in the UK. What is available locally will vary - I have a choice of CityFibre or BT Openretch chez moi and then whichever retail ISPs base their service on top of those.
My current plan is to keep TT for access then use the AAISP L2TP service as that should be cheaper than using AAISP direct and let me keep my block of 30 IPV4 addresses
Apparently we have “fibre to the cabinet” which I’d never heard of, with full fibre broadband coming next year.
I’m not clear what the differences are between all the providers. Is it just price? I’m reluctant to go with one I’ve never heard of because I suspect they will be techie and I won’t understand what they are talking about. At least with a name I know I feel I am on more secure ground.
That’s what we have - it means there is a run of fibre optic to the green box somewhere in your street, but the last bit of the connection is via plain old copper cable.
So you will be able to get “broadband” (probably around 70 Mbps like us) but not a superfast connection as you would if it was fibre all the way to your house.
Difference between providers come down to the quality of customer service (which you can’t really assess without trying them unless you know someone who uses that provider) and sometimes the quality of the router box they provide.
And of course price!
I note @JohnH’s poor experience with Vodafone above, but for us they have been fine - a very reliable and consistent connection. I have only had to phone them once, and that was when we had an outage due to damaged cables in the road.
Andrews and Arnold don’t require one to be"techie" - but they are a better ISP for the techie minded, if that makes sense.
The reason you’ve never heard of them is that they are primarily a business ISP. They are, however, very good - the two taken together does mean they are something like £55 a month for a 1Gbps connection compared to the £25-35 of the more mainstream ISPs - though they offer down to £37 for 110Mpbs “full fibre”.
To an extent, yes. Some offer extras like bundled TV (EE does this). Some (like PlusNet) try to differentiate themselves on customer service.
VDSL - as Chris says fibre to your nearest street cabinet, then copper from there. Max speed download typically 80Mbps.
Be aware that if you have to get FTTC installed now because “full fibre” isn’t available, you will have to upgrade at some point as BT are phasing out copper lines from the system.
Hi Sue, first you don’t pay for anything outside your home as in France, so no payment for changes to cables to your home.
smart tv - do you need one?, cant you use an ariel, and then you can record programmes on a personal video recorder (PVR) and skip the adverts - humax is the main PVR, plenty of mentions on theads here.
For all things consumer / bill wise, internet - electricity - bank and savings accounts, Martin Lewis money saving expert is your (best) friend. Here’s the link - you choose what you want. Enter postcode, choose what speed you need (no more- unless it’s cheaper, then get the faster one). Simples (as they say - some comparison sites sing)
Moneysavingexpert is good and up to date on all these sorts of things. Their forums can be worth a quick look too. You could also sign up for their weekly newsletter if you’re easing back to a UK presence.
Is Chichester a bit like Hampstead used to be? I went there briefly many moons ago.
Hmm, unsure whether 100x - we would just select the programmes to record on the schedule and off it goes, and when playing back press the fast forward 2 minutes button a few times to skip the ads?
So question - can that recording be done on smart TV’s ? Coz I thought you couldn’t skip, except on broadcast TV. One can’t skip on streamed TV - and sometimes when the ad’s come along it throws you out anyway!
If smart TV can record, play back and defeat the ads, then yes, there’s a use case. I haven’t investigated though in the market for a new telly
If you watch an ad supported channel - typically the free ones - no, you can’t generally skip the ads. I normally mute the sound and/or go do something else for a minute.
However if you pay to subscribe many services are ad free.
And doing off air PVR is quite a pain if you have more than one TV.
Also I’d argue that the question
Is not really the right question - it’s more “smart TV, can you avoid one” and TBH I don’t think you can, or it’s a lot of work.
That said I haven’t bought a new TV for a good few years and the one I have could just have been on the right side of the transition point in terms of “you don’t own this device, we do”.
