Is there really any difference in major broadband providers?

[rlg43p]

I am about to sign up for a new broadband deal as current provider is too expensive (SSE) and their router is crap.

I live in a rural village so the major providers are Sky, BT, SSE, Zen, TalkTalk, PlusNet, John Lewis (Plusnet). Virgin and Now are NOT available

Surely these all use the same local infrastructure so is ther really any difference in them? Speed and consistency of speed is the most important issue for me as I don't really have any need for support from the provider.

Sky have a very good offer on at the moment for 66Mb connection and anytime calls, but I don't want to go with them if they are st.

[camel_landy]

Contention Ratio i.e. The number of subscribers, who are sharing the available bandwidth.

This is one of the differences between providers, which often gets ignored and can have a major impact at peak times.

M

[Muzzer79]

When I moved into my house, I had issues with my BT broadband (useless, useless idiots)

An engineer came round and was surprisingly honest.

He said that your broadband provider is just a different plug into the same feed. Like your electricity supply.

Just go for the best deal (and customer service)

[fat80b]

Muzzer79 said:

He said that your broadband provider is just a different plug into the same feed. Like your electricity supply.

Not quite. There are two types of providers - those that re-sell the BT wholesale stuff (for which the above statement is true) and those that have their own equipment in the local exchange for which it is not.

Local Loop unbundling (LLU) is the magic phrase - https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/llu

[dmsims]

Neither of the last 2 statements is correct

Locally you will be utilising the same infrastructure. (for non LLU)

Then some providers have much better backbone infrastructure and there is also the issue of traffic shaping and rate limiting to consider

[rdjohn]

I thought that another issue was the distance from the nearest distribution pillar?

I use Vodafone in the U.K., who purchased the C&W plant. It works just fine, I do not feel a need to shop around.

Unless you need to work on very big files for work, does it really make a big difference between 20Mbs or 30Mbs? I only have 20Mbs in my home in France via 4G. Streaming music and TV while searching are about as heavy as our demands go so they both work well, unless I actually do a speed test.

Compared to the 1 or 2Mbs that we used to have down the phone line, I think that current supplies are pretty good, price is the only really significant factor.

[sjg]

The most common issues people have are down to WiFi (just buy your own WiFi solution if your house doesn't work well on a freebie router) or the local connection from your house to the cabinet and/or exchange (which will be Openreach).

Minor variations in quality and support once it gets to your ISP. Some do traffic shaping (making certain things slower at peak times), some might have too few IP addresses so put you behind another layer of NAT, some might have too little onward bandwidth for their customers. Largely though they're much the same. I could pay more for the likes of Zen or A&A but actually Vodafone is working fine for us. I use my own router and wifi though so all I need from an ISP is to get stuff from my house to the wider internet.

[Shadow R1]

camel_landy said:

Contention Ratio i.e. The number of subscribers, who are sharing the available bandwidth.

This is one of the differences between providers, which often gets ignored and can have a major impact at peak times.

[rlg43p]

Is anyone aware of any reason why Sky isn't a good option?

[Sheepshanks]

fat80b said:

Local Loop unbundling (LLU) is the magic phrase - https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/llu

That reports that our, small and pretty rural, exchange has LLU operator presence for Sky and TalkTalk - does that mean they've put their own kit in the exchange and then have their own links back to whatever the next bit back in the chain is called? I'm gobsmacked they would do that for our smallish village.

[rlg43p]

Sheepshanks said:

That reports that our, small and pretty rural, exchange has LLU operator presence for Sky and TalkTalk - does that mean they've put their own kit in the exchange and then have their own links back to whatever the next bit back in the chain is called? I'm gobsmacked they would do that for our smallish village.

I have the impression that website is VERY out of date. Its summary of Zen Internet seems completely wrong.