r/UKISP

Hi all,

Openreach have arrived where I am and started doing a ton of work all over the place recently, so it is obvious that FTTP is coming within the next few months. To that end, I've been looking up my options for an ISP when the time comes

Currently, on FTTC, I'm with Aquiss who have been great. However, I noticed their FTTP package prices aren't that good compared to the competition. The main thing Aquiss has going for it I find would be its customer service, which I hope with an FTTP connection should be far more stable, reliable, and just generally not need the absolute best CS available at all times. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic.

The other thing would be general latency and routing. I'm up in Aberdeenshire, so the Openreach backhaul is all I'm gonna get. No CityFibre here. From what I understand, that would also rule out the specific latency benefits of providers like Olilo as the OR backhaul uses PPPoE and not DHCP, correct? Aside from that, providing a static IP is all I can think of to justify these smaller ISPs on FTTP. While a nice to have, I'm not running servers so doubt that alone justifies the increased expense.

When looking at deals on places like TopCashBack, EE seems to be offering pretty amazing deals that Aquiss/Olilo definitely couldn't compete with, so on a price and speed basis I'm leaning there. Plus I imagine EE's network basically being BT would mean the best routing when it comes to my rural location overall the smaller providers more based in populated England?

Any comments or advice would be appreciated.

Currently on G.Fast 300/50mbps, very happy with the service via Utility Warehouse (transitioned from TalkTalk) does someone know when there will be a day when G.Fast is not available?, and I would have to go back to a slower 40mbps/10mbps service ? and yes I cannot get FTTP as i live in a block of flats(MDU).

Trying to find a deals for FTTC I get a decent speed of around 300 M/bits as the cabinet is like 20 metres from my flat, was with talk talk on 250 for £35 a month, now been bought by Utlity warehouse and stuck at £35, but out of contract, but every where I look it says i can only get like 67 M/bits , what to do ? And are BT doing fibre to flats at all? Cheers!

Here follows my tale of woe. If you can stick with me and offer any solution I'd be very grateful.

I moved into a rented flat November 2026. I ordered FTTC internet from BT thinking if there were any problems they'd be best placed to fix them. LOL. Almost immediately there were intermittent drops. Three new routers later and speaking to just about everybody who's ever been employed by BT we were no further forwards. I even presented them with a 24 hour ping log which showed drops every 2 minutes or so for a few seconds.

Out comes an Openreach engineer who goes to the cabinet - thinks he's fixed it but actually leaves me with no internet. No matter what buttons I push when I call up, they're not coming out to make it right.

I decided the simplest way was to give BT the flick and go to someone completely different. I fully understand that every ISP uses BT's copper, but thought they wouldn't have such a cozy relationship with Openreach.

So I moved to SKY. Immediately the same problems. Intermittent drops (pinging Goggle on a wired connection) every 5-10 minutes meaning streaming, gaming and calling is dicey. SKY sent someone out and decided that, in essence, they'd not be able to get openreach out to investigate as my fault doesn't fit nicely into any of their boxes. They agreed that I should cancel.

I would say that the fault is somewhere between where the wiring comes into my block (of six flats) and my flat itself. They disconnected all of the additional sockets that were installed from new at build (2016). When the Openreach engineer DID visit the once he said there was no problem between the building and the cabinet.

At the moment I'm having to use ELON to get some internet which is ridiculous on an estate of 1,000 houses. It's also not totally reliable and has also just gone up £5 a month.

The greatest frustration is there's Fibre in the street, it goes to all the houses on my street, but not my block. I guess because it's a block. I've spoken to various FTTP ISPs and they all say they can't help, even though it goes to my neighbour 8 meters away.

What are my options? I could probably dick about with a proper 5g router but it'd need an external aerial as phone coverage isn't great where I am.

What about a second BT line? Forcing them to put a fresh run in from the building entry point to my flat? Would that crack it do you think?

I'm at a bit of a loss. Any help appreciated.

Thank you very much for reading.

Contract ends in July. Does anyone have any idea what sort of offer Zen provides you with?

Just my experience with BT recently.

Having been a customer for a while. Their service had been reliable on their Fibre 900 package.

I realised that I was just out of contract and they were charging me £68 a month for Fibre 900 with a landline!

I called to discuss renewal:

1. BT operator gave me his "best price" at £63/m.

2. I told him that's no where near the new customer price on their website at ~£40/m.

3. He reduces it to £50/m within 20 seconds.

4. He then reduces it to £45/m and won't budge lower. Tried moving me to EE with it costing £43/m. I declined.

5. I then sign up to another company at £36/m.

6. BT then call me back noticing the request for switching. Suddenly they can now offer me £29.99 to keep me.

7. New company then beats BT, to give me their package at £26/m after the counter offer...but also as a bonus, a few months free like rental!

I've never had to play this long game before with any company, but I'm glad I did.

Unfortunately, BT makes no sense!

I feel sorry for those customers who say yes to any of the first three deals given!

At first, they said it was a general outage and that they’d come on May 14, 2026, but they didn’t show up. Then they said they’d definitely come the next day, but they said the port was faulty and didn’t come. I called the day after that, and they said the port wasn’t the problem, so they rescheduled it for the 17th. Is it the same with Vodafone in Europe?

Thought people might be interested, you can see if your ISP has an embedded Netflix cache by going to this URL: https://api.fast.com/netflix/speedtest/v2?https=true&token=YXNkZmFzZGxmbnNkYWZoYXNkZmhrYWxm

If the response contains your ISP name in the URL then they have an embedded cache, otherwise it’ll be served by Netflix themselves (if so it should have ‘-ix’ in the name). It should say the location of each cache.

Sky seem to have some. No idea about any other ISPs. I’d be interested to see which other ones have them too, if people are happy to comment their result with your own IP removed.

Seen it on a few forums for people spotting problems with Netflix, and thought the community here thought it might be cool/useful!

Hey all, currently with EE paying about £45pm for 500mb with open reach. Happy with the service itself but it’s getting to pricey now and will go up - by the time my contract ends will be paying nearly £55pm!

Currently £~300 to terminate my contract early with EE (I know, I know - was moving house at the time and didn’t have time to properly research the different offers)

Looking to switch to another provider, would like:
- 500mb-1gb speed
- City Fibre
- Use my own router
- I WFH full time so must be reliable, but 1gig speed is deffo overkill, 500mb would be more than enough.

Actually took out a contract with Fourth Utility yesterday and then cancelled after reading the horror stories.

Sky are offering £25pm for 1gb up and down, and offered £200 towards cancelling with EE. Vodafone is a similar offer.

I spoke to Aquiss earlier today (amazing customer service btw, what a great guy that Martin fella is!) but they couldn’t offer any credit towards my current contract, similar for Zen - so wouldn’t actually save me any money switching to either of them (yet) compared to sticking with EE. If I could cancel for free I’d immediately switch to one of them, but I just don’t have an extra £300 lying around to cancel.

Wonder whether it’s worth switching to Sky or Vodafone (and then eventually move to Aquiss after that contract ends)?

Sky and voda reviews seem pretty mixed, but doesn’t seem as bad as Rise/4th. Perhaps it would be fine, would save me £~400 over the next 15 months but I’m worried about reliability.

I’m based in the north east if that makes any difference.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

I had the My Fritz! App setup on my iPhone to give me access to my 7350 AX when outside the home.

I have change ISP and now I can't access it from outside. It works ok when directly connected to the home WiFi, just not externally anymore.

Any ideas as to why? All settings checked and it says "Access from the internet allowed".

TIA

I am currently with Virgin Media 250GB, basic phone and tv. I only really need broadband and landline, the tv isn’t important. Vodafone is cheaper so I’m thinking of switching.

I like Virgin, I’ve had some issues with poor customer service but other than that I’ve had no issues with the actual broadband etc. I’ve been with Vodafone for many years with my phone and again, customer service can be very frustrating but I haven’t really had any issues.

Question: Will I regret switching? Does Vodafone actually provide an issue free service in terms of their broadband just working with very little to no issues? Would I notice a difference? What has been your own experience with Vodafone broadband and landline?

I'm making this post for past me and others in the future as I've just been trying to solve this for the past hour.

If you are trying to change the WiFi password of a BT Smart Hub 2 or Plusnet Smart Hub 2 (Both exact same hardware, just different colour and logo) and none of the other online solutions are working, my problem was Firefox!

After typing in the new password and clicking save, it would say the changes had been made however nothing ever changed.

I'm unsure what exactly in Firefox caused it however switching to Chrome/Edge then allowed me to change the password first try.

Not looking for any comments or help - simply writing for anyone searching for this problem in the future