What broadband have you got and are you happy with it?

nice vid, thx for the info,, what is the best for gaming, low pings/latency

In the thumbnail I've got the BT Broadband Hub 4. Anyone know how out of date it is? Great video. I have been looking at all your vodeos from the first one. Keep up the brilliant work.

Glad the BT Full Fibre install went well for you. The Openreach engineer installed mine on the 13th Jul, pulling down the old copper line at the same time. Unfortunately, he didn't test the fibre at the pole before he did so. So he installed it all and it won't go online (no sync - PON light flashes instead of being steady. LOS light is off). So I was left with no phone line (which I do use) and no broadband. Luckily I have a half generous data allowance through EE (a recent upgrade from BT Mobile - £9/mth for 20GB vs 2GB for £6 before) so I was able to tether my computer/laptop to get some work done. Not ideal as my home network wouldn't work with this set-up. BT did send me out a Mini Hub to get me online as I'm on the Halo 3 package. Unfortunately, this felt quite slow and sluggish despite the speed test saying it was running at 28.6Mb down / 15.4Mb up and 4ms latency. Again my home network was inoperative. Openreach came back 2 days later to re-instate the old line as they say it's going to take about a week to give me an update on what's happening with the new fibre line... 6 days and counting so far and no contact yet and the full fibre line still isn't working. The engineer's widget was telling him the fault was somewhere the other side of the splitter, but the Openreach offshore backoffice wasn't being very useful, insisting everything was lined up when it clearly isn't and suggesting the ONT (new white box on the wall where the fibre terminates in the house) was faulty. So the engineers swapped that out just to satisfy them, but surprise surprise it didn't help. I await with baited breath.

I have fibre 3 also but I wasn’t getting the speed around the home even with their discs. So I bought a netgear router and currently using that as an access point and now I am getting over 100 at the back of the house. How have you setup your google mesh with the bt hub?

How much does your mesh cut the speeds down? I’m getting bt 900, but right at the front of the house, with thick walls. Worried the speed will be cut a lot, so will have to invest in mesh system

I have the 1gb virgin and a hub 4 ,freedom fibre are going live shortly they use talk talk so will get the 900 speeds ,they have just installed the new wooden poles outside going live in may ,what’s the difference am I better sticking on vm ? and why have bt not got there fttp service running first, is it just the same as bt the hub 4 is poor but hub 5 hopefully out soon

Hi Steve, I've had BT install their latest service but the speeds are shockingly low 30mb when I'm meant to get 900mb. You mention it took 10 days to sort itself out. What speeds did you get at the start and when did it sort itself out?

I was with virgin but bad for utilisation… switched with BT 900, honestly so much better with faster upload speeds and I can’t fault them at all. Perfect service almost 1 year in.

I'm fairly sure you won't get £100 for anything less than 500MB. Consumer broadband is contended bandwidth, GPON has a shared max capacity of 2.5gbps down and 1.2gbps up and that is shared between 60+ homes. IF you live in an area where there is a large uptake on fibre then your speeds will suffer. To guarantee bandwidth you would need a leased line directly to the ISP which has service level agreements which also costs £1000's per month.

I’m so lucky, I cancelled virgin before it started, now waiting until the 13th November for my 500mbs talktalk. As far as virgin customer service, they didn’t like me cancelling I can tell you. Thanks for this video, helpful and glad I’m not with virgin, the capping thing would have really got me going

VM gigabit here. Pretty solid speeds and low ping (7-8ms or so) for gaming. I download a lot ... like a LOT and I've never had any slowdown or capping with VM. Was surprised to hear that you had.

Couple of issues with what you said 3:44 onwards, the Halo 3 + package does not give you £100 if you drop below your minimum speed, if your speeds are slow (on line only) for 30 days or more, you get £20 back plus you can cancel your contract without penalty. I think you may have confused the £100 comp with the complete WiFi guarantee. This guarantee is for a strong signal in every room and nothing to do with speeds (speed guarantee on WiFi is 10mbps). Finally, you mentioned if you're on BT you get priority for faults. You only get priority if you're a vulnerable user and require services for emergency alarms/care companies etc and has nothing to do with the provider you're using on the Openreach network. The cables are still maintained and repaired by Openreach, so if a Sky user has a fault on FTTP and reports it before you on the same day, on the same street, you do not get priority over them as it's first come first serve.

Virgin wanted to leave me without broadband or tv for a month because they were too busy. Opted for BT in the end - hope that is not a mistake

I've been with BT full fibre for over a year and it's absolutely fantastic, particularly where Virgin doesn't perform well.

Im with sky fibre plus, which is basically the same as yours as it piggy backs off the BT line. Speed isn't as fast as yours but for me its all about stability. Isn't dropping out every hour which pissed me off no end.

Iv been with BT for about 10 years now there very good and very stable. Not the cheapest but you get what you pay for in life remember that, never really had a problem with them only one time and they ware out within 48 hours, there was only one complaint I had they never sent me out a 4g mini hub, iv got full fiber 900 and at a very good price and never had to pay the £9.99 delivery for the new equipment, that I'm not using as iv got my own router

I heard - and saw evidence of - many detriments to Virgin connections for years, leading me to stay away from them... unfortunately the next best connection I could get was 10Mbps ADSL2+ as our street cabinet was constantly passed over for FTTC despite the exchange already going live, eventually after a series of line faults that required Openreach intervention I got sick of it and gave Virgin a chance as our property already had an old Telewest cable socket. Surprisingly it's been rock solid, 500/36 on the VM500 connection, even slightly lower pings than I was getting via DSL but the jitter is of course higher since it's hybrid fibre/coaxial (HFC). Their support isn't the greatest but I've barely had to use them, other than some outages in the early days it's been rock solid and arguably the best residential connection I've had thus far. Of course I have their God-awful hub in modem mode and set up my own Asus router. I guess I won the postcode lottery? However I don't enjoy haggling prices and playing chicken with retentions to get a good deal, so any excuse to leave and I'm off. Thankfully both CityFibre and Netomnia are doing FTTP network builds in my area, with Openreach lagging behind. I preordered with YouFibre, but CityFibre went live first so I've signed up for a 1-month rolling contract with IDNet (overlapping with the last remaining months of my VM contract) and will see how things proceed from there. The biggest advantage to me of altnets is a full synchronous connection - that 1Gbps upload is going to hit different when I need to upload database backups etc for work, or even just cloud backups. I generally tend to avoid the big corporate ISPs if I can help it (Sky, BT, Vodafone, TalkTalk, etc) as they seem more likely to be oversubscribed and support is more script-driven. But in Virgin's case there was no avoiding it, and while you could probably write a book from all the horror stories I've heard, I was pleasantly surprised in my own experience. If there wasn't FTTP available here I'd be happy to renew my contract. I know VM themselves are rolling out XGS-PON but it looks like they're still converting to coax from the ONT just so they can continue to use their existing hubs for the time being, which is utterly barmy to me, but so it goes.

I enjoyed the video about BT. I live in Belfast and have Virginmedia. I am supposed to be receiving 600mb but am lucky receiving under 100mb. I phoned Virgin this morning and they are going to send another router to me. I am defo interested in BT Gig. Thank you. Tommy in Belfast

Do you work for bt as iv never heard so much tosh. My bt broadband is the crapest iv had I pay over 65 per month and it regularly drops below 13 mbps. The money back guarantee is also total nonsense iv never received any sort of refunds

Excellent review Steve - so well laid out - thank you for putting this - I’m with Virgin 500 - it’s time for change virgin’s upload is not good anymore

I don't think you need to have a BT land line now for their broadband packages?

Never had a cap on my virgin media broadband. I have the 500mbps download package and the only time where the speed dips is because I can't get a ethernet connection to my room (the router is on the otherside of the house) and yet I'm still seeing 430-500.

BT broadband service has been very poor in my house getting only 16 mb . Asked for Fibre 3 still awaiting for long times more than 3 months now

Hi Steve, can you give a quick update on your BT Fibre 900? Are you receiving a solid connection. I am still in limbo with alternative ISP than Virgin.

Please do a update on your experience

Was on virgin for years, had the hub 3 given to me after they upgraded my speeds which introduced a load of issues due to its hardware flaw, a month ago upgraded to virgin gig1 with their new hub4 hoping it would solve my lag and ping issues in the past, only to discover it suffered from the exact same issue, just had bt install their full fibre instead, much much better ping, however I’m on their 500 speed but struggle to get above 200 wired or wireless. Didn’t know about the 10 days thing so hoping that’ll fix itself over time. Gotta say though I wish I’d swapped over a long time ago. The stable ping is nice to have once again, plus the fact it’s usually < 20 whereas I was always on 40-60 with virgin

I've got virgin broadband 600mb don't get any issues really apart from when doing a speedtest never get the full speed for some reason and openreach in my area is poor max speed you can get is 24mb which would be buffering etc

I've got virgin gig 1 never had a problem best service I've ever had bt 900 looks very good but there contracts are too long imo

You don't get 'priority' service with BT over anyone else if your connection goes tits up. They are not allowed. All providers purchase a particular level of service from OR, and it just so happens BT pay for the top level 24hr service, along with many others.

I used 3 mobile 5g router for £17.50pm and get download of 750mb and 60mb upload, good enough for me.

AYE LADDIE! Yer spot on there, you cannot run two concurrent WiFi/broadband systems without ensuring seperate wiring n endpoints or non competitive Wi-Fi bands. If you know how you can either set two connections to FAILOVER so you go down on primary the it switches to backup or more tricky but awesome bond the two together so you should have one double fast connection. BUT all this should be pre WiFi so you still only use one WiFi system for distribution... AND REMEMBER! Routers divide your connection by port number so a 5 port router with a 100mb connection is 20mb or port. SWITCHES however can be crazy big as you get the whole connection on every port;) BEST OF LUCK!!)

I have virgin and there has NEVER been a cap on downloads for at least 5 years. Only the 50meg gets it. the higher speeds are restriction free.

Bit of a mess with the naming of each of the products. Virgin is not fibre but hybrid fibre (to the distribution post). BT fibre is FTTC (to the cabinet). Now you have BT "full fibre" which is FTTP (to the premises). And having two wifi mesh systems is really a bad idea. Wifi goes over radio waves, there are limited bands and frequencies. More access points is not always a good idea and it will cause frequency clashes. Access points try to be clever these days and try to jump between different bands and frequencies and this can cause unpredicted results. Likewise stronger signal from a powerfull access point can cause issues as it overlaps other access points. Remove one of the networks and use only 1 system, it will have much better results.

why ping so high?

Just placed my order for the 300mb package. As much as I want it for the buzz I can't see me needing more realistically. I have a pretty intense amount of devices including WiFi CCTV, smart plugs, lights, robot vacuum etc which all struggle on my 30mb down and 6mb up connection. I have a tp-link deco mesh in use already which is excellent!, I just need the bandwidth to complement it. EE set up the order as their system kept crashing trying to order the ultrafast. I bet I end up getting the 900 for the smallest excuse like my Xbox or something lol

BT Fibre 900 slow rollout could be ten years every home Starlink in the UK faster than any but expensive.

Getting it installed tomorrow, going from 35mb with 6mb upload to 900+Mb and 120mb up. Looking forward to it :)

Mine is coming on Wednesday and exactly the same price as 35 mb bt connection

I sincerely hope that Openreach come through with their word to install FTTP to my area. Virgin are literally digging up my street's pavements right now to install the wires, but I admittedly don't want to switch from BT due to its extreme consistency and stability. I can only get 32Mbps down and 7.80Mbps up on FTTC and I'd love an upgrade. Apparently it could take up until March 2024 though for Openreach to give my town FTTP.... bleh!

I have Virgin 500mb and routinely get a combined speed of up to 12MB/s (12 Megabytes) or 96Mb/s (96Megabits) on downloads. They've just sent me a letter saying that they're raising prices by £4/month. Also, I agree that their router blows chunks... my security can downstairs often doesn't work because of the poor coverage. The letter gives me a window to break my contract without penalty. GOODBYE VIRGIN.

Just thought I would say, you stated Virgin is Fibre to the premises, it’s not, it’s fibre to the cabinet and then they use Coax cable (docsis) from the cabinet to your house, don’t get me wrong it’s a damn site lot better than a copper telephone wire but it’s not fibre and still acts as a bottle neck

I'm with V.M. I do alot of streaming, downloading, uploading and home cloud NAS drive and gaming... They do cap it to half.... V.M. customer service is crap! When you call them they don't leave notes on your accounts I going to look at BT with back 4g or 5g this is just right for me

I negotiated the hub4 when I got my 500mb

BT Fibre to the home still make you pay the cost of the old copper line even with the digital phone switch i have both FTTP and they have switched us to the digital phones the old landline copper line thats used no longer we still pay the as much. We dont even want a land phone but to not have it will save us nothing either.

Should i move to BT, sky or Talk talk. I budget is under £40 . I heard sky is unreliable but BT is bit expensive.

Virgin media no longer caps any speeds and neither virgin or the initially mentioned bt package are fttp either.

I didn't like how BT sales team handled my case, they tried to force a sale on us, they attempted to screen share to push a sale without allowing us to time to read the package plan. heck! they refused to even send us a plan to read! BT sales team expected us to absorb their bull crap, skim through the terms and sign a contract! i bet the contract would have been hard to get out of to! not only tried to upsell but they were trying to sell us a halo 5 package, which is complete overkill for our needs! Like to stay with BT but not happy with how they conduct the sales.

I went from Sky to Virgin - what a mistake. Virgin wanted to leave me without broadband or tv for a month because they were too busy - they only text me the night before - after Sky ended - bastards Opted for BT in the end - hope that is not a mistake

Lit fibre is now in my area getting 1000 down and 1000 upload for 39 a month and free for 3 months and a friend refierd me so i get a extra month free there installing on 23rd may 💕

I’m moving into a new house that has FTTP, do I still need an ISP? (currently with Sky)

Virgin do not cap anything slow speeds are probably down to over utilisation in your area, I have 500 Mbps with Virgin, and it's never slowed down

Interesting review. I have BT fibre 900 also thinking about getting the Google Nest Router and 2 points. They seem to be very ascetically pleasing than other routers on the market.

Just to correct you Steve Virgin is not full Fibre its coaxial cable from their street cab to your house, the only Fibre part is the Cab to Virgins area hub point(similar to Openreach's FTTC) Coaxial copper/Ali core is 50 times larger than the copper connection of a traditional BT line hence the increase in data it can do. Openreach's FTTP is Fibre all the way from the exchange point to your house.

I'm with sky It can't even get over 1MB/S can't wait for bt to upgrade

4:20 this is only true if they are running on separate channels.. If they are all on the same channels then the benefits are gone as there will be alot of clashes

i will shortly switch to BT from Virgin. There services haven been horrible over the last 18 months and became expensive.

What are your thoughts on EE broadband?

virgin don't cap your speeds, my last month usage was 1.4 terabytes, and for 850-980mb all through out the month

i love my 16mbs broadband

VM no longer have a traffic management policy (usage cap) meaning a large section of your video is wrong and misleading...

I worked for BT for many years on 150 and the complaints I had to deal with due to Broadband had been crazy and for that reason I would not have BT broadband and have been with Virgin for over 20 years and I have had not one problem. In my opinon for any provider that offers a Hybrid service and cash back like BT they are aware the is issues and they hope customers won't spot the problems thats my sole opinon. The hundreds of customers I spoke to had no interest in any compensation like cash back they just wanted a fully working broadband service. Also Virgin no longer cap as that had been the case but that depended on the BB package you had with them. ((Please dont ask me for details on the complaints I had as I'm not allowed discuss or give detail.)) I think the many looking at this need to think why BT offer a BB Hybrid service as anyone working in telecomms should be able to work this out in seconds.

BT are out of stock on equipment, it’s delayed so they can’t even send me a hub and the engineer is coming on in 2 days! They sent me 1 telephone and that’s it! So I had to buy my own hub from Amazon!

routers wifi depends on your property construction. I bet your house is solid brick. thus mesh enhancement can punch through the brick.

Steve. Virgin don’t cap any speeds, not sure where you have got this from. I have virgin media on the 500mb package for £32 a month, this also includes the virgin media stream box for free. Virgin have also updated the router, the Virgin hub 4 and 5 are much better. BT are very expensive. One thing I would agree on is customer service. Virgin Media is poor, but you’re paying more than double what I am. BT also have nasty annual price increases, 14 percent increase coming in March

there is no cap on virgin, they used to traffic manage for p2p connections, but there is no restriction, you obviously have a fault with virgin, power levels, all isp's have traffic management even bt, they all have fair usage, so this is really miss leading.

Always had problems with sky so went back to Virgin and never have problems

am getting virgin 1gb broadband but goes to around 1.1gb for £60 was on 500mb for just under £50

I got virgin gig1 with the super hub 4 an got a intelligent WiFi booster for free my speeds are amazing all round my house I'm pulling between 700 to 900+down an about 70 to about 110upload all over house and as for customer I had no problems everyone I spoke to has been a pleasure to talk to really friendly & helpful 😊

Bt’s New wifi 6 router will be good coming out soon.

I've used virgin cable since it was cable midlands, they have never capped and yes I sometimes download 1TB in a day

I have virgin in our student rental block but the whole area is a high density area and virgin throttle it down a lot Bt have upgraded their network to 900mb fibre and I know they don’t have many customers on bt as all student in that area on virgin So hopefully when my set up arrives this week it will be much better than Virgin

Using two WiFis with not the same name/SSID/connection is a very bad idea.

I am a high level competitive MK1 player. I’ve had nothing but issues with BT they’re not reliable whatsoever they take ALL your money. They don’t make correct notes or compensate properly for any errors. They are disrespectful and rude they don’t return calls or allow you to speak to a higher up in charge. The internet service isn’t reliable I lag in majority of matches which allows a horrible online experience. They don’t send engineers out as promised. I just wouldn’t recommend BT to anyone NOT even a worst enemy

Virgin is not FTTP 1:47 Virgin is FTTC then coax cable TTP Virgin router in my experience is bad - I use it in modem mode connected to an Asus gaming router . No openreach FTTP in my area yet.

Got virgin 200mg never slowed me down always had top speeds pings are abit high now and then but that's due to the shared cable it can very early hours of the morning pings are low. used to have BT GFast BroadBand never heard of it before but that was the fast always had 300mg down a copper line was amazing speeds with pings of 1ms was amazing but the cost is to high so went back to virgin saved myself alot of money 💸💰💪

im getting virgin 1gigabit broadband installed in a week, cant wait, bt have been absolute trash, and inpayed for their expensive packages.

virgin very expensive live football ,but bt sport cheap football live

Use a vpn on virgin they won’t slow you down.

VM is not FIBRE!!!! do not mix this Bt if FTTP but VM is FTTC and use docsis system with coax cable

Hub 3 is trash yh so bad I always make sure I am on the newest hub the bub 5 is great but I have the hub 4

Virgin media is very overpriced for 500mb/s i pay 69 a month

Everyone talks about BT, but they need atleast 45 days for installation which is a pain when i have to work from home. So i have orderd virgin which took 20 days for installation in mancehster UK. next thing to talk is customer care... guess what all the broad bands are under same companies for customer care and mostly works from india, so reach one cc you get same answer for all providers for installation.

Good advice vigin is crap in north east England. 2routers in a month install old refurbished hub's. A engineer for virgin told me today while installing in home. So from the horses mouth so to speak.🤐

we need a education program in the uk, so many people aint got a clue what they are talking about, forget virgin for a minute, it dont matter who you go with, sky, talk talk, shell, or bt - THEY ALL USE THE SAME lines. fttp, fttc etc etc etc, these companies buy packages at wholesale prices from openreach and then re sell them to us (the customer) if you hat openreach fttp installed (the white box on the wall) it dont matter who you got with you will get the same speeds no matter who you go with, ee, talk talk, shell etc etc, as they are buying the same product from open reach and selling it on, so many people in these comments simply do not know what they are talking about.

I've got BT 500 mb, and download speed is 1 mb/s, fucking scam, can't believe it, previously I had Virgin 200 mb and speen on downloads was 11-13 mb

2026 for me.. no virgin neither.

That’s incorrect virgin haven’t capped for some time and virgin router isn’t a netgear

Neither of the products you describe in the first few seconds are fibre. Despite what BT and Virgin tell you. With Virgin, there is a coaxial copper cable that enters your home. The fibre ends at the cabinet. With the BT it still uses the copper loop from the cabinet to your home. They are copper services. Virgin do offer FTTP however they then convert to coax and into your modem instead of using an ONT

1. VM do not have a cap. 2. BT do not give you £100 for slow speeds, it's £20 and there is a criteria for it. 3. There is no 10 day stabilisation period for FTTP connections! That's not how FTTP works!

Virgin not good at all! !!!

Half cocked video with the facts wrong ,virgin down cap I download all the time with playstation games , and Netgear didn't make the hub 3 Arris did

virgin has better reliability and has cheaper prices on faster broadband if you are having problems just use a diffrenet router like you are right now

GET EE broadband. They are the UKs fastest major broadband provider. It makes Virgin Media useless 😂😂😂

So much bad information in this video

i work for BT you dont need a phone to have a bt broadband service (unless on copper wiring) fibre 3 does not exist we have fibre halo 3 which is just a standard package with add ons virgin media do not cap speed also bt own openreach therefor own the line this video is full of nonsense

BT IS NOT RECOMMENDED! 😡👎

11ms ping on virgin media, that's mad right there