Switching from BT fibre

Author
Discussion

Matt..

Original Poster:

3,785 posts

202 months

Wednesday 11th December 2024
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How does switching work if I already have fibre from BT? Does a new provider simply send me a new router to plug in? I don’t need a visit to install anything do I?

BT is obviously ridiculously expensive now it’s renewal time. There’s essentially no offer at all. £54/month for 500. Switching could mean £34 with Now or £42 with Zen (no yearly increase). Fairly healthy savings really.

Davie

5,487 posts

228 months

Wednesday 11th December 2024
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Yes, assuming your new internet provider uses the Openreach network then it’d be a new router sent out and remotely activated. Occasionally it may prompt an engineer visit but at most that’d be to reactive the ONT (the white digital master socket on the walk) but mostly, it’s all done remotely. If your new internet provider uses another network provider, then it’d be a full new fibre install with new cable and equipment.

Edited by Davie on Wednesday 11th December 21:28

JohnnyUK

952 posts

91 months

Thursday 12th December 2024
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I currently have two fibre installations - one on EE (Openreach) and one on Trooli (their own fibre).

The Trooli is 2Gbps Up & Down.....and £1 a month for the first six months.

EE goes in a few months.

Matt..

Original Poster:

3,785 posts

202 months

Thursday 12th December 2024
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I can only get Openreach so am limited and they’re all expensive. I work from home so need to chose a good option that won’t cause me problems.

MikeM6

5,447 posts

115 months

Friday 13th December 2024
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Surprised BT is so expensive. I recently renewed and pay £41 for 900. I could have had it cheaper elsewhere, but I have had BT for many years and it always seemed to work really well for me, whereas I know others have had issues with their ISP.

Matt..

Original Poster:

3,785 posts

202 months

Friday 13th December 2024
quotequote all
MikeM6 said:
Surprised BT is so expensive. I recently renewed and pay £41 for 900. I could have had it cheaper elsewhere, but I have had BT for many years and it always seemed to work really well for me, whereas I know others have had issues with their ISP.
The website gives me a £1 saving to renew my contract. There’s not much incentive there. I may call them but it’s not fun to have to go through that every time I renew.

Matt..

Original Poster:

3,785 posts

202 months

Friday 13th December 2024
quotequote all
Their chat tried to tell me £54 was a big discount on a product that’s £77. This is fibre 500. £77 is outrageous as a stated price.

They immediately offered £37 but with zero decision time. A frustrating experience as ever for a company that tries to portray themselves as premium.

FlossyThePig

4,131 posts

256 months

Friday 13th December 2024
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I thought that BT were offloading their ISP side to EE.

Plusnet has been my ISP for quite sometime now and switching to full fibre was a simple process as the supplied router worked for both systems.

bmwmike

7,696 posts

121 months

Friday 13th December 2024
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BT FTTP 1G here, and am paying £67 a month. I did negotiate a deal with them as they screwed something up, can't remember what it was, but they upped the price after agreeing a discount as their T&C allow a rise once per year, so i fell for it, only had the lower price for a couple of months into a 1 year contract. Once the contracts up i'll leave.

Never had an issue with the service though, so there is that (wfh also).



Simon_GH

673 posts

93 months

Friday 13th December 2024
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FlossyThePig said:
I thought that BT were offloading their ISP side to EE.

Plusnet has been my ISP for quite sometime now and switching to full fibre was a simple process as the supplied router worked for both systems.
Some experience with PlusNet. Internet was down for 15 minutes while they changed over from copper to fibre line, the existing router worked perfectly and no need to change any passwords etc.

AlunJ

141 posts

176 months

Saturday 14th December 2024
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bmwmike said:
BT FTTP 1G here, and am paying £67 a month. I did negotiate a deal with them as they screwed something up, can't remember what it was, but they upped the price after agreeing a discount as their T&C allow a rise once per year, so i fell for it, only had the lower price for a couple of months into a 1 year contract. Once the contracts up i'll leave.

Never had an issue with the service though, so there is that (wfh also).
I had the same experience, locked in for 2 years or whatever for 900mb because it was £1 extra than for the 500 I had. Seemed a no brainer at the time until they put their daft price increases on every year and ended up paying £57 a month for it. It’s up in January, Their renewal “deal” is to lock in at the same price for another 2 years or have 1gb from EE for £1 more.
Needless to say they can get stuffed when I can get the same thing elsewhere for half the price.

andygo

7,098 posts

268 months

Saturday 14th December 2024
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My BT contract was £49 and due to increase.

When I looked into it carefully I realised it included HALO. I binned off the HALO part of the deal and its now down to £34pm. I always thought the HALO nonsense was embedded into the deal whereas in fact it's it's not.

I'm annoyed as AFAIK I was never given the option to have my 500mb FTTP without HALO. Every time it came to contrct renewal I asked if their was a cheaper option. I was never offered deleting HALO as an option.

Of course they withdrew the cloud storage along the way this year, plus removed the ability to have an analogue phone line, meaning if I wanted a landline I would need a digital handset. Bloody thieves.

Edited by andygo on Saturday 14th December 20:48

bmwmike

7,696 posts

121 months

Saturday 14th December 2024
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What is halo anyway?

x5tuu

12,320 posts

200 months

Sunday 15th December 2024
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bmwmike said:
What is halo anyway?
BTs version of a mesh network IIRC

x5tuu

12,320 posts

200 months

Sunday 15th December 2024
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I was tied to BT for the first couple of years on a new estate and have swapped to TalkTalk and Sky since and I’ve never needed a visit - just plug the new equipment into the ONT and away it goes (again)

My setup my be a little atypical though as I put the provided router into cable access only mode and that’s connected to my eero network which provides the wifi to the property.