Seeking Best Alternative to Gigaclear

Sat 1 Jun, 20:16

Even if you had a copper line in the past with FTTC at your house with say BT you can still switch back they just have to re-enable it ( the copper line an socket should still be there). Though to be clear this will just be for broadband and not a POTS telephone service you have to have digital voice for that (VOIP).

Gigaclear's FTTP bandwidth and latency have been quite good in my experience, but it will never have as much up time as FTTC and copper. To limit my down time while builders and roadworks accidental cut the fibre cable ( which is inevitable ), I use a capable router that can fail-over to a LTE USB modem (with a O2 £50 yearly data only sim) and provide connectivity.

The other thing to consider is the issue with your connectivity, is it may not be the broadband but the equipment :-

1 The router hardware. Most stock routers provided by ISP are based on a budget and less capable hardware.

2 Rubbish network cables if you use them. Use Cat6 and above if you can.

3 Router misconfiguration.

4 Wifi clashing with nearby routers. You can analyse the wifi channels with apps on a wifi enabled phone and see how they clash with other peoples routers.

5 Devices connecting to the router with 2.4 Ghz bands and instead of 5Ghz bands/channels

Sat 1 Jun, 18:17

I'm loathe to intrude as I simply don't have the technical knowledge.  However (!), we've always been with BT and have had excellent service.  Mind you we are near the junction box.  The broadband went on and off a few times last week, and all I had to do was text FAULT to BT.  They sent an engineer round the next day.  All fine now PLUS they have given us compensation.

Sat 1 Jun, 14:13

I'm not sure what your options are now. Your GigaClear connection is presumably FTTP (Fibre to the premises) for ultrafast broadband. They are the only game in town for now for that service. There are plenty of other options for the plain fast broadband but these are FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) and use the old copper wires to your house. I'm afraid I haven't a clue if a house can be 'retrofitted' to the old copper and what that might involve.

Sat 1 Jun, 10:47

All the other ones use the same network i.e. BT Openreach. It's rare things go wrong but it happens, and it is my experience that BT broadband customers get priority for repair with the Openreach engineers. 

Sat 1 Jun, 10:24

Although from this thread it looks like I'm lucky to have gigaclear to my house - they now tell me the cost is going from £36 a month to £51 for a fairly unreliable service. 

Can anyone recommend a better broadband service in the area that is more reasonable please?