Good Morning everyone
You may be pleased to know that the green cabinet at the bottom of Robin’s Lane went into commissioning last Friday and came on line last evening. We got into the roll-out program at the very end, only because you expressed your interest (76%) and we made a lot of noise. Well done!
You now have access to Superfast Fibre Broadband, but before you all go mad and rush to sign up, a couple of things to consider.
If you are happy with your existing service, you don’t have to do anything. Your existing Broadband service will continue. However, some of our villagers are achieving less that 2Mbits/sec, and if you want to ‘Stream’ movies or other bandwidth-intensive content, you’ll really need in excess of 4Mbits/sec. Upgrading to Superfast is your best option (but it does cost more).
The broadband service is provided by a number of ISPs (Internet Service Providers). They have nothing to do with the infrastructure – they just lease the line and equipment from BT and sell it to you at a discount. If there’s an infrastructure issue, your ISP will merely refer your complaint back to BT. The line and ancillary equipment is all BT’s, so no one ISP will have a better technical service than another. A bit like your electricity supplier.
The reason you would choose one ISP over another is how responsive they are, how much they charge, what content they can offer, and where they are located. Overseas call centres are not so good.
At the moment, BT (call centre in Mumbai) is the only ISP who is offering Superfast Broadband in Lolworth. I guess this is because they want to tell their own sales department that the infrastructure is complete first. I presume that the other ISPs will learn that the Craft’s Hill exchange is live in due course and they will then approach you with their own offers. So, BT is the only game in town at the moment, or you can wait for other ISPs to catch up. Have a look at the other ISP web sites to see how they compare to BT. Most of them offer package deals, with the line, internet, free calls and channel content included. Work out which is best for you.
If you want to stay with your existing ISP, you’ll have to wait until they offer the Superfast service. Might be worth calling them to see when that might be. Here are some ISPs to consider:
Talktalk, Plusnet, BT, Zen, Fuel, EE (used to be Orange).
I have no particular recommendations, but I’ve had good experiences with Plusnet and Talktalk.
Just beware of Sky. They are earning an unenviable reputation of making it extremely difficult to cancel your contract once they’ve got you. The press has been full of stories about them this week.
If you have any queries, I’d be happy to help.
Derek Hill
Broadband Champion Lolworth
20 August 2015