rant blog

The best broadband deals are the ones not yet available in your area

Community fibre are rolling out giant-killing offers
Had to sort out the internet at the rental flat a few weeks ago...
A new tenant arrived who needed fast broadband and we discovered that not only was it not fast but it was so slow as to be barely usable...(I'll insert screenshots of the super slow speeds later). TalkTalk said they'd send an engineer but had in fact already sent one who reported he'd fixed it (he hadn't). Rather than mess around trying to resolve this I looked online and found that Community Fibre was available and were promising 150mbps download and upload speed. Given that this was for around the same price as TalkTalk which even if working only offered speeds in the tens, I signed up on the spot.

The installation date was only a couple of days so I rang TalkTalk to cancel the contract which still had a few months to go...I got through to the usual 'retention dept' who claimed the reason for the slow speed was that we were on an 'old' package - Fast Broadband, no less - and that we needed to sign up to a newer fibre package yadda yadda yadda...you know the drill. After an interminable conversation in which they tried to get us to stay, told us there was no way that Community Broadband could install broadband before 8th August, which was the next date they could get an engineer to fix/install fibre - and during which I struggled to control my temper at the enormous waste of time and attempted gaslighting - we came to an understanding that we would indeed be leaving and paying £57 for the privilege of doing so.

Anyway I was so impressed with Community Fibre actual speed that I am going to ditch Virgin...when CF get around to making it available in my area.

UPDATE: Community Fibre in parts of London went down 4th January 2022 and was not fixed for THREE DAYS. CF halved the bill for next month as compo.As a side note, the tenant who works from home and requires a good connection hotspotted from a Vodaphone and hot speeds of 30mbps download and 20mbps upload speed (upload better than my home broadband).

My Virgin home broadband went down randomly on Wednesday 12th January at 11am. This meant my home phone was also offline since it is routed thru the interwebs (foolish decision).

When I checked online Virgin claimed this was 'planned maintenance' but if it was 'planned why didn't they tell me in advance? It was back up at 5.30pm. when I asked about compo got a vague 'reaasurance' that if I was due compensation it would be applied automatically. I pay between £50-60 ($68-82 exchange at time of writing) a month for speeds of 75-120mbps and a home phone rental. The Virgin engineers outside told me that the work they were doing meant my speeds would increase up to a Gigabyte but since I am on an old package which has since gone off contract I doubt I'll be actually seeing much of an increase. I'd still be better off with the CF package of £39/month for Gb speed (see above).

return to blog index

main page