Decisions on broadband

So a few years ago, on here, someone gave me a fantastic tip - to try Starlink for internet. There was no full fibre available and general broadband was only about 5mbps and kept cutting out regularly.

We've been using Starlink for at least two years now and it's great. Good speeds, never goes off (maybe 10 mins in the middle of the night sometimes), no issues whatsoever. But it's very expensive.

FTTP has now been run in by one private company who are offering it to us. The prices are massively discounted for the first two years but then they go up about 35%. Different price category depending on the speeds you want. So 300mbs would do us - it's about what we have now. But it says "up to" 300mbps and from what I've read, people often end up getting much lower speeds than advertised, and "up to" could mean anything. Plus bandwidth issues and things breaking down etc. So really it would need to be a 500mbps plan to ensure at least 300mbps. With that, after two years when the discount is gone, it's still cheaper than the Starlink, but only about £10 a month cheaper. Plus it's a tie into a 2 year contract. Reading the FAQ's, if you move (which is a possibility) and that company doesn't provide in your new area, you still have to pay until the contract runs out. Plus get alternative broadband from someone else!

On the other hand FTTP connected is a good selling point perhaps but not the greatest consideration.

There are no other companies offering fibre - just this one private company - reviews say their customer service is terrible.

So probably just best to stick to the Starlink? What do you think? I don't really want to go back to the days of no internet, having to phone people up to fix it etc. On the other hand for two years, it's half the price of what we're paying for Starlink.

Hazel123 said:

FTTP has now been run in by one private company who are offering it to us. The prices are massively discounted for the first two years but then they go up about 35%.

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Yeah, Fiber in my area is slightly more expensive than my cable provided broadband options. Unfortunately, I don't have fiber yet to my address, so I don't have the ability to switch over, but I will when it becomes an option.

At present, my home internet is via WOW, and I have 600/50 service with my own equipment for $55.00 a month. Most of our residential fiber option in this area (Metro Detroit, Michigan), runs around $75-90 a month. But I would get 1,000 down and 1,000 up. I would love to have my upload as I do utilize things like OneDrive and it would be nice to get things into my cloud account a whole lot faster. Everybody i know with fiber raves about their service and the stability. They claim it practically never goes down.

Hazel123 said:

Different price category depending on the speeds you want. So 300mbs would do us - it's about what we have now. But it says "up to" 300mbps and from what I've read, people often end up getting much lower speeds than advertised, and "up to" could mean anything.

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That's unfortunate that you don't get consistency on the connection. My home internet is 600/50 and no matter when I test, I'm almost always around 585/55. So, I get what I pay for. Mine too says "up to", but it's consistently what I have always gotten. My network tests everyday, and it's almost always right where it's supposed to be, with the exception of situations where I am saturating my uploads, which means downloads suffer since I cannot let the sending server know that I got the last set of packets and to send more.

Hazel123 said:

There are no other companies offering fibre - just this one private company - reviews say their customer service is terrible.

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Having terrible customer service for me would be awful. I work from home, have a kid that does school from home. My kid and I are both gamers. And we stream 100% of our TV. So, internet is vital to my household.

Hazel123 said:

So probably just best to stick to the Starlink? What do you think? I don't really want to go back to the days of no internet, having to phone people up to fix it etc. On the other hand for two years, it's half the price of what we're paying for Starlink.

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if it were a bit name fiber provider, I wouldn't worry about it. But sounds like you have lots of concerns and would likely have lots of regrets if you had a bad experience. So, if Starlink is working well for you, and you have enough speeds, I'd just pay the bill for it.

Thanks. I guess we could wait a few months and find out how others in the area are finding it. Now it's been run into the area, others will be taking it up. I think we're the only ones with Starlink. And no it's not a big name company.

Actually what speeds do you actually need? We struggled along with 5mps for years! Surfing the net was ok, TV streaming was sometimes ok but not always. It wouldn't support the ring doorbells as well though! There is a gamer in the house hence needing faster speeds. Currently get about 200mbs on average and everyone is happy. So maybe 300 is more than we need anyway? They have four plans - 150mbps, 300, 500 or 1000.

Main things needed are for streaming and gaming and various smart devices.

Shame they won't do a "trial" because I think I've ascertained that we could cancel starlink and then start it up again if needed.

I was just informed today that I could upgrade from 1000/40 to 1000/400. The catch is, they want AU$200 a month. I don’t think so.
But there are times where I have to upload video edits, so it could come in handy as I can change my plan back and forth on the fly.

I have been told by friends living remotely that Starlink is good for them on the farms. But I also recall them saying, it’s all in the setup and the installation of the dish/hardware. There are some shonky installers out there. You get what you pay for.

I think I recall @kelper talking about Starlink?

Hazel123 said:

They have four plans - 150mbps, 300, 500 or 1000

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If you have been putting up with 5Mbps, and you want to budget, take the 150Mbps. You’ll notice the difference and also the savings as compared to 1000Mbps.

But I do like my 1000Mbps

Sorry - to be clear we had no option but 5mbps! Until we got starlink and now have about 200 to 260. Which seems to be fine. I'm kind of in the "if it aint broke don't fix it" frame of mind - but money is a consideration too. It's £75 a month for Starlink, which is a lot. Yes we bought the dish and a bracket and got a satellite fitter to set it up. It's all been great. At one time 150mpps would have sounded a lot! Local standard broadband used to be up to about 60mbps.

Ok so to help me out here. What difference do you notice with 1000 compared to say, 260? What exactly do people need and what difference does it make? I mean is faster faster than fast?

Hazel123 said:

What difference do you notice with 1000 compared to say, 260

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OMG yes. If your line can achieve it. Even if you only get 800 out of the 1000, yes you’ll notice, especially with downloading stuff.

But your connection is only as fast as the server (websites/downloads) you’re connecting to, allows.

It was this thread and exactly two years ago It was @hsehestedt who suggested Starlink and saved us from hassle and misery lol!

antspants said:

OMG yes. If your line can achieve it. Even if you only get 800 out of the 1000, yes you’ll notice, especially with downloading stuff.

But your connection is only as fast as the server (websites/downloads) you’re connecting to, allows.

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Ok so I need to work out - what do we need and what would do the job comfortably. I'm guessing as long as it's what we have now it would be ok. Would love to try 1000 and just see what difference it makes, but what we have now is absolutely luxury compared to what we had before!

Hazel123 said:

Ok so I need to work out - what do we need and what would do the job comfortably. I'm guessing as long as it's what we have now it would be ok. Would love to try 1000 and just see what difference it makes, but what we have now is absolutely luxury compared to what we had before!

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You could just make the jump to 500? Really it’s mostly the downloads you’ll notice. Like I mentioned, it’s all about the server.
Even with 1000/40, some web pages are slow to load, as are some downloads also, because of the server I am retrieving from.

But if Starlink is anything like my ISP. They charge AU$119 for 500/40 but only charge an extra AU$10 for 1000/40.
Sometimes I wonder about these immoral companies and their options.

So dropping down to half the speed is only saving me AU$10

Also, VOIP for me is an extra $20 a month, so I can call overseas, which I do a lot. We don’t have copper lines for telephones here anymore. So with a power outage, no landline.
Although I do have a generator.

Hazel123 said:

Actually what speeds do you actually need? We struggled along with 5mps for years! Surfing the net was ok, TV streaming was sometimes ok but not always. It wouldn't support the ring doorbells as well though! There is a gamer in the house hence needing faster speeds. Currently get about 200mbs on average and everyone is happy. So maybe 300 is more than we need anyway? They have four plans - 150mbps, 300, 500 or 1000.

Main things needed are for streaming and gaming and various smart devices.

Shame they won't do a "trial" because I think I've ascertained that we could cancel starlink and then start it up again if needed.

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i have fibre to the house which started at 150mbs which for the needs of our two computers was ample
but my son came home with his gaming computer and wanted more so we upgraded to 1GB which he pays half.
for 1GB the monthly cost is £39. we moved from copper phone line ADSL 65mbs the max we could achieve was 45mbs.

i have no problem at all with the connection so i haven't needed any customer service. when i connected them for the upgraded speed they done that there and then on line after agreeing the extra payment. just giving you my thoughts on this.

i cant comment on starlink as i have never used it.
best of luck, Steve ..

Thanks. Interesting. Yes they are quoting £39 a month for 1 gb but that goes up by another 35% after two years. Which makes it cost almost as much as Starlink (which isn't 1gb but does for our needs at 260mbps ish).

And like Ghot says, it's not much cheaper for 500 or 300 - about £34 for 500 and £30 for 300. I think 150 is only £22 though (all of those prices are minus 35% for the first two years though).

Just checked current Starlink speeds. 268 download, 26mbps upload and 29ms latency. The Fibre company offering FTTP doesn't mention upload speeds.

26Mbps is ok unless you are in the business of uploading a lot of files. Compared to your 5Mbps connection in the past, you probably would of been lucky to get a 2Mbps upload.

Hazel123 said:

The Fibre company offering FTTP doesn't mention upload speeds.

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Did you mention which company? Do you have a link?

I use Starlink in the north of Scotland. I get about 150/20 but it's very variable. I think they control the speed according to your activity.
The dish is mounted on a pole in my garden so I did not need an installer.

antspants said:

Did you mention which company? Do you have a link?

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I was incorrect, it did state the upload speeds. About the same as we have with Starlink. 30 to 35. It's GoFibre. A company from Scotland. They're just doing rural areas in the north. Which is great really - shame there isn't a choice of provider though.

kelper said:

I use Starlink in the north of Scotland. I get about 150/20 but it's very variable. I think they control the speed according to your activity.
The dish is mounted on a pole in my garden so I did not need an installer.

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I forgot you had it as well I don't know what restricts the speeds. Maybe others have it in your area? I think we're the only ones round here that have it.

You mentioned that your kid is a gamer. Your biggest advantage to that fiber over satellite is going to be latency. It would be greatly reduced on the fiber connection which would have a very positive increase on gaming.

For me, as far as downloads go, I'm totally happy on 600mbps. My cable company offers a couple of faster plans, 1,000 and 1,2000 but I cannot justify the extra cost for the extra download speed. I mean, yes a large video game download might finish a handful of minutes faster, but it's not like I am downloading new games every day. For streaming TV, nothing is coming close to needing that much bandwidth. A 4k stream from netflix consumes about 15mbps. So, having 100+Mbps means you could be streaming 6 x 4k shows and still not be fully saturated.

I've been on 500 for about 5 years now, with 0 complaints. But when I can move to fiber and get the same upload as download, is when I plan to switch.