This is a question tah often crops up on Facebook or WhatsApp.
Which is the best Mobile Phone / internet Provider?
I can describe my experience with both Internet and Mobile Phone
My conclusion is Hyperoptic for Internet, and BT for mobile phone.
Internet
When I first moved in to Odell House, in June 2020, I chose Zen as my supplier, the deciding factor being that in many reviews Zen were said to have excellent customer service.
But, it wasn't long before there was a problem, and I was left entirely without any broadband. The customer service was not excellent. Various phone calls and chasing up brought little response, and no internet for days. Eventually an engineer turned up. I think he must have been part of the deskilling programme. Luckily I was able to explain what all the bots were and what the different coloured lights meant. He muttered about junction boxes and went off to another floor. But did not provide a cure.
A while after two more engineers came and misled each other as to what the problem might have been. I think these were BT engineers. Zen buys bandwidth from BT and sells it on. This is not a good arrrangement. After weeks a message got back to me that the problem lay in some sort of controlling unit/junction box at the other end of the estate, and that much work would be needed to fix it.
So I asked for, and got, my money back and switched to Hyperoptic.
I believe that Hyperoptic installed fibre broadband when the buildings were put up. This means that if something goes wrong Hyperoptic fix it. This is a much better arrangement than relying on BT.
Since then I can recall twice that Hyperoptic has failed. Once in the day it took a couple of hours to fix, and the second time I was happy to go to bed, and all was well again in the morning.
Mobile Phone
There are a lot of complaints about mobile phone reception being poor on the estate, but I've not experienced that. It is true that I cannot maintain a conversation whilst travelling in the lift. But apart from that my BT family sim serves us well. And every time I suggest to them that I might leave they offer either more data or a cheaper tariff.
Replies
This is a great discussion post!
Hyperoptic
I've stuck with Hyperoptic ever since I moved in in August 2018. In Kingly Building, we too have BT Openreach and Hyperoptic already installed.
My understanding of their business model is that they were the first to offer full Fibre To The Premise, which was different to what other providers were doing which was hooking you up to the box on the street. So anything that offers "full fibre" would have a reliable connection.
As I'm currently with Hyperoptic, I've unplugged the BT box - saved about 0.5kWh a day.
Hyperoptic occassionally does a few flash sales and, I think within their T&Cs, you can upgrade to a better deal (even if it's cheaper) without being penalised? I did so a few months back. I managed to switch from 150 mbps (£22 PCM) to their 1 gbps (£20 PCM), despite having earlier signed on for another 12 months. The new contract that I signed up for was for 24 months, so I'm quite pleased. To think that I started from 50 mbps at only £25 PCM!
Their customer service has been quite good, but sadly when I'd upgraded my router to their new
On a different note, the FT wrote an article about "altnet" providers like Hyperoptic and whether in the current market they can weather through the storm. What should be diminishing marginal cost of laying another km of cable is now being pushed upwards by increased raw material and logistical csots. Hyperoptic is still in the high-growth phase, so time will tell.
Mobile phone provider
I've stuck with Giffgaff ever since it started. The inertia is too great to switch.