For the last twenty-plus years, we were contracted to either Sky or Virgin media, who provided our telephone, Internet and TV services.
First to go was the telephone due to the number of spam and scam calls we were getting to our landline. This was with a call blocker and being registered with telephone preference service (TPS), we complained to Virgin media who said they couldn’t do anything; they suggested the calls weren’t originating in the UK, so they were powerless as was the TPS.
During the Corona-Virus lockdowns we lost our internet connection a number of times, at one point for a couple of weeks, reported these failures to Virgin media, nothing was ever done, the internet etc. came back on its own, though Virgin claim they did nothing. There was no compensation for lost services. When we held back payout due to lack of services, they cut off our services till we paid in full for something we never had, shocking business practice! Yes, we did report them to OFCOM. Though they are not interested in singular complaints, they are looking for large numbers of complaints for the same issue. We don’t really think OFCOM is fit for purpose.
Next to go was the packaged Television services, yes you get hundreds of channels, though the majority, I would say, were just padding to make up the numbers. There were only a few channels we found we were watching.
Before finally making the decision to cancel the packed TV services, we purchased a mixture of 4K FireSticks and 4K Roku devices. We already had Amazon prime and Netflix, so trialed the streaming devices for a couple months, then we cancelled the packaged TV services, which saved quite a bit, we won’t go into exact figures though we saved in excess of £50 per month.
Once the TV and telephone services were cancelled, we only had the internet left, which was 100 Mbps, till Virgin merged with O2. Having an O2 mobile meant we had 200 Mbps internet service.
The final straw with Virgin was when we experienced the following Internet connection on an almost daily basis:
We complained to Virgin, though they said there was no fault. We suggested that our local area might be oversubscribed, and they confirmed that they had upgraded the overall capacity about a year previously. Of course we had to give 30 day’s notice, for an almost useless Internet connection, we couldn’t reliably stream anything.
We looked at our options. One definite wish was not to be tied into any contract longer than 30 days. We also wanted to get a more reliable connection to the internet. ASUS manufactured our main router and has a dual WAN facility, the ability to have 2 connections to the internet, automatically switching over to the other should one connection fail.
During, our 30 day notice period, Ian decided that we would trial a 4G internet connection, so purchased a 4G router from Amazon – HUAWEI B535-333, 4G+ 400Mbps LTE CAT 7 Mobile WiFi wireless Router ←(paid link)
We invested some time in looking at 4G coverage maps of where we live. We can get a reasonable connection from most mobile networks. Ian chose 2 networks to try VOXI and SMARTY, so ordered free sims from both. VOXI is on the Vodafone network and SMARTY is on the 3 network, both offering 30 day contracts.
Continued in part 2 – Really joining the Cord Cutters & Busters