r/oxford • u/PuzzleheadedAmoeba77 • 2d ago
Best internet provider in Folly bridge?
I'm about to move to the Folly Bridge area (OX1) and looking for internet provider recommendations.
My last place had Virgin Media but they don't offer full fibre speeds in the city centre. It seems no one offers fiber in the city center??
I work from home and do a lot of video calls, so I need at least 70 Mbps
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u/Lethbridge_Stewart 2d ago
As others have said, if you can get FTTP, then get FTTP. Since that doesn't seem to be an option (it's worth registering an interest as this does inform their priorities), then you're stuck with FTTC. As a plus, St Ebbe's and Folly Bridge are very close to the main exchange, so service should be reasonably solid and you'll likely get genuinely close to the max speeds shown, provided there are no weird internal issues with your copper wiring.
From what you've listed, I'm guessing it's all just Openreach FTTC. At this point, there's very little to separate the providers on downstream throughput alone and most of them cost within a few £/month of each other. Customer service and wi-fi are the checkpoints.
- On a CS front, steer clear of EE - they don't give a shit. (From third party reports I'd say the same about any of the mobile providers and Sky, though I've not used them myself.). Zen have been pretty good on this front and still make it easier to reach a human. BT are slow but they are at least consistent and don't tend to occasionally forget you even contacted them. Because it's FTTC you can shop around a lot, though. Almost any ISP can provide services over Openreach FTTC. I'm sure you can get more than just those 4 you mention.
- Working from home covers a lot of use cases. I work in IT and I've been more than happy with 55mbps, which covers video calls and the few downloads I needed to do. If you do lots of big downloads or stream lots of video in parallel then perhaps this won't be enough, but it's more than enough to use remote desktop on a machine in the office (if that's a supported thing)
- Is it a big place? How much time and skill can you spare to install your own wi-fi? If not much, the quality of the access point/router may be more of a factor here than the connection speed. BT and Zen both provide decentish routers. Get something that provides wifi 6E or 7 (specifically with 6GHz if you can, even if it's a premium. The spectrum there is much wider and clearer right now. This will matter a lot if you're in a block of flats and will likely be the biggest factor in your overall experience)
- How reliable do you need the connection to be? Consider a second, backup option, either 5G with a decent antenna or Starlink. These will have lower throughput and higher latency, but if you can't afford the connection to fail, you might need them. Maybe your work can cover some of this cost if so?
The other possible option is Virgin cable. No idea if they cover the area, but they do have really good speeds for decent money. Their CS does sucks, but their connection IME is really stable so you rarely need to talk to them.
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u/Lethbridge_Stewart 2d ago
Addendum: If it is Openreach in your area, then any of the providers listed here: https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/fttc-providers#accordion-e41d704d3f-item-c0ed7d2e3b should be able to serve you. As a rule of thumb, I tend to point people at dedicated ISPs such as Zen and Plusnet rather than the more recognisable brands that do it as an offshoot of their phone and TV offerings.
AAISP are the gold standard for geeks - but they do charge a premium and tend to have usage caps, so likely only worth considering if you have specific needs like fixed IPs and totally unfiltered connectivity.
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u/PuzzleheadedAmoeba77 2d ago
Thank you so much this is very helpful (and technical)
You are right, the use cases are broad i will only use it for video calls / file uploads/downloads but might have two people on video calls at the same time, I probably am overestimating my needs?
ts a 2 bedrooms flat. Might be worth building my own network but will have to do some research
Vodafone +Pro has a backup 4G option to guarantee wifi, is this useful or just for marketing ? Otherwise i think im going with Zen it seems the best value for money. Thanks!
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u/Lethbridge_Stewart 2d ago
A typical video call uses about 6-8mbps, so any FTTC option should easily cover 2 or 3 in parallel so long as you're not also watching netflix and downloading a video game at the same time. (You are at work, right? 😃). You might have to be careful with large downloads while on calls, but usually it's fine.
4G backup can be useful, certainly. It'll maintain a connection in the generally unlikely even that your main one goes down (and it's easy to run since they do all the failover stuff inside the router). How good it is very much depends on your signal, which is not good on the whole in the centre, but can also be highly sensitive to your specific location. If they provide a separate antenna that you can mount separately form your main router, it'll help you find a solid connection. With 4G I tend to tell people not to _expect_ more than 10-20mbps. It can be a a lot more. Video calls will be passable with that but 4G is more jittery (wider variations in latency) so the quality won't be as good - but hey it's a backup...
2-bed flat should be fine with a single router for wi-fi, so long as you can position it reasonably centrally and your party walls aren't foot-thick concrete 😃 - Biggest issue with wifi in flats is contention with other tenants. They all have to share the same channels to an extent and no ISP will be better than any other here (there's no magic solution to this problem, whatever the marketing says, but 6GHz if it's provided should be considered a major plus point)
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u/Zr0w3n00 2d ago
I’m sure you’ll find something, but I’ll temper your expectations by saying Oxford city centre is hard to cover from a provider’s POV, old expensive stuff you have to pull up; Nowhere easy to put infrastructure like boxes, and with the council introducing charges for companies that do roadworks, it’s not likely to speed up.
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u/PuzzleheadedAmoeba77 2d ago
I am trying to find solutions as i work from home and i need the speed What do professionals or people who dont have eduroam access do?
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u/anudeglory 2d ago
I have FTTP in OX1 and am with Sky.
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u/PuzzleheadedAmoeba77 2d ago
Is it good ?
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u/anudeglory 2d ago
from speedtest.net
Download Mbps 151.02
Upload Mbps 28.55
Not had any issues...
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u/adamjzed 2d ago
I live in OX1 and also can’t get fibre to our door so max out at 70 as well. The good news is they’re scoping out fibre at the minute to be installed in the next several months (hopefully). Depending on where exactly you live, your specific timeline may vary but generally they’re deprecating copper lines.
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u/FlakeyBeano 1d ago
There's no proper fttp in that area. You can still get g.fast from a niche provider
https://www.cerberusnetworks.co.uk/connectivity/broadband/sogfast
Ymmv
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u/badb0y_bubby 2d ago
Trust me you'll want "You Fiber" over 500 megabytes a second download speed and the same for upload speed....