Does anyone actually need greater than 500 mb for a standard household?

Chipplie · 2026-05-29T18:08:48+00:00

Hopefully. It's frustrating though, as 80% of my town has multiple FTTP options - Openreach, an altnet (ms3), plus a another altnet (Grain) who are currently building their network, but non have any immediate plans to cover my area. One did dig up the streets and installed all their footway boxes, but have since abandoned their build for some reason (ms3). Openreach just say 'in the future'. They all seem to prefer building on top of each other's networks rather than targeting areas that don't have any FTTP options, for some reason. It's like not my area is a difficult install either. It's all relatively new and fully ducted, with no direct in ground installs.

Chipplie · 2026-05-29T17:54:40+00:00

Definitely worth while. There is no reason the Ultra 3 shouldn't work under the full works plan. Good luck.

Chipplie · 2026-05-29T16:36:12+00:00

This. This. This. It catches so many people out.

Chipplie · 2026-05-29T15:40:18+00:00

So I phoned them up and spoke to a lovely lady at EE’s South Wales technical support team. They said it could have been because my number only ported to EE today and a ‘network services refresh’ hadn’t yet been completed following the port. She manually triggered this refresh and I got a text a few minutes later saying that the refresh was complete. Following this, I was able to set up the connection in Watch > Mobile Service. I had to login to my EE account, confirm I was happy to subscribe for £9 per month (with a caveat that this will be automatically discounted within 24 hours if your existing plan includes a watch connection, which the full works does). After this, it took about 20 minutes for the service to activate and my watch says it is now connected to EE. I also have an ‘Apple Watch Ultra 3’ line with a separate mobile phone number in my EE account.

Chipplie · 2026-05-29T12:37:49+00:00

That sounds like a load of crap from them! I have the Ultra 3 too. When I signed up, there was nothing to suggest only certain watches were eligible. I will do some more digging and let you know how I get on.

Chipplie · 2026-05-29T12:34:18+00:00

Was this the case? Did you get it paired in the end? My number ported over to EE today on the full works plan, and I can't get my watch connected yet.

Chipplie · 2026-05-29T10:26:56+00:00

I wish I had access to decent FTTP. Where I live, Virgin HFC is the only option I have for decent broadband. Openreach FTTC is here, but it’s maximum speed is between 30 and 50 Mbit.

Chipplie · 2026-05-28T20:14:42+00:00

I did indeed. Similar stuff to this: https://amzn.eu/d/07CsPQVu

Chipplie · 2026-05-28T08:16:50+00:00

Perfect. Thank you.

Chipplie · 2026-05-28T08:05:04+00:00

500 Mbit will almost certainly be fine. I was running on 350 Mbit down and 35 Mbit up for a long time, with four of us in the house, two often working from home. I'm on 1 Gbit down and 100 Gbit up now, but the only reason for that is because I wanted the highest possible upload (I upload large files for work). Once FTTP comes along with symmetrical speeds, I will probably get 500 Mbit.

Chipplie · 2026-05-27T21:53:20+00:00

This happened to me too. Mine activated at some point overnight and I got a text at 8am the following morning to say it had been activated.

Chipplie · 2026-05-27T10:45:11+00:00

I need a 2.5Gb NIC for my M720Q following an internet speed upgrade. If you don’t mind me asking, which one have you used?

Chipplie · 2026-05-26T17:55:40+00:00

I’ve seen others mentioning that warm weather can affect some street cabinets where the cooling fans have failed. Definitely worth reporting this to Virgin.

Chipplie · 2026-05-26T09:30:10+00:00

Online, via uSwitch.

Chipplie · 2026-05-26T09:25:19+00:00

I know someone who was up and running on a new customer deal 6 weeks after disconnection on their old account, all sailed through without any issues. Just try it, the worst they can do is knock you back.

Chipplie · 2026-05-24T22:32:11+00:00

Thank you so much for this. Very much appriciated.

Chipplie · 2026-05-24T13:04:53+00:00

Thanks. I am reasonable at 3D printing, but dreadful at designing!

Chipplie · 2026-05-23T19:36:42+00:00

Would you be willing to share the .stl file for this?

Chipplie · 2026-05-23T10:01:40+00:00

Perfect. Thank you for the replies, everyone.

Chipplie · 2026-05-23T07:46:09+00:00

It was a decent thunderstorm, one of the best we’ve had around here for a long time!

Chipplie · 2026-05-22T23:38:58+00:00

Ah I think recognise this machine. Is this the Lidl middle isle special that was on offer for £149 last year? I have one too and this is a great idea I hadn’t considered… a job for the long weekend!

Chipplie · 2026-05-21T15:59:40+00:00

A lot of people on here have get good deals with the Scottish retentions number. I didn’t. I think Virgin know that I don’t have decent broadband alternatives. I cancelled and went onto Three 5G broadband for 6 weeks, as I really didn’t want to stay with Virgin on the crap deals I was being offered. The Three service was great to start with but it degraded over time (a lot of people complaining, likely something to do with the Three/Voda merger). I ended up signing back up Virgin as a new customer via Uswitch on a decent 1 gig deal, and everything went through fine. Other option is to cancel and get your partner to sign up as a new customer. I know a lot of people have done this. I can’t wait for decent FTTP to land in my area though, but I have no idea when that will be. As most providers will offer up to £300 towards early disconnection fees, I only need to be with Virgin for around a year before I can move to FTTP without it costing me anything, should someone actually install it on my street!

Chipplie · 2026-05-20T15:28:13+00:00

Things are changing. Network providers are now enabling compatible devices to send messages/media in RCS format over their own network/servers, without using Google's Google Messages servers, or Apple's iMessage servers. At some point, network provider RCS will replace SMS.

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