I’ve been a customer of BT and Virgin Media and I always rated Virgin Media as being the best, even though they are flawed in may respects. My package with Virgin Media was for broadband only and cost £55.25 a month. For that you get around 300mbps download and around 15mbps upload. Last week Virgin Media sent me a letter stating that my monthly charge would be rising by £7 a month to £62.25 a month. The service has been intermittent with constant dropouts and buffering at critical times, like in the middle of a movie, but what’s the alternative?
Well, this year, I wasn’t particularly concerned by the Virgin Media price rise, because last year, I signed up to switch to Grain full fibre. The Grain infrastructure actually took over six months to install in my area, but it was well worth the wait. I threw Virgin Media’s letter in the bin and gave them thirty days notice. They did try to get me to stay, but as Grain were promising 900mbps at £29.99 a month, Virgin Media had no chance, they did try hard though by offering a £3 a month discount.
I’ve been told that Grain is “dedicated” full fibre broadband, which, I think, means no contention issues as per BT and Virgin, that is, you actually get what you pay for. The install took place on the 8th February 2023, taking a couple of hours in total. No fuss, or mess. I hard wired my PC and telly box, and I measured over 900mbps download and over 900mbps upload speeds. Quite breathtaking to be honest. The Wi Fi was a bit slow when compared to Virgin Media, so I made a phone call to Grain. They have an extremely efficient customer service team based in UK. I was told to follow the instructions for my “booster box”. “What instructions?” I asked. “I’ll send a link to your email now”, was the reply, and, about two minutes later, the link landed in my inbox. The “booster” I was told “amplifies” the Wi Fi signal. The “booster” is actually an Icotera i4850 Residential Wi-Fi 5 Ethernet Router, and setting it up according to the instructions provided did significantly boost the Wi Fi signal, but, please don’t expect speeds of 900mbps on your Wi Fi devices. Any device is limited when it comes to Wi Fi, older devices especially so.
I’ve had the Grain Gigafast Total Home installed since 8th February 2023 and that’s about two weeks at the time of writing. So far, so good. I was actually so impressed, that I provided a glowing review on Trustpilot, and I don’t do that very often, in fact, that’s the first time I’ve provided a positive review for any business. One problem you may find is that Grain may not be available in your area, I don’t think they cover the whole of UK, but they appear to be rolling out their infrastructure to new areas all the time. My offer to take up the service was £29.99 a month for the first twelve months and then onto the standard price which is currently £49.99 a month. Grain have a promise to match any increase to prices being offered to new customers, which is good, because while I was paying £55.25 for my broadband with Virgin Media, new customers could get the same service for £29.99 a month, which is poor customer relations to be honest.
So, to conclude, I’m very happy with the Grain Gigafast Total Home and I would recommend it to anyone, thanks for reading this article.