Broadband ISP in the UK
 

Two questions really.

Firstly, am I the only one having problems with PlusNet? My connection drops several times a day but they say they can't see anything wrong. But it happens with two computers, two modems, and two splitters. On one occasion I got a page on my browser from BT advising me to contact my ISP as they couldn't get a connection.

Secondly, can anyone recommend a reliable, helpful, and economical replacement? I don't need high speeds or bandwidth — I use less than 5 GB a month for shopping and places like this.

I use EE - I've been with them for about five years and the connection is highly stable. I think it's only gone down once or twice in that time.

We pay £28 a month for unlimited broadband - which includes the phone line which we don't use. The phone line has to be there since the property isn't cabled.

Plusnet are a BT company and as with any ISP which uses a copper phone line for ADSL, they use the same BT/Openreach infrastructure. From experience, much of these kinds of problems can be with any part of that rather than with the ISP. Over the years I've had issues with lines, junction boxes, an overloaded exchange, etc. Before you get an engineer out, you have to be very sure the fault is not within your property (including phone cabling and sockets within your property) or you will be in for a large call out charge.

EE used to be orange (also a BT company). I had an appalling experience with orange, to the extent that they'd need to do a lot to convince me that they've changed before I'd go anywhere near them again.

As far as I know, all UK broadband providers, other than Virgin, use Openreach (BT) lines. If you use any other provider other than Virgin they will be using exactly the same wiring as you have now so I suppose the only difference will be in the capability of their servers and I don't know how much difference that can make.

If you read my post, you can see that the problem is somewhere between my local BT exchange and PlusNet's server. That's why I declined having an engineer — they need to check the lines from their end. The last time I complained, I pointed out that a comparison site said their customer service was poor and I asked how they'd like my denouncing them on social media. It's probably a coincidence, but since my rant there have been no drop-outs.

Actually, no-one seems to like phone/internet companies, so I'm probably better sticking with the devil I know — changing my email address would be such a bother.

We use Virgin, comes as a package, internet/phone/TV, but it is far superior to BT, who we used to have, so glad we changed to them, very seldom have we had any trouble, & when we did, it was back up & running within a couple of hours.
It is expensive, but it's reliable.