Briant Broadband’s Most Frequently Unasked Questions

Put simply, broadband is internet data which is always available through Wi-Fi or a cable direct to your computer from your router. While not really an accurate description, it’s commonly understood that broadband became available when we no longer had to plug into a modem and dial up our internet service provider. Broadband allows you to connect many devices to your router at the same time, and so long as you have adequate data speeds, operate them all simultaneously. Something which would have been completely impossible back when you had to choose whether you wanted either to use the computer or be available for phone calls, but not both.

Data speed is the speed at which your internet enabled devices are able to carry out the demand you put on them. If you don’t have a great deal of demand then slow data speeds are fine because you’re only asking one device to do one job: download a record or film for example. However, as demand increases, the flow of data to each device is slower. You’re still getting the same amount of data per second through your router, it’s just that that throughput is being divided up and shared out.
As an internet service provider (ISP) we have a certain amount of data we can put through too. We’d love to be able to give everyone the maximum 900 Mbps as cheaply as possible, but that’s just not practical. We wouldn’t be able to handle processing that much data and most of our customers would never get close to using even a small percentage of it. So what we do is offer a range of plans to suit the demands most people have. A single person or couple who don’t use the internet much will be quite happy with 100 Mbps and we can supply that for a modest sum. A family with school age children who use social media, use the internet for homework, watching movies and playing games will find that 100 Mbps is too slow, but may not have the budget for our most expensive plan, meaning that our 500 Mbps package would be best for them. And our 900 Mbps plan is going to be suitable for the most data hungry households. Students in a shared house who are always gaming, streaming, Zooming and using smart home devices all at the same time are going to find that this suits them best.

A byte is 8 bits. One bit is the smallest binary digital piece of information a computer can use. 8 bits are needed to make a byte as a byte represents one letter or digit needed to create code. So it takes three bytes to write the word Yes. This is a long way of saying a one kilobyte (KB) is a thousand letters of computer code. (it’s actually not, because life’s not that simple, but for the sake of ease, let’s pretend it is!)
A megabyte (MB) is a thousand KB, or a million bytes. If you were to write out a gigabyte of code it would take up about 900 pages, equivalent to 4 short novels.
A gigabyte is a thousand MB, so that’s a billion bytes. That’s 900,000 pages or 4 ½ thousand books. Then there’s terabytes (TB) which are a thousand GB, petabytes (PB) and exabytes (EB) but these are generally terms for vast data storage capacities and far beyond what we’re interested in.
Mbps stands for megabytes per second. That means that if you’re getting 900 Mbps your router is receiving 900,000,000 letters of code every second. With that much data everything you do will appear to be instantaneous, from downloading a movie to playing the latest games with the most realistic environments, on every computer and smart device all the time. But don’t forget, even 100 Mbps is a great deal of data. 100,000 letters of computer code every second means it will take less than 10 seconds to download a complete album, and only a few minutes to download an HD movie if you want to keep it. If you just want to stream it, it’s as good as instantaneous.

There are no hidden costs with Briant Broadband! The price we advertise is the price you pay. Because we use Full Fibre and wireless we aren’t reliant on phone lines using old copper wires, so no line rental! We don’t charge admin fees if you want to change your broadband plan either, so you can increase or decrease the speed when you need to without incurring extra costs beside the price plan if you increase the speed. Additionally we can even pause your payments if you’re going to be away from home for 30 days or more, again without any admin fees.
There is one service we offer which has an additional cost, and it is entirely optional. We offer VoIP phones for an additional £10 per month. You can port your current landline number over, or take out a new one, and the beauty of VoIP is that you can make free and incredibly cheap domestic and international calls to other VoIP, landlines and mobiles all day every day. So if you have lots of friends and family living throughout the UK and abroad who you love to chat to the £10 monthly fee pays for itself in no time.

Switching to Briant Broadband is easy. If your current contract period is expired, or to expire soon, just give us a call and we’ll see if your home is one which is already connected to the national fibre network. If it is we can start providing you with broadband right away. If not we can see if you are within range of our transmitters in Worthing. If that’s the case we can get you up and running within 2 working days with wireless broadband while we make arrangements to get you onto Full Fibre.
If you’re still within your contract you may be able to switch anyway, but only in certain circumstances. If your current contract says ‘up to’ a certain number of Mbps then you can do a speed test to find out what you really get. Many people find that they’re not getting the speeds they expect, and never do. If that’s you, and the speed you get is significantly lower than the speed you were promised then tell your service provider you want to leave. If they can’t make it right then you have the right under consumer protection law to leave without having any early termination fees applied.
If for any reason you want to leave Briant Broadband we’d encourage you to talk to us first! We’re confident our prices and data packages are the best, so we will price match any genuine like-for-like deals being offered by our competitors (this excludes introductory offers and special promotional deals). If you’re sure you still want to leave, just let us know. Because we don’t have contracts you’re free to leave any time you like, but letting us know means that we can ensure you have broadband right up to your changeover date and bill you accurately.

The only cap we put on your service is the speed. Otherwise the service is completely unlimited. Other companies cap the amount of data you can use, and charge you extra on top of your monthly subscription if you go over. But not Briant Broadband. As we said, we don’t have hidden fees, and we want you to be happy, no matter how much internet you use.

Yes! We offer VoIP phones for an additional £10 per month. You can port your current landline number over, or take out a new one, and the beauty of VoIP is that you can make free and incredibly cheap domestic and international calls to other VoIP, landlines and mobiles all day every day. So if you have lots of friends and family living throughout the UK and abroad who you love to chat to the £10 monthly fee pays for itself in no time. In the future the government plans to do away with land lines all together, so anyone wanting a landline will need a broadband service anyway. Our additional £10 is cheaper than current monthly landline rental, so why not switch now?

Wireless broadband is digital data sent and received from a transmitter located at a high point in order to get maximum ‘line of sight’ coverage (if you can see the transmitter, you can receive a signal from it). Briant Broadband’s transmitter is located on the roof of the Bayside apartment building, and is visible from around 15km away in either direction along the coast and several km inland until the downs cause too much obstruction.
Fibre to the Cabinet is a technology Briant Broadband don’t use as we believe our solutions are better. FTTC depends on having fibre optic cables laid from the local exchange all the way to the green cabinet you’ll often see on street corners where all the local phone lines terminate. It’s here that the fibre is connected to the old copper phone lines which are currently connected to your router and phone. This means that for most of its journey to your home your broadband is travelling at the maximum speed possible, but as soon as it hits the cabinet it’s slowed down to speeds as slow as 80 Mbps or lower over those last few metres.
Full Fibre, also known as Fibre to the Property (FTTP) is the fibre solution preferred by Briant Broadband. FTTP does as it says, it delivers fibre fast broadband from the exchange all the way up to and into your router without slowing down at any point in its journey.

The advantages of migrating over to Briant Broadband are many:
We offer Superfast wireless, Superfast and Ultrafast Full Fibre broadband plans to choose from which are flexible, meaning you can change the plan you’re on with a phone call to us, you can even pause your plan and freeze payments if you’re away from home for more than thirty days.
We don’t have any hidden extras. We don’t charge line rental or admin fees, so the price you see is the price you pay. Because we don’t use phone lines we don’t charge line rental, which means that we’re not only cheaper than many of our competitors, we’re faster too. It’s not common knowledge yet, but copper phone lines will be coming to an end in a few years, so if you want a land line you’ll need to have a broadband service anyway. Come over to Briant Broadband’s VoIP service and you can keep your old number or choose a new one. We do charge an extra £10 for this optional extra, but that’s still cheaper than any currently available landline contract, and you get national and international calls to landlines, VoIP and mobiles far cheaper than you can through traditional landline companies.
We’re a genuinely local Worthing based company, we know the area and we know our customers. That’s why we’re proud to offer something so many other companies can’t: excellent local customer service.