Tips and Tricks Archives – Briant Communications

Moving Home? Move To Better Broadband Too!

Moving home is always stressful, but it’s something most of us have in the back of our minds most of the time. A new house with all the mod cons, and better storage would be a delight for most of us. It’s just finding the money, time and the right house that slows most of us down!

When you do move it’s neve just a clean hop from one house to the next either. What with chains, bills and estate agents and solicitors to deal with finding your dream home can quickly become a nightmare!

Speaking of bills, most of them can be dealt with quite easily. You just have to tell your utility provider the date you moved and a meter reading and that’s usually about it. Unfortunately your broadband and TV bills probably won’t be that easy, especially if you’re not out of your minimum contract period. If you’re going somewhere where your current provider can continue to offer the same package you’re already on you should, ideally, be able to just change the address the bills go to. If not you may have to pay a penalty fee for breaking your contract early.

Talk To Your Broadband Provider As Early As Possible

You should aim to get your new service arranged a month or so before your moving date to ensure that you’re connected as soon as you arrive. If you’re moving to an address your current provider serves it should be as simple as letting them know your new address. However, they may not offer the best service if you’re moving somewhere out of the way, but it may be worth sticking with them until you find a better service provider to that area. Read more

2nd December 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Home Entertainment • Tips and Tricks broadband • contract • ISP • shopping • top tips 0 Comments

Choosing Your Next Broadband Provider: Top Tips

Finding the best broadband deal that suits both your demand for high speed internet and your budget can be quite the juggling act. First you have to find a provider who serves your area, then you have to navigate all the different packages they offer, comparing this price with that, the speed, the duration of the contract, and then there’s the additional extras they don’t tell you about until you put your order in. Line rental? That’s another £25 or more per month. Installation? £40 to £50 should cover it.

And it’s vital that you choose the right deal, and pick carefully since you could be in that contract for between 12 to 24 months. Choose badly and you could be paying through the nose for your data, or paying a lower price for really poor speeds, which amounts to the same thing. You can’t get out of the contract without paying penalties, or if your provider does do a package which is better for you, you may be due admin fees if you decide you need to change.

And your needs can change at any time. Get a Smart HDTV and suddenly your need for fast internet spikes. Your college age kids move out to go to university and suddenly you only need a fraction of the bandwidth you had before. So do you stick with a plan which no longer suits you, or do you pay the admin fees to get a better product? Read more

25th November 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Home Entertainment • Tips and Tricks • WiFi broadband • full fibre • Video Games and Gaming 0 Comments

Full Fibre Makes You A Winner When It Comes To Gaming

Any online gaming fan knows the horror of an unexpected interruption to Wi-Fi reception or a slow connection causing freezing and buffering just when you didn’t need it. You’ve got the enemy in your sights, you pull the trigger and nothing but a spinning wheel of death. By the time you’re back up you’ve already respawned and been killed three times and you’re on your way out again.

If you’re the bill payer and chief game player, or your kids hassle you constantly to get better broadband because they’re too embarrassed to go online to play since they can never keep up with the action you might be interested in taking up Full Fibre when CityFibre install it in your area

Full Fibre delivers the kind of internet connection which mean that everyone in the house can be playing in an international tournament, streaming a movie and checking Facebook all at the same time and not see any slowing in their data speed. Read more

14th November 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • Do It Yourself • Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • Tips and Tricks • WiFi 0 Comments

Getting A Smart TV On Black Friday? Can Your Broadband Cope?

If you’re starting to think about what you’re going to put on your Black Friday or Cyber Monday (November 25th this year) shopping list you might be thinking about a Smart TV. Maybe it’s just for the lounge, or maybe you’re thinking about creating a home cinema experience for yourself and your family where you can enjoy movies, play online games, and enjoy the benefits of having a media centre at home.

But here’s a thing to consider if you’re going to connect your TV to a broadband connection rather than an aerial or satellite receiver: do you have enough data?

While it’s not an issue with smaller screen TVs, every inch of a large screen HD TV screen needs broadband to make it work. Slow internet access will mean that picture quality will slump, freezing, glitching and ‘The Spinning Wheel of Death’ will cause constant interruptions, and overall your enjoyment of something which is supposed to be one of life’s little treats will be a frustrating pain in the neck. Read more

26th October 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Tips and Tricks • WiFi download speed • internet • upload speed 0 Comments

Why Internet Upload Speeds With Full Fibre Make A Difference

When you’re shopping around for different broadband internet deals you might have noticed that most providers show different speeds for downloads and uploads, and sometimes that difference is huge. But what’s the difference, and why does it matter?

For most people going about their usual online business, their biggest concern is going to be download speeds. How fast do pictures on Instagram take to load, how quickly do Reels load, do streaming movies keep needing to buffer (especially during the best bits!), spoiling your viewing experience?

Those concerns are all due to download speeds. If you’ve got fast downloads then you’ve got that covered. So why are upload speeds of any importance? Read more

31st August 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • CCTV • Do It Yourself • General Information • Tips and Tricks • WiFi business security • secure wifi network • wifi 0 Comments

WiFi Security For Small Businesses

If you’re running a small hospitality business, a cafe, bar, bistro, hotel or guesthouse, even a salon or spa, many of your customers will be expecting you to supply free WiFi.

If you have contactless card machines then you probably need to use WiFi to make them work, and it’s no additional cost to open up the network and let your customers use it since it’s accepted, and expected by many that this service will be available to them. The problem is that in making your WiFi available to everyone, everyone, including you, is vulnerable to hacking.

It’s nice to think that ‘hacking’ is something that happens far away to other people, that it’s only worth hacker’s time to attack huge corporations and steal billions of pounds at a time. The reality is that with the availability of code on the Dark Web and the massive proliferation of laptops, internet enabled phones, and smart devices, it’s easy and cheap for anyone with a will to to find a way to hack into your business’s WiFi and use it to harm you or your customers.

Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to protect yourself, your reputation, and your customers from attacks which don’t take a great deal of tech savvy or programming skill. Read more

24th August 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Tips and Tricks • WiFi broadband myths • broadband switch • myths 0 Comments

Persistent Myths About Broadband Busted

Switching broadband ISPs used to be difficult, but now, with many more suppliers on the market, it’s time to put those myths to sleep

The problem with myths is that they become received wisdom which, once established, can be hard to debunk, refute or explode. Not only are many of them wrong, in the ISP industry they can cost you, our customers money, and leave you on a broadband package which doesn’t serve your needs.

Switching from one supplier to another isn’t the painful process it used to be, especially if you’re out of the minimum term of your contract, and doing so can save you money, especially if you’ve been on the same plan for a long time.

Fibre Broadband is All The Same

Fibre broadband isn’t all the same. Fibre to the Cabinet or Curb, also known as FTTC, is indeed faster than the old copper phone lines which broadband internet was being supplied until quite recently, but it still relies on a copper wire element to get from the cabinet or ‘curb’ into your home. This final transfer of technology means that you can receive the internet on your old router, but it also means that there is a considerable slowdown in the speeds you can achieve in your home.

On the other hand Fibre to the Property or Premises (FTTP) means that there’s full fibre connection from the local exchange right through to your router and out through the wifi or ethernet cable which was designed to handle superfast data, unlike phone lines. That means much more speed, up to 900 Mbps reliably hard-wired into your house. You can’t use your old modem/router though, as they are not compatible, and can’t approach the speed and signal quality a new fibre router needs to be able to deliver. Read more

10th August 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • Do It Yourself • General Information • Tips and Tricks • WiFi broadband • home network • mesh network 0 Comments

Have Great Broadband, But Still Have Slow Wi-Fi?

Installing A Mesh Network Could Be Your Solution To Wi-Fi Shadows And Dark Spots

While your broadband provider gives you incredible internet access speeds, you may find that too many users at the same time and the distance you are from your router can have a significant effect on the speed that you’re able to surf the web. What can you do about it?

Several things can affect the speed you get when you’re actually browsing, the distance from your router, the number of people trying to use the internet at the same time, walls, or even heavy furniture can all have a detrimental effect. While the position of your router is important, there are some things which just can’t be overcome that way, so you may need to invest in a mesh network to solve dark spots.

The Further You Go The Slower The Flow

Wireless routers can only deliver a strong signal for a limited range. As you get toward the extent of that range you will see speeds slowing as the weaker signal affects the amount of data your devices can receive. The router is designed to have a limited range as making them more powerful would mean that householders would find that all their neighbours’ Wi-Fi signal was coming through as strongly as their own, which causes a variety of problems including ‘noise’, interference and tethering problems for devices which automatically connect to the strongest signal.

So people living in a larger than average home, or who want to extend their Wi-Fi’s reach into the garden have to find a way of broadening the reach of their reception. One of the best solutions available at the moment is a mesh network, a series of devices (usually in the form of ‘disks’ or ‘satellites’) which can be dotted around the home to improve signal wherever you are. Read more

20th July 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • Do It Yourself • General Information • Home Entertainment • Tips and Tricks • WiFi speed up wifi • wifi 0 Comments

The Causes Of A Slow Wi-Fi Router And How To Fix It

It’s no good having up to 900 Mbps Full Fibre if your Wi-Fi connection to your devices is slow. You could plug an ethernet cable from your computer to the router, but that defeats the point of Wi-Fi, and what about all the devices which can’t be plugged in? There are several reasons for poor Wi-Fi, some of which could need investment in extenders, Point to Point transmitters, and mesh discs, but some of them are simple solutions you can take care of in a few minutes.

Router Placement

Where your router is positioned within the home can have an incredible effect on the speed your internet connected devices work. Placing it near the front door, where the cable comes into your home, seems like an obvious idea, but if most of your internet use takes place at the back of the house, upstairs, or in a home office located in the garden then the distance the signal has to travel, and the obstacles it has to pass through can have a great effect on the amount of bandwidth available to each machine.

To overcome this, simply place your router nearer where the action is. If your family doesn’t all sit in the same room to access the internet (and what family would!?) try to place the router at the centre of the home. This means that each laptop, phone, smart speaker and TV will have an equal opportunity to get signal. And place it somewhere high up. It might be tempting to put it on the floor behind a desk, somewhere out of the way, but putting it on the desk, or better yet on a high shelf. This extends the broadcast range and means less objects the signal has to pass through before reaching your device. Read more

13th July 2022 By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Tips and Tricks • WiFi local company • SME 0 Comments

Why Briant Broadband Is Different From The Big Boys Of Internet Data

A while ago someone unfriendly left a comment on Briant Broadband’s Facebook page about how he couldn’t trust a small ISP because we didn’t have the same clout as the “big boys”. It left us wondering if he thought we were cooking up data in a still in the back garden, or how he thought that any internet provider came about.

As an ISP it’s our job to ensure that you get the best speeds available. We need to ensure that your connection is stable and reliable, and we need to ensure that you get it at the best price. If that wasn’t enough juggling, because Briant Broadband is an installer as well as a data provider we need to provide routers, wireless receivers, and even pull fibre cable under the ground or suspend it from telegraph poles in order to connect you to our service. We are partnered with CityFibre, a national company who are deeply embedded in the scheme to roll out fibre connectivity to 99% of British homes by 2030, but there are some areas they aren’t going to be able to reach for years. And some areas, such as private housing developments and gated communities, as well as particularly remote homesteads where they may never reach at all.

Briant Broadband have solutions. In one remote private estate we established a wireless solution so homes in the area can all benefit from Superfast internet at speeds up to 200 Mbps whereas before they had to rely on copper phone lines for their internet connection which delivered around 10 or 20 Mbps. Another solution which is open to us is to install our own fibre network, connecting all the houses in a community to our own spine and then connecting that to CityFibre’s infrastructure. Read more

Category: Tips and Tricks