Email, 50gig/unit..

I'm actually thinking about alternatives for the first time since joining. I wish they did php/sql on their hosting too, then I might not even have to consider moving.

I agree that the halving to 50Gb/unit off-peak for 20CN users feels insulting.

I could understand effectively punishing customers if they chose to remain on 20CN when they had the option to move to 21CN (or Be) but the vast majority of 20CN customers have absolutely no choice and are getting ripped-off.

The ultimate fault may lie with BTs obscene pricing for 20CN connections and chronic underinvestment (since BT get more money, why would they invest ?) but however A&A dress it up (see http://www.aaisp.net.uk/news-2010-04.html) 20CN customers are now getting a MUCH worse deal than they were a month ago and that is down to A&A's miscalculations when introducing the new tarrif.

Whilst the off-peak change wasn't exactly a welcome one, I can understand why it happened. BT are pushing their new 21CN network and I would imagine running the older one simply costs more.

I can honestly say I've no intention of moving to a different ISP. A&A have been fantastic since the day I joined and the support and quality of the service far outweighs the unfortunate drop in off-peak usage.

Granted, I could more-than-likely get more usage for my money elsewhere, but with all the ISP's I've been with over the years, none are even close to A&A in terms of quality. Not to mention the 2-6am usage which is very generous and works out at over 350GB a month on an 8mbps connection.

Hopefully BT will upgrade all our old exchanges soon, or perhaps Be will work on increasing their LLU network, but regardless, I'm happy where I am, reduced off-peak or not.

Edited by NeoLojik (Wed 07-Apr-10 22:50:34)

seems silly to move due to web hosting reasons, if you need php/mysql you can buy a commercial webhosting package for a tiny sum as its another competitive market. Probably under £1 a month.

Regards to 20CN limits, I agree its harsh on the people that have no 21CN option, some would say the 21CN savings should be shared amongst everyone. But from a business point of view aaisp know people in areas with 20CN only services will stick with them because the alternatives are too poor even with the drop in limit.

Is the 1000gig/unit for dusk hours now removed? if so thats quite a major change.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

seems silly to move due to web hosting reasons, if you need php/mysql you can buy a commercial webhosting package for a tiny sum as its another competitive market. Probably under £1 a month.

Well yes, precisely. I need 1gig+ webspace with php and sql, I can't get that at AAisp so I have to look elsewhere. That means that I'll be spending £2-3/month on external hosting/email, so it makes the webspace/restricted email AAisp provide redundant, on top of the reduced evening use, combined with my naff exchange that means any speeds benefits are redundant too..

It all starts to make it cheaper for me to move, unfortunately.

Is the 1000gig/unit for dusk hours now removed? if so thats quite a major change.

No, that's still there, but the 'special' wording is ominous.

I take your word for it since you a customer, but the fact I couldnt find any info on it on their website is worrying.

it mentions peak and off peak and off peak is described as all other hours.

2 'till 6 is mentioned here as a "bonus".

I haven't found the email restrictive in any way. Bit puzzled about that comment?

They've recently applied an email/month limit.

It's still quite generous though:

Light usage email services cost £1.18 pcm�, or is free with your broadband service. This includes us processing up to 1,500 emails per month, and you have to exceed this for three months in a row to be re-classified.

tbh if you're doing more than that you really ought to have a commercial product I certainly wouldn't do anything business related on "free" ISP offerings no matter who from.

Good luck tho

pffft I comfortable predict our exchange will still be 20cn at the end of 2012

You could get that from a couple of busy mailing lists.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

They've recently applied an email/month limit.

Ah. Thanks. Forgot about that
Didn't that come about through the performance issues they had with mail a little while ago?
Seem to remember there should be some new servers with go faster stripes coming on line soon.

ok thanks. just seems odd why aaisp wouldn't make it easy to find that info as its a good selling point,

Brighton Freegle group: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenCycleSussex/ Typically around 1300 posts a month.

A lot of people in that group still belong to what was the old FreeCycle group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freebrighton/ which is still receiving 800 per month. Before the split it was typically 2500 to 3000 per month.

I was very seriously considering moving to AAISP later this year (once I've moved domains around), but this miserly allowance has made me think again.

This includes us processing up to 1,500 emails per month

Does this include spam messages that are rejected or just emails actually delivered?

Having been with AAISP for about 8 months now, and being very pleased with the service, I am now giving serious consideration to looking elsewhere snce the halving of the 20CN allowance from 100Gb/unit to 50Gb/unit, at the beginning of April.

For my £40/month I am now getting the equivalent of 3 units/month compared to the 6 units I was getting prior to April 1st.

This seems a major drop in useability to me, and it is only the 2am-6am "bonus" that is currently making it worthwile staying, though how long I can justify the £40/month outlay for that remains to be seen.

Could there not have been a less drastic reduction for a time (say, a 3 month trial) to see if such a level was sustainable (say 75Gb/unit) before going as low as 50Gb?

I do hope that some of the AAISP team read these particular thread entries and take the comments onboard, and maybe even makes some comment.

It does feel like us poor people who are (through no fault of our own) stuck on 20CN equipment, with no timescale for a 21CN upgrade in the next 2 years, are being overly penalised to the point where it is not really cost effective to be with AAISP, irrespective of how good they are, if you have a 20CN line anymore.

Any comments or thoughts are welcome.

Kevin.

In reply to a post by KevinM2:

It does feel like us poor people who are (through no fault of our own) stuck on 20CN equipment, with no timescale for a 21CN upgrade in the next 2 years, are being overly penalised to the point where it is not really cost effective to be with AAISP, irrespective of how good they are, if you have a 20CN line anymore.

I hear your pain but equally it is not AAISP's fault that BT charge so much more for bandwidth on IPSC (20CN) connections. You may well find a cheaper ISP but if it supplied over BT lines they will probably be achieving that by not buying sufficient bandwidth to meet the peak demands of their users or using some sort of traffic shaping/throttling. Either way the service will probably be poorer but you may be able to live with that.

Terry

I don't know the pricings as far as what BT charge ISP's, but if AA are halving the allowance of 20CN accounts, (and bearing in mind, they already charge more for 20CN accounts than 21CN accounts), does that mean that BT charge ISPs twice as much for a 20CN line connection than they do for a 21CN line connection to justify it (for the same download limit).

Does seem a bit excessive.

Also, I am pretty certain I can get one of the more "top range" ISP's for £40/month, and that is what I am looking into right now.

I am not looking for cheaper, I don't mind spending £40/month, but I just want better value for money, and I feel that at 50Gb/unit now, £40/month for half the download limit I used to get isn't good value for money anymore. Especially when you factor in the (effective) limitations of daytime use.

I have got used to not downloading anything between 9am & 6pm, and I accept that, but I only accepted that based on the fact that the evening/overnight limits were relatively good.

Now that the evening limits have been decimated, the whole package isn't looking anywhere near as attractive.

I'd rather not say goodbye to AA, but this move really does push me in that direction.

In reply to a post by KevinM2:

I don't know the pricings as far as what BT charge ISP's, but if AA are halving the allowance of 20CN accounts, (and bearing in mind, they already charge more for 20CN accounts than 21CN accounts), does that mean that BT charge ISPs twice as much for a 20CN line connection than they do for a 21CN line connection to justify it (for the same download limit).

Does seem a bit excessive.

Quote from AAISP:
We have been asked why 21CN get more for the same money as 20CN. Basically, our costs for 20CN are more than twice that of 21CN to BT. BT are showing no signs of improving this situation. Obviously we are continuing our programme of free migrations from 20CN to 21CN following BTs exchange upgrades.

Terry

Thanks for that bit of info. Looks like things aren't going to change anytime soon then

It doess seem then that BT are not playing the game. They appear quite happy to charge more than double for 20CN access, yet they don't appear to have much of a plan to upgrade 20CN to 21CN.

Maybe that's because at the moment they can charge double for 20CN lines, so why would they? Sounds like a bit of a gold mine for them, at the expense of the customer.

BT at their best.

In reply to a post by TerryN:

Quote from AAISP:
We have been asked why 21CN get more for the same money as 20CN. Basically, our costs for 20CN are more than twice that of 21CN to BT. BT are showing no signs of improving this situation. Obviously we are continuing our programme of free migrations from 20CN to 21CN following BTs exchange upgrades.

Terry

It seems to me as if every ISP that has moved to IPSC has had to decimate their 20cn packages. Entanet being the other prime example. The argument used for switching to IPSC is always the same, ie to save money by combining the costs of some parts of 21cn with 20cn. Yet even though it seems cheaper on paper, it looks like it works out to be more expensive than running centrals quite frankly.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

The argument used for switching to IPSC is always the same, ie to save money by combining the costs of some parts of 21cn with 20cn. Yet even though it seems cheaper on paper, it looks like it works out to be more expensive than running centrals quite frankly.

Quite right. That was the promise from BT (and AAISP set their new tariffs accordingly). However, BT went back on this and have put ISPs in a really bad position now. To be fair, AAISP have not halved the tariff on 20CN, it has gone back to where it was before the new tariffs came in but I can see why people are annoyed.

As usual, AAISP have been honest and up-front about this and will not hide this price hike under some sort of "Fair Usage Policy" (for a cautionary tale see http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/unhappiness/t/38266... ) or compromise on the quality of service they provide by simply buying less IPSC bandwidth.


Terry

In reply to a post by TerryN:

Quite right. That was the promise from BT (and AAISP set their new tariffs accordingly).

Afaik though, AAisp didn't jump on the bandwagon until a good while after the price hikes that caught Entanet out. This was because AAisp had to wait for BT to sort out WBMC irc.

Not so have a look at idnet their offerings over 20cn are quite generous, there is an off peak allowance and no throttling, I have a 30gig peak allowance and 60gig off peak for £24.99 which suits me very well

I think is policy for others isps (or seems to be) to at least partially subsidise 20CN customers from lower 21CN/LLU costs, aaisp appear to be strictly pricing based on costs for the actual customer hence their PAYG pricing for usage and large variance between 20CN and 21CN. I hope aaisp havent artifically increased 20CN pricing to try and get 20CN customers in 21CN areas to move.

and for £26 per month I get 5 units split whichever way I like and considering I don't do downloads during the day (work mostly) that more often than not leaves me 3 or more units per month which is still 150GB per month with a rollover allowance on top.

Just depends on how desperate anyone is to use bandwidth 9-6 weekdays I still say AA is better for my needs even with the new allowances (which I still feel are ok shame no21cn here for forever tho!!)

There's more to an ISP than just a usage allowance, as I found out with a large generous allowance with another ISP when I had an intermittant fault on my line.....

Enta is an excellent example, they went the other way instead of slashing allowances they under invested in capacity for MONTHS then blamed the users for using it too much and crapped on everyone with traffic shaping

Typical useless PoS that is OFCOM should NOT be allowing this considering the thousands of exchanges that don't even have RFS dates set yet and these exchanges tend to be the smaller ones sustaining longer lines (generally) so not only are the "have nots" been hit once by lower line speeds but they then get hit again with this [censored] terrible state of affairs brought on by BTs sheer greed

...and as well as OFCOM apparently sanctioning what is an abuse of a dominant market position in terms of exchanges not yet upgraded, the OFT are also sitting on their hands... There is no case for "leverage pricing" until another access method is available, and given the cost of upgrading, the price differential would seem to be a deliberate abuse. My suspicion is that we are being used to subsidise lower pricing for the faster services on cn21 exchanges so that BTw can compete with the lower priced LLU services without hurting their bottom line. We pay more for slow access over old equipment while people on upgraded exchanges pay less despite the money just spent on them - something stinks.

I guess the Govt loves getting the extra VAT on the inflated pricing - much as they do with fuel. Maybe Europe needs to look at the BT abuses present in the UK market, as our govt. sure as hell wont act to end this abuse.

I agree its poor, the same areas repeatedly get investment even tho they already have superior service and on top of that do tend to get preferential pricing as well.

To make it less depressing consider tho that rural areas in other countries tend to either have to choose wireless aka 3g or dialup.

That is fair but OTOH who gives a frig about them blooming foreigners

What annoys the hell out of me is both o2 and Sky keep pestering me to migrate to them, as soon as I mention the lack of LLU and push then for a firm date for my exchange they seem to become rather confused by the whole thing.

Like Talk Talk who keep pestering me in town.. they all get the same answer... No LLU? no sale! Im not going to lash myself to a long contract for the same or (more probably worse) service.

Its a one way thing in this country.. they ripped up this place to lay LNG pipelines... and now they are rigging pylons across the landscape for a new power station... the rural areas are included when it is to provide services for the urban areas... shame we dont see a quid pro quo for that huh?. Especially as many of the communities the pipelines run through DONT have mains gas.

In reply to a post by Rich44:

Typical useless PoS that is OFCOM should NOT be allowing this considering the thousands of exchanges that don't even have RFS dates set yet and these exchanges tend to be the smaller ones sustaining longer lines (generally) so not only are the "have nots" been hit once by lower line speeds but they then get hit again with this [censored] terrible state of affairs brought on by BTs sheer greed

Are not *all* these consumer bodies a total joke though?

Supposedly put in place by the government to protect the people yet they all seem to be toothless tigers and even when they are forced into action just get laughed at by whatever industry they are supposed to govern.

After just paying my hugely increased water bill for 2010 I know clearly what I now think of OFWAT! And this for a cruddy product I have to pass through a water filter at large expense each year before it is even fit for human consumption, I say "human" - even the cat won't touch it unfiltered!

Edited by deleted (Thu 15-Apr-10 05:55:02)

I think you missed a silent T out of that one.

The ONE body i've had to deal with that has had decent results has been FOS they were superb oh just thought of another one LGA - local government ombudsman, but it does take the pee that local government needs an ombudsman to go to, surely they know the rules they should follow them.... There you go though

Similar thing here dug a dual carraigeway width across the countryside heading from the coast inland to lay cables for offshore windfarms, fair enough but they then want to put a substation (FORTY ACRES!!!!) in a tiny little village

http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx...

FFS