Leaving AAISP?

The fact that there are so few posts in this forum is an indication of how good an ISP AAISP is - so why I am mulling over the possibility of leaving?

In the past 2 weeks, we have had a swarm of OR vans in our small town checking that the fibre installed late last year is as it should be; surveying individual homes for telephone wire access points etc plus frequent short breaks in our broadband. The ‘man in the van’ suggests that FTTP will go live shortly.

The possibility that I may soon be in ordering mode again has left me with the usual problem of speed; data; CS support and price. I have no idea whether I would benefit from 330Mbps compared to 160 but the simple fact is that other reputable ISPs can offer me unlimited data at a speed twice that of AAISP’s offer for about 2/3 of the price. After 4 years of exceptional service, my heart tells me to stay with AAISP but unless I stick with a 160Mbps package my head suggests otherwise.

If I decide to move from AAISP then I would be be looking at Idnet; Zen or Aquiss.

Any thoughts?

AAISP have lately announced their new core routers, which permit them to offer FTTP at higher than 160mbit.

This means they've announced the current "rough" pricing for the higher speeds, if that helps you with your decision?
https://www.aa.net.uk/etc/news/new-core-routers-and-...

I suppose that migration between FTTP ISPs isn't too difficult to accomplish, especially if you choose a 1 month contract with the alternative, so depending on your sentiment when you've reviewed those prices, you might initially sign up for a 1 month term to keep your options open, and then later consider locking in a longer term if you're satisfied & want to lower the costs.

AAISPs pricing shows the true cost of broadband, but £75 or £85 a month shows how hard it is to offer these speeds in todays competitive market.

Quotas on a gigabit FTTP connection in 2022....really?

I'm not minded to agree; AAISP offer a premium service, but built into those prices are things like the R&D for their custom Firebrick routers, their constant line monitoring, their fanatical support (Who will no doubt spend many hours to get each customer's line 'just right' where other ISPs will throw in the towel). That's all got to come at a cost, which if not charged directly to the customer will therefore be spread evenly across all customers.

Given the mainstream ISPs seem to not be grinding to a halt in the evening peaks, and that (as mentioned by the original poster) other premium ISPs such as Zen and IDNet can provide greater speeds and more usage allowance for less, I'm not so sure that AAISP's prices are necessarily the benchmark for the minimum cost to provide a given service.

With FTTP there is less reason to need to pay for tech support that go the extra mile. There is no DLM randomness in play on FTTP and you get the connection speed as advertised without having to nurse old copper cable, walk around with AM radios looking for sources of interference, or finding a corded phone to plug in and listen for crackle's.

It is possible if you have some strange fault on FTTP to pay for special service from Openreach, what you save over a few months with a more typical ISP even if you pay for a special Openreach engineer out of your own pocket because of a fault you are still probably better off money wise, and that's only if the fault is found to be your side after the ONT.

That doesn't mean you will not have faults, perhaps further into the network, but most smaller ISPs with their own kit are pretty hot on getting stuff fixed, I've found this with Uno, IDNet and Cerberus in that you do end up talking to a network engineer quite quickly. I would avoid resellers, these are ISPs that simply admin and bill for broadband and don't have their own kit or network. For example they just resell Zen, CityFibre or BT Wholesale, it's just a rebranding exercise. I quick way to check is see if the ISP has any peering arrangements in their own name which shows they have their own gateways and kit, I use peeringdb.com, if they don't appear on there they are likely just a reseller.

Edited by E300 (Fri 25-Mar-22 13:14:14)

I have been with AAISP for quite a few years now however know a friend who recently left as he couldn't justify the price anymore in comparison to a BT FTTP package.

In my opinion I think AAISP should offer a contended cheaper package. For example I'd be happy on a gigabit FTTP package which slows down to 200Mbps during peak times etc. I know that goes against the company ethos however times have changed and these things aren't really that important anymore.

I guess the question is how come AAISP have to charge so much compared to other providers? Is it because other providers are getting better wholesale costs? Or is it because they have to fund all the R&D into their own networking equipment. I don't know the answer.. It could be that offering a contended service wouldn't allow enough cost savings for AAISP to pass onto the customer.

In any case, some sort of cheaper package would be a welcome offering at the moment.

All very good points. Simple maths shows that I could save £270 on a 12 month 300/50 contract if I went for Aquiss rather than sticking with AAISP. That’s a lot of money to pay when my broadband connection sits more in the ‘nice to have’ category rather than essential.

Cerberus is also worth shortlisting. Their sweet spot is 300/50: £48 per month, £48 setup, bring your own router.

However, Aquiss at £49 per month for the same speed has no setup fee and is half-price for first 4 months. It will be 146 months before you get your money back with Cerberus

Both give you a static IPv4 address and a static /56 IPv6 block, and have a 12 month contract which rolls over at the end without price rise.

AAISP is a no ******* ISP, and that is not just their approach to faults but also on their packages and costs.

No retention deals, no new customer deals, everyone pays the same. I have also never had a price increase since I joined the ISP, but in fact the other way round with package upgrades. I know I sound like an advert, but this is refreshing that it exists in the current market so felt I had to say it.

I was able to sign up to VDSL on a 1 month commitment, and all of their FTTP are 12 months instead of 2+ years.

Sadly I may be in the same boat as yourself, the problem of lack of full gigabit FTTP and also lack of cityfibre, however AAISP have solved the first issue with their firebrick upgrades, and it was mentioned on IRC some time ago there is talks ongoing with cityfibre.

So if you can get Openreach FTTP, you can get all the speed you want on AAISP now.

As to leaving I dont know who to recommend. For the minimal changes from Zen in terms of access to IP space, would be Zen probably.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 12-Apr-22 00:45:39)

If you’re with AA, I think you’d be mad to consider leaving to save a few pounds. It would drive you insane now having to deal with the usual morons in ordinary ISPs now having got used to talking to knowledgable and respectful humans with names.

I can’t imagine it. I’ve been with AA for nearly twelve years and shudder to think about going elsewhere.

FTTP breaks far less often so quality of support is far less of an issue than over xDSL. The CQM running all the time is basically irrelevant too.

I'm sure there will be people who stay where they are even on FTTP but the USP is certainly diminished, expecially with the backhaul network improvements many have made.

You could consider staying as an L2TP customer, for now at least. Then moving to FTTP with AAISP once they get their act together.

That said, I *thought* I was going to go down that route when I went for FTTP with CityFibre/TT but it turns out that I can drop to 800GB/month on my SOHO::1 account by configuring all the heavy users (TV, son's PC for game downloads etc) onto the TT network but keep the web/email/remote access servers which don't really need the bandwidth but do need static IPs on the AAISP connection. That way I basically save the same as the TT subscription making it cost neutral to keep both fibre *and* VDSL which is handy for redundancy, not fully decided but tempted to stick with both at the moment.

Update. My FTTP 330/50 connection went live yesterday. After a lot of soul-searching I have gone for Aquiss. Paying an additional £270 over the course of the next 12 months was the key decision-making factor for me. If things go badly - and I have no reason to think that they will - then paying a termination fee to migrate back to AAISP leaves me no worse off financially.

Funny I'm doing the opposite, I'm moving from Aquiss to AAISP. I've been getting congestion with Aquiss on working days from 9am, not every day is bad, but some days it falls over a cliff. Recent example, the first working day after the Easter holidays speeds at 9am dropped down to a few Meg from 9am, this is on a 900/100 service! BQM attached for a visual of the problem. As I'm working from home, it got to the point I avoided doing anything like video calls around 9-10am as the experience was often not good.

This problem was evident the first working day after joining Aquiss and duly reported. After 4 months of monitoring and raising the issue and finally having CityFibre look into it they reported no fault found. Aquiss have always been responsive, so can't fault that, but on an issue like this they are tied to whatever support CityFibre are willing to give.

I'm sure this problem can't be wide spread with Aquiss/CityFibre as it wouldn't go unnoticed by everyone else, and I'm probably plugged through some overloaded kit with a large number of business customers, if we imagine that perhaps CityFibre prioritise their residential customers below their business traffic then that might explain why I get hit hard on some busy working days. Still CityFibre were not quick to look into it and when they did they are not accepting there is a fault and closed the case. Aquiss have allowed me to leave before end of contract penalty free so at least I can move away.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/16503572597...

Edited by E300 (Thu 28-Apr-22 09:21:52)

For the record, I appreciate the patience shown by yourself.

We have meeting with their TSC due next week with senior members of their team as we want to get to the bottom of this and a number of niggles with their response times currently.

In reply to a post by aquiss:

For the record, I appreciate the patience shown by yourself.

We have meeting with their TSC due next week with senior members of their team as we want to get to the bottom of this and a number of niggles with their response times currently.

An aside, but reading this the thought came to me of the potential future scenario, as and when Virgin Media opens up its network as a wholesale proposition, of a conscientious ISP trying to get some sense out of VM regarding customer connection problems...

In reply to a post by binary:

An aside, but reading this the thought came to me of the potential future scenario, as and when Virgin Media opens up its network as a wholesale proposition, of a conscientious ISP trying to get some sense out of VM regarding customer connection problems...

Personally speaking, CityFibre need to restructure their support teams to support the massive growth of various aspects of their wholesale business. They have got a bit too much Team Leader heavy IMHO, where those on the coal face are light on resources, in some departments. It's not grown at the same rate as the a business as a whole. I know a recruitment drive is currently underway.

In reply to a post by binary:

In reply to a post by aquiss:

For the record, I appreciate the patience shown by yourself.

We have meeting with their TSC due next week with senior members of their team as we want to get to the bottom of this and a number of niggles with their response times currently.

An aside, but reading this the thought came to me of the potential future scenario, as and when Virgin Media opens up its network as a wholesale proposition, of a conscientious ISP trying to get some sense out of VM regarding customer connection problems...

Or more likely around here when CF come along and VM customers realise and leave VM as they want faster upload - the network will get swamped too possibly from the go.

In reply to a post by E300:

if we imagine that perhaps CityFibre prioritise their residential customers below their business traffic then that might explain why I get hit hard on some busy working days.

Which is what I would expect to be the case. I am not on CF (yet) but I would imagine what you say is true - it is a shame but at least your ISP allowed you to leave, that was very decent of them.

I know this reply is a bit late, but just my thought on this,

I would love to support a smaller provider like A&A, but price is the thing, certainly now with the increase in the cost of living. I did try and support a local wireless network for a couple of years, but they could not cope with the demand and then FTTC came here, so they closed.
I was with Metronet for a while, again a smaller provider, until they sold out to Plusnet.

So yes I like to support smaller providers, but price is the thing and sadly A&A prices are a lot higher than larger providers, not just a little. There is no denying from what I have read that A&A service is fantastic and to be honest they are more for Home office and office broadband where the network have to be ultra reliable. Most home users will go for something cheaper and put up with the bad customer service they normally get Unless they have a load of money.

I don't blame you for going for FTTP, if the price is lower, FTTP, is a more robust service than FTTC.

I never knew that Idnet; Zen or Aquiss was still going.

I have the same problem. I don't want to leave A&A but it looks like I will.

I've been an A&A customer since 2000 - I bought from them some ISDN kit (Lucent Cybergear Gold) and ordered an ISDN line.

As soon as ADSL became available, I've had broadband service from A&A continuously since the end of 2001 - first ADSL (512 Kbps originally and then 2 Mbps), moving on to VDSL and currently Firebrick bonded dual line SoHo::1 (for a total of about 75 Mbps down 14 Mbps up).

I found out recently that Community Fibre will be available in my area soon (they were working last week on a nearby road) meaning symmetric service of 1 Gbps. Unfortunately, Openreach currently show no FTTP plans for my area in the next few years and the CityFibre availability checker says the same.

So despite being 100% happy with A&A for over 20+ years, it looks like I'll end up with only their L2TP service going forward until/unless Openreach or CityFibre becomes available.

Edited by jman (Mon 08-Aug-22 16:22:36)

I currently have AAISP L2TP for a backup connection over Three 5G, which combined costs £26/month.

I'd love to upgrade that to say 100/100 once CityFibre come around, but £37 with a 500G quota is a hard no. Considering I currently balance this alongside my Zen 900 which can pull 180MB/s over Steam between the two, and that doesn't need to go over the L2TP so doesn't eat into that quota.

While 5G is not entirely reliable yet, this is likely to improve over time once they move to a pure 5G solution (it currently uses 4G for upload so its dire). Plus once Vodafone upgrade my area, the mast is closer and covers a smaller footprint so probably will work better.

I can understand having a quota, I can understand charging more, but to do both seems too much. Also the base Home quota should be at least four times the size it currently is. I've already done 545.524 GB on Zen in the past week alone, most of that just updating games on the Xbox.

I'd also much rather the service slow down once you hit the quota, rather than take data from next month. It also doesn't help they have the £100 new install charge when AFAIK no other ISP does this.

AAISP are strange, their L2TP service is reasonably priced IMO, as is their VoIP service (I use both), but their broadband is WAY out there.

Edited by alexatkin (Mon 08-Aug-22 18:10:59)

No one has mentioned A&A's policy of not subscribing to IWF, which is a big plus for me. I like to be treated like an adult.

I'm currently with them for FTTC. While City and Netomnia have been busy laying fibre round here for over a year, Netomnia is the only one currently offering a service, and that is through YouFibre. I'm hoping City will go live soon, and that AAISP will be able to offer a service. Our neighbour is an OR engineer and he says that FTTP is on the way, but I doubt he has any detailed inside knowledge.

In reply to a post by chrisadsl:

No one has mentioned A&A's policy of not subscribing to IWF, which is a big plus for me. I like to be treated like an adult.

I'm currently with them for FTTC. While City and Netomnia have been busy laying fibre round here for over a year, Netomnia is the only one currently offering a service, and that is through YouFibre. I'm hoping City will go live soon, and that AAISP will be able to offer a service. Our neighbour is an OR engineer and he says that FTTP is on the way, but I doubt he has any detailed inside knowledge.

They block other stuff though, as per the law.

(Well Block is a strong word really, they do the bare minimum to comply with the law)

Edited by therioman (Sun 21-Aug-22 20:43:33)

In reply to a post by therioman:

They block other stuff though, as per the law.

(Well Block is a strong word really, they do the bare minimum to comply with the law)

Do they, what exactly do you think they are blocking ?

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

In reply to a post by therioman:

They block other stuff though, as per the law.

(Well Block is a strong word really, they do the bare minimum to comply with the law)

Do they, what exactly do you think they are blocking ?

I don't *think* they are, they are - if you use the A&A resolvers they're not resolving some web sites in accordance with the law. It's on the A&A news site..

Ah, I'd missed that.

https://www.aa.net.uk/etc/news/uk-sanctions-law-aa-a...

As I started this thread, an update might be helpful. I have been with Aquiss now for over 4 months. My connection purrs away at 300/40 to all parts of my home via a AVM/Fritz mesh. The only time that I see a speed drop is when a device stubbornly stays connected to a repeater in another room. Even then, the drop is only down to about 200Mbps.

Since I joined Aquiss, my monthly price has been reduced from £49 to £45 in line with its current FTTC offer. I am now in a situation where I pay Aquiss the same price as I did AAISP: the key differences being that I now get 6 times the speed and unlimited downloads.

So far there isn’t much not to like.

Looks like my loyalty to AAISP is about to be tested. Netomnia and City Fibre have both been laying fibre here. Only Netomnia has gone live (via YouFibre). I've been waiting to see if AAISP will sign up with either of them. Finally, they've signed a contract with City in July, but no service yet available. As few weeks ago I registered with YouFibre to get early joiner deals but decided not to go ahead. Now I've received an email asking if they can tempt me: offering their YouFibre 1000 package ((includes You Mesh with the eero) for £25/month (instead of the usual £45) and first 3 months free! (I'd previously said their 500 package was probably more than I'd need). Then I finally found AAISP's FTTP pricing £45 for 150 Mbit/s!! No installation fee, and a symmetric badndwidth. I have until the end of the month to decide. Very tempting. It's actually £10 less than I currently pay for 73 Mbit/s, though I'd probably pay the extra £5 for static IP.

What have you got to lose

The biggest risk to my FTTP service is me cutting the external fibre line with my grass strimmer. As there is no DLM on FTTP, then my connection just purrs along at 300/40 actual with unlimited downloads for the same price as my old Aquiss 63Mbps 500GB service.

Do I miss AAISP’s first rate customer service.? The truth is that I have never had to contact my new ISP so I haven’t a clue.