I joined IDNet 14 months ago, and for all of that time experienced rock steady speeds. As I am amazingly lucky, I live on a FTTC exchange, and close to my cabinet, so got DL 37 mbps, UL 8 mbps, varying by only decimal points during that period.
IDNet's tariff states the maximum peak time download per month and after a couple of months I was on the correct tariff, with a pretty steady 30GB per month usage.
Downloads were amazingly fast, and even uploading pictures to Flickr or video to YouTube never seemed too bad.
However, IDNet are not cheap. OK I know a Merc or BMW costs more than a Mondeo, but the cost was high enough that I was aware of it.
So at the end of the year contract I looked around and found another ISP (PlusNet) with which I had good experience in a rental property I look after. After a bit of calculation, I worked out that my 30 GB usage would cost far less on PlusNet so migrated.
Now, I was really sad to leave IDNet - I had loved the helpfulness of the team and the forum, but I thought that this was a positive move.
So - why am I posting this?
Well, firstly, I found out that PlusNet charge for both UL AND DL data, so my usage was going to push me into the next tariff up. That largely erased the cost saving I had planned to make.
And as PlusNet profile bandwidth, if I wanted to watch Netflix or download video that was shaped unless I paid another £5 per month!
THEN I found out that PlusNet also cap UL speeds at 2mbps, and I was only getting just over 1mbps UL - so my video and image uploads were suddenly going to not only be charged but take a long, long time!
So - back to my spreadsheet and it worked out that I was actually cheaper when I was on IDNet for my usage (which is not high, really) and I would get the whole bandwidth for which I was paying - no caps or profiling!
So a rapid cancellation later, I am returning to IDNet, wiser, chastened, and very unlikely to go after "greener grass" elsewhere again without a huge amount of research and a lot of thought.



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