Transfer advice please

Hi,

I haven't posted here for a long time as I haven't needed to. However, I'm looking to move away from Coms after poor communication and withdrawal of services - this after they promised to preserve the quality we enjoyed with ADSL24.

We are on a high speed fibre connection - around 75 down and 16 up - the cabinet is around 400m away. To be honest, the service hasn't been bad but with the recent withdrawal of email, hosting etc and increased complaints elsewhere, I think it's time to move.

We run a successful web business from home so need a very good, reliable connection. I don't mind paying more for this. I've heard good things about Zen and Andrews and Arnold historically, is this still the case? Any other contenders to consider please?

The other major concern is downtime when transferring - what is the current process and how long does it take please? Is it possible to avoid downtime?

We have a BT modem and then link that to our own Netgear unit - I need the flexibility to keep that as it cost a fair bit and works well. We also have a separate phone service via BT; the internet provision is separate. However, I'd be willing to consider consolidating it all into one service. We pay around £35 per month for the internet but can flex on that a little if it means an upgrade in reliability.

Sorry for all the questions but I'm way out of the loop when it comes to internet services these days.

Thanks
Dave

I do not want to directly answer this, but I will say both Zen and A&A are still both at the top of respect. I have heard one or two mutterings about Zen being a bit oversold, but I really do not wish to say that is the case and I would suggest you go onto the ISP forums on here and guage that for your self.

Personally I think if you are willing to pay that bit more they are both excellent choices and probably two of the safest.

I will say Xilo (Uno) have been fabulous since I moved over and possibly they may be worth a look too. Their support is top notch.

Woody

Do you know who the underlying provider of your fibre connection is?

It could be a BT Wholesale provider, or TalkTalk Business as far as I know. I don't think Sky has resellers, and I don't think there is any other wholesaler except the unlikely Enta. A tracert to the BBC might give us a clue, from the first hop after your router.

An FTTC migration does not generally need an engineer visit, but it might require work at the exchange depending on who the underlying supplier is. Downtime is negligible unless there is work needed at the exchange, and even if there is it should not be long.

Regarding your Openreach modem and your own kit, no need at all to change that.

Few ISPs insist that you put your line with them, but they may charge a few pounds per month more for the broadband if you don't.

What kind of internet usage do you have for the business, and also for personal use? It may be relevant, particularly with AAISP.

Hi folks,

Thanks for the replies and sorry for the delayed reply - quite a weekend of sport distracting me!

I believe our supplier (Coms) resells BT.

We are on a 100 gig package and use around half of that. We are web designer/developers and move a lot of files up and down. This is supplemented by the odd HD movie. So a decent chunk but not massive.

I think my next step will be to approach a couple of the suppliers mentioned and start asking about the specifics of transfer.

Thanks for your help,
Dave

Zen is looking the better choice of the two to me.

Hi,

Yes, just mailed them to get some more info. Looks a good bet however. Just got to keep my nerve and get on with it! Can't afford more than a few hours offline really.

Thanks
Dave

tbb comparison. Hover the cursor over an ISP's bar to see how many of its customers gave it a rating that month.

My FTTC connection is due to be migrated from Vivaciti to Zen on Thursday, so i can let you know how smooth it was after that.

Previous ADSL migrations have always been easy. Sometime between 07:00 and 09:00 of the morning of migration the connection goes down on the old provider. I log into the router and change the username/password (also needed to reboot when i switched from ADSL to FTTC). A couple of minutes later the connection comes back up on the new provider.

I don't see any reason why the FTTC migration should be any different, but i'll post back here on Thursday.

I've gone with Zen's Fibre Unlimited 2 package without line rental. Total is £35.40/month (£30 for the Internet and a £5.40 surcharge for not taking their phone service). This is £1.80/month less than what i'm currently paying Vivaciti.

My line's no where near as good as your's though. About 550m from the cabinet and get 39Mbps down, 6Mbps up. Considering the speeds i thought about their Fibre Unlimited 1 package saving £3/month but it incurs a setup fee that FU2 doesn't so i'd only be saving £6 over the year anyway.

Thanks - useful. Zen and AA seem to be up there albeit with smaller sample size.

Uno (Xilo) were very responsive on mail last night. Still waiting to hear from AA and Zen. Interestingly the business services for some of these guys seem to be a few quid more than the 'home' service but the actual service seems (and probably is) very similar?

This also look very useful and I'll be interested to see how it goes. Thanks for this.

Dave