Let me explain,
about 3 years ago I tried out O2's broadband service as had been a happy customer of their mobile service for a while.
Speeds were cracking but the line became extremely unstable so moved back to a BT based service.
Last year I decided to see if I could get more speed out of the line so asked Zen if I could get my socket replaced with an NTE5 with the bellwire choke which BT did for free.
There's also been a question of partial homeworking at work so earlier this year I plugged a phone into the line to check whether it was working as intended to use it as a dedicated voice line for work, no dial tone.
Reported to Zen who I also pay the line rental to and they got a BT engineer out to fix it who found some rotten copper he cut away and then sealed it.
Speeds have been great since but running alongside all this I've been using Netflix quite a bit so thought I'd look at the unlimited offerings as was going through my Zen allowance quite quickly.
Firstly moved to Freeola who did unlimited off peak, then found Xilo and Vivaciti did unlimited.
I was a tad apprehensive about going direct to Xilo due to previous problems with O2 based ADSL and initial cost would have come to 65 quid so went to Vivaciti to check it worked as they had free setup to check it works first which it does.
Xilo did also say they can provide Enhanced care which means they can raise issues with O2 even over a holiday period but Vivaciti say they cannot.
This is now important as it's looking likely I'll be using VPN over Christmas to work but if it fails I have to go into the office which I don't really want to do.
Now do you understand?
Virgin (ADSL) => Namesco => Newnet => O2 => Plusnet => Zen => Newnet => Zen => Freeola
Note: I don't lay turf for anyone. astro or otherwise, all views and opinions expressed are my own based on experience.